The God we worship, the God we encounter in both the Old Testament and the New Testament is One. But just as the doctrine of the Trinity reflects the reality that we encounter God in different ways, so the stories we read in scripture reflect the fact that God shows up in all kinds of ways. Yet underneath all of the ways in which we encounter God, both in scripture and in our own lives, is a God who loves this world and all the people in it. A God willing to show up in ways that we can recognize, but also a God who is constantly calling us to a bigger and bolder version, not only of God, but of the world that God created.

Our greatest hope and desire should be to produce the finest quality fruit we can. Not because we fear God’s anger and judgement, though it is fearsome, but because we have seen all the nurture and tending God has put into us. Because we have experienced God’s love and compassion and forgiveness ourselves. Because we want to live in a world of justice and righteousness, not bloodshed and distress. May it be so. Amen.

Ultimately, I know I can’t measure how much any of our faith changed at Triennium. But, we had fun. We laughed. We deepened our sense of community and connection. We felt the Spirit moving around us. We prayed. We sang. We danced. We learned some things and listened to other people’s experience of encountering God. We ate together. We took communion. We saw the church, the body of Christ, as something wider and more diverse than we usually see. We hoped God would show up, expected God to show up, and God did. May it be so again and again. Amen.

Jesus invited Martha and invites us to lay down all the worry, the fretting, the tendency to blame and isolate, the frantic consumption of more and more things to be worried about, at his feet and to listen instead for the comfort and the challenge offered in his words; to be encouraged and inspired to go out to do the work we are called to do in this world; to find other people who will do that work with us; and to be reminded we are not alone in any of this.

We live in a broken and fearful world. It was true long ago and it remains true today. And there is no easy fix, tempting though it can be to point fingers. But there is work we can do, work God calls us to do—to see things more clearly, to love this world more dearly, and to live into God's generous, generative vision of what could be. Amen.