Basking in the Mystery of the Trinity - Trinity Sunday Sermon 2013

Back in June of 2003, I flew with a friend of mine to Germany where we met another friend of mine who was working for a year in Berlin. Now, we were only there for a week and we had to really plan how to travel around so we could see as much as we could in so short a time. Of course, in Europe, you have to travel by train. So we would take a train real early in the morning, and then head back to Berlin in the evening. On one of the trips back to Berlin, I was sitting and talking to my friend when we heard this commotion behind us. This guy, dressed as an attendant, came hurriedly through the train asking if there was a Catholic priest on board. Apparently, there wasn’t. A few minutes later, he came back through, this time asking for a lutheran pastor or even an anglican priest. Again, there didn’t appear to be. A few moments, later he came back through asking for a Jewish Rabbi. This time an elderly man towards the back of the car stood up and said, “Can I help you, friend. I am a Methodist minister.” At this the attendant sighed and said, of course not, you’re not going to be any help, I need a corkscrew.”

Today is the day that we celebrate the Holy Trinity. You know, that logically impossible, mathematically complicated thing that tells us that God is three distinct entities, each with its own purpose and yet, these three distinct entities are, in fact one and the same. 1+1+1=1. Plain as day. Or maybe not so much.

I preached on this topic, I think two years ago, and I looked over that sermon and came to the conclusion that I wanted to do something different, but I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what to say this morning. You see, while I don’t read a lot of mystery novels, I do enjoy them. Last week, Dan Brown came out with a new novel. I know his books are controversial, like the Da Vinci Code, and I can understand why, but at the end of the day, for me at least, it is a fictional novel and he is a good writer so I enjoy reading him. Now he only comes out with a book every few years or so and it had been awhile since his last one. When I new there was another one coming, I was counting off the days to when I could get it. I finished it this week, and I have to admit, I enjoyed it. The surprising thing is that as I got closer to the end of the book, I found myself getting upset, because I was enjoying the mystery so much, that I didn’t want to get to the end. Even though my mind was trained to sift through possibilities and find the facts, the reality is that I enjoy the mystery.

As I looked over the text I preached two years ago on this subject, I noticed that I spent a good deal of time trying to give a definition to the trinity that would give it some meaning. Because, in my mind a mystery lacks definition, by design. We can’t learn anything through a mystery. This morning, though, I realize that I may have been trying to explain a mystery thinking that clarity brings power in understanding. Yet, what if that isn’t the case. What if mystery has a power of its own that can even surpass the power that clarity can bring.

Let’s look at an example. The book of Genesis. Let me tell you two different accounts of creation and see if you can tell me which one is actually from the Bible. Option 1: man and woman are made on the same day at roughly the same time and at the end of the rest of creation. Option 2: man is made first, then God makes the rest of creation and towards the end, then finally makes woman as a companion to man.

Which one then, of these two different accounts of creation is actually the version that Genesis tells? The first version does indeed come from Genesis, specifically it comes from the very first chapter. The second version comes from the second chapter of Genesis. That is right, they both are from Genesis. They both tell of creation, and they both tell contradictory stories about how the earth was created. How can that be?

Throughout history, many people have weighed in on the issue. Some say there is no contradiction, that they are simply the same account but from a different point of view. Others say that one of them was a later addition. Still others say that it is simply a metaphorical attempt to put in words the actions God took on our behalf during creation. Even others point to this as proof that the Bible can’t be authoritative because of its contradictions. Any of these explanations could be true, but I personally don’t subscribe to any of them. And here is why.

Sometimes a mystery is ok. Sometimes accepting what we don’t know can help us to see the larger picture in a better way. There is an old story about Saint Augustine. One day Augustine was walking along the beach by the ocean and pondering the deep mystery of God the Holy Trinity. He met a boy there on the beach who had dug a hole in the sand and kept busy running back and forth from the hole to the ocean; collecting water and pouring it into the hole. Augustine was curious about this, so he asked the boy: “What are you doing?” The boy replied: “I am going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.” Augustine then said: “That is impossible, the whole ocean will not fit into your hole.” And the boy answered Augustine: “Neither can the infinite God the Holy Trinity fit into your finite mind.”

The Bible is full of many mysteries. From the contradictory accounts of creation, to the differences in the four Gospels, to the true meaning of the Book of Revelation, and of course to the concept of the Holy Trinity that we deal with today. Scripture, with all its answers and with all of the advice it gives us on how to live our lives, with all of that, it is still filled with mystery. And that is ok, because in mystery, we find ourselves opening our mind to possibilities that we may not have imagined if we simply were presented with facts. Maybe the mystery of the trinity is simply that, a mystery that was never meant to truly be understood but rather to simply be believed and lived in.

