Today's Sermon - Fruit Bowl 6/30/19

Fruit Bowl

(based on Galatians 5:13-25)

In Paul’s letter to the Galatian church he makes a list of vices which is pretty exhaustive enough to include just about everybody.  And I honestly think that was his intent.  Perhaps you don’t struggle with sorcery or licentiousness, but what about anger?  Do you quarrel?  Has there ever been just a moment or two of envy in you?  No one can claim that he or she is completely righteous, or you’d be the reincarnation of Christ.  But we might be tempted to play the, “Let’s see who is holier” game.  That game becomes a competition to feel better about oneself–at least my sin is not as bad as yours.  Of course, in that game we get to decide which behaviors are more sinful than other behaviors.  And where, exactly, does that lead?  To what end?

It leads to either moral superiority OR to feeling that you’re never good enough in God’s eyes.  I’ve known some people who thought that being a Christian was all about trying to be good enough.  Or some who felt that the only thing Church people did was criticize the sins of others, never admitting their own.  A lot of them eventually threw in the spiritual towel, stopped going to church, or even believing in God altogether. 

When Christianity is reduced to a few formulaic professions of faith and a list of moral imperatives, a living and growing faith will not take root in the human heart.  It’s when we can trust that our “righteousness” is not about us, that it’s not about what we do or don’t do.  Instead, it’s about allowing the Holy Spirit to do the work in us.  An apple can not be proud of its achievements all on its own.  The apple required a lot of work going on inside of it – from the beginning of a blossom to the large juicy fruit we can eat – in order to become an apple, right?

However, Paul was not saying that the desires of the flesh are bad in and of themselves.  God created desire.  And healthy desires are what give us life and vitality.  It’s when desires become disordered; when they begin to control us that we find ourselves out of step with God, Christ, and the Spirit.

A few examples:

A perfectly natural human desire is for meaningful relationships.  But left unchecked true intimacy gets substituted with shallow, self-centered encounters.

A natural desire is for enjoyment and contentment.  But if unfulfilled, that desire might devolve into excessive use of pain-numbing substances like alcohol, drugs or food.

Most of us desire a safe home and enough material possessions that bring comfort; but left unchecked, our wealth and our “things” begin to control us.  We become stingy, ungenerous, or greedy.

We were created to have a natural desire for community; but, left to our human tendencies, our desire can easily become disgruntled feelings toward people who grate on us like sandpaper.  Which then leads to exchanging true community with all its textured diversity for a homogenous one in which we are only with those who are like us.  Our church becomes like us.  Our friends are like us.  Our social-political bent is filled with those who see the world like us.  

Do you remember where you were between April-July of 1994?  It was just 25 years ago.  Do you know what was happening in the world at that time?  A friend and colleague of mine, Charissa Howe, just returned from a mission trip to Rwanda, which is the most densely populated nation in Africa.  Last week we met, had coffee, and talked about her trip.  During approximately 100 days between April 7 and July 15, 1994 in Rwanda, 800,000 people were slaughtered.  And, for the most part, the world stood by and did nothing.  How did this happen?

By 1994, Rwanda’s population stood at more than 7 million people, split into three ethnic groups, the majority Hutus who made up 85% of the population, the Tutsis, 14% and the Twa (only 1%), a relatively small native tribal group, said to have been the original inhabitants of the country.  The larger ethnic minority group, the Tutsis, were in political power after the time of colonialism, when Germany lost the possession of Rwanda following World War 1.  The Tutsis were the elite, the wealthy, the educated.  But the majority group, the Hutus gained power in the 60’s through a peasant and social revolution when Rwanda gained their independence as a country.  Because of this many Tutsi Rwandans became refugees who had to leave their country.  ½ million Tutsis had fled to neighboring countries by the 1980’s.  On Oct 1, 1990, a rebel force of 7,000 soldiers from Uganda launched a major attack on Rwanda.  Because of this attack, all Tutsis within Rwanda were labeled as accomplices and all Hutu members of any opposition political party were labeled as traitors.  On April 6, a plane carrying the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda where shot down by a rocket.  In retaliation, the Rwandan government called for their citizens to slaughter every Tutsi and also all Hutu sympathizers in the land.  Within 100 days 800,000 Rwandans were dead – more than 1/10 of the entire population in 100 days.

