Holy Trinity Sunday    June 3 2012

6/1/2012

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Trinity Sunday June 3 2012 Our Saviour's

How to explain the Holy Trinity?  The short answer is, you can't.  Take a look at the fans up there on the ceiling.  There are three blades, but they are whirling around so fast it looks like just one blur.  And if you stuck your hand in there to try to stop it so you could see each blade clearly, it would hurt like blazes!  That's the kind of thing that happens when you stick your mind into the dance of the Holy Spirit to try to stop the action so you can examine each person separately – your head hurts! Everything God does is done by the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  You can't separate them.  But you can tell them apart.

Sometimes people try to describe the difference between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, by different things that God does.  They talk about God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sustainer.  Now this would be very tidy if we knew that God the Father was the Creator of the world, and God the Son, Jesus, was the Redeemer of the world, and God the Holy Spirit was the sustainer of our faith and life.  And indeed they are.  

But Creation, for example, involves all 3 persons of the Trinity.  In Genesis 1 God says, “Let US make human beings in OUR image.” Plural right from the start. And in Psalm 104 it says, “When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” And in Colossians 1 it says about Jesus, that “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created.” So it seems that just making the Father the Creator won't work.  The Son and the Holy Spirit are Creator, too.

This is also the case with our redemption or salvation.  Yes, it was Jesus who died on the cross, but he was doing it by the Father's will, and it was the Father who raised him from the dead.  And it is the Spirit who warms our hearts and sparks faith in our minds so that we can embrace the cross for our salvation.  So Jesus is our Saviour, and the Father is our Saviour, and the Spirit is also our Saviour.

And it is the same with the sustaining that we receive from God.  Yes, the Holy Spirit comes to us to awaken God's gifts in us and fill us with joy.  But the love we have is poured into our hearts by the Father.  And Jesus promised to be with us always, to the end of the age.  So the Holy Spirit is the Sustainer, and Jesus is the Sustainer, and the Father is the Sustainer.

Are you thoroughly confused yet?  All three persons of the Trinity are present in whatever God does, but we do identify some things more with one and some things with another.  The point is, God comes to us in many different ways; we experience God's presence in many different ways.
In our first story this morning, Isaiah experienced the presence of God in the temple.  And we think, well, of course, that is where people are supposed to experience the presence of God!  But to tell the truth, that does not always happen, does it? We come to church, to the sacred space, hoping that God will make God's self known to us. It is not always as dramatic as Isaiah's experience, not by a long shot. But God is there, and God does become known to us. 

But worship is not the only place that we can experience the presence of God. Many people experience God's presence through Creation.  I must say, that when I walk in the woods,  I often feel very close to God. I think that is why the hymn “How Great Thou Art”  is so popular. Sometimes God the Creator is our first experience of God.

And some people first experience the presence of God in the midst of a crisis. It may be that they need healing, or it may be that they need forgiveness, that something is wrong, drastically wrong with their lives.  In the midst of their brokenness, they cry out, and God is present with them. The work that is so closely associated with Jesus, the work of healing and forgiving and saving, is some people's first and most powerful experience of the presence of God.

And still others first experience God in the love and acceptance of the Christian community.  The Holy Spirit binds us together in love, with all our differences and our quirkiness, and this is a powerful testimony to the presence of God.  When, as the Body of Christ, we are Christ to one another, in reaching out, in hugs, in smiles, in casseroles, in prayers, in water and bread and wine – that too is the presence of God.

What was your first experience of the presence of God?  Was it in creation? Was it in a crisis situation?  Was it among God's people?  No matter how you first experienced the presence of God, your spiritual growth requires some experience of the others as well.  A person who finds God in nature, but who never comes to the realization that life is broken and needs a Saviour, remains a child spiritually.  A person who comes to God on their knees begging forgiveness, and yet who never joins in a Christian community, will have no opportunity for growth.  A person who lives happily in the love of the church, but who never is exposed to the wonders of creation, will never reach their full potential.

God is with us, God is all around us, God is within us, God is within the people around us.  There are so many opportunities to experience the presence of God. 

Isaiah met God in the temple.  The furnishings of the temple, the smoke of the incense, the carvings of the Seraphim, became windows through which God was able to reach out and touch Isaiah, and call him to ministry.

