"Called to Freedom" - Pentecost 3C

Galatians 5: 1 & 13-25
Saint Luke 9:51-62

Flags in the sanctuary and crosses in the public square.  How did such signs of our unity become such symbols of our divisions?
 

More than a few churches have been divided to the point of collapse by where or even if the American flag should stand in the sanctuary. 
 

Just this June the Supreme Court of the United States had to decided whether a “Peace Cross” erected with funds raised by “a group of mothers in 1921 ... to construct the large memorial for 49 of their fallen sons, hoping it could evoke the crosses that stood over the local boys buried far away in Europe”1 could stand on public land.  Turns out it could.
 

There seem to be some (because there always are some) who take umbrage in seeing a flag in church or a cross in public space for the very same reason:  It is a mixing of church and state.  To some, a flag in church implies a loyalty to the state equal to that of the cross.  To others, a cross on public land places one religion above all others.
 

Maybe I am one of the dying breed of moderates in religion and politics that sees flags, and crosses, and menorahs, and an Islamic star and crescent not as something that threatens but as an opportunity to understand one another’s cultures and traditions.
 

In these matters I may be what one of my heroes, George F.  Will calls himself, “an amiable, low-voltage, athiest.”  A flag in the sanctuary does not raise my hackles but neither does symbols of faith in public places.  However, I do have to acknowledge with Dr.  Will that “there are some people who only feel half alive if they are not incensed about something.”

To me, it is not flags or crosses that matter so much but rather as Adam Sutton wrote in Friday’s Chicago Tribune.

The idea that our political and cultural leaders in this country are touting leadership styles that amount to thrashing around on the floor with plugged ears screaming, “Not listening!” is a disgrace.  This “Us vs. Them” attitude held by our country’s leadership is an existential threat.2

And we can play into this whenever the only things that bring us together are chants like “Lock her up!” or “Collusion with the Russians.”

Jonathan Haidt in his book, The Righteous Mind, called this “tribalism” and it is not so much about disagreement but rather that my tribe can’t even talk to your tribe anymore.  Once known for our “shining city on a hill”  optimism it seems that every thing from political parties, to block parties, to family get-togethers have become fertile battlegrounds of irreconcilable differences.
 

In a very fine article in The Christian Science Monitor called “Outrage nation: Can America overcome its addiction to anger?” the authors made a clear distinction in what they called “righteous anger” which can be [the] appropriate response of an individual encountering injustice and what they called “narcissistic rage.”

Righteous anger has its basis is reality.  It comes when a person has to stand or sit in the back of the bus when there are seats up front.  It comes when one finds themselves being not being hired because of their gender, race, or orientation.    It is the idea behind “Evil only triumphs when righteous people do nothing.”

Even this kind of anger is difficult to handle.  The ancient thinker Aristotle, said: “Anybody can become angry, that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way ... that is not easy.”

The other kind of anger, the kind we see much more often is the the explosion of “narcissistic rage”. That is anger that has been transformed into some kind of personal attack.3 

It is the anger of our politics that comes from both side of the political aisle. 
 

It is the feigned outrage that those of us who do not live our lives enmeshed in the world of Washington or engrossed by the talking heads of the cable news networks both left and right can see from space.
 

We can see it when someone says: “I know your not a racist but...” “How could you say that about me?”  “If you’re going to take that position I’m afraid we can’t be friends” Or, worse yet, when we see people thinking about ways to destroy another person or group over any thing they see as attacking or rejecting them.
 

All this, believe it or not, is exactly what is happening in today’s Gospel. 

This is Jesus and his disciples first visit to Samaria.  Jesus will be back to talk to a Samaritan woman near a well at midday and heal ten lepers with the thankful one turning out to be a Samaritan.  Jesus will paint Samaritans in an especially good light in the parable of the good Samaritan but this time he and his disciples are off to a terrible start.

