Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday
May 31, 2015
First Lutheran Church
Louisville KY

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

Kurios Iesous.

Jesus is Lord.

The first of the theological affirmations I just proclaimed in my bad Hebrew is the Sh’ma, the prayer from the Book of Deuteronomy that is said at least twice a day by devout Jews and which is recalled in many other ways throughout the day, is the closest thing Judaism has to a creed.

·       It’s an affirmation of monotheism, the oneness of God.

·       It’s also an affirmation of God’s authority.

The second affirmation, in my equally bad Greek, is the first and most basic creedal statement of Christianity and in common use among Christians by the time of Paul’s letters in the mid first century.

For Christians, both of these statements are equally true and so it was soon evident that there was a theological problem.

·       The Lord is the one God.

·       Jesus is the Lord.

·       Jesus is the one God.

·       What can it mean to say the truly human Jesus, whom people still living had seen and known in the flesh, was truly God?

·       Experiencing the power of the Spirit in their lives, the question of the Holy Spirit also soon arose.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the product of several centuries of Christians wrestling (sometimes literally) with this theological issue.

From our perspective, it’s easy to suggest that two millennia of sometimes heated discussion about the nature of God and the persons of the trinity is nothing more than a vain attempt at defining God and, at worst, a test for membership in a club we call church.

Dear friends, I would like to suggest, no that’s too wimpy a word, I am proclaiming, perhaps even insisting, that the doctrine of the trinity is, in fact, good news for us and for our world.

3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

In perhaps the most quoted verse from the New Testament, we are told that God is for us and, even more importantly, that God comes to us.

Furthermore, today’s Gospel lesson reminds us that God dwells in each of us through the Spirit.

God for us!

God with us!

God in us!

God for us means that our salvation is God’s doing.

·       We can give up trying to save ourselves by our own good works.

·       We can give up trying to save ourselves through power, money, and their demonic offspring war.

God with us means that our bodies, our human experiences, and this world in which we live have been and continue to be made holy by God’s physical presence in Jesus.

·       The flesh, as spoken of negatively in today’s lessons, is an allegiance to hedonism, an affirmation that I am lord and doesn’t refer to our actual bodies or the creation, all of which God has called good.

·       We are not alone as is expressed in the ancient Christian greeting “The Lord be with you.”

God in us means that we have the power and the freedom to be more than we could ever dream or imagine.

·       God’s Holy Spirit is at work in us making us God’s hands and feet in the world.

·       The Spirit makes us, like Isaiah, friends of God and prophets.

·       The Spirit enlivens us and will one day restore these mortal bodies of ours so that we might be like Christ in glory.

Finally, to say that God is Trinity is to say that God is by nature a community of love, that is, God is love.

·       Having been created in the divine image, then, we are not made to be the rugged individual so praised by our culture.

·       Resplendent in our individual identities, like Father, Son and Spirit, each of us has none-the less been made to be a part of a “we”.

·       That “we” can be experienced in family and friendship but is especially made manifest in the Church.

·       We are not baptized into just a personal relationship with Jesus, but into a community of faith centered in love around a triune God that uses us to invite others into that same relationship.

The Father is not the Son and not the Holy Spirit.

The Son is not the Father and not the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is not the Father and not the Son.

There are three persons.

The Father is God.

The Son is God.

The Holy Spirit is God.

There is one God.

These formulations sound clumsy and soulless to many of us today.

·       Their dependence on intellectual categories seems foreign to our culture which is obsessed with feelings.

·       But clumsy and foreign though they might be, they have no other purpose than to be of service to the good news.

I hope you’ll agree that God for us, God with us, and God in us is indeed good news.

I hope you’ll agree that to say that God is love and that we have been created to be loved and to be lovers is indeed good news.

This feast of the Holy Trinity then, is not some theological litmus test nor a celebration of some philosophical argument, but a proclamation of the good news.

To the Father give glory, to the Son give glory, to the Holy Spirit give glory; now and forever. Amen

Pentecost

Toto I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!

·       Most of us are familiar with the movie classic, “The Wizard of Oz”.

·       As a child in the 1960’s I eagerly awaited its annual showing on television while secretly dreading the Wicked Witch who scared the daylights out of me.

·       I remember the amazement of seeing, after we got color television, what previous generations had seen at the theater, the amazing, exotic color of Oz.