This mystery, in its complexity and in its simplicity, can help us understand God in a better way and it can also help us to grasp better what our own calling may be. Because in this three is one and one is three illogical structure we find that our lives are filled with small trinities. We find them all over. Our relationships. Our gardening. Our communities. Augustine, for example, explained the trinity as a diagram of relationship. He used the model, believe it or not, of a romantic relationship. The lover, the beloved and the love that they share. Each representing either the father, the son or the holy spirit. Others have compared it to a plant, with the seed, the roots, and the visible flower. And even in our communities we can see its presence. the church, the community and the mission work we do, for example.

All of this is what makes the doctrine of the Trinity a celebration of the triumph of the infinite hues of complexity over a monochromatic simplicity. It reminds us that the central metaphor for God for us Christians is a diversity, and within that diversity a unity. We see that biological diversity is nature’s way of preserving and propagating life. But when it comes to race or class or even sexual orientation, it can feel like a threat to our own values and lifestyles.

Sociologists tell us that in early American towns the richest person and the poorest person never lived more than 200 yards apart. They would have to walk by the other’s dwelling during the course of a typical day. They were part of the same community and they were connected in a way we can now only try to imagine.

How different is that from where we are now when we wall ourselves off from the community or gate ourselves inside. How different is it when we don’t share the same schools or even the same churches?

When we don’t experience diversity in our day to day, we begin to lost touch with one another and the social fabric that binds us together begins to slowly unravel.

Theological diversity works the same way, and maybe that is even more difficult because we are dealing with what we believe to be eternal and sacred, and when it comes to that we are not open to alternative approaches. We want our religious truths to be pure, immutable. We want to believe our particular corner on God has not other inhabitants.

Rev. Richard Bowers writes, “The fear and insecurity that draws people into rigid, propositional statements about god and creation blinds them to the reality that all theological reflection flows from particular histories and contexts that shape how we understand God and the divine work among us.

For Christians, the Trinity is the primary symbol of community that holds together by containing diversity within itself. The trinity is an attempt to express an ineffable truth using a symbol, a metaphor for the different aspects and activities of God’s personhood.

It might make for strange math. Yet, actually the Cappodocian Theologians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, all from the 4th and 5th centuries) viewed the number 1 as no number at all because it had no diversity. It possessed no discernable strength. Isn’t that interesting?

The number 2 was weak as well in that it was only a dualism. At best, it could only be two sides of the same coin.

The number 3 was considered the first real number because it had innate stability, a complexity; a diversity, which made it durable and strong.

And the Trinity is not the only symbol of diversity for Christians. All of the Bible with its two accounts of the creation, and its four gospels, is enriched by its strikingly different approach to telling the story of Jesus and his ministry. It symbolizes a unity that is anything but uniform. These multiple viewpoints of truth help us to begin to comprehend the complexity of Jesus and the Mystery of the Incarnate Christ. the Son of the living God can’t be verified by one, lone witness. It requires a diversity of witnesses, a host of people who see that story, who witness that truth through their own individual lenses.

No matter how  we choose to explain the trinity, the reality is that its mystery gives us an opportunity to venture into a deeper understanding of what it is and what it means. In some ways, then the Trinity is the first community, the model for how we are called to connect with one another, without prejudice, without inequality, without competition, and always with perfect love.

It is not that a Trinitarian God is too complicated to understand, but rather that a Trinitarian God is too complex to be managed or manipulated by all of us who think we know better than God.

We see all kinds of issues in black and white, but we live our lives in color. the complexity of the trinity means that Spirit and Flesh live inextricably bound to one another. It means that the human and the divine are connected in an eternal dance.

In fact, the early theologians used the Greek work perichorasis which means around the circle. As we dance together and with God, we all dance to the center of life where God resides and we all move closer to one another.

Today we also celebrate those who have served our country, many making the ultimate sacrifice. While we do that, we must remember one thing in particular. Despite the army’s motto of “an army of one”, few if any veterans that I know would say that battles are lost or one by a single person, they know that it is by working together that evil can be overcome. That speaks to our lives and our faith and our mission as well, so as we celebrate those who serve, let their example and the example of the trinity itself to remind us that it is together we are strong, it is in our unity that our mission is better accomplished.

Returning back to Augustine, as he wrote to students as he was writing “On The Trinity,” his famous treatise on this topic, he wrote the following. “Lest you become discouraged, know that when you love, you know more about who God is than you ever could know with your intellect.”

It is in loving that we find love. It is in giving that we receive. It is in serving that we are ultimately served.

The Holy Trinity, it is indeed a holy mystery. It is not an entity that mathematics or physics or calculus can explain. It is not a philosophical position that can be achieved by the use of logic or reason. It is a mystery. It is one that we may never really solve, but in that we find its strength. It is not something we must see in order to believe. Rather, it is something that truly needs to believed and lived in order to see the effects it has on our lives, on our community and on our mission and calling in this world, in God’s world, in God’s creation.

