Faith journey in a nutshell.

The climactic moment of one’s faith journey is not, as many assume, the point in which an individual accepts Jesus into their lives. Although this point of receiving God’s grace is a powerful sign of God working in us, it ultimately is not the action through which we receive salvation. In the excitement that comes from feeling oneself tugged toward the will of God, we cannot help but feel proud of ourselves for making an important decision. However, when we come to our senses, we realize (hopefully) that “he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”¹ In other words, our salvation is linked with the two primary practices of our communion with God and each other-baptism and the Eucharist. The former is our initiation into the body of Christ where we die to ourselves and are born anew into the community, the church. The latter is our regathering, renewal and witness. In neither case is the celebration primarily one of an individual’s relationship with God. The “private enmities [are not] more important [than] the struggle of an entire people.”² Rather, in the baptismal and eucharistic rites, we are celebrating the presence of God in God’s new community. “The liturgical performance of his flesh…continually produces and reproduces a different city, which is called church or ecclesia.”³ This ecclesia is “a new inter-ethnic social reality into which the individual is inducted rather than the social reality being the sum of the individuals.”⁴ In other words, we become saved in our participation in the larger reality of church, not through our own will.

This community of faith that we enter into is the conception of the Father, established and led by Christ, which is provoked by the ever-processing fecundity of the Holy Spirit. It knows no geographical boundaries, has its own economy, judicial proceedings, and even its own grammar. It is a new way of being a people of God that is an expansion of the generous covenant with the chosen people of Israel. We are gathered to simultaneously inaugurate and demonstrate the new creation, the new way of being- i.e. creation redeemed from sin in “an ongoing redemptive relation to God”.⁵ This positively affects our relationship with those both within the community, as well as the wider world.

Internally, the church gathers to worship God and interpret the movement of the Spirit. We “describe his wonders [thereby giving] Him the fullest glorification possible.”⁶ When we describe these wonders well, we glorify each of the distinctive roles that the three persons of the trinity perform in the life of creation, for each person should be worshipped. First, the Father should be worshiped as the creator of all things. Then the Son, whom through his life, suffering and death we became intimately related with God. We worship the Son for what he did for us, for what he did, “is inseparable from the Person of Jesus Christ and vice versa.”⁷ Because there is no individual incident that you can point to and say, “that is where the salvation of humankind occurred,” it is likely that the event required all of Jesus’ offices (i.e. according to Calvin- Prophet, Priest, and King).⁸ So when we worship well, we draw upon descriptive images that evoke all of the components essential to teaching us how to be the polis of God, reunite the flesh with God, understand the magnitude of Christ’s redeeming the sins of the world etc. We have a natural tendency to praise and pray to the person of Jesus because we can relate, ever so slightly, to his fully human nature. As Jones comments, Jesus Christ is both ‘with us’ and ‘for us’ fully in both his humanity and divinity.⁹ That is, he is of the same substance as we are and can therefore work on our behalf and he can achieve this work because he is fully divine. So, we worship the Son because we cannot do otherwise. “It is I [Jesus], it is I; it is I who am highest; it is I you love; it is I who delight you; it is I you serve; it is I you long for; it is I you desire; it is I who am your purpose; it is I who am all; it is I that Holy Church preaches and teaches you; it is I who showed myself to you here.”¹⁰ We may not be certain how we are saved, but it is enough to know that we have been assured that the church is.

And finally, we share Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians that “out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”¹¹ We worship the Holy Spirit for guiding us to God. Also, as Gregory of Nazianzus suggests, the Holy Spirit is to be worshiped because we declare that he deifies us in our baptism. And “if he is to be worshiped, surely he is an object of adoration, and, if an object of adoration, he must be God.”¹² Then, lest we mistakenly essentialize any one of these roles to any one of the persons, thereby ignoring each of their complete natures, we worship the unified Godhead. We offer up prayers to God, ‘not as though we would pull down to ourselves [God], but that, by these remembrances and invocations […] we may commend and unite ourselves Thereunto.”¹³ That is, the blessing bestowed upon the church is the ability to discern God’s will over and against competing wills in the world.

Through this process of continually appealing to God to grant us the strength and wisdom to receive and utilize God’s will, we learn to better care for the different parts of the body of Christ. The more faithful the church is at practicing praise and prayer, that is, the more it acknowledges the corruption of humanity as compared to the goodness of God and conforms itself to the latter, the greater its blessing. Kathryn Tanner describes this phenomenon as the non-competitive relationship between God and humanity where humanity gains self-actualization and freedom in direct proportion to its dependence upon ‘the fecund provider of all that the creature is in itself.”¹⁴ We partly receive this blessing through the Eucharist in which we reenact the death, life and return of Jesus Christ, as expressed in ‘the mystery of faith’, so that we develop the theological virtues that enable our re-membering and reenacting of Christ’s works in the way we live our own lives.

Humanity, in the Kingdom of God will become fully actualized human beings, completely decentralizing secular power in favor of a universal congregation (and all of creation with it) aligning in right relation to God. So, Ludwig Feuerbach was correct in noting that ‘every advance in religion is therefore a deeper self-knowledge’ though he was horribly mistaken regarding the direction of the knowledge.¹⁵ We are a poor reflection of the divine rather than the divine being a hyperbolic reflection of us. Furthermore, it is easier to know God than our own soul because, “he is the ground on which our soul stands”.¹⁶ As mentioned above, God is immutable and simple whereas humans are fickle and changed from moment to moment.