·       You’ll remember, of course, that the scenes of Kansas were shot in black and white.

·       Dorothy, transported by a great wind, had arrived in a new reality far more expansive than anything she had known in Kansas.

I would like to think that one of the apostles, probably one of the lesser known of them like Simon the Zealot or Jude, used words similar to Dorothy’s when a great wind dislodged them from their hiding place.

Suddenly finding himself in the midst of the colorful throng with their myriad of languages, costumes and customs, can’t you hear the anonymous apostle say “Peter I’ve a feeling we’re not in the upper room anymore”.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.” (Acts 2; 1-2)

You will recall that the followers of Jesus, most of whom had betrayed him by “what they had done or by what they had failed to do” and who had been witnesses to the resurrection and ascension, continued to be holed up in a room in Jerusalem.

·       Although they had managed to gather a small community and had taken care of the business of choosing Matthias, they still weren’t sure what to make of all they had seen and heard.

·       They were still reluctant to share their experience with others.

·       They were focused on themselves.

·       They were afraid of what God might have in mind for them.

The actual text from Acts is fascinating.

One minute the disciples are gathered in the room and then, without any kind of transition or description of how it happened other than the coming of the wind and fire, they are out in the streets in the midst of the multitude of those visiting Jerusalem.

Like Dorothy and her little dog, a great wind had suddenly and without warning lifted them from the colorless room of fear and self-absorption and deposited them in the midst of a colorful crowd more expansive than anything they had known in the Kansas of that upper room.

What then can we say of this Spirit that comes in wind and fire?

·       The Holy Spirit comes completely as gift, the gift of the Risen Christ.

·       The Holy Spirit is disruptive and unsettling while at the same time comforting.

·       The Holy Spirit turns fear to courage.

·       The Holy Spirit makes communication possible between people who at one time could not understand one another.

·       The Holy Spirit turns ordinary people into dreamers, prophets, and evangelists.

·       The Holy Spirit births the church.

And so dear friends in Christ, what about us here at First Lutheran?

After a few weeks with you there are many wonderful things that I’ve observed;

·       Your commitment to the worship of God through the liturgy and great music,

·       Your genuine affection and concern for one another,

·       Your generous support of Dare to Care and The Louisville Youth Group,

·       - to name just a few.

I have wondered though if we, and I honestly and wholeheartedly include myself in this we, if we are really ready and willing to experience Pentecost.

·       We have to ask ourselves some serious questions.

• ·       Has the upper room become too comfortable?
• ·       Do we pass up opportunities for real communication?
• ·       Are our priorities focused inwardly?
• ·       Would we really just rather be left alone?
• ·       Isn’t black and white good enough?
• ·       What does it mean to be “the welcome place’?
• ·       Is a peaceful death preferable to an unsettling future?
• ·       What will the great wind overturn?
• ·       What will the fire burn?
• ·       Can’t we just stay in Kansas?

We will need to answer those questions as individuals and as a church over the coming months.

In a sense, however, it’s too late.

·       For my friends, like an unpredictable tornado, the Holy Spirit blows were she wills and is already blowing here among us.

·       The answer to those questions will determine our cooperation but in no way limit God’s power at work in the world or in this place.

If left to themselves, the disciples might never have left that upper room.

·       We are grateful today that God did not wait for them.

·       We are grateful today that it does not depend on us.

It is Pentecost whether we ask for it or not.

·       First Lutheran, feel the power of the wind and be blown away!

·       First Lutheran, feel the heat of the flame and catch fire!

Come Holy Spirit!

·       Renew us.

·       Renew this congregation.

·       Renew the whole church.

·       Renew, as the scriptures promise, the whole face of the earth.

Amen.

March 8, 2015 - Third Sunday of Lent (Revised Common Lectionary) Exodus 20:1-17 - Psalm 19 - 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 - John 2:13-22 Third Lutheran – Louisville, KY Austin Newberry

As the psalmist says this morning “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and redeemer”. Amen.

Given any number of popular shows on TV, it would seem that most of us enjoy watching an argument.

·        From paternity tests on weekday TV   to the Sunday morning talk shows, verbal (and sometimes even physical) sparring seems to rule the airways.

·        But most of us, when the conflict moves from the television to our living room, quickly become uncomfortable.