Rev. Howe returned from this mission trip, not with sadness, but rather with a sense of hope.  How could you visit a country with such animosity of what group against another and come back with hope?  Because, after the genocide, and after prison for many of the perpetrators of this violence, the Church stepped in and did what the Church is called to do.  People of the Church, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters sat down with those who committed murder against their families, those who raped their wives and children and forgave them.  And those who had done such horrible crimes accepted their forgiveness and formed new bonds of friendship.

Friends, may we learn from others’ mistakes and from the grace of the Church at work in the world.  In all honesty, we could be one incident from something like that happening here.  One spark to set off a violent encounter that spreads through the nation, if tensions keep rising and we allow the rhetoric of politics to dictate how we should feel about one another.

Christ did not die so that in the afterlife we would finally be free and experience an abundant life.  Christ died so that we might experience freedom and an abundant life in the kingdom of God today, in this moment, in this life.  Said another way, we know we are walking with the spirit when our desire to know God becomes deeper and more expansive.

Paul lists nine fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  

THIS is the role of the church.  It is our duty and our freedom.  We must be a beacon to the world.  We must be that light set on hill that cannot be hid.

The Spirit filled life and one that is full and abundant is about grace.  It is about being filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  If you are filled with these things, the bad things that Paul also mentioned earlier in the passage have no hold on your life.  

The Spirit filled life is about unfurling our clenched hands around things that aren’t ours anyway, in order to receive what Christ has done for us, what Christ taught us, what the Holy Spirit whispers to us, and what God’s creation sings to us every day, revealing the Creator’s deep love for us.

The Spirit filled life based in freedom is a life measured by a love that sees responsibility toward neighbor as Jesus revealed in his story about the Good Samaritan, our responsibility to the orphan and the widow, to the outcast and the foreigner.  Each of these has stories and illustrations in further Biblical texts.

The great 20th-century religious thinker Reinhold Niebuhr put it this way: “Basically love means . . .being responsible, responsible to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind.”

Paul makes it clear that in the church there is to be no division.  Here we become a community of flesh and blood where all the old barriers are finally, at last, overcome.  Let us together, through the power of the Holy Spirit, bearing fruit in our lives, proclaim to the world this gospel of love.

Today's Sermon - One in Christ - 6/23/19

One in Christ

(based on Galatians 3:23-29)

The starting point for Paul in understanding our relationship to one another, how we ought to treat one another, and ultimately how God views us, begins with this great statement Paul makes to the Galatians.  Let me read it one more time,
“Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.  Therefore, the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.  But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.  As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:25-28)

Back in Christ’s day, there were three major areas that separated people – one from another.  The first one was about what nationality and religion you were.  For example, an Israeli Jew could not associate with a Thessalonian Greek.  Using the word Greek here, was just another word for Gentile or heathen in the eyes of a devout follower of Yahweh.  The second area of great divide were those who were free and those who were slaves.  In other words – economics – the rich versus the poor.  And the third area of separation was between male and female.  There were rights and privileges for men and very little for women.

Roughly 2000 years has separated the time with we were under the law and when faith came in the bodily form of Jesus Christ, supposedly abolishing these separations that were so prevalent in Christ’s day.  How have we done?

Are we better at including those who are of different nationality and faiths, different colors?  Are we any better at seeing everyone as equal when it comes to economics?  Have we completely abolished the lines of privilege and rights between men and women?

Perhaps that is why this passage is here.  To remind us that we still see one another differently and still have some work to do in seeing one another through faith in Christ and through the eyes of God versus a disciplinarian or the law who only saw a clear separation of all things, set before the society as a way to keep order.  Because when you abolish the rules and blur the lines between things that were always separated, you create a murky mess.