By now it should be clear that the church, the cross, and the entirety of our reality, is given to us as pure gift. As St. Anselm expressed this truth, “for I cannot seek thee unless thou teach me, or find thee unless thou show me thyself.”¹⁷ It is a gift freely given by a God who is pure love, who obviously does not expect that we could return the favor, and who does not have any need to give except for the simple fact that it is somehow pleasing to God. But, “he made everything for love; the same love sustains everything, and shall do so forever.”¹⁸ Furthermore, by accepting this gift, we are not doing God a service at Sunday service. God is complete within the trinity-each component offering and receiving abundant love from the others. Nevertheless, God does take delight in our limited appreciation of God’s continual bestowing of gifts. God revealed to Julian, “see here how I let my side be opened, and my heart be riven in two, and all the blood and water that was within flow out. And this makes me happy, and I want it to make you happy.”¹⁹ And again, “If you are pleased, I am pleased…if I could suffer more, I would suffer more.”²⁰ She concludes that “This human example was so powerfully shown, that a man’s heart could be ravished and he could be beside himself with joy at this great friendliness.”²¹

So, what does this mean for the church? When the church conveys these truths and models 'this great friendliness' well, it stands as a light to the nations, displaying to the world the humble power of a community of believers aligning their wills with God’s. More specifically, the church demonstrates to the world what the future Kingdom of God will look like. It demonstrates in the here and now what creation’s destiny is. That is, it with our process, route and end. The church is a sign of the simultaneous current presence and future realization of the Kingdom of God. It is the indication that the children of God are finally accepting the direction of the Holy Spirit toward the second person of the Trinity. When church is church, we love one another, praise God well, and spread the good news. By this infectious example, we invite others to partake in the fruits of these actions. When we trust in the Lord and demonstrate his radical commandments to love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable, we demonstrate to the watching world that love does not cause the social order to fall into chaos like we always imagined. Rather, we establish a fellowship of right relation with each other and God, which produces an environment of peace. When we squarely confess those sins (individual and communal), which we would otherwise choose to ignore, we demonstrate that reconciliation and gratifying justice are not the products of coercion, but the outcome of mutual love. By giving itself up to God, the church lays bare the power that obeying the various counter-intuitive commandments demonstrated to us by our Lord has. When we forgive one another, share unselfishly, and hold each other accountable, we create a new environment which is open to the Holy Spirit and reverberates into the secular world. These service oriented ministries that 'bridge and empower' are primarily in the domain of the deacon. That is, deacons create the bridges between the disparate areas of the church so that we truly are a united body, and not isolated hands, heads, and feet. Deacons also create the bridges that allow the church's witness to truly be a witness. This is done by making connections between the church and the world. So that the church does not only model peace, but is actively engaged in its creation in the world. So that the church does not restrict her offering of accountability and forgiveness to her own, but reverberates throughout society.²²

The church is also the storehouse of both our publicly and privately proclaimed knowledge of God.²³ Therefore, we are given the responsibility to pool our gifts, graces, and knowledge in order to educate one another in the ways of celebrating our faith well. This is the primary function of the elder. When we dedicate the community and the individuals within the community exclusively to the act of praising God, we bear witness to the fount of true happiness that makes even the most cutting-edge consumer product pale in comparison. In other words, we, as church, are God’s agents of change, not out of our own intellect or will, but out of our prayerful obedience. The elder is responsible for ensuring that 'the flock' is nourished, recognizes in their own lives cause for rejoicing, and views the church as a safe place of exploration. Through these preconditions, the elder speaks for the church in word and sacrament, therby empowering the community to praise God well. This is where my “greatest passion intersects with the world's greatest needs”, as the common definitian of calling states. I seem hard wired for theological and philosophical study. More importantly, when it comes time to combine this study with what the Holy Spirit is putting on my heart to share with the congregation, I do so in a way that connects. I am very conscious of being

When we accept people into this community, we baptize them “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” not because we are tritheists, but because this expression of the Godhead most closely resembles (as far as the tradition has been able to determine up to this point) its distinct complexities.²⁴ For example, the nature of God is love, which is a relational topic. Yet, God is not dependent upon creation in any way, especially since creation is incapable of mutually fulfilling its end of perfect love. So, God’s love finds its perfect expression within the persons of Godself. Without an internal relationship of God, God could not fully express Godself.

Of course, the church does not live up to her calling. Our ignorance, sloppiness, and even our good intentions not founded in The Word create a fog in which “signals cannot be recognized, and one can no longer distinguish between friend and foe.”²⁵ Our fallen nature allows for betrayal, lust for power, and fear. As James Cone concluded in his study of Black spirituals, there is a fluidity of time in the work of salvation. There is always a sense of “already but not yet” in the work of God. Any attempt to push things toward “the sweet by and by” while ignoring present reality is not consistent with the redemption that Jesus offered. Likewise, an obsessive focus on the present will only lead to embitterment and despair. So even though it is understandable why the church gets scorned by the world for declaring that the Kingdom of God is here in the midst of tragedy, we remain confident in declaring that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”²⁶ The alter of a church is on the east side because “we are seeking Paradise, our old fatherland, which God planted in the East of Eden.” This vision of the true promised land and the hope in the rewards of aligning our will with God’s will is the source of our strength. In defining real possibility, Jones declares, “the act of hoping for that future possibility involves belief that the possibility can be realized, can become actual”.²⁷ As Martin Luther King preached, “I just want to do God’s will and He’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.”²⁸ In an age of corrupt Romans and Barbaric hordes, black plague and ruthless kings, or S.A.R.S. and religiously fanatic quasi-United Methodists with access to the bomb, we can put our trust and confidence that there is a higher power that gives life instead of destruction, engenders love instead of hate, and offers hope in place of fear.

