It’s been a long time since July 4th fell on a Sunday. It’s almost ten years. And that’s important for us to know because, ordinarily when we celebrate the Fourth of July, it’s on a weekday, and we have a special Mass just for that day. When the fathers of the Second Vatican Council were preparing the changes in the liturgy, they decided that every nationality be able to have some Masses exclusive to its own culture and its own nation. And so, the American bishops were invited to write special prayers, a special Mass for July 4th. Ordinarily we celebrate that Mass and we invite people to come. Part of that Mass is always a large selection of readings from which to choose. And so, naturally, you look for those readings that have a sort of uplift to them because, after all, it’s our national holiday, we want to be happy. And yet, here we are, on July 4th, stuck with the readings for the Sunday because, in our liturgical forms, Sunday, the Lord’s Day, always takes precedence over all except the most important feast days. This August we’ll have the feast of the Assumption of Mary, which will take the place of Sunday, but that’s very, very rare.

And so we wind up this Sunday with three readings that don’t fit our mood. I asked you to listen, and see what you could figure out was the common thread going through all the readings. That is, what we would call in the 1960s, a downer. They’re very depressing. We’re going to look at each one of them and see what it’s all about.

I’m sure that many of you remembered the AT&T slogan used to be, “Reach out and touch someone.”

There are many reasons why I chose the long gospel this morning. Most of the time, when we have an option, I choose the short option, because of my attention span. But one of the techniques that St. Mark uses is to make a sandwich of two stories. He starts one, breaks off the story and puts another story inside of it, then he continues the first story. When he does that, he wants us to evaluate each story in terms of the other story. And there are six points of contact between the two stories that make them stand out.

Back in the 1970s, there was a hit song by Gordon Lightfoot, called “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” And some of the verses went like this. “They (meaning the people on the ship) might have split up or they might have capsized. They may have broke deep and took water. And all that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters … The church bell chimed ‘til it rang twenty-nine times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald. The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down, of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee. Superior, they said, never gives up her dead when the gales of November come early.”

How could a boat capsize in storm waves on a lake? Well, Lake Superior - I looked it up - is 350 miles wide by 160 miles long. It’s the size of the state of Maine. And it is the largest fresh water lake in the world.

What was your favorite childhood story? When you were about four years old, able to read a little bit, but still rather having mommy or daddy read to you. What was your favorite story? I had two. “The Little Engine That Could.” (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.) And a little book called “The Weehawken, Hoboken, and Troy Railroad.” It might be because of those stories that I loved Lionel trains so much, when I was an older little boy. But, whatever your favorite was, it might have been “The Three Little Pigs.” Or it might have been “The Three Bears.” Or “Goldilocks.” Or “Little Red Riding Hood.” Or, for later generations, maybe “Good Night Moon.” Or “The Cat in the Hat.” But, whatever it was, you always wanted to hear that story. Tell me that story again. Read me that story again. Because those stories have very simple plots, easy to follow what goes on in the story. They build quickly to a climax. The climax is almost always delightful, pleasant. It sets off those endorphins. That’s why you tell them when it gets close to sleep time, because it puts you in the mood to go to sleep. That’s one way of understanding the parables of Jesus. They are short stories that have a simple plot that meets quickly to a climax and a surprise ending that’s almost always a happy ending, or at least a surprise to the listeners. That’s what we have in today’s stories. I asked you if there was a farmer in the second story. The first story begins with a man who went out to sow some seeds. There’s the farmer right there. At the end of the story he wields the sickle because the corn has come to maturity.

There’s a teensy, tiny miracle at the beginning of today’s gospel story. Jesus somehow or other sees the sequence of events that are going to happen when the disciples go into Jerusalem looking for a place to host the Passover. Not a big deal as far as miracles go. What do you think is the greatest miracle of all? Was it the multiplication of the loaves and fishes? The early Christians were so enamored of that miracle, they told it six times in four gospels. Maybe it was turning water into wine. Wouldn’t that be nice? How about cleansing ten lepers all at the same time? Or calming the storm at sea, “Peace, be still?” Or its companion piece, walking on the water? How about that? That’s pretty nifty. Or maybe raising Lazarus from the dead? Maybe that one. If you’ve ever been to Lourdes or Fatima or have seen photographs of the shrines, walls of crutches and prosthesis left behind by people who were cured by praying to the Blessed Virgin Mary at her shrine. But it’s none of them. It’s none of them.

The greatest miracle is the one that we celebrate today. The Body and Blood of Christ. It’s a three part miracle. It begins with the second person of God’s Blessed Trinity becoming a human being. What an amazing miracle that is that the One who launched this great universe by the will of His word should decide to enter it, looking, sounding and acting like you and me. That’s the first part of the miracle. The second part of the miracle is that He was able to leave Himself here in physical form despite that He, as a human being, died, miraculously rose, and returned to the spiritual kingdom of His father. The third part of the miracle is you and me.

You can search from the first to the last page of the Bible, and nowhere, nowhere do you find the word trinity. The Holy Trinity is not mentioned anywhere. How come? When we talk about the Blessed Trinity, we’re talking about what we call systematic theology. That is to say, the definition of a clearly delineated proposition. That’s not what you get in the Bible. What you get in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, is relational theology. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all through the New Testament. And there are hints of the three persons of the Blessed Trinity here and there in the Old Testament. The people who wrote the Old Testament would not have been able to discern those hints because they were so fixated on the idea that God was only One that any other concept would not compute.

But what you find in the New Testament, both of the writings of St. Paul and the other apostles, and the Words of Jesus himself, is talk about how we relate to each person and how each person relates to each other person. Jesus almost always speaks of God as Abba, a term of endearment for the father or the patriarch, of a clan, or the head of a family. Abba. He talks about My Father all the time. In John’s gospel he says, “The Father and I are one.” He says, “The Father and I will send the Spirit.” St Paul talks frequently about the power, the action of the Spirit within the Christian community. And so, there are two different ways in which the doctrine of the Trinity is relational in the scriptures. First of all how the persons of God relate to each other. And secondly, how they relate to us, and we relate to them.