Holy Trinity Sunday
Genesis 1:1-2:4 Psalm 8 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 Matthew 28:16-20 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the community of God. Amen Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, it’s an odd little festival that is crammed in between Pentecost and the long stretch of ordinary time that takes us to the end of the Church year it’s odd because it is the only festival that is dedicated to a doctrine or teaching of the church, you see, the doctrine of the trinity, the idea that God is one in three, three in one doesn’t appear explicitly in the Bible. We do hear the trinitarian formula at the end of the gospel of Matthew, we heard that just a moment ago, but as a description rather than a teaching. because while the math doesn’t work and the concept is confusing, how can God be one and three at the same time? In the end we have found that the trinity is the best description we can come up with for our experience of God. We have experienced and believe in God the creator, the one who, as we heard in our first reading created the heavens and the earth, and we have experienced Jesus who in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the word was God. Jesus who told his disciples that in seeing him they had seen the one who sent him, who rose from the dead and we have experienced the Holy Spirit, the wind that swept over the waters at creation, who descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the form of a dove, the advocate who Jesus promised to send who with a rush of wind blew the disciples out into the streets with tongues of fire above their head and all the languages of the world coming from their mouths, We have experienced all three and yet we believe that to experience each of these members of the trinity is to fully experience one God, the God of Abraham and Jacob, the God of Moses who led the people out of slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land, the God who sent his son to once and for all redeem the world, who promises to be with us to the end of the age. Our one God is a community within Godself. The various experiences of God working together to become the full expression of God. and yes how exactly that happens is a holy mystery, when we try to explain every single aspect we invariably get into trouble because our explanations fall short of reality but we know what we have experienced, our God is communal. Last week we talked about the beginning of the church and how it is like a body, one body many members, and the one body needs a diversity of parts to create the whole. This week we discover that in a way the same thing is true for God, that even God needs diversity within unity to be whole. So what does this mean? (Remember our Pentecost question?) What the trinity means for us is that diversity is essential to existence, even the existence of God. The way God created the world means that we need a diversity of people to be whole as humanity. We need people that look different and think and move and communicate differently, variety is a strength and we will never be whole while some differences are valued higher than others, while some differences hold more power than others. Until that is acknowledged there will always be something missing in the experience of humanity. That’s the march toward justice that we have seen break out, the acknowledgment of pain of division and the desire to be whole. What the trinity means is that the lie of individuality is exposed, our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the wellbeing of all and when one person or group is hurting, we hurt too. The same applies to our faith, our faith is communal, it grows and flourishes when in relationship with God and others, and this is so because our God is a communal God. What the trinity means is that we are to set aside our own advantages and privileges In our quest for the wellbeing of all because we have a God who set aside the privileges of being God, but took on flesh, and in the words of the Christ hymn from Philippians: 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. What the trinity means is that we have a God who works in the world through us. We heard in our gospel Jesus’ last words to the disciples his last command: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” God comes into our lives and claims us through the community of God, the parents that bring the child to the font, the sponsors and Sunday school teachers and classmates, the people who gather together linked by their own baptisms. What the trinity means is that joined to God in baptism we are never done learning, the baptismal journey is one whose whole length is spent learning to obey the commands of God, all summed up in the greatest commandment, love the lord your god with all your heart and soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself. And yes because we are always learning and growing we will make mistakes along the way, and when we do, when we acknowledge our sins and repent, we are forgiven and freed to continue to learn and grow What the trinity means is that in community with one another and God we are never alone, Jesus’ last words before he ascended were a promise: “And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.” God the creator is with us always in the diversity of creation that God made and called good. Jesus the Son is with us always in the Church, the body of Christ on earth, The Holy Spirit is with us always, blowing through our lives, calling, gathering, enlightening and sending us in the world. Three experiences, one God, with us forever. Amen.
