god exists in relationship: holy trinity

The other reading I refer to is Romans 8:12-17.

The holy gospel according to john 3:1-17.

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus,

       a leader of the Jewish people.

       ²He came to Jesus by night and said to him,

              “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God;

                     for no one can do these signs that you do 
                            apart from the presence of God.”

³Jesus answered him,

       “Very truly, I tell you,

              no one can see the dominion of God without being born from above.”

⁴Nicodemus said to Jesus,

       “How can anyone be born after having grown old?

              Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

⁵Jesus answered,

       “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the dominion of God

              without being born of water and Spirit.

              ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh,

                     and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.

              ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you,

                     ‘You must be born from above.’

                            ⁸The wind blows where it chooses,

                            and you hear the sound of it,

                                   but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

                                   So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

⁹Nicodemus said to Jesus,

       “How can these things be?”

¹⁰Jesus answered him,

       “Are you a teacher of Israel,

              and yet you do not understand these things?

       ¹¹“Very truly, I tell you,

              we speak of what we know

              and testify to what we have seen;

                     yet you do not receive our testimony.

                     ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe,

                            how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

                            ¹³No one has ascended into heaven

                                   except the one who descended from heaven,

                                          the Son of Humanity.

                            ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

                                   so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up,

                                          ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

       ¹⁶“For God loved the world in this way,

              that God gave the Son,

                     the only begotten one,

                            so that everyone who believes in him may not perish

                                   but may have eternal life.

       ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world,

              but in order that the world might be saved through him.

The gospel of the lord.

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Our readings for today are readings once again geared toward insiders.  It’s followers of Christ talking to other followers of Christ.  Ones who are being persecuted encouraging each other.  The need to encourage those facing persecution and hardship also sets the stage for some hefty dualism.  Encouragement against persecution means lifting up the reasons for persecution—faith in Jesus and profession of Christianity—and putting down anything connected with the larger world and therefore persecution.

Paul’s letter to the Romans encouraging them to live by the Holy Spirit, joining with Christ as heirs to call on God, our Abba, our Papa, also denounces the flesh—the very bodies God adopts in coming to us in the incarnate Word—Jesus.  And Jesus’ own conversation with Nicodemus calls into contrast flesh and spirit, human and divine.

It is far too easy for us as Christians to fall into a dualistic trap of thinking that there are insiders and outsiders; those who, in Paul’s words to the Romans “live according to the flesh” and those “who are led by the Spirit of God.”  Those whom Jesus counts as born from above and those who are not born again.

But even right here in this place, we live according to the flesh in these fleshy bodies and we seek the Spirit’s guidance, we are born from above through the waters of baptism and yet are put to death with Christ in those same waters—“we suffer with Christ so that we may also be glorified with Christ.”

We do not fit in the dualisms that so easily overtake Christianity and we are not the only ones.  Even as the scripture for today can set up dangerous dualisms, the day itself invites us more deeply into the mystery that is the Trinity.  Today is Holy Trinity Sunday.  The day we particularly celebrate and focus on the Holy Trinity—three in one, one in three.  The Athanasian creed, one of the three creeds we confess as part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, describes the Trinity (in part) stating,

“We worship one God in trinity

       and the Trinity in unity,

       neither confusing the persons

       nor dividing the divine being. …

As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge
       each distinct person as God and Lord, …

And in this Trinity, no one is before or after,

       greater or less than the other;

but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal;

       and so we must worship the Trinity in unity

       and the one God in three persons.”

The Trinity itself inherently resists dualistic thinking!  Not only is the Trinity not binary, the closest thing to a binary about it ends up being a good, Lutheran both/and paradox: three and one at the same time!  Why?  Because the Trinity is: relationship!

It is a relationship that doesn’t always make sense.  One God and three persons, or expressions.  Three persons, and yet one God.  It is not the easiest to wrap our heads around if we want to understand every little detail of the how of it, but then, no understanding of God has ever been that simple because God is bigger and more complex than us.

The basics of the Trinity—being three in one and one in three—is understandable enough for us to focus on the important question.  Not how? But why?  Why is our God triunal?  Pastor Neil Harrison, who is the ELCA person in charge of redeveloping congregations, has a favorite line: Relationship.  Relationship.  Relationship.  God, as the Trinity, is inherently relational.  The three cannot exist without their relationship with each other.  I’ve heard it described as a dance or as a jazz trio.  They only make sense in relationship to each other.  Without the other persons of the trinity, the Holy Spirit, Son, and Father don’t make sense.

As God becomes incarnate—fleshy—in Jesus, we are brought more fully into that relationship as well.  Jesus takes on human form so that humans can be in full relationship with the divine—so that there is no longer any separation between us.

