Humming the Tune of Grace and Compassion
The Trinity defies description, but the Spirit surrounds us and shows itself to us when we are authentically present. Sometimes the best you can do is to offer a cold glass of water, and that’s enough.
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Transcript
Well, in the name of the God of creation who loves us all. Amen. Please be seated.
Good morning, friends, and welcome to Grace Episcopal Church on this first Sunday after Pentecost. We are so glad you’re here, and if you’re visiting today, please do let us know. And a deep bow of gratitude to Brandon and to Stuart for the invitation to be here with you all this morning. Thank you.
Well, today, as Brandon said, we observe Trinity Sunday. It’s a day set apart in the life of the church to creatively and imaginatively reflect on the nature of God and our experience of being in relationship with God and with the Trinity and with one another.
Although the history of the great doctrinal councils of the fourth and fifth centuries regarding the Trinity is rich and interesting in its own way, as much for the contentious debates as for the conclusions they reached, I think it all comes down to this truth. The Trinity reveals that the essence of God, however we understand God to be, is found in relationships just like those gathered here today. So thank you, each of you, for showing up this morning. And we’re called to show up for others when we can, aren’t we, and to go forth in love when we leave this place.
One of my favorite of our hymns is Ubi Caritas, and it says it so well, I think. “God is love and where true love is, God’s own self is there.” I think that’s right.
And as a former neuroscience major, I can tell you that research is showing that it’s written in our very DNA that we are creatures of relationship. Relationships of love and gratitude and compassion can change our neurochemistry and our neural pathways in life-giving ways that allow us to flourish.
But to explain the Trinity isn’t now, nor has it ever been easy, really, and therein lies a tale, doesn’t it? Because I think we each have to go on that journey ourselves. Saint Augustine once said that anyone who denies the Trinity is in danger of losing their salvation, and anyone who tries to explain it is in danger of losing their mind. Well, I don’t agree with the first proposition, but I can certainly relate to the second.
In the gospel text for today, dear ones, Jesus reminds us that he will be with us always, and we recall that on Pentecost, which long green season of ordinary time we now observe, the Spirit came to be an advocate not just for the disciples, but for all of us.
The Spirit, pneumas in the Greek and ruach in the Hebrew, is the breath of life. It’s the very divine spark that gives each of us our authentic and true self.
I had a beloved track coach in college who was fond of saying in Latin, Esse Quam Videri. And after hearing this for a couple of years, I said, “Coach B, do you actually know what that means?” He said, “Yes, William, it means: Don’t be a phony. Be yourself. Be who God created you to be.”
The poet Mary Oliver, a fellow Episcopalian, said this: “Love yourself, then forget it, and then love the world.” That’s exactly right. And from that spacious and grounded place, one connects and empathizes and forgives and loves just about everything in creation, that deep inner yes to God in us with the nudging, I want to suggest, of the Holy Spirit in her mischief.
Now, today’s gospel text also says, “Make disciples of all nations.” It’s interesting to me, friends, that the word “disciples” isn’t actually a noun in the Greek, and so it should read, “Go therefore and disciple all nations.” And I think that changes things considerably, because making disciples sounds like a finished product, or if baptism is the ultimate change for everyone, and it is not. I think baptism is just a beginning, because the word “disciple” is a word of formation. And with a little imagination, it becomes the verbs “discipling” and “christing,” for example, which is, after all, what we’re called to do when we leave this place having been fed by the bread and the wine and the fellowship of being together. It implies being in relationship and showing up and walking together over time. A disciple isn’t simply someone who agrees with an idea, but someone who is shaped by a way of being in the world. And this may mean that becoming a disciple is really about the slow work of formation over time in communities just like this one.
When discipleship is driven by curiosity, even not knowing on occasion, we assent to the wisdom of those who are farther along on the path. We’re curious about their insights and curious about our own unsettled not knowing at times. We disciple ourselves to a journey where asking good and hard questions allows us to continue to grow over the course of a lifetime. So, for example, think of the Benedictine Rule of Life or any good 12-step process. It’s a journey day-by-day.
To be a disciple of Jesus then is to go ourselves on the journey that Jesus pioneered rather than to worship the journey of Jesus. If we understand Jesus to be the pioneer of faith, as suggested in Hebrews chapter 12, then he becomes the one who is opening doors of possibility for us to walk through with the help of the Holy Spirit. We’re called to take full responsibility for our own relationship to God. As we say in our baptismal covenant, “I will, with God’s help.”
And so, friends, I believe we’re called to pay attention to how the Holy Spirit may be inviting us all the time into conversation, no matter what forms this may take. I wonder how you and I might be more attentive to the possibility that the Spirit in her wisdom is available to be our advocate and maybe nudging us along on the journey. How are we showing up to be available to this, and in relation to whom?
Liston Mills was my mentor and primary professor who taught faithfully at Vanderbilt for over 40 years, and I remember him saying to me once, “William, over the course of your time with us, you’ve studied a lot of psychology and theology and how those might be integrated. But I want you to remember that sometimes the best we have to offer is simply to show up, be present, co-create hospitality.” He said, “It’s like giving someone a cup of cold water on a hot day.” He was quoting Matthew, of course. And I’ve thought about that often in the years that have since passed, especially when people like me tend to traffic in theories of psychology and religion, and we sometimes miss the real person sitting right in front of us. I think he was trying to tell me something about grace, and humility, and compassion.