We call sacred, the things through which God makes God's presence known.  The church is a sacred place, because many people encounter God here.  The bread and the wine and the waters of baptism are sacred, because God promises to meet us there.  The whole world is sacred, too, because God reaches out to us through Creation.  And this gathering, this small, but powerful gathering, is also sacred, because God is present to us in each other.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all here, right now.  And just as they cried out to Isaiah, “Who shall I send?”  God is still crying out for people to go for God.  And in the same way, we cry out, “Here am I; send me!”   And as we respond to the moving, urging, impelling work of God, we are caught up in the movement of the Holy Trinity, always moving, like the fan, refreshing, energizing, enabling us to be what God wants us to be.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.
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Second Sunday of Easter - April 15 2012

4/15/2012

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John 20:19-31 

“These are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” This is the big SO THAT, the chief motivation for John to write his gospel, and for that matter, for all the gospel writers. So that you may come to believe.

Now, we tend to use the word believe as if it means to have an opinion. “I believe it is going to rain today.” The word has a much deeper meaning as it is used in the Bible. There is intellectual content of course, but there is also an element of trust and confidence, and even loyalty, to the word believe.

Now, how does this belief happen? What causes it?

The kind of proof we need to believe in Jesus is not the kind of proof that we need if we are, say, developing a cure for cancer. It is not scientific, experimental, verifiable proof that we need. It is more like the kind of proof we need for falling in love. Ian and I know about this. We had only known each other 3 months when we decided to get married. And then we were only engaged for 5 weeks! 4 months from start to, well, not to finish, because that was only the start after all, and we're still going, after 38 years. We didn't need a lot of proof that we were a good match – and we were right.

Thomas thought that he needed tangible proof. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” He wanted proof that he could touch. But in the end, he didn't need that much proof. There is no indication that he actually did touch Jesus. When he saw Jesus and heard his voice, that was enough – he fell to his knees: “My Lord and my God!”

And there are many who don't even have this amount of proof – who just hear the story, and believe. And they are blessed.

Now I think there are 3 stages to coming to belief in Jesus. 1. We are attracted by the story, we want to believe it is true. 2. We decide to believe it is true, and start to behave as if it is true. 3. We get affirmation of the truth of our belief by what we experience.

This is also true in the process of falling in love: I first met Ian and just knew that we would be good friends. I decided that he was worth getting to know better. Then as we spent time together, we found more and more reasons to keep spending time together.

So the process of coming to belief in Jesus is much like falling in love with someone: You hear the story of Jesus; you decide that it would be worthwhile to be one of his followers; and as you act like his follower, you have experiences that convince you that you were right; everything about him is true.

What is the proof for you? Some people have had supernatural experiences. One man I know was baptized in a river as an adult. He says that while he was under the water, he could feel the pastor holding his hand, but he could feel another hand in his other hand, and he knew that it was God's. Some people have dreams or visions. Some people just have a sense of a comforting presence. All these are valid signs of the presence of God, proofs that the Jesus story is true.

  But there is another affirmation that the gospel is true: the love and fellowship that is found in the church. It is significant that Thomas, after he was not present at the first appearance of Jesus, did give up. He was still with the community when Jesus appeared again. He didn't abandon his friends because he thought they were deluded. He still hung around with them.

The kind of love that the early church had for one another is so beautifully described in our first lesson from Acts: “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and... everything they owned was held in common.” And in the second lesson: “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.”

Because when we believe, we have no need anymore to SEE the body of the risen Christ. We ARE the body of the risen Christ. WE are the proof that Jesus is alive.

Now, walking in the light, as John says, means being honest with one another. It means being honest with ourselves about our faults and our shortcomings. It means forgiving one another. We cut each other some slack because we are all struggling with some sin or other, if we are honest about it. And Jesus tells us to forgive one another in the power of the Holy Spirit. If we retain the sins of any, they are retained. We have to let go of them, let go of all our grudges and hard feelings from the past, and forgive one another freely, in order to set each other free.

In a world where everybody seems to be promoting their own agendas and putting up a perfect front for the world to see, covering up their inadequacies, it can be refreshing to be among a people who are humble and honest and forgiving. And this is the final proof that Jesus is alive.

  People will fall in love with Jesus when they not only hear his story but see him in the flesh. And that's us, folks. We are the body of Christ. A bit broken, but filled with new life, the life of the Spirit, eternal life. Thanks be to God! Amen.

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