When trying to diminish the intensity of a quarrel, we often find ourselves suggesting that the issue at hand is “just a misunderstanding”.

·        In saying this we’re attempting to distinguish between bad will, dislike, and hate on the one hand and a mistake, misinformation, or ignorance on the other.

·        According to this point of view, it’s far more excusable to be wrong than it is to be hateful.

I think we all understand the logic of that but I’m just not so sure that it holds up.

·        We human beings are far more complicated than a simple distinction between mind and heart might indicate.

·        Even if it’s really possible to separate the two, to make the mind less culpable than the heart is dangerous because it allows us to make excuses for unacceptable, even evil, behavior done by us or by others.

By now you’re probably asking yourselves what on earth any of this philosophical speculation about the motives behind our actions has to do with today’s lessons.

·        If you’ll bear with me, I’d like to suggest that each of our readings is, in its own way, about misunderstandings rather than ill will.

·        A theology professor of mine used to often say that “Christians have a remarkable proclivity for missing the point”.

·        I might even go so far as to suggest “missing the point” as the very definition of sin.

In fact, the Hebrew word for sin literally means to “miss the mark.”

In the lesson from Exodus, God gives the commandments to Israel because of a growing misunderstanding.

Note the first commandment.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. (Ex 20:1-3)

The people had obviously become mistaken about who God is, what God had done for them in the exodus from Egypt, and what was required of them in return.

·        All the other commandments that follow are elaborations on the first.

·        In other words, what we understand about God has consequences far beyond intellectual theology.

·        If we fail to understand that God is the source and goal of all that we have and are, then we cannot love God and neighbor as we ought.

·        We might even dare to say that every sin is idolatry, a sin against the first commandment.

In First Corinthians there is a misunderstanding about the nature of the cross which, ultimately, is once again a misunderstanding about who God is and what God is doing in the world in and through Jesus the Christ.

·        To choose human wisdom over divine wisdom is another way of describing idolatry.

In the Gospel lesson from John we are shown, once again, a misunderstanding of the nature of the temple as a house of prayer and, as in First Corinthians, a misunderstanding about what God is up to in and through Jesus.

·        To believe that the business of the temple is business and not prayer is idolatry.

·        To prioritize the temple building over God made flesh in Jesus, is for John, idolatry.

The fundamental human condition which Lutheran theology has traditionally referred to as original sin is, it seems to me, a basic inability to understand who God is and the subsequent creation and worship of gods of our own choosing – idolatry.

We miss the point, we misunderstand, we miss the mark.

·        When we believe that we will ultimately be made safe by killing, we pay homage to the false god of death.

·        When we believe that we will be made happy by accumulation of wealth and goods, mistaking want for need, we bow down to the false god of consumption.

·        When we turn to food, drink, drugs, and sex as cures for loneliness and pain, we have given ourselves over to the false gods of immediate gratification.

·        When we believe ourselves, our culture, our race, our gender and even our sexuality to be superior to that of others, we have forsaken the God of the universe for the false gods of home and tribe.

·        When we reject the poor, the marginalized, the homeless, the mentally ill, the public sinner, and all whom Jesus called the least of these, we reject the Christ who is made present in them for the false gods of self-righteousness, self-help, and the self-made person.

·        And yes, when we insist on erecting monuments to the 10 commandments as a way of marginalizing those who do not share our religious tradition we turn the commandments themselves, as well as the bible itself, into a false god.

·        The list of these idols and the ways in which we worship them, of course, goes on and on.

This is the sad history of our human response to God’s goodness, love and mercy.

·        This friends is not really news to any of us.

·        It’s the story of Exodus, it’s the story of the buyers and the sellers in the temple, and it’s the story of the search for wonders and wisdom rather than the cross.

·        We admit as much in the declaration of our sin at the confession at the beginning of worship week after week.

·        God has given the law as gift so that we can see our failure with clear eyes.

·        We are forced to acknowledge that our idolatry has real life negative consequences for us and for people all over the world.

So where is the good news this morning?

As the Presbyterian theologian and popular writer Fredrick Buechner has said, “the good news is always bad news first” and we have plenty of that.

·        But, as Buechner’s statement implies, There is indeed good news for us today as well.