Buddy Miller is a wonderful alt-country singer-songwriter in Nashville, and he wrote a fine tune in which he says,
I need a drink of something like water
I need a taste of love divine
Sometimes you just got to do what you ought to
Sometimes you bring up the water when the well is dry.
I think my mentor Liston Mills and Matthew in today’s gospel knew this. Small miracles can happen even with a small cup of water. Small acts of hospitality and compassion can make a difference far beyond what we can imagine. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, even small acts of kindness can transcend the limits of our human spiritual imaginations. And this need not come from our positions of strength or our roles professionally or otherwise.
The author Brené Brown has said it paradoxically comes from our own places of vulnerability. She says, “When I asked people what is vulnerability, the answers were things like sitting with my wife who has stage three breast cancer trying to make plans for our children, or my first date after my divorce, saying ‘I love you’ first, asking for a raise, sending my child to school, being enthusiastic and supportive of her and knowing how excited she is about orchestra tryouts and how much she wants to make first chair and encouraging her and supporting her and knowing it is not going to happen.”
It’s about the willingness, she says, to show up and be seen in our lives. And in those moments when we show up, I think those are the most powerful meaning-making moments. Even if they don’t go well, I think they define who we are. Yes. And metaphorically speaking, these are the opportunities to provide a cold cup of water on a hot day.
My friend and colleague Barbara Brown Taylor put it this way: “The next time you’re in real pain, see how you feel about your favorite TV show or new appliances, a clean house or your résumé and your professional roles. Chances are none of those will do anything for you. All that will do anything for you is some cool water held out by someone who has stopped everything else to look after you. An extra blanket might help, a dry pillow, the simple knowledge that there is someone in the house who might hear you when you cry.”
Well, soon after he retired from the faculty at Vanderbilt, my dear friend and mentor Liston developed an aggressive form of carcinoma. It was not the retirement for which he had hoped. And despite a vigorous experimental treatment protocol at NIH at Vanderbilt, the cancer spread rapidly. On occasion, I would leave early in the morning from Atlanta and drive to Nashville to take him out to lunch. “We’ll go anywhere you like,” I said. “I’ll just pick you up and you take me to your favorite place.” Each time the answer was the same: Waffle House out on Charlotte Avenue. And I protested and offered something with a menu more, well, foodie, but he said no. At Waffle House, the food is simple and didn’t upset his stomach during his chemotherapy, and he had a favorite waitress there who knew him and called him sweetheart and said, “You want some more water, hun?” It was a calm sea in the storm of his treatment and his dying. And so there we would sit together eating waffles and drinking water and talking and giggling until it was time for me to take him home and back to the mysterious sacred task of his saying goodbye to this beautiful world, and for me to head back home to Atlanta, grieving the impending loss of this dear man without whom I would not be here with you all today.
The last time I saw him, and this is hard to confess to you this morning, I didn’t want to go. It was eight hours of driving and our older son had a baseball game that evening and I was his coach. I told myself I was too busy and had too much to do. But I heard a voice saying, “You, you really need to go.” Whose voice? I’m not sure. I suspect it was a holy nudge. And so I drove to Nashville, and we went to Waffle House one final time shortly before he died. And I noted how his favorite waitress watchfully kept his water glass filled. Maybe she was an angel right there on Charlotte Avenue, so carefully disguised as a Waffle House waitress. And she was, well, discipling and christing in her own way. I noted the care that she provided for Liston and I said, “You know, a very wise professor of mine once told me that sometimes the most we can do is give someone a cold cup of water, and that would be enough.”
Tears formed in his eyes and he said, “Now, William, you know that quote wasn’t original to me.” He said, “Sometimes I think we claim to know all the right notes of the Bible, but we can’t hum the tune of it.”
That’s what the gospel is all about: humming the tune of grace and compassion, keeping the water flowing, and being willing to just show up, like you did today for me. Because, you see, Liston had taught me many years ago in the classrooms of my beloved Vanderbilt Divinity School that we can be broken and still be whole. We can be terminally ill and healed completely in spirit. And on that day, he was giving me the gift of seeing him live that out. As Donald Winnicott said, “God, my prayer is that I will be fully alive when I die.” And so he was.
In so doing, he gave me a deep drink of something like water, something like the taste of love divine. He was saying, “Sometimes you bring up water when the well is dry,” just as Mary Magdalene did at the foot of the cross.
And so, dear ones, this morning, I pray that each of us may ask ourselves where we are willing to show up and do some discipling and christing, not by an assent to an idea, but saying yes to practices and disciplines of relationship as Christ comes to us and says, “Don’t be afraid. Drink the water from a deeper well. Love one another. I am with you always.”
Because, you see, I sat there in Waffle House on Charlotte Avenue with my dear friend, a father to me in many ways, bearing witness to his dying, with our faithful and steadfast server companion embodying Christ by showing up for him. And the Holy Spirit who sent me there that day, holding all of that hard, messy, sacred space together. Christing, discipling in community out there on Charlotte Avenue. Now, that’s a definition of the Holy Trinity I can understand.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Bill Harkins
May 31, 2026