For this reality, we continuously offer up our praise and thanksgiving.²⁹

Further thoughts on Who Jesus is and What He Did?

All of Christology is an exegesis of Matthew 16:15.³⁰ Jesus asked his disciples, "But who do you say that I am?" to which Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Therefore, the very question “Who is Jesus and what did he do?” is redundant. Neither ‘Messiah’ nor “Son of the living God” is a job description. They do not describe an accident or property of Jesus. Rather, Jesus Christ’s essence, existence, and ‘purpose’ as the second person in the Trinity are identical.

The latter part of Simon Peter’s confession, that Jesus is the “son of God”, is a designation that appears at lest thirty-nine times in the scriptures, and is verbally affirmed by the first person in the trinity, Christ himself, friends and detractors of Jesus, and even Satan herself. But Jesus is also God. I heard a pastor scandalize his church by exclaiming, “Jesus? That bastard be his own daddy.” It is through this wonderful absurdity that Jesus can accomplish the salvific function of the Messiah. St. Augustine puts it a little more delicately by saying, “God himself remains God; humanity is assumed by God. There results a single person. Here is God, our liberator; here is man, our mediator.”³¹ Jesus Christ, as the second person in the Trinity, shares the divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternality and impassibility.³² But, as the son of the Virgin Mary, he is fully human. The tradition tells us that only that which is assumed can be saved. Likewise, humanity is too fallen to overcome its own fallenness. So, Jesus Christ is the salvation of creation partly because he perfectly united humanity with the Godhead. As Julian of Norwich teaches us, the ‘higher part’ of humanity (our soul-though not detached from the body) has been united with God since creation.³³ But our ‘lower part’, that is, our sensory part, was not united with the Godhead ‘until’ Jesus Christ.³⁴ In other words, Jesus Christ demonstrates that God is actually in creation, not just behind it. Just as Adam, God’s firstborn creation lost God’s blessing as a result of disobedience, Jesus Christ regains it through perfect obedience. However, as Kathryn Tanner points out, this is not to imply that God rewards His Son for this perfect obedience. Rather, the obedience is the result of God’s blessing.³⁵ This is accomplished by conforming the flesh completely to the will of God. When Jesus committed the unique (that’s an understatement!) act of conquering death in his own flesh, he gave us grounding for our own hope of resurrection in the new earth. It is unfortunate that some church leaders would remove this hope through statements such as “I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I cannot affirm that his resurrection involved the resurrection of his physical body.”³⁶ This violates the rules of Christian grammar in the same way as “I believe the Jaberwokky ditried at the gumgum tree” violates the grammar of literature. The syntax implies sense, but the locutions are nonsensical.

When a Christian who speaks well says ‘Messiah’, they are referring to Jesus. However, this meaning is a partial supplanting of a more general Jewish term meaning ‘the anointed one’, which referred to a political ruler who would restore Israel and renew God’s covenant with His chosen people. As Jones notes, “The actual Jesus—as the subject--redefined and reshaped the predicate, ‘Messiah.’”³⁷ In one sense, Jesus is a messiah of a radically different sort than what the Jewish tradition had anticipated. Rather than overthrowing the competing nation-state, Jesus introduced a new way of being a people that was not founded in violence. On the other hand though, there are important similarities between Christian and Jewish Messianic expectations. In both the Christian and post-Second Temple Judaism, the coming (or return) of the ‘Messiah’ will accompany the creation of God’s kingdom on earth and its accompanying distribution of justice. For Christians, this has happened already, but not yet.

Jesus Christ the Messiah is the Word who told us and showed us the way to be truly human. Colloquially put, he practiced what we preached. By doing so, he demonstrated the unfortunate and inevitable result of living in complete obedience to the Father in the present, fallen world. Namely, death-even death on the cross. But through the conquering of even this, we get a glimpse of the unlimited possibilities of the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately,³⁸ one component of Christ’s messiahship is that Jesus handed the cross down to us through the establishment of his church as his body. Although, “the ecumenical creeds of the church have not attempted to define how Jesus is savior,”³⁹ we can agree that his life, work and death “is fundamentally at work with regard to sin and the consequences of sin.”⁴⁰ We grow in faith, not by creating increasingly specific theories of atonement, but by weaving the tapestry of the components of Christ’s life and death, with our own lives and deaths.

When Paul tells us to pray unceasingly, a fitting mantra for every occasion could be “Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus…”

1 Titus 3:6

2 St. Basil the Great. On the Holy Spirit. tr. David Anderson. (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press; Crestwood, NY. 1980). 115.

3 D. Stephen Long. The Goodness of God: Theology the Church and Social Order. (Brazos Press; Grand Rapids, MI. 2001.) 156.