Maybe we haven’t answered any questions today, yet, even more important, maybe we have learned that we can find beauty and strength without finding answers and proof. That is the mystery of the trinity. That is the mystery of God. And it is in that mystery, that, when we accept it, we come to find the loving embrace of that God, That Father, that Son, and that Holy Spirit. Amen.

May 12, 2013

Seventh Sunday of Easter

Mother’s Day/Festival of the Christian Home

Ascension Sunday

Shortly after commencement, the young seminary graduate was being considered by a pulpit committee for his first pastorate. The committee chairman began the interview by asking the candidate, “Sir, how much do you know about the Bible?” To which the young man responded, “I am a seminary graduate. I know the Bible well; Old Testament, New Testament, I know it all.” The chairmen then said, “Since you are such a knowledgeable Bible student, why don’t you share a well known passage with us from memory; one with which we lay people are all familiar. Tell us the story of the Good Samaritan.”

The seminary graduate said, “Oh, yes, I know it well. There once was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus who went down to Jerusalem by night. But he fell upon the stony ground and the thorns choked him almost to death. He said, ‘What shall I do? I know. I will arise and go to my father’s house.’ So he arose and climbed a sycamore tree. The next day, Solomon and his wife Gomorrah came by and carried him down to Noah’s ark for Moses to take care of him. But as he was passing through the east gate of the ark, his hair became tangled in a tree limb and he hung there forty days and forty nights. He was afterwards hungry, and the ravens came and fed him. On the following day, the three wise men came and carried him down to Nineveh. When he arrived there, he found Delilah sitting on the wall. He cried out, ‘Who is on my side?’ and the seven sons of Sceva came forth. He said to them. ‘Throw her down boys!’, to which they answered, ‘How many times, till seven times?’ He said, ‘No, seventy times seven.’ So they threw her down four hundred and ninety times, and she burst asunder in their midst. Afterwards, they picked up twelve baskets of the fragments were were made.’

At this point, the seminary graduate took a long pause and looked intently around the room into each one’s eyes before confronting them with his application. ‘And in the resurrection, whose wife will she be?’

The chairman of the committee thanked the young man and dismissed him from the room while they discussed his candidacy. When the seminary graduate had departed the room, the chairman turned to the rest of the members and said, ‘I think we ought to call him. I know he is young, but my soul, he really knows his Bible.”

John 17:20-26 (NRSV)

(20) I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,

(21) that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

(22) The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,

(23)I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

(24) Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

(25) Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me.

(26) I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

The message in these words this morning is pretty intense. Yet, these are the words Christ prays right before he is arrested. They are words in prayer that are meant to be encouraging. Why else would they be written down? God didn’t need to know them, he already did. They were written down so that we would know them, so that we would hear them, so that we would understand them. Yet, we often forget these words and focus more on the parts of the gospel story that are easier to act upon, or so we think.

Every four years the United Methodist Church gathers together in one place and has what we call General Conference. The General Conference is the convening of the governing structure of the United Methodist Church throughout the world. Last year about this time the General Conference met in Tampa, Fl. At this meeting there are changes made to our Book of Discipline. Here is a copy. If you would like to borrow a copy let me know and I will lend you one. Then I will pray that you find something more constructive and enjoyable to do. This is not leisure reading. However, not too far in you get to what we call the social principles of the UMC. Yet, before it gets into detail it offers up a preamble. None of the social principles are binding, but rather together provide kind of a general consensus of the thoughts about how the church and society are related to each other and the importance of this relationship in societal development at a local, national and global level. I want to briefly read this preamble because I feel that it speaks to the message we hear in the Gospel this morning.

We, the people called United Methodists, affirm our faith in God our Creator and Father, in Jesus Christ our Savior, and in the Holy Spirit, our Guide and Guard.

We acknowledge our complete dependence upon God in birth, in life, in death, and in life eternal. Secure in God’s love, we affirm the goodness of life and confess our many sins against God’s will for us as we find it in Jesus Christ. We have not always been faithful stewards of all that has been committed to us by god the Creator. We have been reluctant followers of Jesus Christ in his mission to bring all persons into a community of love. Though called by the Holy Spirit to become new creatures in Christ, we have resisted the further call to become the people of God in our dealings with each other and the earth on which we live.

We affirm our unity in Jesus Christ while acknowledging differences in applying our faith in different cultural contexts as we live out the gospel.

Grateful for God’s forgiving love, in which we live and by which we are judged, and affirming our belief in the inestimable worth of each individual, we renew our commitment to become faithful witnesses to the gospel, not alone to the ends of the earth, but also to the depths of our common life and work.