Historically there was a deep hostility between the Jews and the Samaritans.  To put it simply it was about intermarriage and worship styles.  The Samaritans were a mixed raced people who married outside of their traditions and did not worship in Jerusalem.  The Jews tried to keep their blood lines pure and were more orthodox in their religious practices.  So it should come as no surprise to anyone that this village rejects Jesus and his disciple’s message.
 

What is surprising is James and John’s response.   “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?”4   It’s an all-caps warning that in rejecting Jesus this village will “SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”5

Jesus has only one response to the disciple’s narcissistic rage and it is an all-caps “NO”.  He rebukes them in the strongest of ways possible.
 

We don’t have the exact words but they might have been something like “What are you?  Nuts!  We don’t reduce people to briquets just because they don’t believe they way we do!  We don’t go around setting fire to the homes of others just because they don’t agree with us.  I don’t know where you got that idea,” I can imagine Jesus asking, “but you didn’t get it from me!”
 

Jesus followers are not to lash out and destroy because such measures are counterproductive to the gospel which we proclaim.  This kind of rage always has us looking back and remembering every slight, every unkind word, every past deed.  Jesus says we need to say good-bye to the these none productive attitudes.  We need to not only say good-bye to them but bury them along with anything else that keeps us from really following him.
 

What Jesus is inviting us to is a call to freedom, real freedom.  No looking back, no excuses, no hitting back and those whom we have perceived to have wronged us.  To put it directly the Christian life is not one long political debate where we try to score points but an offer to be free. 
 

Alexis de Tocqueville warned in his 19th Century classic on life in America, “Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”

How is freedom rightly used?

Let me close with a story of how and where such freedom can be seen. It is also a story about why you should listen to sermons.
 

Over thirty years ago I asked my friend Steve Samuelson, then the chaplain at Carthage College to preach for me when I was in Racine and he told this story about his father-in-law, Karl.
 

He commanded a landing craft on Omaha beach and his best friend was another young man named Leonard Lewis from Detroit.  They were  linked by being married on same date, and having daughters born on same date!
 

At the landing on D-day Leonard was killed and Karl blamed himself.  For decades, Karl called Leonard’s wife every June 6, crying on the phone at the dining room table.
 

When my friend Steve and his family took Karl on a pilgrimage to find Leonard’s grave at the Normandy National Cemetery and Memorial they found amid all the crosses  that Leonard’s grave was marked with the Star of David.  Leonard was Jewish! When Karl was asked why he never mentioned it he said, “I never thought it was important.”
 

Maybe the things that we think are important really aren’t?  Maybe being angry and expressing a desire to get even is not the best way to live.  Maybe acting like spoiled children and not listening to each other is not the way to exist on a national, local, or even personal level.
 

Maybe like Kurt and Leonard we can learn from Jesus to ignore our differences and work for the common good always remembering those other wise words from Alexis de Tocqueville:  “America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
 

Greatness only comes out of goodness. May God continue to make all of us good for it is only then that we will really be great.

___________

1.  Harry Bruinius, "It's 40 Feet Tall and Concrete. Is 'Peace Cross' a Civic or Christian Symbol?" The Christian Science Monitor, February 27, 2019, , accessed June 29, 2019, https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2019/0227/It-s-40-feet-tall-and-concrete.-Is-Peace-Cross-a-civic-or-Christian-symbol.

2.  Adam Sutton, "Our ‘Us vs. Them’ Attitude Is a Counterproductive Disgrace," The Chicago Tribune, June 28, 2019, Morning ed., sec. J., p.  14.

3.  Harry Bruinius, "Outrage Nation: Can America Overcome Its Addiction to Anger?" The Christian Science Monitor, December 07, 2018, , accessed June 30, 2019, https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1207/Outrage-nation-Can-America-overcome-its-addiction-to-anger.

4.   St.  Luke 9:54.   (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

5.  Joshua Berlinger, "Trump Tweets Explosive Threat to Iran," CNN, July 23, 2018, , accessed June 29, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/23/politics/trump-iran-intl/index.html.