4 John Howar Yoder. Body Politics. (Herald Press; Scottsdale, PA. 2001. 30.

5 Kathryn Tanner. Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity. (Fortress Press; Minneapolis, 2001). 102.

6 (Basil 86)

7 Jones II-427.

8 Jones II 434.

9 Jones II 435.

10 Julian of Norwich. 78.

11 Ephesians 3:16-17

12 Gregory of Nazianzus. The Theological Orations. 211.

13 Dionysius the Areopagite. The Divine Names. Kessinger Publishing. 83.

14 Tanner 3.

15 Ludwig Feuerbach. The Essence of Christianity. 13

16 Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. (London: Penguin Classics, 1998). 133.

17 Anselm of Canterbury. A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham. Ed. Eugene R. Fairweather. (Westminster Press; Phillidelphia, 1956. 72-73.

18 Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. (London: Penguin Classics, 1998). 52.

19 Julian of Norwich. 20.

20 Julian of Norwich. 72.

21 Julian of Norwich. 51.

22The South African post-apartaid reconciliation comes to mind.

23 Basil 98.

24 “there is one God the Father, one Only Begotton Son, and one Holy Spirit. We declare each person to be unique, and if we must use numbers, we will not let a stupid arithmetic lead us astray to the idea of many Gods.” Basil 72.

25 Basil 114.

26 Julian of Norwich. 79.

27 Jones. II 692.

28 Martin Luther King, Jr. Sermon. April 3, 1968

29 There is no doubt that any given truth claim offered in this paper is in dire need of clarification and amplification. Fortunately, “the Lord will provide a full answer for any remaining questions, since He gives knowledge to those He has chosen, by the Holy Spirit.” (Basil 118).

30 With its parallels in Mark 8:29, Luke 9:20

31 Augustine. Sermon 293,7. trans. Edmund Hill, Sermons, Part III vol. 8:155 The Works of Saint Augustine, ed. John E. Rotelle, OSA (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1993).

32 Scripturally, these are attested to respectively in (Matt 28:18) “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.” (John 16:30) “Now are we sure that Thou knowest all things,” (Matt 28:20),“I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (John 1:1),“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” and (Heb 13:8), “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”

33 Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love. (London: Penguin Classics, 1998). 132.

34 ‘Until’ is in scare quotes because this point of unification was the beginning of history from which time moves bilaterally from.

35 Kathryn Tanner. Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity. (Fortress Press; Minneapolis, 2001). 87-88.

36 C. Joseph Sprague. Affirmations of a Dissenter. (Nashville; Abingdon, 2002). 42.

37 Jones 388.

38 I say unfortunately out of honesty to my fallen nature. I am confident that as one grows in faith, this so called burden becomes a supreme blessing.

39 Jones II 428.

40 Jones II 427.

On the Trinity

Ann and I are participating in one of the oldest rituals that there is in human existence- one that goes probably goes back to Adam and Eve. The discussion of what to name the baby. I have a strong preference for two names. The first, for a girl, is Miriam. I think in Miriam, Moses' sister, we get the example of a faithful devotion to God filled with happiness, gratitude, fortitude and singing. Ann finds this to be a beautiful name as well. The name that I would pick for a boy is Athanasius. Ann isn't quite as enthusiastic about that one. My sister has said that if we settle on these names, she hopes for a girl. I admit that Athanasius is not a very common name, and it might take a while to learn how to spell, but his namesake, Athanasius of Alexandria of the fourth century was used by God in a way that few others have been. God used Athanasius to help us to understand the Trinity. Did you get that? Athanasius helps us to understand the true nature of God, he helps us to speak well about God. Some of you still look skeptical. As our call to worship, we read Athanasian Creed. I admit, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But if you spend some time with it, you can see the nutshell of our faith. This morning, we are going to look ever so briefly at what this might mean.

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday. It is one of the times during the year where we pause for a moment and ask the big question to God- Who are you anyhow. The response that the faithful get is I am. I am the Father, I am the Son, I am the Holy Spirit. And we ask, which one? I am. I am the Father, I am the Son, I am the Holy Spirit. And this would be as good as a spot as any to end this sermon, because once we get past saying that God is the Father, Son, and Spirit, we start to get into trouble. But I am going to go on anyhow.

The most common criticism of Christianity by Muslims is that we are tritheists. A faithful Muslim would say, “there is but one God, Allah. But these Christians, they worship 3. They worship God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They baptize their children in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They give their lives to three, not one”. A faithful Christian must respond, “No, we worship but one God, in three personas.”

[Certain Tibetan Buddhist Monks ... chords]

This would have been a big help in the early third century, when Turtullian struggled to find a word to describe the three aspects of the one God.

(3-1) Let's try it together. This side says 1, this side says 3. I think that there is a message about why the church needs diversity in order to get the whole story, but that was a sermon that some of you already suffered through on Wednesday.

3-1. St. Patrick's Day children's sermon. [3 leaves or 1 leaf] What Pat really said though was, we do not even have the language to describe a shamrock accurately, how can we describe God? So maybe I better stop here?

No, lets give it our best anyhow.

The Athanasian creed that we read sets out four rules for speaking well about God.

1. there is one God

2. the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God

3. these three persons of the Trinity are distinct. the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.