We acknowledge that, because it is a living body of believers, gathered together by God from many diverse segments of the human community, unanimity of belief, opinion, practice has never been characteristic of the Church from the beginning to this day. From its earliest time, as evidenced in the letters of Paul, the witness of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and other New Testament texts, diversity of understanding and controversy with regard to many matters has been the reality. Therefore, whenever significant differences of opinion among faithful Christians occur, some of which continue to divide the church deeply today, neither surprise nor dismay should be allowed to separate members of the Body from one another; nor should those differences be covered over with false claims of consensus or unanimity. To the contrary, such conflict must be embraced with courage and perseverance as all together continue to seek to discern God’s will. In that understanding and commitment, we pledge ourselves to acknowledge and to embrace with courage, trust, and hope those controversies that arise among us, accepting them as evidence that God is not yet finished in sculpting us to be God’s people.

We commit ourselves to stand united in declaring our faith that God’s grace is available to all, that nothing can separate us from the love of God. In that confidence, we pledge to continue to be in respectful dialogue ;with those with whom we disagree, to explore the sources of our differences, to honor the sacred worth of all persons, and to tell the truth about our divisions as we continue to seek the mind of Christ and to do the will of God in all things.”

So, you may be asking what this preamble has to do with this morning’s Gospel lesson. Well, to get to the heart of it, no pun intended, it is all about true love. What do I mean by true love? I don’t mean the true love we think about near valentine’s day with cupid and arrows and sappy love songs and well worded cards, or boxes of chocolate. Although, chocolate doesn’t hurt. True love is not the feeling you get when you see that object of your desire. For instance, maybe you love the smell of fresh cut grass on a summer morning, or maybe you love the humm of a well-tuned engine on a brand new mustang or even a tin lizzie. Maybe you love that feeling when you are at a baseball game and its the bottom of the 9th, score is tied, your team is up to bat, there are two outs, and the count is 3-2 and the next pitch is pounded out of the park and you stand up screaming as the runner rounds home base, winning the game. Maybe you love one or all of these things. And, this feeling is a good one, but it isn’t true love.

But, don’t be discouraged, because true love does exist in our world. But if these things aren’t true love, then what is? We find an example in the reading from John’s gospel. We find it in the selfless love of Christ. Here he is, praying, shortly before his arrest. He knows what is coming. Yet here he is praying, likely for the opposite than what we would pray for in the same situation. He is praying for his disciples and for us. He is praying that we will come to know him. He was praying not for us in an individual sense, necessarily; but rather for us in a communal sense. He is praying for what will become the Church. This is a prayer of sacrificial love, of true love. The love that is true love in its purest form.

We, as the church, though, have often let the differences we have come between us and a true understanding of the love Jesus is praying for. There is an old poem that sheds light on how many of us think of our faith. It goes:

I can be a Christian by myself.

Leave my dusty Bible on the shelf.

I’ll sing a hymn and pray a bit.

God can do the rest of it.

My heart’s the church, my head’s the steeple.

Shut the door and I’m the people.

I can be a Christian by myself.

I can be a Christian by myself.

I’ll break some bread and drink some wine,

Have myself a holy time.

I’ll take the offering, then I’ll know

Where that money’s going to go.

Lord, please remember, when I die.

Give me my own cloud in the sky.

After this life with all its labors,

Don’t bug me with any needy neighbors.

I can be a Christian by myself.

This is truly the opposite of the love Jesus modeled for his disciples. Jesus did not promote a cult of the autonomous individual - a law unto himself. He was not self-centered, but God-centered. People who center themselves in God are able to get their egos out of the way so they can set their first concern for others. There really is no other way to do it. You're either full of yourself and despise others. Or you're full of God and live for others. So Jesus found himself praying on the night before he died not for himself, but for us. And one of the things he prayed for is that we might be one. "I ask," he prayed, "that they may be one even as we" (that is Jesus, the Son, and his Father) "are one, perfectly one."

This unity is achieved in love.

Many theologians have focused to some extent on the importance of an individual faith. Perhaps the most well known is Martin Luther. Now, this individual faith is not only relevant, but important. Yet, it is not the only aspect of faith that must be developed. In his treatise, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, almost arguing against Luther says in response to a call to individual faith,

But the reverse is also true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. “If I die, then I am not alone in death; if I suffer the fellowships suffers with me.”

This morning then, we see this self-sacrificial love that Christ models for us, becomes the glue that holds together the whole church. Right before he is arrested and executed, knowing what is to come, Jesus prays for the unity of all of us. Jesus calls us to a collective understanding of what it means to live in community and to love sacrificially, to be in love with true love.

This morning, we gather together in the presence of the risen Christ, and we come to learn to model that kind of love to our friends and our neighbors. We come to learn to model that kind of love to the strangers and even our enemies, some of which might be in the walls of the sanctuary and no doubt many more are outside these walls. Yet, the love we are called to is a difficult love to live out. Sometimes it can even seem impossible. Impossible, kind of like kneeling down and praying to God for the unity of those that will make you suffer, that will secure your own death. That is true love.