"Repossessed" - Pentecost 2C

Saint Luke 8:26-39

One does not have to live very long before one hears about or knows a person who is suffering from the dreaded disease of Altzheimers.  It is a cross-cultural disease that involves not only family but friends as they enter into what Patti Davis called in her book about her father President Ronald Reagan’s struggle with the disease The Long Goodbye.  

 Slowly, little by little, we lose people we love.  They are there physically but we know that they are not with us completely.  

 We’ve all met patients who suffer from this malady who are sweeter than sweet much like the way they lived most of their lives.  On the other hand we also have met people who weren’t easy to get along in the best of times who become unbelievably difficult after being afflicted.

 The sister of the woman who lived upstairs of us was the perfect example.  Challenging at best when she was well when she became afflicted she was a real handful.  Once, after she was placed in extended care, she became so agitated that she threw a potted plant, sent to her by a friend whom she was angry with, out of her third floor window.  Thankfully when it crashed down on the busy boulevard below it struck neither a passing car or pedestrian.

 From the other side of the world comes another story.

 Michael Joyce lives in Franktown, New Zealand with his wife Linda who is lovingly caring for him as he battles this dreaded disease.  So great was the love she shown to him in his care that, even though they were married for 38 years, he asked her if she would marry him.  She said yes.

“Michael had clearly forgotten we were already married but I absolutely went along with him and said I would be delighted to be his wife. In spite of his confused mind, he obviously knows and feels this is something he really wants to do … to Michael it will be our Wedding Ceremony and to our friends and myself, a truly precious memorable occasion.”1

  For the people of that impossible to pronounce gentile village Jesus arrival was memorable but not the least bit precious.

They had become accustomed to the naked guy running around in the cemetery.  While it may not have been a safe place for him it made their community a safer place for them.  If they chained him up in there at least they wouldn’t have to deal with him on a day to day basis.  They could handle his occasional outbursts and occasionally he would break out but sooner or later they would have him chained up in the cemetery once again.

 Until this one day he storms out and approached this foreigner who is fresh off the boat.  We know the man is Jesus but the possessed man gives him a more exalted title in the form of a question.  The man is playing Jeopardy at a very high stakes level when he asks:  “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of God Most High? Please, I beg you, oh, don’t torment me!”2

 It is not Jesus’ intention to torment the man who is exhibiting more symptoms in one human being than a psychiatrist would see in her or his entire year.  The diagnosis might read: Alzheimers, Self-destructive and anti-social behaviors.  Homelessness.  Inappropriate dress.  Paranoia.  Uncontrollable outbursts of anger.

 The man calls himself “Legion” which is a good name because a legion of soldiers would be about 5,000 in number and it must seem that he has at least that many things wrong with him. 

 In our day he wouldn’t be imprisoned in the cemetery but sent to the drug store with a fistful of prescriptions that might put him into a drug induced stupor.  The result would be the same - separation from the community.
 Jesus may not torment the man but he is about the upset an entire  community by restoring the man to health.  He does so by sending the demons within him into a herd of pigs who plunge themselves into the lake and drown.
 
Note that it is not the healing ... to which the community’s attention ]is drawn but the destruction.  Upon finding the one whom they had devoted themselves to excluding they don’t throw a welcome home party for the man nor a thank you party for Jesus but they become fearful to the point that Jesus and Legion feel they have to leave town.
 Jesus is leaving the same way he came, by boat, and the man wants to go with him. 
 Maybe it is loyalty to Jesus?  Maybe he doesn’t know what to do with his new found freedom and hopes Jesus will show him?  Maybe he doesn’t think he will be accepted as a new man by his neighbors, friends or even his family? 
 Jesus tells him he can’t come with but must stay as a sign and symbol of what God has done for him.  And so he does but not exactly.  He makes his witness to the power of God into a confession that this same power lies in Jesus.
 Luke is very subtle here.  His writing about the newly healed man is so sophisticated that on first, second, or even third reading we might miss it but he says: “So the man went away and told the marvelous story of what Jesus had done for him, all over the town.”3
 The change is that Jesus’ charge is to tell people about the power God and the man witnesses to the power of Jesus, which to him are one in the same.
 That is our witness too. In Jesus God is breaking into our lives.
 The promise is that Jesus will meet us in our darkest tombs, but He also comes with the promise that our lives will not stay the same. That is good news for the naked, tormented guy, but perhaps we should consider what this means for us.