4. this is the essence of what Christians believe, so you better pray hard about it

To understand the basics of the Trinity is to understand the basics of God. God is excessive. God is overflowing abundance. Right now, on some deserted island, there are tens of thousands of flowers blooming that no-one will ever see. What a waste. No, God is like that. God doesn't do anything half way. We also know that God is love. Not that God has love, but God is love. And it is an excessive love. It is a love that is so excessive and perfect that the only object of this love that can handle it is Godself. God's love pours out from the Father and into the Son, and out from the Son and through the Spirit and from the Spirit and into God and it still spills over into all of creation. This excessive love that we see this in the Trinity shows us something quite amazing about God, if you think about it. Our God is a relational God. Not some mastermind in the sky. Not some cold. unconcerned great principle. No, our God, the God of love, the God of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is relational. And this is good news sisters and brothers. We are direct recipients of God's overflowing love and thank God for that.

God is relational. This is how we can understand how we can have 3-1. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Now, in these days of Oprah, we all take it for granted that we are to love ourselves. But lets step back and look at that for a second. When we speak of love, we are usually implying that there is a subject and an object. “I love Ann.” “Ann loves Eggplant Parmesan (and me too, I hope).” There is a person that is doing the loving, and there is someone or something being loved. But Jesus tells us it is perfectly reasonable to love yourself. In fact it is the benchmark for fulfilling our Gospel call to love our neighbors as ourselves. The subject is I, and the object is I. There are not two separate 'I's, but one I that loves and receives the love. So it is with the Trinity.

My identity is relational as well. I am a pastor. I am a husband. I am a friend. I will soon be a father. I am a son. I am me. Each of these entail different roles, different relationships. I say and do things differently in the role of a pastor than I do as a husband. But they draw from the same me. The same character, the same characteristics, are applied to all aspects of my life. So it is, in a sense, with God the Trinity.

There are many other ways that our church Fathers and Mothers have left us to understand the Trinity, and I love to explore, so if you want to talk more about it, give me a call. Seriously. But for now, lets go with this.

“Within the Trinity, there is constant movement, interaction, as the Father gives to the Son, and the Son is constantly returning praise and glory to the Father, and the Father and the Son give to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit constantly draws everything back to the Father and the Son. There is the Beloved, the Lover, and the Love.” (Willimon)

Next week, we will answer the question. “So what? How does God being a Triune God affect my life in some other way than giving me a headache.” But for this week, I think that it is enough that we pray for increased understanding of God. That we continue to seek to learn more about God, in the same way that we ask a newfound friend questions about their life and who they are so that we can have a deeper relationship with her. God's very nature is based on relationships. So we, as creatures with the image of God in our breasts- we are called to be based in relationships. We are called to give and take, to assert and sacrifice, to be willing to compromise with each other, even if it means not naming your child Athanasius, even if you know that it is the best possible name, to offer ourselves wholly to one another.

God being abundant, effusive, gracious and ridiculously generous in God's outpouring of love calls us to be abundant, effusive, gracious, and ridiculously generous in our outpouring of love. When we reflect on the awesomeness of the nature of God in the Trinity and our relationship with God, our illusions of lack melt away. We are introduced into a different way of seeing our lives. We see abundance. We see that we partake in God's abundance. The world tells us to hide away our talents, our money, and be cautious about who we love. The Trinity tells us that to stop moving through relationships is death. That if you bury your talents, you lose them. If Amen? Amen.

baptized by water and fire

Art has power. I turn to art almost as much as I turn to theological treatises in order to get my spiritual imagination flowing. But sometimes, this power can lead us astray. Sometimes we can get an image in our mind's eye that is radically different than what the scripture paints. This morning I am thinking specifically about depictions in paintings of the Holy Spirit. Think about pictures you may have seen of the Holy Spirit. For example, the baptism of Jesus. The Father is at the top, old man with a beard, doesn't look like he gets out much, or sometimes God is shown as a ray of light. On the bottom is Jesus, young white man with a beard. In between is the Holy Spirit as a dove, hovering over Jesus, ready to poop God's love on Jesus. This is the image of the Holy Spirit that we have a tendency to grasp on to.

One novelist put it like this... “They paint the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles' heads in the form of a dove. For shame!…Where did they find that innocent, edible bird? How can they present that to us as spirit? No, the Spirit is not a dove, it is fire…(that) clamps its talons into the very crown of saints, martyrs, and great strugglers, reducing them to ashes. Abject souls are the ones who take the Holy Spirit for a dove, which they imagine they can kill and eat… Wake the fire! That is (our) duty…(This) is how (we) collaborate with God…Ignite the world, transform it into fire, and render it unto (God, who) will turn it into light.”

This is the image that we see in todays text. The Holy Spirit comes down upon those gathered as tongues of fire. Fire.

Think about fire. In your minds eye, think of a raging, spreading prairie fire. That is what the Holy Spirit is like. {help to visualize it}.

Think about some of the characteristics of fire. First off, there is nothing that it touches that it doesn't change. That it doesn't transform into something other than what it was. For this reason, fire is dangerous. We want our house to remain a collection of wood and nails ordered just so, not a pile of ash. We want our communion sets to be functional, not a mass of metal and glass which is what this became after the 1960 fire here at the church. We want our lives to stay just as they are. To stay right here in our oblivious comfort thank you very much, rather than becoming martyrs, or worse yet, saints.