And so we become the body of Christ—not each of us individually, but all of us in relationship together.  All of the Christians and Christian denominations together, in relationship, are the body of Christ.  Each of us with the both/ands of the dualisms we are so often given—with our doubts and beliefs, sinners and saints, fleshy and spirit-born.

God exists in relationship.  It is the only way to understand the full complexity of our God.  In relationship—with God’s self and with us.  And it’s hard to be in relationship when we’re categorizing and boxing things and people in, when we are creating more dualisms.  Our God breaks down the dualisms we both cling to and dread.  Light and dark, bad and good. 

And so I am reminded of the moment during Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when Sirius Black points out to Harry that “the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.  We’ve all got both light and dark inside us.”  We all, when we dig deeper are more than the dualisms and God is more than any dualism, God in the Trinity is the ultimate in relationality.  The ultimate model of relationship, bringing us as the body of Christ, the church, into that relationship as well.

And being the church together, being the body of Christ, means that our concern is for each other.  That we exist for those who are here today and for those who are not in the church.  Christ came for sinners, not for those who claim to be well and so the body of Christ, the church, this church exists for the sake of the whole world, for the ones who are broken, because, indeed, we are all broken and God is the one to make us whole.  That triune, relational God brings us together and our brokenness fits with each other’s to make up the body of Christ, which is broken for us each week.

Thanks be to God.

the holy spirit works in the world: pentecost!

The first reading is Acts 2:1-21.

The second reading is Romans 8:22-27.

The holy gospel according to John (15:26-27, 16:4b-15)

Jesus said,

²⁶”When the Advocate comes,

       whom I will send to you from the Father,

              the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father,

                     the Advocate will testify on my behalf.

                     ²⁷You also are to testify

                            because you have been with me from the beginning.

“I did not say these things to you from the beginning,

       because I was with you.

       ⁵But now I am going to the one who sent me;

              yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’

                     ⁶But because I have said these things to you,

                            sorrow has filled your hearts.

⁷Nevertheless I tell you the truth:

       it is to your advantage that I go away,

              for if I do not go away,

                     the Advocate will not come to you;

              but if I go,

                     I will send the Advocate to you.

                     ⁸And having come,

                            the Advocate will prove the world wrong

                                   about sin and righteousness and judgment:

                                          ⁹about sin,

                                                 because they do not believe in me;

                                          ¹⁰about righteousness,

                                                 because I am going to the Father

                                                        and you will see me no longer;

                                          ¹¹about judgment,

                                                 because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

¹²“I still have many things to say to you,

       but you cannot bear them now.

       ¹³When the Spirit of truth comes,

              you will be guided into all the truth;

                     for the Spirit will not speak out of the Spirit’s own authority,

                            but will speak whatever the Spirit hears,

                            and will declare to you the things that are to come.

              ¹⁴The Spirit will glorify me,

                     taking what is mine

                            and declaring it to you.

                            ¹⁵All that the Father has is mine.

                                   For this reason I said that the Spirit will take what is mine

                                   and declare it to you.

The gospel of the Lord.

After all of this time with the risen Christ, those 40 days from the resurrection to Jesus’ ascension, the disciples find themselves without Jesus once again.  So, they revert back to the old Jesus-is-missing, resurrection standby: huddling together, unsure of what to do now, and probably a bit anxious and apprehensive. 

And once again, God breaks in.  The Holy Spirit breaks into their huddled anxiety like a rush of violent wind that fills the entire house.

The Holy Spirit Jesus promised to send—the Advocate who will make his case for him now that he has ascended—is finally here!  The Spirit comes in a rush of wind with tongues of fire and of new languages.  The diversity of the whole world captured in one place!  Being a pyro and a bit of a language nerd, this is my dream come true! 

And the Holy Spirit doesn’t just show up flaming with different languages.  The Holy Spirit, as Jesus says, advocates, as a lawyer would, for God’s case to the world.  The Holy Spirit comes to make the case for God’s love and forgiveness in all the world!

Not only that, but the Holy Spirit also intercedes for us, as Paul tells the Romans, “with sighs too deep for words.”  Those prayers that you can’t quite articulate—the ones that are too private, too personal, too vulnerable, even too angry for you to voice out loud.  That is the work of the Holy Spirit, to reach into our depths—our deepest pain and sorrow as well as our deepest joys and bring them to God, connecting us evermore deeply to God.

Every week we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  That is what the Holy Spirit does.  She brings God’s will to us here and brings us and our deep prayers and desires to God.  She is the bridge that connects us all.  The subtle breeze and violent winds that blow between us.  The one who changes us, makes us grow, pushes us to new depth.