You know, we all have our circles of inclusion, some are more exclusive than others.  Here’s one example.  It comes from the Broadway musical, Shenandoah.  A rugged mountaineer and his wife and their son and daughter-in-law sit down to eat in their small Appalachian home.  The father returns thanks: “God, bless me and my wife, John and his wife, us four, no more. Amen.”  Now, that’s a small circle.

And at the other end of the spectrum, there’s the little children’s song we all probably know very well, having sung it in Sunday School or Vacation Bible School.  Most of you can probably even do hand motions that go with it.  I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together; All who follow Jesus, all around the world, yes, we’re the church together.

How wide is your circle?  That’s really the question here today.

About 25 years ago, I visited the headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland.  In the lobby there was a walk-through display of life-size photographs depicting Christians all over the world. Picture this:

• A tribal church in central Africa where scantily clad villagers gathered more or less informally under a makeshift arbor.

• An Eastern Orthodox congregation where priests dressed in elegant robes and caps processed through a magnificent cathedral.

• Close-ups of Armenian Christians, Coptic Christians, Protestants and Roman Catholics.

• Men and women, boys and girls, of every conceivable nationality, race and station in life caught by the camera in the process of praise, prayer and outreach to others in the name of Jesus Christ.

As I walked through the display, I tried to absorb the scope of it all.  As I did, Paul’s words echoed in my mind:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)

Jesus once told his disciples, “The kingdom of God is like a net thrown into the sea that gathers in fish of every kind.” (Matthew 13:47)

The same could be said of the Church that bears his name. We are a people of every race and nation, language and custom; yet, we worship the same God, follow the same Lord and are led by the same Spirit of grace, forgiveness and love.

How wide is your circle?

There’s a story about an older gentleman, a curmudgeon by well-earned reputation, who stood up in church one Sunday.  Pastor, he said, “I don’t like eggs.  I don’t care too much for milk.  And I’ve never liked broccoli since I was a young boy.”  Now, the parishioners all looked at one another, squirming in their seats, wondering where this was going to go.  The pastor looked a bit concerned that the old man might start taking this list of things he didn’t like a little more personal and was about to interrupt the man.  But the old curmudgeon was on a roll and he kept on going.  “I don’t like cheese.  And ham is one of my least favorite meats.  Separately, you can keep all of those – I’m not eating them.  I’ll just have my steak and potatoes, thank you very much.  But, my wife here, mixes all those ingredients together, the stuff I don’t like; eggs, milk, broccoli, cheese and ham and makes one awesome quiche.  I like it.  I like it a lot.  Now, there are some of you here today that I didn’t particularly like when you first came.  But mixed together with the rest of the people, who I didn’t particularly like either – we make an awesome team.  I like it.  I like it a lot.”

Whether we mean to or not, we draw circles of who’s in and who’s out.  If we all profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, why is there so much division in the church?  Ideally, the Church of Jesus Christ includes Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants, rich and poor, English speaking and not; conservative and liberal, traditional and contemporary, congregational and connectional, pastoral and prophetic.  Yes, we have our particular beliefs and peculiar ways of doing things.  That’s only natural.  It speaks of our different temperaments and personal tastes – like whether you prefer to put on your Sunday best or come to church in blue jeans and cowboy boots.  But our differences should not divide us.

So far, I’ve only spoken about those who profess Jesus as Lord.  But to be clear, we should also not be at war with Jews, Muslims and other religions of the world.  We are at war with the forces of evil that threaten to exploit us and divide us and, ultimately, destroy us.  If you’re willing to step out of your comfort zone and look beyond your circle, you may be able to see the big circle God intends for all creation and do your part to make it so.  A passage we read a month or so ago from Revelation is how John described this big circle God intends:

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ (Revelation 7:9-10)

Today's Sermon - Show Us 6-16-19

Today's sermon incorporates within it an article by John Pavlovitz written in May 2019, entitled Dear Church.  But I've set it up to go with today's scripture reading from John's gospel.

