19.06.2019
‘Let go of What I Once Knew and Trust in a Triune God’ – Trinity Sunday in Christ Church Cathedral
“Much of the work of reconciliation is about coming to peace with the task of faith.” So said the incoming leader of the Corrymeela Community, the Revd Dr Alex Wimberley, who was preaching at Christ Church Cathedral’s Patronal Service on Trinity Sunday.
Archbishop Michael Jackson presided at the service in the presence of Dean Dermot Dunne and it was sung by the Cathedral Choir. The annual lunch and AGM for the Friends of Christ Church Cathedral followed.
The Corrymeela Community is an ecumenical community dedicated to the work of peace and reconciliation and Dr Wimberley said he was initially relieved to learn that he need not preach on the subject of the Trinity. Quoting Dorothy L Sayers he said that the mysterious concept of the Trinity was incomprehensible and irrelevant. But in the light of what he was invited to speak about – reconciliation and living with diversity – he said the Trinity didn’t sound so bad or irrelevant.
“There is something screaming at us about daily life and ethics in the notion that God is God not in singular aloofness but in vulnerable relationship with others. The essence of being divine, the Trinity tells us, is to live in loving communion with those different to us. Pluralism is good, the Trinity implies. And there is something downright practical in the idea that God’s relationship with us is not based on a static, take it or leave it yes or no pronouncement, the result of some a–ha moment that some get and others don’t. That when we get it, we get it all. No. The Spirit of Truth – at least in this passage – is a promise, not a possession. There is more to come,” he explained.
On the island of Ireland in 2019, he suggested that a God whose very existence stressed relationship with others and a God who walked with us in the process of becoming something new was the God we should be glad to worship. Ireland and the world were quickly becoming something new, Dr Wimberly stated. Never before had such fundamental change happened so quickly or so extensively.
“The digital revolution, the population explosion, the cataclysmic tipping point of climate change, the demographic shifts that fuel anxieties and flummox our governments. The latest calculation has whites like me in America becoming a minority in 2042. That’s 23 years from now. If you don’t think that a subconscious realisation of that is driving much of the populist backlash in US politics, then you’re seeing something I am not. I’m seeing a lot people uncomfortable with vulnerability. (Of course, if minorities weren’t treated like second–class citizens, there wouldn’t be anything to fear.) The date when whites become a minority in Britain is estimated at 2066. The date in Ireland may be sooner: around 2050. Now. We can choose to worship a God who welcomes this process of becoming, that holds these transformations of who are we in a spirit of hope and assurance – or we can insist on a god who wants to keep everything as it is, or to return us to where we used to be. That sounds like a god of fear and anxiety to me, a god of singular aloofness, a god more and more irrelevant to the world we are in, a god increasingly incomprehensible to coming generations,” he stated.
He described coming to peace with the task of faith: “That to be faithful is to trust that I can let go of what I once knew, of what I insisted was right, I can let go of my way of doing things, and who I decided I was – because I can trust through Christ that what lies ahead and what will remain will still be in keeping with the God who was and who is and who is to come. That a Europe or an America or an Ireland where being a white, straight Christian male is no longer an advantage will be still a Europe or an America or an Ireland that I will want to be a part of; that what is good and right and true and eternal will still be found – not because I fought to preserve it – but because it is good and right and true and eternal. And doesn’t need my protection. It is of a God who will continue to be.”
You can read the full text of Dr Wimberly’s sermon here.
Following their AGM the incoming committee of the Friends is: Hon Secretary – Lesley Rue, Hon Treasurer – Brian Bradshaw, Hon Editor – Derek Byrne and committee – Desmond Campbell, Eileen Kennedy, Ruth Kinsella, Don Macaulay, Helen Martin, Ken Milne, Patricia Sweetman, Terence Read and David Wynne.