But there comes a time when a strange stirring comes creeping up in your heart. A desire, a longing for life, and for life abundantly. These first stirrings come straight from God's spirit. Wesley called it 'prevenient grace'. This is the grace that we celebrate in baptism. In The Articles of Religion, John Wesley asserted that, “Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are distinguished from others that are not baptized; but it is also a sign of regeneration or the new birth. The baptism of young children is to be retained in the church.” Baptism of an infant powerfully portrays the utter dependence which all of us have on God. It is not about anything that we do. The sacrament is the sign of God’s promise of ongoing grace, offering continual forgiveness and transformation throughout our lives. But we do not receive all of the benefits of baptism at once; this is particularly obvious when infants are baptized. At whatever age it is received, baptism demonstrates our inclusion in the covenant with God and our access to the divine grace that claims, sustains, and saves us.

And then there is a moment when we respond to this Grace. A moment when we stand up and say, “I am so tired of compromising. I am so tired of lukewarm living.” There comes this moment when we let the floodgates wide open and say Lord, set me on fire. Here I am with my heart wide open. Take it, Lord. Take all of it. I have no use for any of it if it is not in your service. It is this ongoing moment of awakening, when we give ourselves wholly and completely to God, that Wesley called Justifying Grace. At this point, when we allow the Holy Spirit to have its way, that we get burned. That we get transformed. Its a pure fire that wipes away our sins clean. We are burned beyond recognition, back to the state of grace in the garden before the fall. We may still be guilty of our sins, but God declares us not guilty. We celebrate God's justifying grace in the service of confirmation.

Unfortunately, what happens if you burn a field of weeds and then abandon it again. The weeds come back. So it is with sin. This is why we are in need of perpetual grace. We need to keep going back to the fire for further refinement. This is called Sanctifying Grace, and we practice it through communion. This is why we practice communion with increasing frequency, because we want to get back, to that state of divinity with Jesus Christ.

It has been 50 days since Easter, both for us and the disciples. The setting we read in Acts is very public. Luke gives a list of 15 distinct language groups. We are told that there are many faithful and we hear from skeptics. This is not an encounter with the divine that happens behind a locked door in a monastery. This is God making Godself present in the midst of community. “Christianity is lived out not in isolation, but in community with other Christians.” The church does not allow private baptisms except in the most extreme situation of imminent death. The congregation needs to be present to “reaffirm its own faith and commitment, to promise to nurture, teach, and support those whose commitments are being affirmed. We need mutual nurturing, by both proclamation and example. We grow in faith, service, and discipleship within a community of love and forgiveness.”

“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost”

Sisters and Brothers, we are the community that was created in this holy fire. We are the ones who have felt God's call and are responding to it.

{“Nothing but fire kindles fire.” “If you want to set someone on fire, you have to buuurn a little bit yourself.” “A burning heart will soon find for itself a flaming tongue.”}

In a little bit, you will be invited to take on an awesome responsibility and you will need to keep these three principles in mind. We will be accepting one person into Christianity, one person into the United Methodist Church, and one into our local community at FGUMC. You will be asked if you will proclaim the good news and live according to the example of Christ. You will be asked if your will surround the Rueffs with a community of love and forgiveness. You will be asked if you will pray for them. If you do not intend to live up to these commitments, do not say them. Can we effectively do these three things on our own? No. And so we will need help from the fire of the Holy Spirit.

So how is it that we will proclaim the good news. How is it that the word of God spread from these initial 120 people that we read about in Acts to the entire world. How is it that we are expected to spread the word of God in a culture that already gets too much information. That has playstations and ipods and 300 channels on the TV. How can we possibly spread the word in such conditions. I'll tell you how. “Nothing but fire ... kindles fire.” People were on fire...

How can we express our love for this family, to surround them with a community of love and forgiveness. Simple, we need to make ourselves vulnerable. We need to put our pride on the shelf, or better yet send it back to Satan and tell him to keep it. If you are struggling in the faith, share it with someone. If you are sinning in any way, burn it out- don't let it fester. If we are going to be of any use to anyone, we cannot pretend like we are perfect. We need to burn a little ourselves. If you want to set someone on fire, you have to ... burn a little bit yourself.

Finally, how will we pray. We will pray passionately for them to have life and have it abundantly. A burning heart will soon find ... a flaming tongue. If we truly cultivate a love for this family and all of the families in our congregation, we will passionately desire that they have abundant life in Jesus.

We are going to take the offering now. Val and Deb are going to sing, and the rest of us are going to consider the responsibility that we are going to take on. We are going to ask God to reclaim our own lives so that we might be an effective Christian witness. We are going to ask that our hearts be filled with fire. Amen?

May the ushers please come forward.

1st Sunday after Easter

There is a bluegrass song, popularized by Jim and Jesse in the 50's, and Jack Kelly, Jim Wolber and Banjo Bob in 2005 called Y'all Come. It would make a great theme song for the church. It starts off

When you live in the country everybody is your neighbor
On this one thing you can rely
They'll all come to see you and never ever leave you
Saying y'all come to see us by and by
Y'all come (y'all come) y'all come (y'all come) y'all come to see us when you can
Y'all come (y'all come) y'all come (y'all come) y'all come to see us now and then

When the Pharisees asked Jesus, who is our neighbor, he replied, by way of a story about a good Samaritan,

everybody is your neighbor
On this one thing you can rely

Later in his ministry here on earth, he was asked who can come to the banquet? We saw him eat with sinners and tax collectors by the dozen
And right after dinner they ain't looking any thinner
And here's what you could hear Him say
Y'all come (y'all come)...