Show Us

(based on John 14:8-17)

I’ve been following a Christian Youth Pastor and author for the past few years by the name of John Pavlovitz.   For about 10 years he served as a youth pastor at a mega church in Charlotte, North Carolina, until 2013 when he was fired from his job because some of his articles were too radical for the church he served.  I started following his writings in 2016.  Most of today’s sermon comes from his letter to the Church called Dear Church.

But before I read it, I want to set it up by talking about today’s passage from John.  In the previous chapter – Chapter 13 – Jesus had just given his followers a new commandment to follow.  He said in verse 34 and 35, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Just after this Peter tells Jesus that he would follow him no matter what might happen and no matter where Jesus might go.  But Jesus tells him that even before the cock crowed that Peter would deny him three times.  When they still didn’t quite understand that gravity of Christ’s foreshadowed crucifixion, Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”  To which Jesus replies, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  Know one comes to the Father except through me.  If you know me, you will know my Father also.”

Still at a loss for full understanding, Philip says to Jesus in the passage we read this morning, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

How many times just Jesus need to tell them, that they’ve seen the Father because they’ve seen him?  How many times does Jesus need to explain to them that if they’d love him, if they’d love one another, they’d also love and see God?  How many different ways could he have said it?  Or explained it?

Lord, show us the Father and then we will be satisfied?  Jesus’ response was and has always been, “Look around you, the Father is present in every living thing, in every single face.”  Show us the Father?  You’ve been given and shown the Father in every human being and yet you still can’t see.

Earlier this year, John Pavlovitz wrote this article.  I’ve edited it a bit, but it is a letter of rebuke to the church; one that I think we ought to hear.  It is not an easy letter to listen to, but perhaps it will remind us of what we should be doing.

Dear Church,

The Exodus has begun and it’s not going to stop.

People are leaving you and they’re probably not coming back.

I’ve been where you are and I know what’s happening within you right now.

I know you’re panicking, scrambling to understand it all, trying to somehow stop the bleeding, to reverse the swift and steady tide out the doors.

I know that you hire consultants and hold emergency meetings and plan bold strategies and brainstorm solutions—all designed to engineer a way to bring all the prodigals home, to “reach the young people,” to grow numerically again.

I know you imagine that if you just tweak the songs or shorten the services or get a new sign or rebrand your logo or set up shop in a strip mall; that if you just find the right aesthetic balance of vintage reverence and hipster chic—that this will all magically change your fortunes. 

It won’t.

This attrition is likely irreversible and here’s why:

The departure isn’t about the style of music in your worship services.

It isn’t about the coolness of the coffeeshop facade in the lobby.

It isn’t about the amenities you have or don’t have.

It isn’t about the tricked-out tech you’re getting in the sanctuary.

It isn’t about the youthfulness and charisma of your lead pastor.

It isn’t about how many pop culture references you make in your sermons.

It isn’t about the bells and whistles of your new website.

It isn’t about your facilities or your staff or your social media fluency.

It’s isn’t about the sprawling menu of ministries and bible studies you offer.

The people who are gone—aren’t gone because your band wasn’t good enough or because the messages weren’t clever enough or because your production wasn’t tight enough.

They don’t give a darn about such things.

Church, people are leaving you because you are silent right now in ways that matter to them.

You aren’t saying what they need you to say and what you should be saying—and it makes them sick.

They spend their days with a front row seat to human right atrocities, to growing movements of cruelty, to unprecedented religious hypocrisy, and to political leaders who are antithetical to heart of Jesus.

They live with the relational collateral damage of seeing people they love abandon compassion and decency; people who are growing more and more callous to the already vulnerable.

They see in their daily lives and on the news and across their timelines and in their communities, exactly the kind of malevolence and toxicity they expect you to speak into with boldness and clarity as moral leaders—and instead they find you adjusting the stage lights and renovating the lobby and launching websites.

In the middle of the songs and the sermons and the video clips, they can see your feet of clay and your moral laryngitis. That’s why they’re leaving.

