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.