In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Three In One who pours His Love into our hearts and makes us rejoice.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ
About one hundred years before the Reformation, an artist named Andrei Rublev painted a depiction of the Trinity. Today we celebrate the feast of the Trinity, this mystery of faith revealed to men. Rublev’s painting is taken from a scene in Genesis 18. The story is of when three angelic beings visited Abraham and Abraham presented them with a feast at a table.
The painting featured these three angelic figures in a configuration that created an invisible equilateral triangle: one at the head of the table, one at the right and one at the left – sitting in obvious conversation and camaraderie, the way many of us might appear if we’re sitting down at lunch with people that we love and know well.
Throughout the years, pastors and theologians have used this painting to explain or understand something about the Trinity. Strangely enough, the most profound thing that has been said about this painting has nothing to do with the presence of three figures, but rather it has to do with an absence, or a void.
You see, in this triangle of three figures – there seems to be an opening, a missing piece, an invitation to the viewer to take a fourth place amongst these three men, there is an empty chair.
The experience of having an empty chair is one that is quite common to us. Surely we have all experienced empty chairs in one way or another. If you look around today in the sanctuary, you will certainly notice a few empty chairs. Since it is the middle of summer you may notice that many of the chairs once occupied by students are empty. Some other chairs may be empty this week because of vacation plans. Other chairs yet are empty because of the people who used to occupy them have moved away.
For some, the empty chair is even more painful. It may be a reminder of the loved one who no longer sits in a certain place because of an argument. For still others yet, the empty chair may be all that is left behind by a loved one who is now in the hospital or assisted living facility. The empty chairs in your life may perhaps be the end product of a sinful life, the devil’s greatest weapon – death.
That empty chair can be hard for us to look at. It can be hard for us to see the place where a loved one sat and watched tv or drank sweet tea and talked to us. We want to put the chair away. We want to at least look away from it. We don’t want to see it.
I was surprised one day while visiting the home of a friend of mine. I had known her father, but he had died about three months before this – my latest visit. In this my first time back since that tragedy, I noticed that something was “off” in the room. Something didn’t feel right. I looked around and suddenly I realized it – the father’s chair had been moved almost completely out of the dining room and into a corner where it wouldn’t be seen. It was just too hard for them to look at that empty chair.
We have many empty chairs in our own lives. We know the empty chair of sicknesses and deaths that steal people away from us. We know the empty chairs caused by our addiction to sin – empty chairs caused by violent arguments and hurtful words. We even know what it feels like to experience what seems to be an empty chair between us and God when we don’t get a prayer answered the way we want or we don’t have an experience that we think we should have.
These empty chairs are hard to handle because they produce in us a feeling of suffering. They are painful, tragic, and ugly.
Yet the Apostle Paul in our reading for today says something so incomprehensible. He says that we REJOICE in our sufferings. He doesn’t say that if we ignore our sufferings, they’ll go away. He doesn’t say that if we just believed more, we wouldn’t have sufferings. He doesn’t offer us a 12 step program or a band aid but instead says that people who follow Jesus REJOICE in empty chairs and sufferings.
He takes the pain and the suffering that we have been trying to push into the corner or the other room and he takes it into his own hands and says REJOICE!
REJOICE in the passing of this friend, REJOICE in this economic hardship, REJOICE in this persecution, REJOICE in this empty chair which makes you cry every time you look at it. REJOICE because this suffering produces HOPE. It produces endurance, which produces character, which produces HOPE.
Our empty chairs are changed from places of suffering into symbols of hope because when man sinned, the Trinity saw an empty chair and turned to action. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit saw the chair that we should be sitting at and devised a great plan.
In that great plan the entire Trinity sought us out. In that plan the Father sent the Son to the world because of His Great Love. In that plan, the Son walked amongst us, died and rose from the dead because of His Great Love. In that plan, the Holy Spirit was poured once again into the hearts of men and women because of His Great Love. This Great Love has transformed our empty chairs into hope and a reason to rejoice.
Now the empty chair left by a loved one who has fallen asleep is not a source of bitterness, but a hope of the joyous reunion we will have on the Great Day of Christ’s Returning. Now that empty chair left by an argument is a reason for reconciliation and forgiveness within Christ’s body.
Today we celebrate the reality of the Body and Blood offered to us by the Trinity. At the time of Jesus, at the Passover where Jesus first instituted the Lord’s Supper, an empty chair was always left for Elijah to sit in. On the day that He instituted that meal, Jesus took the cup that sat in Elijah’s place setting and declared that Elijah’s seat was no longer empty, but was filled by the presence of a Trinity that was seeking to bring man into communion and fellowship.
That Trinity is with us today. That Trinity turns our sorrow into rejoicing. That Trinity forgives us and washes us clean for the banquet in order to present us with the empty chair that we might sit in. That Trinity says “Rejoice! Today you sit in the Kingdom of God! Today you shall rejoice!”
May your empty chairs cease to be reasons for suffering and may you see your empty chairs as reasons for hope because of the transforming work of the Trinity. Amen.