However, this morning we also gather together to give thanks for the many models of this type of love in our midst. Even though it might seem that love this strong is rare, the reverse is actually true. We see it today in the eyes of so many women in our congregation today. There are millions of examples. Let me give you a few. The women here whose children have at some point decided to serve their country either in peacetime at a base in the states or in war time in dangerous places throughout the world. We see this love in the act of these mothers who, despite their fears, have supported and prayed for their children. This is one example of this selfless love. We see it in the acts of mothers who struggle with children who have become addicted to drugs or alcohol. Those mothers who worry and who pray every day that their children will come home. Those mothers who know what is inside the soul of their children even when the rest of the world can’t or won’t see it. That is an act of selfless love. We see it in the acts of mothers who have sat at the bedside of their ill child, fearful and hopeful at the same time. The mothers who have begged God to take their life instead of the life of their child. This is an act of selfless love.

This morning, we gather to celebrate the mother’s in our midst, for the acts of selfless love they commit every single day. We gather to celebrate the spirits of those mothers who are with us only in spirit, but whose lives gave us example after example of this selfless love that enabled us to grow and love in the same way. We gather to celebrate all women and men and boys and girls and grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles who without question, will sacrifice for another, modeling the selfless love of their lord, Jesus Christ.

And we come together this morning in the hope that we can see and learn to fulfill that last line of the prayer Jesus prayed. That in this love that we show, others witness and come to believe as well. This is the love we are called to live.

April 21, 2013

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 9:36-43 (NRSV)

(36) Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity.

(37) At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs.

(38) Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, “Please come to us without delay.”

(39) So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

(40) Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.” Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up.

(41) He gave her his hand and helped her up. then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive.

(42) This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

(43) Meanwhile he stayed in Joppa for some time with a certain Simon, a tanner.

Revelation 7:9-17 (NRSV)

(9) 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.

(10) they cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

(11) And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,

(12) singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

(13) then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?”

(14) I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

(15) For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

(16) They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat;

(17) for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

John 10:22-30 (NRSV)

(22) At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter,

(23) and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon.

(24) So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.

(25) Jesus answered, “I have told you , and you do not believe. the works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me;

(26) but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.

(27) My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.

(28) I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

(29) What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.

(30) The Father and I are one.”

I was blessed last week to have the opportunity to sit back and worship here with you all. It is such a wonderful experience to be able to participate in worship rather than lead it occasionally. I really enjoyed Phyllis’ words as I am sure you all did as well. In addition, not having to prepare much for last week gave me the chance to work ahead a bit. A few more weeks of school and the semester will be over so these last few weeks, needless to say, I have a bit of work. Papers are coming due, projects are getting ready to be presented. Final exams are getting a bit too close for comfort. So I entered this week caught up, and dare I say, a bit ahead. I was proud of myself.

Then, Monday happened. Monday happened and, well, everything changed. I was on my way to DC when I heard the news of the bombing. At that moment, no one was real sure exactly what was going on. I don’t know if you have ever felt like that. I remember on Sept. 11, 2001, I was starting my senior year of College. I had a 9:30am class on Tuesdays, and would walk to class with my friend who lived next to me. When we left for class, there was a report of one plane crash, but that was it. We went to class, unaware of what was happening, until 11am when class let out and we went to get some lunch and it was at that point, as we walked into the cafeteria and saw TV screens on all over the place, so many people gathered round that there was no room to move.

We got out of class and realized that the world had changed. That is what Monday felt like. I heard bits of the radio and by the time I had class, I realized that something horrible was happening, but it wasn’t until I got out of class that it really hit me.

You see, guilt strikes us in different ways. Sometimes we struggle with guilt for things we did or said that we shouldn’t. Sometimes we struggle with guilt for things we didn’t do or say that we should have. Monday mornings I have a routine. It is the one day of the week that I can “sleep in.” Eimy and Ian have to get to work and school, but i can’t take them like I usually do because I leave before they get home. So, generally, I will get up to give Ian a hug and kiss goodbye since I won’t see him until wednesday night, or he comes and gives me a hug and a kiss. This monday, for whatever reason, we didn’t see each other before he left for school. I didn’t really think about that until after I got out of class and back to my room a little before 9pm and got online to check my email and the news and that is when I heard about the little 8 year old boy who lost his life in Boston.

Just like that, we struggle with guilt for things we should have done, things that didn’t seem all that important at the time, but in all reality are the most important things there are. There is a lot of guilt to go around this week. I am sure each of you missed an opportunity to let someone close to you know that you love them. It is unfortunate that sometimes it takes a massive crisis for us to remember who is important in our lives.

