At
it’s essence, faith is a mystery. How one decides to tirn their life
over to God as we experience God through Jesus Christ and the Holy
Spirit is at it’s simplest a deeply personal and private decision and at
it’s most comolicated a sense that without faith in the Holy and
Undivided Trinity: One God our existence is reduced to (to quote St.
Paul) a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal, signifying nothing….so when my
colleagues lament preaching on Trinity Sunday I stay silent…for
preaching on this wondefrul mystery of the Trinity is an honor, not a
burden.
Why has God decided to exprerss God’s Divine self in
three distinct, yet forever connected, ways? I wouldn’t presume to speak
for the Creator but I can speak about why the Trinity is something I
love rather than loathe. God as Creator tried—for THOUSANDS of years—to
communicate with us through prophets like Abraham, Moses, Isaiah,
Miriam, Deborah, Anna, John the Baptist. We didn’t get it, continuing to
forget about God the Creator, turning to false prophets and their false
gods. So…God took on human form—Jesus—to teach us through direct and
personal relationships: beginning with the original 12 disciples and
carrying all the way through to today with you and me. We, through the
vows we make at baptism, carry the message of God as given to us through
Jesus Christ to one another, both individually and corprorately through
this community of faith—Trinity itself, the GRI, the Partnership
dioceses and the wider Episcopal Church.
As we’ve heard the last
couple of weeks in our readings, Jesus couldn’t stick around in any
bodily/physical way for he knew that if He did, we wouldn’t do the work
of spreading the Good News far and wide….he knew that we’d sit at his
feet and watch him do it. So he left….BUT he left with the promise that
he would send us someone—an advocate, the third part of the Trinity to
enflame our souls, ingnite our hearts and loosen our tongues to spread
the news that we, in the name of Jesus Christ, love everyone,
everywhere, without exception. And we do this not only with our words,
but our actions, not only through our creeds, but also with our deeds.
Why
do we have a Triune—a three version— God? Because we—human beings—are a
complicated bunch and so our Divine source of life is expressed three
ways: As a supreme, unknowable ever creating God,; a tangible,
historical figure of a fully human and fully divine Christ who has felt
all that we have—joy, love, regret, fear, hope, anger, peace and
turnoil; and a we can’t see her, we can’t really describe her, but a
Spirit, an advocate, whom we feel deep in our soul, a being who urges us
to take risks we didn’t think we could and animates the very essence of
who we are.
The Trinity is a gift from a God who will do anything
and everything to get through to us. May we strive to always recive this
Trinity of Love, however, and whenever we can.
Amen.
Proper 4B
+I have a friend who is a priest in Chicago. One day I was at his church as he was preparing for a big parish event…as he was running around he KEPT muttering, “Jesus never had a parish, Jesus never had a parish.” At the time I wasn’t sure what that was all about but now, after being ordained for 17 years, I get it….sometimes the business of the church feels as if it’s overshadowing the business of God.
It’s true, Jesus didn’t have a church, nor did he have a denomination. Jesus simply had a message and some followers. But the message was revolutionary and his followers were growing, so he had to deal with the institutional faith of the day—the Temple and the temple authorities. Jesus may have been fully human and fully Divine, but even his Divine nature had to deal with church—or in this case temple--- politics.
In today’s Gospel those authorities were none too happy with Jesus. The specifics of the argument are a bit arcane; suffice it to say the authorities had one interpretation of the Jewish restrictions on activity during the sabbath while Jesus had a broader, wider encompassing view. The authorities were basing their opinion on human-made (although no doubt Divine inspired) law. Jesus was basing it on who God is, what God wants, and what God needs. You see, the Jewish people had their “law” handed down to them from Moses. Jesus’ followers had the requirements of God presented to them by God in the flesh,Jesus Christ.
Yeah, this is an argument the temple authorities are going to lose every single time.
The authorities had Divine law interpreted by human beings---complete with what humanity brings to the table—flaws and foibles—while Jesus had, well Jesus had the inside track…. Jesus had God. Jesus knew what it was God required of us. The authorities had nary a chance.