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Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21 Psalm 104:24-35b 1 Corinthians 12:3-13 John 20:19-23 Dear fellow ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you from the one who blows new life into our lives. Amen It’s pentecost! The festival fifty days after Easter when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the start of the church. Each year I’m reminded of a song from my children’s choir days - Mom you know exactly which one I’m talking about, and yes my mom watches the worship videos online- this pandemic has created avid youtubers out of moms of pastors all across the nation- anyway the song went a little something like this: Pentecost is happy birthday Happy birthday to the church When every single doubting Thomas Comes alive with Jesus’ promise That he would not leave them In the lurch. Now with the exception of the fact that the song continues to smear the disciple Thomas’ character for the sake of a rhyme it’s a pretty good basic interpretation of the day. We heard last week how Jesus promised the disciples the gift of the holy spirit and commanded them to take his message to the ends of the earth before ascending to the right hand of the father and we just heard in our reading from acts, how the spirit blew the disciples out into the streets, each speaking in a different language so that the people assembled from the ends of the earth could understand their message and later though it wasn’t part of our reading, we are told about 3,000 people are baptized and join the disciples and it is exciting and a great celebration but it’s one that comes as the culmination of a long time of waiting and uncertainty. We’re intimately familiar with those dual feelings aren’t we? uncertainty coupled with waiting and even if we are trusting in the promise of God to bring new life it can be really hard to wait, we get impatient, or we imagine what the future will look like which invariably ends up being unrealistic, because we always imagine ourselves in the role of the hero, we anticipate and hope that when our wait is over and the spirit is on the move that we will be like the disciples stepping forward to face the crowds but the reality is that often when the Holy Spirit blows in new life, it looks nothing like what we imagined and in turn we are act more like the crowds than the disciples Act tells us that the crowds gathered by the commotion the disciples are making are first astonished to hear the disciples whose accents betray them as Galileans, speaking in their own languages and then they have one of two reactions some in the crowd react with curiosity, asking “What does this mean? But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." Their response is to immediately dismiss what is happening using the least generous possibility as an explanation, and while it is amusing to hear Peter protest that the disciples are not drunk because it is only 9am think about how the disciples felt, here they are receiving the long awaited gift from God, and some immediately dismiss them because they are disturbed. That’s the thing about the Holy Spirit, as new and exciting as it is, the new life it brings is coupled with the potential for destruction, the potential exists even in the way the arrival of the spirit is described, with a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and as tongues of fire, out here we know the power of wind and what it can do to trees and structures that seem strong in one moment and in the next are torn apart. Fire, used for cooking and heating, is always only one spark away from destruction. We also know that giving birth Even in the best of circumstances, is painful and dangerous and full of uncertainty Until the first breath is taken and even after. When we are faced with the arrival of the Holy Spirit, New life and all the comes with it to bring it into the world we are faced with two options: to dismiss the strange things before us with pat explanations that demean those through whom the spirit is working, or we can approach with curiosity, to ask the question: What does this mean? To take the time to listen to the ones who like Peter stand up and offer an explanation, to explore what others have experienced leading up to this moment That makes new life necessary to seek out those who have visions and dreams for the future, those who can help us imagine ourselves in that future, those whose faith remains unshaken even as we are unsure. In short, faced with the work of the holy spirit we need the help of the gifts of the spirit that Paul describes in our reading from 1 Corinthians, gifts that the spirit has distributed as she sees fit and never all in one person, when we need the gifts of the spirit we need the community. We need the people who are wise, and the ones that are knowledgeable, we need the ones that get things done, and the ones who are good at figuring out what we need to do, we need those who prophesy and those who translate that prophesy into a vision for the future. “All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and we were all made to drink of one spirit.” We are united in the spirit but Unity in the spirit doesn’t erase our individual identities, in fact we need people to be different so that we all can be whole Paul continuing with his body analogy later says “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body.” and what keeps a whole body alive? Breath, the spirit. The common theme running through the major upheavals in our world right now is lack of breath, COVID19 is a sickness of the lungs, the people who die are those whose lungs are so compromised that they are no longer able to breathe. George Floyd could not breathe, his airway cut off by another person and he is not the first to have uttered those words in a similar circumstance. Those seeking new life for other Have their breath taken from them By those who want things to stay the same. Our world needs breath, needs the spirit, even as we are made aware that we are members of a community, that our health and wellbeing are tied up in the health and well being of our neighbors, the ones next door, across the country, and around the world. The world needs the spirit, and I believe that the spirit is at work, bringing new life, even, especially if it is life like we haven’t imagined, and the work of the spirit, like a strong wind, will be unsettling, even for those of us who long for the new life that the spirit brings. And when faced with the work of the Holy Spirit, we have two options: curiosity or dismissiveness. We can dismiss the need for finding new ways for common life that enable the health of all, we can dismiss the protests using whatever pat explanation comes to mind. Or we can ask: What does this mean? And listen with an open heart and an open mind to those, who like Peter, have the gifts of the spirit that allow them to explain the long history leading up to this point, who show us why this is a moment that should not be dismissed but paid attention to. And it may be hard to hear what the Peters in our midst have to say, and at each point when we feel discomfort, a sign that the spirit is working by the way, we once again have two options: we can dismiss it or we can ask what does this mean? And move further down the path toward new life and as we go down this path, we will never be alone because we have been given the gift of the spirit who is as close to us as the breath in our lungs, who is there to unsettle us when we need to be unsettled and to comfort us when we need to be comforted who activates in each of us gifts, who works in our lives through the gifts others share who gathers us together in community to wonder together: what does this mean? If you are feeling the moving of the spirit, If you ever want someone to wonder with and ask the hard questions, know that I am available to wonder and question with you, because this is something that we don’t do alone and if we can’t ask the hard questions in the church, where can we ask them? Pentecost is happy birthday Happy birthday to the church. What does this mean? It means the start of something new, something unsettling and comforting at the same time, it means God is with us and God is sending us. It means Jesus keeps his promises. Amen |
AboutPastor Emily Johnson preaches weekly at Christ Lutheran. These are manuscripts of her sermons given at Christ Lutheran. Feel free to engage with them in the comments section of the blog. Archives
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