I think it means that God’s love is not limited by our limitations.  It is like the love Michael Joyce had for his beloved Linda.

On their wedding morning, Linda Joyce said she wasn’t sure he would remember, but he woke up and told his betrothed, “Today’s the day!” 

The beaming couple, originally from Scotland, exchanged vows [on a] Saturday at a scenic lake near their home as friends looked on and ducks waddled by in the background. When the ceremony was over, bagpipes began to play ... and the newlyweds danced.

“There’s been a lot of sadness and a lot of frustration,” Linda Joyce said. “And despite all the fogginess, today has been pure joy.”4

  We can have this pure joy when we remember that  God’s love is not dependent on us.  God, in Jesus, sees in all of us, as a beautiful person even when we are behaving in not so beautiful ways.
 It means that the love of God does not come and go but is there amidst all of the fogginess of life.
 And finally, while Jesus may not be able to cure our ills as fully and completely as he did for the man who called himself Legion he is surrounding us with a community in which we are  free to show what God has done for us - even amid all our trials - in the love of Jesus Christ who makes us one.
 That may be the best and most lasting gift of all. 
 Don’t you think?

__________

1.  Allison Klein, "Husband with Alzheimer's Forgot He Was Married to His Wife of 38 Years. He Proposed, and They Married Again.," The Washington Post, January 25, 2018, , accessed June 22, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/01/25/husband-with-alzheimers-forgot-he-was-married-to-his-wife-of-38-years-he-proposed-and-they-married-again/utm_term=.2b1543580eae.

2.  St.  Luke 8:28b.  (TLB) [TLB = The Living Bible]

3.  St.  Luke 8:39b.  (PHILLIPS) [J.B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York: Macmillan, 1958).

4.  Klein, loc.cit.

"To Be A Hero" - Pentecost C

Genesis 11:1-9
Acts 2:1-21

Charles Dickens began the book David Copperfield with these words:  “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”1

Those brave men who, “In the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944 ... crawled down swaying cargo nets and thudded into steel landing craft bound for the Normandy coast” were heros. Their senses were soon choked with the smells of wet canvas gear, seawater and acrid clouds of powder from the huge naval guns firing just over their heads”2 but they pressed on.

They all probably left American soil with tears in their eyes asking one question running through their minds: “Where am I going, and when am I coming back.”3
 

When asked to describe D-day by Shepard Smith Cpl. John McHugh described it this way:  “Well D-Day was– you really can’t describe D-Day. You’re so, you’re petrified. You’re absolutely petrified,” said McHugh. 

“It’s hell. It’s just hell on Earth. I can’t describe it any better. I don’t think anyone can really describe it.   It’s - needless to say, I had a bad day.”

Shep then asked him about his “big picture considerations back then, such as that they were fighting for freedom.”

“I was in the Army, and they told me to go that way, and I went that way,” came the veteran’s veteran reply. He added later “You know, you get drafted. You had to do it, and I did it. Did it pretty good, too."4

That is the way it is with heros, real heros.  They don’t get up at nine o’clock in the morning and say to themselves: “Today I am going to do something heroic.”
 

Heroism is something that gets thrust upon you and whether you become one or not only the pages of you own life can show.

The people of Babel were going to write their own story in which they were the heros.  They were going to make themselves superstars in the world of pre-history construction.

They said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered here and there across the Earth.”

It’s all about them!  We’ll do this and we’ll do that and our work will reach up to heaven. 
 

But God knows that, as Harry Carey used to say, “There is danger here, Sharie.” So God says to God’s self:  “‘One people, one language; why, this is only a first step. No telling what they’ll come up with next—they’ll stop at nothing! Come, we’ll go down and garble their speech so they won’t understand each other.’” Then God scattered them from there all over the world.”5

When left to our own devises humans can cause such things as a D-Day to become necessary.  Left on our own there is no telling what we will do but when God is at work in our lives there is no telling what we can do.