I know you’re worried about saying too much, about being branded too political, about offending people or somehow making it worse by speaking.

Trust me, you are making it worse by saying nothing.

Yes, you may be avoiding conflict or keeping a tenuous peace in the pews.

You may be causing less obvious turbulence inside your walls.

You may be appeasing a few fearful folks there who don’t want you to trouble the waters.

But you’re doing something else: you’re confirming for millions of people, why they have no use for you any longer.

You’re confirming the suspicions of those who believe the church has no relevance for them.

You’re giving people who’ve offered you one more chance to earn their presence—reason to walk away.

Your silence right now is the last straw for them.

They’ve been waiting for you to oppose hypocrisy in institutionalized religion and in government the way Christ did,

to declare the value of every human life the way Christ did,

to loudly defend all marginalized people the way Christ did,

to stand alongside your brothers and sisters of other faiths, the very same way even Christ did,

to denounce the current degradation of our planet, given to us by our Creator to care for and tend —

to say with absolute clarity what you stand for and what you will not abide.

And you have kept them waiting too long.

Church, people can get most of what you offer them somewhere else. They can find meaningful community and entertainment for their families and acts of service to participate in. They can get music and inspiration and affinity and relationships without you.

The singular thing you can offer them is a clear and unflinching voice that emulates the voice of Jesus.

If you really want to be relevant again: say everything.

Stand on your platforms and in your pulpits and specifically name the bigotry, precisely call out the politics, unequivocally condemn the people and the policies and the movements that sicken you. Jesus did.

Stop couching your words and softening your delivery and start speaking with clarity about what matters to you. That’s what those who are leaving want most.

It may be too late to stop the mass exodus at this point—but saying everything will at least help you keep your soul as you fade away.

At least you’ll know you stood for something.

Speak, Church.

Based on this letter to the Church from John Pavlovitz and based on the message of Christ and his word to the disciples – Do not be afraid to speak truth, do not be afraid to stand on the side of love and acceptance.  Do not be afraid to offer grace.  These are the things that Christ did, every day.  Nothing less.

Show us the Father and then we will be satisfied, Philip said.  Here, in this message from Christ in our scriptures and in this letter to the church, is the Father.  Now, be satisfied and do what Christ commanded.

Today's Sermon - Spirit - Day of Pentecost 2019

Spirit

(based on Acts 2:1-21)

This morning I want to talk about the symbols of Pentecost, Flaming Fire, Rushing Wind, and Descending Dove.  But before we get to the symbols we need to understand what Pentecost is all about.

You probably know Pentecost as the day when the Holy Spirit of God came down to indwell the followers of Jesus Christ.  This is often referred to as the day that the church was born.  On that day, the Spirit of God descended on the 120 followers of Jesus, not just the eleven disciples, but the larger group of followers and they started speaking out loud in foreign languages so that everyone in attendance at the Jewish festival would be able to understand them.  This created such a commotion that thousands who were in Jerusalem at the time came out to see what was happening and in front of the gathering crowd, Peter spoke the first gospel message and Acts records that ‘three thousand were added to their number that day’ (Acts 2:41).

This happened 50 days after Christ’s resurrection.  On Pentecost Sunday they went public and history was changed.  But that is not the complete story of Pentecost.  Many people yearn for a return to that Pentecost Sunday to have a similar experience of speaking in languages and dramatic signs of the Holy Spirit.  Since the first disciples of Jesus had this experience by ‘waiting for the gift of the Spirit’, today people figure that likewise if we ‘wait’ He will come again in a similar way.  Therefore, many people wait and implore God for a similar experience.  They assume that it was the waiting and yearning that moved the Spirit of God back then.  However, this misses the point and overlooks the full understanding of Pentecost – because the Pentecost recorded in Acts Chapter 2 was not the first Pentecost.