The Holy Spirit is the one who stirs things up, keeps us from becoming idle in our faith and in our lives.  There’s a company called StoryPeople, which sends me a StoryPeople of the day each day.  It’s usually a quick sentence or short she said/he said kind of story.  Sometimes they’re silly, sometimes profound, and many times both at once.  One of my favorites is called Angels of Mercy, which goes “Most people don’t know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don’t get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life.”

Sometimes that is the best description I have for what the Holy Spirit does—make sure we don’t sleep through life and, even more importantly, that we don’t sleep through our faith.  That we don’t sit idly by passively experiencing God’s love and the Creation God brings forth all around us.  The Holy Spirit is there to nudge us out of our comfort zones, to nudge us into deeper relationship with God, into greater witness to God’s loving action in the world.  Now there is the added component that the Holy Spirit also equips us—gifts us and creates the space to put our gifts to work.  The Holy Spirit gives us the language of faith.

She is the Advocate that says God’s love is for everybody without exception, who inspires acts of service and generosity.  The Holy Spirit brings us new ways of sharing God’s good news of love and grace—through donations for Family Promise, support of Native American Elders, volunteering, caring for children (whether they’re yours or another’s).  The Holy Spirit inspires our faith.  She gives us infinite opportunities to witness to God’s love in our lives.

The trickiest, or perhaps scariest, part for many of us is not in the acts of service or donations, which we’re actually pretty good at, but in the conversation.  Especially here in Utah there can be a fair amount of baggage around faith-talk.  But what a disservice we do to others when we withhold our faith!  When we don’t share with them the real reason we volunteer or the real reason we give.  When we don’t share what a difference being part of the church, the body of Christ, makes in our lives.  God’s love is real and active in the world and through us—it motivates our actions.  We serve and love in response to God first serving and loving us and sending us with the Holy Spirit.

If God’s love for us is so important that we keep coming back week after week, then how can we not share that gift with others?  The joy that God loves us just as we are.  How can we not share about this love that motivates us?  Or do we even notice it?

Maybe we’re just not paying attention to God’s loving Spirit at work during the week.

In this upcoming season after Pentecost, celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit, each week I’ll invite you all to share any Spirit moments you’ve had.  These can be big moments or small.  Glimpses of the Holy Spirit at work in the world or in your own personal life.  Moments where you anticipated something bad from a situation and yet it was used for good, moments of unexpected grace.

I’ll share first this week as an example and throughout this week I invite you to be aware of how the Holy Spirit might be showing up so you can share with us next week. 

(This is a short summary, in the sermon I told the story without it written down) Monday during my regular office hours at The Coffee Shop, a torrential downpour of rain led to a conversation about the torrential downpour of God's love in our baptism and the value of affirming our baptism and the faith traditions that brought us to the waters of baptism even as we find new faith traditions.

How is the Holy Spirit already at work in your life?  How are you moved by the Holy Spirit?  How are you responding to God’s love?  The Holy Spirit is already at work.  God is already here.  Since the beginning of time itself.

Thanks be to God.

jesus prays for us: 7th of easter

The other reading I reference is 1 John 5:9-13.

The holy gospel according to John 17:6-19.

Jesus prayed:

⁶”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.

       They were yours,

       and you gave them to me,

       and they have kept your word.

              ⁷Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;

                     ⁸for the words that you gave to me I have given to them,

                     and they have received them

                     and know in truth that I came from you;

                     and they have believed that you sent me.

       ⁹I am asking on their behalf;

              I am not asking on behalf of the world,

                     but on behalf of those whom you gave me,

                            because they are yours.

                                  ¹⁰All mine are yours,

                                  and yours are mine;

                                  and I have been glorified in them.

¹¹And now I am no longer in the world,

       but they are in the world,

       and I am coming to you.

              Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me,

                     so that they may be one, as we are one.

                     ¹²While I was with them,

                            I protected them in your name that you have given me.

                            I guarded them,

                                  and not one of them was lost

                                          except the one destined to be lost,

                                                 so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

                            ¹³But now I am coming to you,

                                  and I speak these things in the world

                                          so that they may have my joy

                                                 made complete in themselves.

                            ¹⁴I have given them your word,

                                  and the world has hated them

                                          because they do not belong to the world,

                                                 just as I do not belong to the world.

                            ¹⁵I am not asking you to take them out of the world,

                                  but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.

                                          ¹⁶They do not belong to the world,

                                                 just as I do not belong to the world.

                                          ¹⁷Sanctify them in the truth;

                                                 your word is truth.

                            ¹⁸As you have sent me into the world,

                                  so I have sent them into the world.