It is nine o’clock in the morning when we find the disciples huddled in their room not knowing what they should do.  They were doing what Jesus told them.  They were waiting for some kind of gift.  They didn’t know what it would be or how it would be delivered but then it came.
 

The wind came.  What was first heard was then seen.  Tongues of fire appearing among them and resting on the head of every believer as if they were human candles.
 

Sufficiently frightened while, at the same time, inspired by the Holy Spirit they began to speak in other languages.  This was not gibberish, this was not babble, they were speaking in other languages each of which could be understood by all the curious onlookers who gathered around.
 

It was nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit was at work.
 

It was nine o’clock in the morning and some of the awestruck bystanders concluded that the followers of Jesus were tipsy.  That’s the only kind of conclusion we can make if we focus on the mayhem coming from the disciple’s at that early morning hour.
 

Pentecost is more than wind, fire, and a crash course in foreign languages.  It is the announcement that God’s involvement with human life did not end with Jesus’ Ascension.  It is the startling realization that God is going to be involved in your life and mine no matter who we are or, frankly, even what we believe.  God is going to bring out the best in us just as God was doing in Peter.

Here, before the half-inquiring, half-mocking crowd, Peter is the first, the very first, to lift up his voice and proclaim openly the word that only a few weeks before he could not speak to a serving woman at midnight.  The Spirit had breathed new life into a cowardly disciple and created a new man with a gift of bold speech.6

 Peter was becoming a hero at that nine o’clock hour.  Gail O’Day was right on the mark when she wrote:

There are days, oh so many days, when we are “sore afraid.” Afraid of the decisions we have to make, the risks we have to take.  Afraid of what happens when we do listen to Jesus’ promises, afraid of what happens when we do not.  Afraid that the world ... is the victor and we will live forever without hope and joy.  Afraid we will be crushed before we find the strength to be faithful to God’s promises for our lives and our world.7

 It is then the Spirit comes to write new chapters in the pages of our books.  The Spirit comes to make us heroes in our own way. 
 

We’re not all going to be a Churchill or an Eisenhower, or even heroes who floated around in the waters of the Pacific for a couple of hours (which must have seemed like an eternity) after our ship had been sunk, but that doesn’t mean that the Spirit isn’t at work in us and in our lives.
 

Pentecost was a unique event within the life of the church.  Pentecost was a dramatic sign to show that the Spirit’s work is bringing all people to a unity of understanding in Jesus Christ.

Whenever people come together and community happens in families, churches and neighborhoods, it’s nine o’clock in the morning and the Spirit is at work making heros.
 

Whenever fresh winds blow and you feel like you did the first time you saw Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”.  It’s still the same sky that you’ve seen but everything is different, better, more passionate.  The blues, the yellows, the swirling stars, everything has feeling, movement and even the colors seem alive.
 

It’s like lying on one of Monet’s water lilies.  It’s the warmth of a Georgia O’Keefe flower wrapped around you.  It’s the power and strength of a Degas dancer.

 When you feel that, it’s nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit is at work, making heros.

Where human life is most human - when athletes and physicians, dancers and attorneys, teachers and politicians and homemakers reach deep inside to give more, and create more, and be more human... 8

 ...it’s nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit is at work, making heroes.

When churches rise up and become great realizing that the Gospel is not just for us or aimed at “Parthians and Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesoptamia” (Whoever they were?) but for all people - Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, married, never-married, divorced, gay, straight - it’s nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit is at work making heroes.

And when our own life is depleted and we are literally and figuratively out of breath and .and quietly we feel restoration happen and vitality return...9

...it’s nine o’clock in the morning and God’s Spirit is at work, making heroes.
 

When individuals come together and exercise their rights to celebrate their differences and see in those differences see unity the Spirit, God’s Spirit, is at work making heroes.
 

