I Bind Unto Myself Today

We are living in a fearful time.  Not the fear of one but of many.  We are closer to Great Power conflict than at any other time since WW I.  The current level of mistrust and perceived threat resembles the world that existed prior to that conflict which consumed 40 million casualties, military and civilian.  Just from July to November 1916 the Battle of the Somme resulted in one million casualties.  The cemeteries of the Somme Valley hold over 72,000 British soldiers whose bodies were never identified.  The first day of that battle alone resulted in nearly 70,000 casualties.[1]

Global conflicts rage, like those leading to 1916, conflicts that could spiral out of control:  Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, Iran, Sudan, the tension between North and South Korea, the tension between the U.S. and China over Tawain and trade policies, conflict between India and China over Himalayan water resources as its glaciers continue to melt under global warming.  A fear that in the not-too-distant future our planet could be consumed by the chaos of armed conflict among the many Great Powers – chaos resulting in one of the greatest migrations of desperate refugees that the world has yet seen.

Europe is experiencing the highest temperatures ever recorded, wildfires rage.

Kenya and Uganda are consumed by Ebola and Marburg diseases, highly severe and often fatal viral hemorrhagic fever ailments.  Let the “America First” crowd remember that what happens in Africa no longer stays in Africa.  Time to renew our membership in the World Health Organization, ya think?

Our youth, no matter how well prepared for the future, are struggling with futile job searches.  In part brought on by this insane Iran conflict and by A.I.

Just one young man, Soban Ali, was hoping to begin his life away from the Washington where he had been raised.  Now living in New York City, he, after being released from his federal job as a government contractor, was into a seven-month job search.[2] 

After applying to over 450 openings, he had landed only 10 interviews and still has no full-time work.

He feels guilty, not being able to join his friends at dinner or a beer out.  He would like to start a family but sighs, “I can’t even afford myself, so how am I going to afford someone else?”  He ponders his prospects for the future.  In five years will he have a good, livable income?  “Or am I going to be flipping burgers?”   He now makes $18 per hour as an aide in an after-school program – a dollar an hour over minimum wage.   Yes, he wonders, will he be consigned to flipping burgers for the rest of his productive life?  Or will an A.I. robot take over that job too.

Mirko Mormile, 27, a graduate of Brooklyn College, is still living with his grandfather.  He studied business, not his first choice, in the hopes of landing something.  After applying to over 1000 jobs, he now is a digital content creator, but still does not bring in enough to live on his own.

The current financial chaos is a blight on an entire generation seeking to enter the job market.  The worst since the coronavirus pandemic.

We presently live in a chaotic world.  The existential fear not of one but of many is palpable.

In the Book of Genesis, the supreme Act of Grace is the subduing of chaos.  Order is brought into creation, beginning with, “Let there be Light.”  Night and day are ordered.  The boundaries of the sea are set.  The living world of plants and animals unfolds in order.

Would that some act of creative energy subdue the chaos we inflict upon nature and upon one another?

God brings order into creation as Ruah, the Spirit, blows over it all   The Book of Proverbs defines this power of creation as Wisdom.  She was there in the beginning delighting God as she worked to bring all into being as a master worker with God.[3]

Today we celebrate the Doctrine of the Trinity.  However, this doctrine is nowhere explicitly to be found in scripture.  It was an accretion of experience over the years, that was finally formulated as an article of faith for Christians in the 300s.

Today hapless preachers will stumble from one heresy to another in an attempt to define and make sense of the Trinity.  Just as numerous early church councils in conclave after conclave failed to come to a satisfactory formulation.

So, I say, let’s ride loose in the saddle, remembering that all theological language is figurative, metaphorical.  Paul Tillich warns that our minds are idol factories.  The moment we think we have a literal description of the Divine, we have created something less in our minds, far, far less.  Literalism only begets an idol.  That’s why Jesus spoke in parables and similes.  The Kingdom is like…such and such — not far off but within.

The Almighty connects with humanity in many guises.  Traditionally, we have perceived the workings of the Creator through the beauty and order of our world.  Through the Love binding human relationships.  Yes, God is Love and those who abide in Love abide in God and God in them.[4]

We have known this force of Love through the person Jesus.  For Christians, that revelation is primary and determinative. 

We know that from time to time the Spirit touches our imaginations, bringing to remembrance acts of courageous love, of self-sacrifice.  Enlightening in the way of Truth and Life.  Wisdom being her hallmark.

As Episcopalians, we have a generous understanding of this Holy Trinity, working ever to bring us to the full mark of humanness.  Working ever to restore that original garden of harmonious subsistence.