In a recent article in The Lutheran, Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton reminds her readers that we focus on our sins and their negative consequences during lent as a first step in recognizing God’s goodness and mercy, not to feel guilty and even less as a reason to start a program of self-improvement.

·        In this holy season we are right to turn our attention to the misery and, yes, sadly, even the death that is caused by our devotion to false gods, but to think that we can somehow fix ourselves is just one more form of idolatry.

The good news is that God’s gracious redemptive activity in creation does not require that we get it right.

·        We cannot, thank God, misunderstand our way out of God’s love, grace, and forgiveness.

The idols lined up on the altars of our hearts are, in the end, no match for the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Moses, the God of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.

·        Just as Jesus cleansed the temple, so Jesus cleanses our hearts time and time again.

Just as God raised up the torn down temple of Jesus’ body, so too God brings new life to those places and people harmed by our idolatry.

Yes, the whole of sacred scripture contains the story of our human foolishness, our misunderstandings, our idolatry and sin.

But, dear friends in Christ, the bible is not ultimately about us – we are but bit players – rather, the bible is about God, the one true God, a God who time and time again offers only love, grace, and forgiveness to those who miss the mark.

In choosing with the Apostle Paul to proclaim Christ crucified, we proclaim the sign of God’s extravagant grace and the wisdom of a God who is a fool for love of us.

That extravagant grace and foolish love is indeed good news for us and for our world on this third Sunday of Lent.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday

People love Ash Wednesday for a variety of reasons and folks who never appear in church any other time often show up for the distribution of ashes. Perhaps, deep down, people who are pushed about by the whims of our consumer driven culture, desire a moment of austerity, a reality check if you will. But my friends, Ash Wednesday cannot be just about death and still be Christian. As the mid-twentieth century monk and mystic Thomas Merton warned, we cannot turn the distribution of ashes into some sort of “sacrament of death as if such a thing were even possible”.

The ashes themselves say all that needs to be said about death. Let them speak their power. Perhaps though rather than the traditional "remember mortal that  you are dust and dust you shall return", we are better served by the optional words at distribution “Repent and believe in the Gospel” or, in other words, turn around and believe the good news. Use the days ahead to turn around.

Turn around and see the whole history of God’s covenant love and salvific will at work in the world. Turn around and see the saving life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Turn around and see the Spirit at work blowing away the dust and ashes of death and breathing new life into dry bones. Spend some time during these forty days sitting with Sacred Scripture. Believe that the triune God is at work in the world for you and for all – for the whole of creation.

Turn around and see the messes you have made in your life and in the lives of others. Turn around and see the trail of tears left behind by deeds done in our name by both church and country. Turn around and see the abuse we have afflicted on our dear mother earth. Spend some time during these forty days in introspection and deep soul-searching examining your conscience for those things done and undone that contribute to death rather than life. Believe that all of this baggage can be left behind and that God offers forgiveness and new life for you and for all – for the whole of creation.

Turn around and see the marvels God has wrought in and through you on your journey of life. Turn around and see God's love for you expressed in love shown to you by others, in the peace that has come unexpectedly at just the right time, and in events that we can only in all humility call miraculous. Turn around and see, if you will, those famous footprints in the sand. Believe that you are God's beloved, a small but no less important part of God's beloved creation.

In various places the liturgical texts for lent dare to call this special time of year, God’s gift to us and, yes, a joyful season. Our turning is God’s grace at work in us. Our believing is God’s work in us. God's work is indeed marvelous and joyful to behold.

We are indeed dust and ashes, but dust and ashes loved beyond all understanding and destined to be re-formed as citizens of the new heaven and the new earth.

Repent and believe in the Gospel!

Turn around and believe the good news!

Amen.

Baptism of the Lord 2015

Today we commemorate the Lord’s baptism in the Jordan by John.

To commemorate something is another way of talking about remembering.

For the Christian, to remember is not simply to recall, but to make real, to make present in the here and now, at this place and in this time.

This is the kind of remembering we do when we celebrate the sacraments.

This sacramental remembering is made powerful, not through our efforts which would be magic, but because of God’s promise, which is pure gospel. 

Having made the point that sacraments are not magic, I would ask you to bear with me as I suggest that we now turn our attention to the magical world of Harry Potter.

In the Potter books there is a magical device that, in the movies,  looks for all the world just like a baptismal font from a medieval church.