Hey!  It’s almost 10:15!  God’s Spirit must be at work.  Let’s go find out where and how. 

______________

1.   Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (Harlow: Penguin, 2008), p.  1.

2.  David Chrisinger, "The Man Who Told America the Truth About D-Day," The New York Times, June 05, 2019, published June 5, 2019 , accessed June 08, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/magazine/d-day-normandy-75th-ernie-pyle.html.

3.  Tom Strong, "Memories of World War II Still Strong for Aurora Veteran," The Beacon-News (Aurora, Illinois), May 26, 2006, sec. 1.

4.  Caleb-Howe, "Shepard Smith Talks to D-Day Hero in Gripping, Emotional Interview: 'We Were Absolutely Petrified'," Mediaite, June 06, 2019, , accessed June 08, 2019, https://www.mediaite.com/tv/shepard-smith-talks-to-d-day-hero-in-gripping-emotional-interview-we-were-absolutely-petrified/.

5.  Genesis 11:4 & 6-9 (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

6.  William H. Willimon, Acts: Interpretation Bible Commentary, vol. 21, 33 vols. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).  p.  33.

7.   Gail R. O'Day, "From Fear to Joy," Pulpit Digest 73, no. 515 (May/June 1992).  p.  11.

8.  John M. Buchanan, "Like a Breath of Fresh Air" (Sunday Morning Sermon, The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, June 4, 1995).

9.  ibid.

Trinity C - "Talking Trinity"

Psalm 8
John 16:12-15

The year was 325 and my guess is that as many people cared about what was going on in the small city of Nicea in the center of Turkey as do now which is to say, not very many.  Over the years the city’s name has been changed to Iznik but what was done there effects what we do in this place and places like it almost every Sunday.  

That year the city hosted a religious conclave bourn out of a religious and political necessity. 

Emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity right before his conquest of Rome in October of 312 and quickly went about making the empire a Christian nation.  His goal was that the nation be united politically and theologically.

Standing in his way was a bishop named Arius of Alexander who held that God was a static God.  The creator of all things but then not involved in creation.  For him Jesus was human but not divine having no direct knowledge of God the creator.
 

He was opposed by Athanasius of Alexandrea who held that God was a dynamic self-giving God who in Jesus held nothing back.
 

Constantine saw this division as having the potential to split Christianity and the emperor called a council to “talk Trinity” and settle the matter.1  The primary document produced at the Council of Nicea is a creed that many churches recite every Sunday - the Nicene Creed.
 

We say it but we don’t talk about what we are saying much because “talking trinity” is not only hard but a little boring.
 

It may be something that is better experienced.

Dr.  Scott Walker, not the governor of Wisconsin but the professor of Christian Growth at Mercer University, gave us one experience when he “talked Trinity” in his book Where the River Flows.\
 

He grew up in rural Georgia and remembered that, as a teenager, he and his buddies used to cruise the town not on the internet but in their cars looking for some sort of excitement.  Finding none he would often return home disappointed and go out in back of his house and just look at the sky.
 

It has been my cathedral, my high vaulted place of worship; my dark blanket which has brought me the warmth of God.  Conversely it has also been the place where I had been brought into the stark fear of the holy.2

I hope you have had experiences like that in your life because, if you have your “talking Trinity.” 

When we look up into the night sky and see, in the mystery of stars and space, a far greater mystery, we’re “talking Trinity.” It is not something we can easily put into words because it is the magical wonderment of the greatness of God and the reassurance of God’s presence. 
 

It is also something that might cause us to exclaim half in question, half in confession, “what are human beings that you spare a thought for them?”3
 

There have been times in all of our lives when events and circumstances have led to awe at the greatness of God and to wonder if God, who is so vast and so marvelous, does indeed have time to spare a thought for us. 
 

God as creator can only bring us so far which why we need God as redeemer.
 

There are those who claim that they can discover all there is to know about God in their gardens, or on a golf course, or quietly reading the Scriptures to themselves and then praying alone in their own room.  But sometimes these individualized paths to faith do not hold up in troubled times.  It is then we need to talk Trinity.