                                          ¹⁹And for their sakes I sanctify myself,

                                                 so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

The gospel of the Lord.

 
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When I was in my second year of college, one of my friends from high school died in a car accident and, before I headed home for the memorial service, my roommate wrote different Bible verses on note cards to send with me.  Those cards continue to go with me as I’ve traveled and moved.  Right now they are sitting on my desk in my office.  They keep me grounded and remind me of the God who loves me and the comfort and refuge that God is.

One passage that she wrote out for me comes right after today’s gospel reading.  As Jesus prays for his followers, my roommate Stefanie, changed the “them”s to my name.  Now generally I don’t advocate changing what is communal, or group-oriented, to individualize it, because it was probably written that way for a reason, but here in this context of our faith community, naming ourselves and being named can be so valuable.  To hear yourself within Jesus’ final prayer before heading into the night and crucifixion brings a new meaning and depth to the prayer.  Listen as I read from the gospel of John again,

(fill in the blanks with your name and the names of those in your faith community)

Jesus prayed:

⁶”I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.

       __________ was yours,

       and you gave __________ to me,

       and they have kept your word.

              ⁷Now they know that everything you have given me

                     is from you;

                            ⁸for the words that you gave to me I have given to __________,

                            and __________ has received them

                            and knows in truth that I came from you;

                            and they have believed that you sent me.

       ⁹I am asking on __________ ‘s behalf;

              I am not asking on behalf of the world,

                     but on behalf of __________ whom you gave me,

                            because __________ is yours.

                                  ¹⁰All mine are yours,

                                  and yours are mine;

                                  and I have been glorified in them.

¹¹And now I am no longer in the world,

       but __________ is in the world,

       and I am coming to you.

              Holy Father, protect __________ in your name that you have given me,

                     so that they may be one, as we are one.

                     ¹²While I was with __________,

                            I protected __________ in your name that you have given me.

                            I guarded __________,

                                  and not one of them was lost

                                          except the one destined to be lost,

                                                 so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

                            ¹³But now I am coming to you,

                                  and I speak these things in the world

                                          so that __________ may have my joy

                                                 made complete in themselves/themselves.

                            ¹⁴I have given __________ your word,

                                  and the world has hated them

                                          because __________ does not belong to the world,

                                                 just as I do not belong to the world.

                            ¹⁵I am not asking you to take __________ out of the world,

                                  but I ask you to protect __________ from the evil one.

                                          ¹⁶__________  does not belong to the world,

                                                 just as I do not belong to the world.

                                          ¹⁷Sanctify __________ in the truth;

                                                 your word is truth.

                            ¹⁸As you have sent me into the world,

                                  so I have sent __________ into the world.

                                          ¹⁹And for their sakes I sanctify myself,

                                                 so that __________ also may be sanctified in truth.

Jesus prays for us, his followers.  He prays that we may have his joy made complete in ourselves.  Jesus’ prayer and words for us are assurance that as we come together to pray, to study scripture, to share in the Lord’s Supper, Jesus manifests his joy in us.

This prayer is for those of us who are already here.  Those of us seeking to follow Jesus in our lives.  The message is clear: “¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.”  Jesus’ hope for us, his followers, is that we trust and live in the world as God’s beloved children, because that is who we are.  Jesus comes to us and knows us in our entirety.  In the things we do trust, or believe, and in the things we struggle with.

The gift of that is that belief is not about knowledge.  Faith involves—even necessitates—doubt.  Many of you have heard me say that if we didn’t doubt, it would be knowledge, not faith.  In fact, the Greek word for believe, pisteuo, means trust—trust in God, trust in Jesus, trust in the Holy Spirit, trust in each other.

Trust.  And you have it!  At least enough to get you to show up here today.  And that is enough.  It is enough because  1 John assures us that “the testimony of God is greater”—because God is greater and God makes it enough, because God is enough.

God’s love is poured out again and again, as we gather in trust to worship, to be fed, and to be loved.  So God loves us.  Jesus makes his joy complete in us and we are God’s, as Jesus says, “¹⁰All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.”

Because sometimes trust is just showing up—letting someone else hold the faith for us when we are caught up in doubt.  At our evening worship, during our prayer space, trust can be lighting a candle in prayer, writing out a prayer to hang up or fold into an origami paper crane.  In spending time with God, in spending our energy and our resources and money with and for God, we are choosing to put our trust in God. 

What do you need for trust?

It is not always easy and that is why we come together.  So that friends can send you to memorial services with assurances of God’s loving presence.  So that we can hold the faith together for and with each other.  So that God’s love can be made real in our lives.  So that we are never in it alone.  

Thanks be to God.