We are left today, with this image of Jesus as our shepherd. I don’t know about you but when I was growing up and was thinking of a shepherd, the image I got in my mind was of a lonesome boy, out on the range guarding his flock. For that reason, it can be comforting to imagine, rather, to know that while we flock together, we have Christ guarding us, protecting us, guiding us home. Yet, it begs the question, if Jesus, if God, if the Holy Spirit is shepherding us, that means they are protecting us from something. They are protecting us from some evil. As a shepherd guards, he does his best to keep his flock safe, but to a certain extent, it is in the shepherds power to protect, but not in his power to control the evil that lurks outside of his view.

If we think of Christ as our shepherd in this light, it quickly becomes scary. We know Jesus to be part of the Holy Trinity, Jesus as man, but also as God and as the Holy Spirit. We know that as part of the trinity, all that we see and experience is part of His creation. This brings us to the ever present question, if all is created by God, why is there so much sorrow and heartache and evil. Many say that God created it. This, historically, has been a popular understanding. To us, it makes logical sense. God creates everything. Evil is something, therefore it was created and since it was created it had to be created by God. See, it makes sense. There are a couple of problems with this though. First of all, this logic has been used by some individuals who use it to scare and to blame. It is this understanding of evil that gives us those individuals who say that illness, cancer, AIDS, poverty, death, and destruction are signs of God’s vengeance upon those who have sinned. It is this understanding of evil that gives us those who say that health, prosperity, wealth, influence, and power are nothing more than blessings for those individuals who have kept God’s commandments.

Yet, here is the thing. There is one fact that blows a hole in this logic. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Despite the fact that this logic has been used more times than we can count, the truth is that this logic is just that, a human attempt to understand something that is to a certain extent beyond our comprehension. No matter how many times we hear this perspective on why evil exists, the truth is, when we read through the Bible, especially when we read through the New Testament, this understanding of evil is simply wrong. It is simply a way we have come to pretend that God is on our side. What it fails to do is ask the question, are we on God’s side?

You see, there are other explanations of why evil exists and what exactly evil is. I don’t want to get into a whole bunch of theology, because frankly, it confuses me just as it might confuse a number of you. However, let me give you what I believe is possibly the most likely explanation that I feel fits into the understanding we get through careful study of scripture.

Evil, in all its forms, is not something. It is not a substance, it is not a piece of matter. It is, rather, a state of mind. It comes into being in a very simple way. We don’t get our priorities straight. We order our lives and our beings in ways that are counter to what God intends. We can do this because God gives us the ability to choose what we do in life. God gives us the power to order our priorities in any way that we want. When our priorities are ordered in the correct way, our lives, our words, our thoughts and our deeds bring us closer to God. But the reverse is also true. When our priorities are not in the right order, we put distance between ourselves and God. More than this, it becomes a self-fulfilling circular habit. When we order our priorities incorrectly, we get further from God. As we draw away from God, it becomes harder and harder to realize how our priorities should be ordered and we just keep moving farther and farther away.

In this understanding, evil exists not because God creates it, but because we do. We create it and allow it. What makes matters worse is that over time it just keeps getting harder and harder for us to figure out how to get everything in order.

That is why that image we have of the Shepherd watching over us can be a bit misleading. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that Christ is not our shepherd. Rather, Christ being our shepherd is not simply a matter of him looking out for wolves. Rather, it is a matter of Him trying over and over to convince us that the only reason wolves are there is because we choose to see them. But, to a certain extent they are illusions. Created by our inability to answer our calls. He tells us that much today in his words, “You don’t believe because you don’t recognize the voice of the shepherd among you.”

We wondered if we tend to think of the image of the shepherd as an image of Jesus on a grassy hillside surrounded by fluffy white sheep.  Here we see a sharper image:  Jesus is the Lord who is the Shepherd of the Twenty-third Psalm:  "When you recite the psalm, 'the Lord is my shepherd,' Jesus says, "you are addressing me.  The Father and I are one, I am the Good Shepherd."

And now come the words, "My sheep hear my voice.  I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  No one will snatch them out of my hand.  What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand.  The Father and I are one."

Today listen for the voice of our Shepherd, calling us away from deadly things, empowering and equipping us to raise up others who long to know the power of his forgiving love.  Let's show ourselves to be alive in Christ, raising up others in the joy of our risen Lord.

Today, we struggle with the events of this past week. Today we look to God, we call to the Shepherd, we pray that we can understand why. Maybe the reason why is that we have created something we can’t control. Maybe the reason why is that we have sinned and are being punished. Maybe the reason is simply that, sometimes, bad things happen. We also know that as Christ calls us into the fold, we too, must answer. We too must share that love that brings us home.

Today, we are humbled. We are in awe of the evil that has befallen us. We are scared that more will come. We mourn for those whose lives have been taken away far too soon. We are reminded that, in life, there is little true security. That is, except in the arms of the shepherd who calls us, who searches for us, and who loves us.