In fact, ‘Pentecost’ was a regular Old Testament festival.  In the time of Moses, several annual festivals were prescribed and celebrated throughout the year.  Passover was the first to be celebrated in the Jewish year.  Christ, the Lamb of God, was crucified and sacrificed on the same day that all Jewish people were sacrificing their lambs in memory of their first Passover.  And now, exactly 50 days (from which we derive the word Pente, meaning 50), after Passover the Jews celebrated the Feast of Pentecost.  And they had been doing so yearly for about 1500 years by the time the events of Acts 2 happened.  In fact, the reason that there were people from all languages who were in Jerusalem that day to hear Peter’s message was precisely because they were there to celebrate the Old Testament Pentecost.

Leviticus 23:16-17 describes how Pentecost was to be celebrated:

Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh sabbath (or Passover), and then present an offering of new grain to the LORD.  From wherever you live, bring two loaves made of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour, baked with yeast, as a wave offering of firstfruits to the LORD.

Numbers 28:26 further describes what this day of firstfruits during the Festival of Weeks was to be like.  It reads: On the day of firstfruits, when you present to the LORD an offering of new grain during the Festival of Weeks, or Pentecost, hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.

In the Jewish feast of Pentecost the Jews were to offer up a grain offering along with the regular burnt offerings. The grain was to be ‘firstfruits’ of new grain harvested from the land.  

In this way, the Spirit of God comes to the people, as a “firstfruits” for the new movement of the relationship God now has with the people of God.  That God not only moves over the face of the water, as the Spirit of God did from the beginning of Creation, but now God moves in the hearts and spirits of God’s own people.

During Pentecost, we use a variety of symbols to celebrate the holiday or festival.  We use the Flaming Fire symbol, as a remembrance of the tongues of fire that appeared above the heads of all the followers of Christ.  We use the Breath of God, or the Rushing Wind, as a remembrance of the sound that accompanied the tongues of fire at that new Pentecost event.  And finally, we use the dove, as a sign of the Holy Spirit, recorded in all four gospels when Christ was baptized, where the Holy Spirit of God “descended like a dove” over him when the heavens opened up and alighted upon him.

But these symbols; Flaming Fire, Rushing Wind, Descending Dove, are not easily seen as a symbiotic unity.  What do they mean and how do they relate to one another?

We’ve witnessed, thankfully from afar, the devasting fires that have ravaged entire cities and towns in the west.  And the image that comes to my mind of flaming fire is consumption and destruction.  Flaming Fire is not a calm, settling image.  For me, it is one that excites anxiety and concern.  And when the Biblical account says that tongues of fire appeared over the heads of each of the followers that day, I’m not given to thoughts of calmness and reflection.  I’m more inclined to be concerned and worried. 

But fire also purges, cleanses and renews.  I remember visiting Mount St. Helens a number of years ago with my family.  We had gone to see the devastation of the volcano and the fires that destroyed the entire area in 1980.  But just over 25 years later, there were new forests and new greenery that covered the entire mountain again.  Using that image, I think about the tongues of fire over the disciples’ heads and I’m wondering if this symbol of the Holy Spirit is meant not as a consuming fire, but rather as a refreshing fire, purging the old ways of thinking, in order for the new to come, cleansing the soul of sin, allowing for the renewal of being one with Christ.  That the Spirit moves differently in us in order for God to set the boundaries, for God to set the course, for God to be center stage in our lives rather than we, ourselves, being the motivator and force behind our movements.  So, the flames of fire of the Holy Spirit aren’t bent on destruction, but rather on renewal in each of us.

The Rushing Wind is yet another symbol that more often is related to destruction.  We’ve seen the power of the wind coming in forms of hurricanes and tornadoes.  Once again, these images don’t lend to calm and reflection, but rather to chaos and concern.  Furthermore, when you think of wind in conjunction with fire, you think of out of control, ravaging advancement of that fire.  Fire fighters working hard to control the blaze find wind to be their biggest enemy.  It can whip a small flame into a consuming fire in moments and change the direction of the blaze on a dime.