Well, liturgically, in the life of the church, we are in the third verse.

Now grandma's a wishing they'd come out to the kitchen
And help her do the dishes right away
But they all start a leavin' grandma's a grievin' you can hear my grandma say
Y'all come (y'all come)...
Oh y'all come to see us now and then

Last Sunday, here at the church, we had a party, didn't we? Somebody say Amen. We had friends and relatives that we haven't seen ages come and join us for the awesome event- To come and see nothing - the empty tomb. People came from states around to join us the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. Which is great. That is part of what we are here for. But, not surprisingly, only about half of us are here this week.

Last week, we were let in on the most important event in human history. We were able to share in the awe and majesty of the conquering of death... To participate in a story created before the beginning of time. A chance to sit back and marvel, and receive the awesome gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to get a foretaste of the feast of the heavenly banquet.

But this week, this week, the savior comes back- not to treat us to another service of celebration, another cause for a holiday to get dressed in our finest and eat and exchange gifts, but to tell us to get to work.

And now we're a wishing they'd come out to the kitchen
And help us do the dishes right away

Please turn with me to the 21st vs in the 20th chapter we read
21Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.'

Jesus did not come back just to say hi. No, he come back to say, I have done my part to bring the Kingdom of God on earth, now it is your turn. The Father has sent me to redeem creation and I have done it. And just as he sent me, so I send you. We can imagine Jesus reminding us, hey, remember when Judas asked me a couple weeks ago 'Why was the perfume that Mary anointed me with not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?' and I told you that "8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." Well, now is the time to do unto the least of these. The time of feasting and relationship building, when I was in human form, is ended. Now is the time to feed my sheep. Now is the time to care for the poor that, in this fallen world, are always with us.

Again, vs. 22

22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.'

This is a serious weight of responsibility. It is little wonder that our numbers have dwindled.

3If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.'

"Easter is not just coming to a wonderful, inspiring worship service, it is being sent back into the (hostile) world, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to bear witness to the identity of God as revealed in Jesus." http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/john20x19e2.htm

So is this kind of a drag? Kind of like when you go out to eat with ten people and the bill is hundred dollars and each person gives you ten bucks to cover their portion and you are left with paying the $7 tax and the $20 tip. Did we stick around too long at the banquet and get stuck with the bill? Maybe it isn't so great to be given the responsibility of saving the world, of being responsible for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the sick and binding and loosing sins.

But let us look at the promise of the text once again. Look at vs. 19, vs 21, and vs. 26. "Peace be with you." Some translations say, "My peace, I give to you." What do we get for lingering and doing the work of Christ? Not just the great story of Easter, but nothing less than genuine peace. If you could use a little more peace in your life, please say "Amen". In this text and throughout Scripture, we are promised this peace. True peace. Lasting peace. Deep peace that is not simply the absence of war and strife, but is in itself something to behold. The kind of peace that can only come from the source, from the Prince of Peace Himself, Jesus Christ.

Is it unfair to think that to whom much is given, much will be expected? I don't think so. Besides, when we are truly in ministry, and it is truly inspired with the breath of the Holy Spirit and infused with Christ's peace, there is wonder in the work and great joy in the harvest.

That is why we are

a grievin' when they all start a leavin'

Not because we are bummed that we are left with all the work. But because we know what a gift the work and the peace that comes with it is. If we truly love our neighbors, we want to get them in on the action too. We want them to receive this peace. And so we sing out with whatever voice we have...

Y'all come (y'all come) y'all come (y'all come) y'all come to see us when you can
Y'all come (y'all come) y'all come (y'all come) y'all come to see us now and then

Palm Sunday sermon

On the board outside of our church is the message “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord”. Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord. The message of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea. ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’“...Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
We are one week away from the most important day in the church year. The most important day because it points to the most important day in history- the day which some theologians believe that time itself began. Easter. The day when God chose to redeem God's people. The people of Israel had been awaiting for this day for a long time. A day when the Messiah would loosen their chains of oppression and they would be able to once again live in freedom. And that is what today is about, isn't it. On Palm Sunday, we identify ourselves with the people of Jerusalem on the cusp of our liberation. It might be a little challenging for us. Most of us do not feel oppressed in the same political sense that the Jews did under Roman occupation. But all of us have plenty to be liberated from nonetheless. Amen? Our fears of natural disasters, terrorists, and our rapidly failing economy. The broken relationships that all of us seem to have in our lives. The toils that wear down our bodies. The anguish of watching loved ones slip away. We have plenty to be liberated. Our doubts about our faith, our beliefs, even who we really are and why we are here. O God, why do you tarry so long?

We hunger for liberation from all these things and more so we wave our branches and say “Hosanna in the Highest! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” And this is a good thing. We throw our branches down and allow ourselves to be led by children because we are told that they are closer to God and we must become like them to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. We share in their enthusiasm. We share in their uninhibited shouts of “Hallelujah!” and “Praise Ye the Lord!” because we want to be delivered from our adult complacency. And this is a good thing. Yes, on this Palm Sunday, we can relate with the people of Jerusalem.

But Sisters and Brothers, there is danger ahead. The Kingdom of Heaven is indeed coming near. But are we prepared to repent? A lot will happen between this Sunday and next, between our initial recognition of who Jesus may be and who Jesus actually is. The race is long, but we must run in such a way as to get the prize.