If we learn nothing else from this past week, let us learn this. We share this life with family and friends. We share this life with neighbors and acquaintances. We share in this life, a planet filled with two things. First, it is a planet filled with pain. Secondly, and more importantly, it is a planet filled with millions of opportunities every day to reach out, embrace, and love. For it is in this embrace, it is in this love, that we begin to see how we have misordered the priorities in our lives. In fact, it is the one thing that can help us see clearly when we are trapped in the downward spiral that draws us away from God. This embrace and this love, gives us enough clarity to see through the evil and recognize the love. This love, brightens our path, and together, we can walk, back into the fold, where we will be blessed to share an eternity in the fold of the creator, the only place we can be where it will be impossible to confuse evil with love.

Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 10, 2013

Fourth Sunday in Lent

Joshua 5:9-12 (NRSV)

(9) The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” And so that place is called Gilgal to this day.
(10) While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho.
(11) On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain.
(12) The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (NRSV)

(16) From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.
(17) So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
(18) All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;
(19) that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
(20) So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
(21) For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 (NRSV)

(1) Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.
(2) And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
(3) So he told them this parable:
(11b) “There was a man who had two sons.
(12) the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them.
(13) A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.
(14) When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need.
(15) So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed his pigs.
(16) He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything.
(17) But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!
(18) I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you;
(19) I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’”.
(20) So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.
(21) Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”
(22) But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe - the best one - and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
(23) And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate;
(24) for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
(25) “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing.
(26) He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on.
(27) He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’
(28) Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him.
(29) But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that i might celebrate with my friends.
(30) But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’
(31) Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
(32) But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

So, earlier this week, Eimy got an email from a friend at work. She told me about it when she got home. The email said simply, You are wonder woman! You wonder where your keys are, you wonder where your shoes are. You wonder if the bills were paid, you wonder if you turned off the coffee maker.
Eimy thought I should include that email in my remarks this morning, but I hesitated, because truth be told, she is a wonder woman. And for that gift, I am, and will be, forever grateful.
But, I did want to start this morning with family. Because it is the bonds of family that our Scripture speaks of this morning. Anytime I get a scripture that is well known, it is both a blessing and a curse to come up with a message. Today, with our reading of the prodigal son, we have what is one of the most well known stories of the Bible. Even more so, it has come to have meaning in our larger society, even outside of church. Most people, even if they have never been to church, know the story of the prodigal son. It is likely that more sermons have been written on this parable than just about any other one. It is truly difficult to find words to speak that haven’t been spoken before. Yet, with all that in mind, here we go.
“Blood is thicker than water.” That is something I remember my father saying quite often. He would use that phrase in different contexts yet, I always knew what he meant. No matter what else you may do in life, your family will always be your family. And no matter what other priorities may come about, no matter what happens to you in life, you always do for family. There are no exceptions to this rule, at least not any my father could think of.
Yet, growing up, it was always just something my father said. Yet, looking back, I can see that it is something he lived. When my sister was born and had serious medical problems, whatever sacrifices it called for, they were sacrifices that had to be made. My mother leaving her career to stay home and take care of her, a sacrifice that had to be made. My father taking upon himself working endless hours so we could pay for food and medicine, even though he was a truck driver and would be gone most weeks and we could see him only on the weekends, a sacrifice that had to be made. When my sister had to have surgery and was in the hospital for weeks, even over my birthday, my father would come home to my grandmother’s house where I was staying to give me a small remote control race car even though his presence was needed at the hospital. A sacrifice that had to be made. All of these sacrifices had to be made, and they were, without thought or second guessing, because, when you get to the heart of it, you do for family, not because they deserve it, not because they want it, not because they even need it, but because they are family and family is the bond that, in life, is what ties us to each other and forms the backbone of our society.
“Blood is thicker than water.” Of course, it is a bit easier to live out this ideal when the issues you are dealing with are life and death of a family member. When the issues are more day to day, sometimes it can get harder to live out the responsibilities and obligations of life when we find ourselves disagreeing with each other, maybe on the opposite side of the argument from our mother or father, sister or brother, neighbor or friend.
While I have painted a picture of my father here that is true to form, it does glance over some of his more human characteristics. Like, for example, when I went away to college and came back with some different social and political ideals that he wasn’t too thrilled about. To make a long story short, the word brainwashed was thrown out a couple of times. At one point, in the midst of a heated argument, I remember him walking down the stairs in a huff and as he walked out the basement door, he screamed back at me, “You are nothing but a democrat.” For my father, and much of my family, that was the ultimate insult. Nothing was worse.
Yet, even though we would disagree, at the end of the day, blood is thicker than water. At the end of the day, you do for family.
On tuesday, I have a project due for a class I am taking called “Pastoral Care and Counseling in Contexts.” This particular class begins to introduce us into the world of counseling in the context of pastoral relationships. The professor, an extremely smart individual who came to ministry through psychological counseling, is a firm believer that your interaction with people in your life is a reflection of where you came from. So, as the first big assignment in this class, we have to do a genogram. I had never heard of a genogram before this semester, but it is kind of like a family tree, but a bit more involved. You draw a family tree, but you include a lot of other information. Age of death, cause of death, disabilities, illnesses, migrations, separations, divorces, etc etc. After that, you include information about the types of relationships. Estrangements, hostile or violent relationships, abuses, family “secrets”. Just about anything that happens among families that affects people in one way or another.
I have spent the past couple of weeks working on this project and it is quite a sight to see four generations of both my family and Eimy’s family. To see it in that form, it gives you a frame of reference that you don’t normally have. Looking back over our two families gives quite a picture into our lives. Just as the professor wants us to realize that where we come from affects where we are going, seeing our families’ histories really drives that point home. As I look back over my side of the family, I can see some patterns that I never really thought about before. For example, while I know which members of my family have been divorced, it didn’t dawn on me until I put it on paper how stable my family has been. Of all my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, there are only two divorces in my family. In fact, my father and his brothers were each married once. My mother and her sisters as well, were each married only once. While the lack of divorces is a good thing, it also speaks to the idea that life can be difficult and sometimes we just have to plough through and make the life that we have and not let petty differences break us apart. As we look over Eimy’s family, the one major pattern is migration. Not only has Eimy migrated here, her parents, her paternal grandparents and all of her aunts, uncles and cousins on her fathers side moved from Colombia to Ecuador. On her mothers side, there are a few who still live in Bogota, Colombia, many others have migrated to other parts of Colombia. Still others have moved out of the country entirely. One lives in Caracas, Venezuela. Eimy’s mom of course is in Quito. Another uncle lives in Fort Myers, Florida.