But even if Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, even if the authorities took up this same argument—-plucking grain to feed hungry people on the sabbath as some type of horrendous violation of Jewish law— they quite possibly would have lost the argument.
Why?
Because when religions fail to adapt to the reality of the world around them, they become irrelevant.
Yes, we are to take a day of rest. Working all the time is bad for our souls, failing to rest in the presence of God is not good for us, no question. However….grabbing an apple off a tree, a head of grain from a stalk, or even cooking a full meal for a starving person is not an insult to God, it is doing the work God gave us and Jesus taught us.
And just what is it that God requires of us, just what is it that God dreams for us, just what is it that God created us to be?
Creatures of Love. People who love one another. Without exception.
The law of Moses served a people in a particular time and a particular place, and then the time and the place and the circumstances changed. The Law worked until it didn’t.
We, Episcopal Christians in Western New York, know a little bit about stuff working until it not longer does. We know a thing or two about adapting to new circumstances and we know a thing or two about trying different things to accomplish that which we’ve always strived to accomplish: Peace on earth and goodwill to all, always. And forever.
When love adapts my friends. Love wins. Amen.
Proper 5B
Just how crazy was Jesus? Using the book of Mark as a resource, let’s do a little forensic psychology. Jesus doesn’t head to the temple to solicit the blessing of religious leaders before beginning His ministry. He heads to the river Jordan and into the clutches of a wild man. Jesus doesn’t look for the approval of the folks who are in charge before beginning, He goes out to encounter John and the Holy Spirit, and He hears a voice from heaven saying “You are my Son, whom I love.” How crazy is that?
After hearing the voice Jesus immediately is sent by the Spirit out into the desert where he meets evil and darkness head on with no weapons other than His faith in God and His faith in His ministry. How crazy is that?
Jesus heads to Galilee preaching that the kingdom of God has come near and it’s time to repent and believe the good news. He heads to the sea and calls 4 fisherman to follow him. At Capernaum Jesus teaches in the synagogue, amazing the people with His authority and drives out an impure spirit from one of His listeners. The people are amazed and word of Him begins to spread. At the home of Simon and Andrew the whole town gathers and Jesus healed diseases and drove out demons. How crazy is that?
A few days later Jesus is in a house packed to the gills— it’s so crowded that people open a hole in the roof to lower their paralyzed friend inside for Jesus to heal. Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven”, knowing that this will tick off their temple authorities who are witnessing the whole thing this will spark confrontation. How crazy is that?
The list of suspect behaviors goes on…Jesus doesn’t make a big deal out of fasting, a vital part of the Jewish faith. He allows the disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath, heals a man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath, and impure spirits fall before him, proclaiming, “You’re the Son of God”. How crazy is all of that?
So, it’s no wonder that by today’s Gospel Jesus’ family is fired up, ready to take control of Him. Who is He to be preaching and teaching in synagogues instead of following in Joseph’s footsteps? Why isn’t He getting married and raising a family? He must be crazy to have gathered up this rag tag band of followers, He must be out of his mind to think He is curing the sick and banishing demons. He must be a bubble off level to be so intentional about infuriating the secular and religious leaders of the day. He must be nuts to think that He’s doing the will of God, showing us who God is and showing us what God would have us do.
There you have it, according to the norms of His times, according to His family, and according to the events recorded in Mark, our diagnosis is clear…Jesus is nuts!
And that’s a problem, isn’t it?. Jesus, our icon of how to be in right relationship with God is out of his mind. Does He expect us to be nuts too?
Yes. Because you have to be a little bit nuts to be a Christian, you have to be a little bit crazy to accept that you can make a difference. That one person, one kind act at a time, one loving thought at a time, one out of the norm action at a time can make a difference in this messed up world of ours. But it can. And it does.
If people think we’re crazy for believing in an all loving, all accepting, always ready to cheer us on God, so be it. Because we’re a bunch of people crazy enough to believe that God so loved the world, God will do anything to help us love it as much as our loving, life-giving and sometimes crazy making Savior does. And for that we can all say, Amen.