Called a penseive, the font is filled with a magical liquid in which memories are stored and through which they can be seen with clarity.

I would like to suggest dear friends, that the baptismal font we see here before us, is even more powerful and that this power comes not from the invocation of magic spells but from the proclamation of gospel to and for everyone who has or will be baptized.

Not only does the baptismal font enable us to see the past, it also provides us with a clear vision of the present and the future.

In this small bowl are all the Church’s past memories of water, memories freed of the need to be fact, so that they can be the truth.

• ·       The chaotic waters brooded over by the Spirit at the moment of creation as we heard in today’s first lesson.
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• ·        The river flowing out of Eden.
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• ·        All the rivers and oceans of the earth in their primal state before pollution and damns.
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• ·        The seas containing what one psalm translation delightfully calls “the monsters God made to play with”
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• ·        The ocean home of the great and terrible Leviathan.
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• ·        The cleansing flood of Noah’s day.
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• ·        The water flowing forth from the rock in the desert.
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• ·        The Red Sea through which God’s people passed out of slavery.
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• ·        The Jordan River which those same ex-slaves crossed over into the Promised Land.
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• ·        The Jordan River to which Elisha directed Naaman to wash and be cured of Leprosy.
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• ·        The raging waters and rivers through which God promises protection in the prophesy of Isaiah.
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• ·        The waters Ezekial saw flowing from the temple.
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• ·        The waters of justice and the everlasting stream of righteousness proclaimed by Amo.s
• .
• ·        The stormy sea into which Jonah was thrown.
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• ·        Again, the River Jordan where John the Baptist preached and into which Jesus descended into baptism.
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• ·        The Sea of Galilee so prominent in the Gospel narratives.
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• ·        The water turned into wine.
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• ·        The pool at Siloam where Jesus healed the blind man and the healing pool at Bethesda.
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• ·        The spittle of Jesus mixed with dirt to make healing mud.
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• ·        The water used to wash the disciples feet.
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• ·        The water and blood flowing from Jesus’ pierced side on the cross.
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• ·        The water into which countless saints, including most of us here today, have been baptized.
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• ·        The water we drink and which we use to grow crops, the water with which we bathe and with which we clean. And yes, even the water we waste while millions thirst.
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• ·        And last but not least, our own individual memories of lakes, streams, rivers and oceans as we’ve experienced them for good and for ill in our lives.

o   Picnics on the beach, a drowned cousin, fishing with Grandpa, the Christmas Tsunami – joy and sadness, refreshment and danger,life and death.

So many memories.

So much water.

So much truth about both the chaos and storms of sin, but also the healing and refreshment which is God’s promise to us..

Luther says that in Christ’s baptism all the waters of the earth have united to become one great flood.

Perhaps it’s a good thing we keep the lid on the font when not in use!

Unlike the penseive in the Harry Potter stories however, the baptismal font also gives us a vision of our future.

The font is a tomb into which those of us who have been baptized have as St. Paul insists, already died.

In baptism, we have died the only death that ultimately matters for, if we have died and been buried with Christ, so we also shall share in his resurrection.

And so the baptismal tomb is also a womb of rebirth from which the baptized are reborn into eternal life.

It is the womb of Sarah, of Hannah, and of Elizabeth who were barren but who gave birth to Isaac, Samuel, and John the Baptist, and the virgin womb of Mary who gave birth to the Christ, for nothing is impossible with God.

In the book of revelation we are given a vision of a new heaven and a new earth, a new temple in a New Jerusalem, out from which flows the river of the water of life.

No longer contained in the font, the lid removed once and for all, this river spills forth all the waters of our collective memory.

The words of the prophecy are worth rehearing.

·        Then the angel^* showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ²through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life^* with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. (Rev. 22, 1-3)

Here at the font then, is our future.

Finally, here also, is our present.

Here, over this font, God rips open the heavens and says to each of us here and now, no matter what we have done or failed to do,“You are my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Here are the waters of grace for the forgiveness of our sins here, today, at First Lutheran.

Here are the waters of refreshment for lives poured out in ministry and service to neighbor, here in Columbus, IN, in 2015.

Here is water for healing, water for fishing for people, waters of justice and righteousness flowing through our witness and action.

Here in this font is the truth of our past, present and future. 

All in God’s hands. 

All grace. 

Amen. 

Alleluia