 Retired pastor, Dr.  Fred R. Anderson wondered once in a sermon:

What makes you think the divine arms are wide open?  Are you a Rotarian, a Wall Street Banker, a father, a mother, a physician, a retired person, a singer, writer, teacher, scientist, or educator?  Of all the choices out there [only] the church tells you that you are first and foremost a child of God.4

The church is where I learned how to “talk Trinity” even if I didn’t even know what I was talking about.  I was there to sing the songs in Sunday School but  around me were people who not only told me about Jesus but showed me in real ways the power of God’s love and the acceptance of the Holy Spirit in such a way that I saw God working in them and through them.  This made a  made a powerful impression of me.

There have to be people like that for you!  Some person at home, or at work, or at school, or on the baseball field came into your life and “talked Trinity” in such a way that you knew that you belonged to God.
 

That’s the way most of us have experienced the faith.  Not in the grand gesture but in the simple act of one who has reached out to us and by that very act reminded us that we are children of God. 
 

Sometimes those moments are hard for us to remember so we need the Spirit to come and remind us. 
 

The Holy Spirit is probably the most elusive actor in the Trinity.  It’s hard to define, hard to pin down.  Most often we see it in our brothers and sisters who are Spirit filled. 
 

Pentecostals seem to have cornered the market on the Holy Spirit and in their worship and lives its presence is quite evident.  There is speaking in tougues which, unlike inthe original Pentecost event where everybody could understand, these utterances nobody can understand.  There can be dancing in the aisle and waving of hands.  On occasion there ever are people who are “slain in the Spirit” who seem to faint dead away.
 

It can all be a little overwhelming for the rest of us who like our worship orderly and we may think we are missing out on something. 
 

We are not. The Spirit does have to overwhelm only to remind.  And that reminder can come anywhere in myriads of ways.
 

Sometimes we may be surprised that we played a part in the Spirit’s reminder.
 

Long ages ago I asked Dr.  Elam Davies, a retired pastor who once was named one of Time Magazine’s Ten Great Preachers in America to come and preach at an anniversary service of a church I was then serving.
 

You cannot imagine my surprise when I opened a collection of sermons he was featured in and read these words.

I was preaching at a Anniversary Lutheran service ... a special reunion of past and present members and friends.

There was a communion service ... in which the Pastor gave the elements to those of us kneeling in the chancel.  I shall never forget the experience!  Quietly he gave me the bread and wine, each time addressing me personally, “Elam, Receive the body of Christ broken for you!  Receive the blood of Christ shed for you!”

Do you wonder why I was so deeply moved?  Suddenly, the “heart of the universe” knew my name and declared that I was worth it!  I now, as never before, experienced what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, “The Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”

This is the most humbling and exalting of experiences.  The most searching and affirming of moments.  When God tells you that you count without measure ... you can get up again, forgiven, renewed, confident, “standing tall” inspite of what others (or we ourselves) have done to us.5

Actually this ancient doctrine is not just something we recite from rote in our worship it’s something we experience everyday.

Every time we are moved to wonder at the grandeur of God and in that experience feel God’s love we’re “talking Trinity.” 

Every time we have an experience of the Spirit of God moving us closer to Jesus and we feel “renewed, refreshed, restored”, whether we know it our not, we’re talking Trinity.
 

We may not “talk Trinity” but we experience Trinity everyday in many ways.  All of these experiences point us to God and make them well worth having.
 

Don’t you think?  

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1.  http://www.classichistory.net/archives/constantine-christianity

2.  Scott Walker, Where the River Flows  (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helyn, 2002)

3   Psalm 8:5.  (JB)   [JB=The Jerusalem Bible]

4.  Fred R. Anderson, "Why the Church - Who Needs It" (Sermon, Sunday Worship, Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, New York, May 2, 1999)  

5.  Elam Davies, “God’s Secret of Renewed Self-Esteem” in Best Sermons II, James W.  Cox, ed.   (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), p.  294