By the way, given our egregious failures as Episcopalians, in our support of slavery, in our complicity with the genocide of our First Peoples — right from America’s founding, our support of Jim Crow laws in the South and silence about racial injustice in the North, with our murderous persecution of those of other faiths — we have fallen far, far short of the Original Vision that ordered creation out of chaos.  We have been agents of disorder.

As I oft say, “Why, given our sordid track record, would God be so stupid to put all the eggs in a basket called Episcopal?”  Yet, led by the Spirit, we have become open to that generous Spirit of Charity that works through those of other faiths, and sometimes through no declared faith.

Given our present world, we need the assurance of a strong faith to bind us to Life and Truth.  We need such a resilient faith to pass on to our children that they can bear the hatred the world throws at them.  Sometimes just because of the color of their skin or accent.  A faith to which they can bind their futures, their dreams and their hopes.

So let me tell stories of that Divine Love known through our ongoing creation, through the legacy of Christ emptied out in the humanistic values that guide our world, in the moments of Spirit-filled inspiration that open up new vistas for life to flourish, for the renewal of all Creation.

Creator God, Redeemer God, Sustaining God – who am I, a simple parish priest, to sort it all out.  But I will eternally give thanks for all who have carried forth this saving legacy of Eternity.  To that heritage do bind unto myself today.

Genisis begins the first act of unmerited Grace.  The simple fact that there is Something and not Nothing.  And when we behold creation in all its splendor, our breath is sucked right out of us.  From sunflower to humming bird.  From the majesty of Half Dome to the rugged Mojave Desert with its Joshua Trees.  Sucked right out of us it is.

So, I close with a story of this heritage in my life.  In our downtown church in Los Angeles, Temple United Methodist Church, there was a family notorious for both their gifts and their disruptive children, especially Billy and Bobby.

Barbara — the mother, an upper-class white had an incredible soprano voice and she would sing in the choir if someone would babysit her children during Wednesday night choir practice.  Jai volunteered.  And that’s whole other story.

The father, Bill, a Panamanian, was an incredible drummer on the bongos, great on the guitar and would sing scat through some of the hymns.

The two boys were known — behind the parents’ backs – as Los Monstros.  Both parents oft seemed clueless about raising their children. It was Bobby who turned off the moving sidewalk in the Haunted House at Disneyland.

After divorce, Barbara brought her children up to Inyokern where I was serving my first appointed church assignment for the Methodists.  They were to stay with us for a few days.

It was late in the evening when her van pulled up in front of our house.  As the doors popped open and sleepy children stumbled out, one of the boys looked up.  Upon seeing the dazzling display of the Milky Way, gasped, “Wow, you don’t have much air up here, do you.”

He had never seen the sky without Southern California smog and light pollution.  Soon the other children were heads back, marveling at the splendor of God’s Light Show.

I give thanks for the heritage of this Holy Trinity that has bound such a wildly diverse folk together in one fellowship of love and service as in our church.  Yes, even Los Monstros and their parents.  I give thanks for such a heritage that has brought me Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Langston Hughes’s poetic insight.  To this renewing heritage of unmerited Grace, I bind myself today.

I give thanks for one pastor’s wife, Nellie Hughes, who lived out before us often unruly junior highers the gracious acceptance of Christ.  Bringing a generous welcome and gentle admonishment of our bad behavior.  To her absolute goodness, I bind myself today.

I give thanks for the Spirit of the Divine that has opened my life to creative service and the ability to proclaim the Goodness of it All, goodness as just on that First Day.  The Spirit working in my imagination and through the love of others to continually open my life to new mind-bending experiences and fascinating adventures.  To this Glorious Revelation, I bind myself today.

To the goodly heritage of the apostles and martyrs, the Gospel writers, the early leaders – Stephen, Paul and Dorcas, the patriarchs and matriarchs who struggled to defend the faith, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the medieval monastics and the entire company of the saints – to this trinitarian heritage, I bind myself today.

I bind myself to the entirety of this gracious heritage.  I don’t have to explain it.  Like Billy, I stumble out of my slumber, look up and behold the wonder of it all.  And gasp, “Thanks be to God.” 

As I oft say, that’s my story and for dear life, I’m sticking to it.  Amen.

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[1] Odd Arne Westad, The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2026), 1. 

[2] Troy Closson, “Cloudy Futures Loom Over Big-City Dreams,” The New York Times, May 17, 2026.  The other stories of job search are from that piece.

[3] Proverbs 8:22-30.  Though her role is unspecified, she as a “master worker” was instrumental in bringing about the ordering of creation.  One might note that Ruah, Spirit or Divine Wind, is also feminine.

[4] 1 John 4:16.

May 31, 2026
Trinity Sunday

“I Bind Unto Myself Today”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Genesis 1:1-2:4a; 5:1-6; Canticle 13
2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20