But, once again, we might have to look for new images and understanding of this wind, the way we did with fire.  I remember being a boy scout and learning how to make a campfire.  You needed a spark to get the fire going.  But once you had that spark, does anybody know what you needed to do?  Yes, you needed to blow on it, to use your breath to get it going, to build the fire.

Perhaps we can view this Rushing Wind or Breath of God in this way:  It helps fan the flames of fire or tongues of fire above each of the 120 followers of Jesus to spread the movement of the Gospel outward.

And the third symbol, the descending dove.  Finally, we get a peaceful image of the Holy Spirit as a comforter and a helper.

The tongues of fire that cleanses us and renews us, the rushing wind or Breath of God that fans the flames into a spreading movement, and the descending dove as a comfort in times of stress and concern about the unknown, a guide to show us the way. 

It’s interesting that all three of these symbols work together as part of the image we now have of the Holy Spirit which we received on the day of Pentecost, not as some waiting event, but as one that is ongoing for each of us every day.

Today's Sermon - The Holy Trinity - 6/1/19

Today's sermon is a bit more "scholarly" then I usually offer.

Holy Trinity

(based on John 17:20-26)

Saint Augustine, who lived between 354 AD - 430 AD, spent a lot of time thinking about the Trinity and trying to explain it.  There is a story about Augustine walking along the ocean’s shore, greatly perplexed about the doctrine of the Trinity.  As he meditated, he observed a little boy with a seashell, running to the water, filling his shell, and then pouring it into a hole which he had made in the sand.  “What are you doing, my little man?” asked Augustine.  “Oh,” replied the boy, “I am trying to put the ocean in this hole.”  Then it suddenly struck him that, when it came to God, he was guilty of exactly the same thing.  “That is what I am trying to do with God,” he later confessed.  “I see it now.  Standing on the shores of time, I am trying to get into this little finite mind things which are infinite.”

So, bear with me this morning as I attempt to fill our finite minds with a glimpse of the infinite when we talk about the Trinity today.

The Westminster Confession is the summary of the theology adopted by our denomination.  It was formulated in 1646 and describes the Trinity this way:

In the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, having one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: The Father exists. He is not generated and does not come from any source. The Son is eternally generated (begotten) from the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally comes from the Father and the Son.

          Perfectly clear now, right?

If we unpack this a little bit, we would describe the Trinity as follows:

·        There is one and only One God – one substance – one power

·        God eternally exists in three distinct persons.  Although scripture talks of the Son being begotten and that the Holy Spirit coming from the Father, notice how Westminster states that each exist eternally. There wasn’t a time when the Son or the Spirit didn’t exist.  

·        The Father is God/The Son is God/The Holy Spirit is God but, (and here is one of the confusing parts)

·        The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Father is not the Spirit

And somehow we get to this idea that there is the Trinity in God, but that God is not Three Gods.  It’s not easy to understand. 

Over the years I’ve studied and reflected on the Trinity.

The first challenge to God being singular or a Unitarian God came from the ultimate claim of Jesus as divine.  If Jesus was divine, then Jesus was also God.  The New Testament provides many texts to prove that Jesus was divine and was, in fact, God.  He revealed this about himself more and more as the reality of the cross came closer, but Jesus’ early hidden divinity was part of the Master plan of unveiling a very complicated and mysterious part of God’s Trinitarian nature.

As I read some of the early church writers, I learned that they fully accepted the divinity of Jesus.  The problem was that the divinity of Jesus challenged them to come up with a way to articulate the true nature of God. What they couldn’t articulate was how the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit fit together.  They knew that there was just one God.  And they knew that the Father was God and they knew that Jesus admitted progressively that he was God.  And then there was the issue of the Holy Spirit.  How do they fit together?  

As early as 110 AD, Ignatius of Antioch wrote using Trinitarian language.  Then late in the 2nd Century the word Trinity first appears in the works of Theopholus of Antioch.  By early in the 3rd Century, Tertullian, defended the doctrine of the Trinity which meant that it was already part of the doctrine of the church.  The concept of the Trinity did not burst on the scene in the late 4th century with the council of Nicaea, when they voted to adopt the belief in the Trinity, but rather it was a natural progression coming from this revolutionary idea that God became human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.