John the Baptist tells us to repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. The people of Jerusalem were prepared to celebrate as they looked upon the Messiah. But they were not prepared to do the hard work of rooting the deepest evil out from their hearts as they looked upon themselves. As Jesus rode in his donkey, fulfilling the prophecy of the Messiah coming in and kicking butt, the people were all in praise and adoration, ready to ride the wave of victory. We all want to be on the winning side. But when Jesus was sentenced to death, when following him might have meant your own death, enthusiasm waned quickly.

I wonder if our commitment to stand with the losers, the poor, the prisoner, and yes Jesus on the way to die on the cross will be stronger? Sisters and Brothers, there is a hard week ahead. The religious leaders, the people whose whole lives were dedicated to interpreting the word of the God and trying to do God's will. Surely we would have stood up for Jesus. Surely the religious leaders would have recognized the Messiah. But no, history tells a different story. I wonder if we more often than not see the presence of God as a threat, because we know that it will mean great change to what we are comfortable with? I wonder if we are afraid to repent, because it may just let God out of the box and into our hearts? You know what happens when God gets into our hearts, don't you? When God gets into our hearts, God asks us to change. When your asked to change, that means there must have been something wrong with you. Who likes to be told that there is something wrong with them? I don't and I am sure that you don't either. We don't like to be asked to be changed, even by God, because it is so much nicer to be told, I'm O.K. Your O.K. Everything is O.K. Isn't that nice? But we know that that is not the case, I am not O.K. and it is my solemn duty to tell you that you are not O.K. And that hurts yours and mine pride. But there is a reason why pride is the greatest of the deadly sins. Pride is the opposite of love and love is life. We need to squelch that pride. We need to be of “the same mind ... that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” We find ourselves in human form like Jesus and Jesus “being found in human form, ⁸humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”

Sisters and Brothers, lets not make asses of ourselves, waving our palm branches and singing yeah Jesus and then go home and forget all about it. Instead, let us be vigilint this Holy Week. Amen? If you can't join us here, than I pray to God that you can somewhere else. If you can't get somewhere else, I pray that you spend the week in prayer and fasting, reading each of the four Gospel accounts. If you can't find the hours to do that, I pray that you somehow get right with God. Let's not be Judas' and put our own agenda above God's. Instead, let us empty ourselves, so that we have room for nothing but God's will, Amen? Let's not be Peter’s and deny Christ. Instead, let each of us shout it from the mountain tops. Amen? Our neighbor's should be asking each, what is all that noise coming from. I think its those Methodists. Let's not be Thomas' and give our ear to Satan's whispers of doubt. Instead, let us boldly proclaim even the mysteries of faith. Amen?

The Lord be with you...

Selah! (Whatever that means)

So far, there are 5 of us going to see Michael W. Smith
w/ Selah & Watermark event, taking place Sunday, April 24, 6 pm
at the Peoria Civic Ctr., 201 S. W. Jefferson St., Peoria,
If you want to join us, call me.

why bother

i have been spending a fair amount of time this week wondering how Lazarus died the second time- or if he is still around for that matter. i recently reread and rewatched Kazantzakis' 'last temptation of Christ' in which Lazarus is killed by Saul (later known as Paul) for political reasons. I also came across this interesting little piece on the topic by john kavenaugh http://liturgy.slu.edu/5LentA031305/theword_embodied.html

"I wonder how it was when Lazarus died for the second time. Were Mary and Martha there?... Of what did Lazarus eventually die? Was it a recurrence of the original affliction or something unforeseen? Did Mary and Martha, the second time around, think that Jesus could spare Lazarus anew?"

it is a fascinating question, but ultimately, it will not bring life to our church. so, i can't help but wonder why God has put this on my heart as the focus of my thoughts this week. well, i am afraid that it is becoming clearer to me. i think that i had to work through this hypothetical in order to see what was underneath it- namely, this nagging 'why bother?' that continuously lingers. i think that i am missing some of the wonder of the miracles because i am stuck in a 'why bother?' glut. a person was blind 2000 years ago and then they could see. they died sometime later and that was that. lazurus was raised from the dead. but surely he could not have lived much longer, so why bother in the first place?

parallel to this 'why bother?' about Lazarus has been a rather annoying refrain from a cantata that we have been practicing. 'he gladdened each neighborhood- helping wherever he could'. never mind that the first part is biblically wrong (he was chased out of galilee, when he cast legion into the swine the pig owners weren't too happy, and i doubt the money changers were 'gladdened' by his visit). the second part 'helping wherever he could' gets to me. Jesus is God. surely, 'wherever he could' would be a large area. but we only hear about select miracles. for example, Lazarus is the only one raised from the dead.

this, of course, is flawed and unfaithful logic. the 'why bother?' obviously cannot be found in the particular miracle. rather, the particular points to the larger issue, that is, glimpses of God's promise. its not so much that Lazarus himself was raised (though i am sure Lazarus himself thought that that alone was enough), but it is the larger promise that such raising represents. the blind man can now see so that God could show God's BIG plan.

this, of course, is the approach that i am going to take for saturday and sunday's sermons. i am (hopefully) not going to get bogged down in what happened to Lazarus, which Mary is mentioned, the archeology relating to the valley of dry bones. rather, i believe that God has refined these banalaties out of me this week, so that i could focus on the good stuff this weekend. God's promise for salvation, the resurrection of our bodies and souls, the breath of life back into the church.