So the understanding of how migration affects families is strong in Eimy’s family, and the idea of sticking it out and not letting our differences break us apart is strong in my family. Eimy and I each bring these qualities to our family. While we have ventured out in our own, individual lives, those values that we learned venture with us, they become part of who we are and how we live.

Our story this morning, the prodigal son, is a story, a parable that has been dissected in every imaginable way. We can look at it through the eyes of the father, the son who stays home, the one who goes away. We can look at it through the slaves of the father, or the people in the far away land who the son came to know. Yet, this morning, we look at it through the lens of the family. The prodigal son was, just that, a son. He was a son who thought he knew better, and who realized later how wrong he was. He went back to his father, the father was his father. And as his father, he loved him anyway and was overjoyed to see his lost son return. The brother, was the brother who questions decisions, who believed that he had been wronged, who suspected that life wasn’t fair. In other words, this family, the father, the son and the brother are us. We are that family and we each can relate to one of these characters in some way or another. And when we do that, we remember that blood is thicker than water.

Not only are we that family, but God is the head of that family, of our family. He is that father that lets us take what is his and use it for our purposes. He is the one that waits patiently for us to see the error of our ways, and he is the one that rejoices when he sees us coming, even though we are still far off. Because, no matter what we have done, we still belong and there is still joy when we return.

In life, we many times try to do it our own way. We try to strike our own path. We try to control all the uncontrollables. But, in the end, we can’t control them, not on our own.

In my senior year of high school, I had a difficult time. I had been gone the year before, so all of my friends had changed and so had I. I had to take the required classes that juniors have to take, but I had to take them as a senior, so I wasn’t even around a lot of the friends I had had before. It was a difficult time, and I found it hard to find a place again. Then I went on to college and had to start all over again. My girlfriend at the time was in high school with me and she came to Bucknell with me too. Her and I would talk a lot and I would tell her how much I learned from my year as an exchange student. Her father had died of cancer a few days before I left for south america, and now, a few years later, my father as well had just been diagnosed with cancer, so we would talk about that and she helped me get through it. We would talk about future plans. I was excited about returning to Argentina during my junior year, and I loved my classes and we would talk and I would say how much I wanted a life that was different than the one I knew. It was at this point that she said something that has stuck with me ever since. She said, “It is great that you have all these dreams and ambitions and hopes. But, whatever you do, don’t ever forget who you are and where you came from.”

That advice has served me well. Because for all of the changes that have happened in my life, my family has always been there, in good times and in bad, when I deserved their love and when I failed miserably at deserving it.

The prodigal son, he comes home. There is celebration, not because the sons actions in life deserved the celebration, but because in the end, he remembered where he came from. He remembered that blood is thicker than water. He remembered that what he deserves is irrelevant in the eyes of the father. The son had come home.

On this Sunday as we draw closer to that day when Christ will sacrifice himself, let us remember that at the end of the day, we are to remember where we came from, even if the place we come from is a total wreck. Even if the place we come from is filled with filth, and sin, and anger and hatred and violence, even if the place we come from is so horrible that there are no words that could truly describe it, if we remember where we came from, and return back to that home, the father will be there waiting. That will be a celebration we definitely won’t want to miss.