But the question is often asked, is it Biblical?

Certainly, one of the arguments made against the Trinity is that the word doesn’t appear in the Bible.  But it isn’t just the lack of the word, the Trinity is not even described.  That’s because the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard in the New Testament as overheard.  I think this is part of the Master plan of God’s to reveal to us this incredible picture of who God is. 

So, let me just highlight what we find in the Bible

Is there just one God?  Well, nowhere in our holy Scriptures does it talk about three separate Gods.  Monotheism is the by-word for the Jews.  It is not only strongly affirmed, the opposite is strongly opposed.  Even Jesus and Paul who affirm the deity of Jesus strongly affirm that God is one.  So, no biblical scholar debates the divinity of the Father.   The divinity of Christ is strongly attested to when we really understand Jesus’ words and actions from the perspective of a 1st Century Jew as revealed to us in the writings of the gospels.

The divinity of the Holy Spirit has less evidence.  But again, Jesus, Paul and Peter have very strong words affirming both the deity of the Holy Spirit as well as the distinctiveness of this entity of the Trinity.  The evidence is pretty clear in scripture that there are three persons of the Godhead distinct in function yet all part of one God, even if the word Trinity doesn’t exist in the text.  

God is one, yet exists in three persons.  Our text today from John highlights the fact that God is already a loving community who then invites us to join and become an intimate part of that community.  Which harkens back to the very beginning of the creation when in Chapter 1 verse 26 of Genesis, when God decides to create us and says, “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness…”  

In John, Jesus says:

·        Verse 23 – Father, I desire that they … may be with me where I am – There’s the invite

·        Verse 24 because you loved me before the foundation of the world. – There’s the loving community

·        Verse 26 that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. – There is the intimacy

Does it matter that our life was created by a being who pulses with love and community and honor?  Let me offer you two visions of life. Bertrand Russell was the great mathematician of the 20^th century

You are the product of causes that have no purpose or meaning. Your origin, your growth, your hopes, fears, loves, beliefs are the outcome of accidental collections of atoms. No fire, heroism, or intensity of thought or feeling can preserve your life from beyond the grave. All the devotion, all the inspiration, all the labor of all the ages are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. The whole temple of human achievement must inevitably be buried in the debris of a universe in ruins. That’s what we’re all headed for.

Or consider this from Dallas Willard, American Christian Philosopher, professor at University of Southern California until his death in 2013:

You are the uniquely designed creation of a thoroughly good and unspeakably creative God. You are made in His image, with a capacity to reason, choose, and love that sets you above all other life forms. God’s aim in human history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with Himself included as its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant. He is even now at work to bring this about. You have been invited, at great cost to God Himself, to be part of this radiant community.

So, you have a choice, trajectory #1 described by Bertrand Russell or or trajectory #2 described by Dallas Willard.

Willard tells us that God is inviting us into an already existing community of love because of the Trinitarian nature of God.  The Trinity is essential for the essence of God to be love.

C.S. Lewis wrote:

All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that 'God is love.'  But they seem not to notice that the words 'God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons.  Love is something that one person has for another person.  If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.

If love is part of the very fabric of God’s essence, who or what did God love for all of eternity before the world was created?  A Unitarian God whose essence was love would require an object for that love – because that is the nature of love.  A lover needs a beloved.

There was a divine love / a divine dance that was going on for all of eternity long before the creation of the world.  Jesus says this in our passage today. “You loved me before the foundation of the world. “ The life of the Trinity is a great dance of unchained communion and intimacy, fired by passionate, self-giving and other-centered love, and mutual delight.

The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take your place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water.  If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. If we want love and we want community, we are called to get close to the community of love that exists in the Trinity.   For in the Holy Trinity we are invited to join and become part of the intimate relationship of love.