Trinity Sunday

1+1+1=3?

Sunday June 3rd is Trinity Sunday in the life of the Church. This is the one distinctive doctrine of Christianity that is difficult for most people It is also a doctrine that makes other monotheists question whether Christianity is not a tri-theistic religion. We insist that we are indeed monotheistic. As the Jewish people, whose Bible makes up 2/3 of our own Scripture, we believe there is one God and only one. Within that Godhead there are three Persons dwelling in perfect unity. Each Person is fully God, and not 1/3 of God. The Father is fully in the Son and Spirit, and each person shares the same being in that way. Therefore we are not tri-theistic. The doctrine is complicated and, if approached as a math problem as above, does not make much sense. There is no doubt that it is scriptural, though not spelled out as explicitly as in the creeds. Jesus said, "I and the Father are one". Paul said, speaking of Jesus, "The Lord is the Spirit". Thomas makes his confession of faith after the resurrection, and says to Jesus something no good Jew would say, unless he believed that Jesus was one God with the Father. He confesses, "My Lord and my God".

We probably get into trouble trying to explain the doctrine intellectually. In most lectionary study groups I have been in, preachers start talking about how they are going to do the children's sermon. I don't remember ever discussing children's sermons in these groups on any other day of the Christian year. Perhaps, in discussing how to do the children's sermon, we are really trying to figure out how we can understand the doctrine in a simple way. We talk about the wick, the candle and the flame being three yet one. Sometimes we talk about H2O and say it can be water, liquid, and gas. However, these are all inadequate, for no created image can ever explain God. Water is not in the 3 states at the same time. God is all three and yet a complete unity. The question of the Trinity will not be solved as a math problem. The doctrine, while based on scripture, is also explained in the Greek philosophical categories of the 4th and 5th centuries in the Nicene Creed. The Trinity starts from the experience of the Church. God the Father created heaven and earth. In God the Son we find our salvation, and in God the Holy Spirit, we find our peace and power as Christian people. God is above us, God is with us, God is among and within us. The doctrine rises out of Christian experience, spirituality, and worship. The theological categories explain the experience.

Now that we have gone through the long theological discourse, what does it mean for us? Why is it important for us? First, it shows that God is love and wants to dwell in community, that God wants a relationship with us. God's very being is in community. The One is in a community of Three and yet is still One. Each of the Divine Persons relates to the others within the Divine Being. God created us in the Divine image so that we could be in relationship with God and each other. We receive salvation because the Father sent the Son, and we are related to God through the Holy Spirit who unites us to the Father and Son. In other words, God is love and wants a relationship with us, because that is God's nature in himself. Secondly, it means God loves us, and does not reject us, but wants to redeem us. Finally, it means we also are created not just for union with God through the Trinity, but with each other. We are made in God's image, we are baptized into the name of a relational God, and are then called to grow in sharing and reflecting God's love and grace to others. God loves us and is active with and in each of us. This is what we celebrate on Trinity Sunday. This is our understanding of our relationship with God. May God help us to grow in relationship to himself and to our neighbors, as we share in the divine grace and carry out God's mission in the world.

Peace and Joy,
Jim

Pentecost

Pneumatikoi

The term Pneumtikos is from the Greek word for "Spirit". 'Agia Pneumatos is the Greek word for Holy Spirit. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition "pneumatikoi", a plural, are people who are specially gifted by the spirit and can hear confession and offer sage wisdom to spiritual seekers. The best translation might be "Spirited ones" or "Spirit gifted ones". As Presbyterian Protestants we believe that all Christians are pneumatikoi. I mean that all of us are gifted ones, by the Holy Spirit. Paul says we have received our spiritual gifts for the common good. Some have certain gifts of wisdom perhaps and others of service. Some are called to ministry and others to music. Each person, who is sealed by God's Spirit in baptism and confession, has a calling. We are all pneumatikoi, each with our individual gifts from God
s Holy Spirit, but serving the church and the world as part of our service to the risen Christ.

Some of us don't take that very seriously. In most communities of faith and of other types of human community, there is something called the 80/20 principle. Eighty percent of the people do twenty per cent of the work, and twenty per cent do eighty per cent of the work. That seems to be universal, and with little possibility of changing it. However, what if we changed that to at least 50 per cent of the people sharing their gifts? It is not likely to happen but each of us who has been made a Christian by God's grace must ask the question: "What are my gifts and how can I better use them for the work of God's Kingdom in the world"? This may be a major call to some kind of service, it may be a call to better serve in the local church, or it may be a call to be a better Christian in our daily lives. What gifts do you have? How can they be placed in God's service by the power and grace of God's Spirit?

At Pentecost, the 50th day after Easter and end of the Easter Season, we remember the coming of the Spirit upon Christ's Church. Often we emphasize empoweredness for the church to go out, proclaim the Good News, and be instruments of God's peace around the world. As individuals and congregations we may not be able to change the whole world, but how we can help in our part of it? What are your gifts? How are you using them in God's service? What is God calling you to do with them?

In Fire of God's Presence,
Jim

Ascension

What Goes Up, Must Come Back!

Today, May 18, 2007, is Ascension Day, the 40th day after Easter. It is a day not much noted among many Protestant Christian. It has been a bit of time since Easter, and the excitement of Easter, if not the Easter message of God's eternal life-giving love, has evened out a bit. What does the Ascension mean? In the Acts 1 story, the disciples are given final instructions to go and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. They have asked Jesus when the Kingdom will come. He tells them it is not for them to know, but they will be empowered to proclaim the Gospel to the world as witnesses in Jerusalem and to the ends of the earth. But, for the moment, they must wait for the power of the Spirit to come upon them.

This waiting is offset by the fact that, as Jesus ascends, the men are standing and gazing into the heavens. Why would'nt they be, that is a sight you don't see every day. Some "men", who appear to be angelic figures, tell them to stop gazing into heaven, for Jesus will come back. Until he does, Jesus has given them something to do. The implication is that they are to quit hanging around and do what Jesus told them! As I said, for the time being that something was wait. The season of Easter to Pentecost has the 10 days in it from Ascension Thursday to Pentecost Sunday called in some churches "Ascensiontide". It is shorter but is similar to Advent, a period of waiting. When Pentecost comes the church will be empowered by the Holy Spirit in the Acts story. Until then what Jesus commands is to wait.

That is hard for me and probably for a lot of American Christians. There seem to be two tendencies in American Christian spirituality, one is to totally stand and gaze at the heavens, and the other is some for of activism that distrusts any waiting as spiritual escapism. The spiritual formation movement can fall into quietism, which is not its goal. Quietism is a highly individualistic form of spirituality that makes the disciple feel good through various prayer and meditation disciplines, but makes the spiritual experience of peace and union with God the goal of faith. It often does not translate into living the gospel. None of the monastic, or Protestant Christians, who lead this movement advocate that, they say it is tendency to be guarded against. Other forms of this are more evangelical, obsession with heaven to the exclusion of discipleship on earth is a form. It often does not translate into the nitty gritty of following Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus gives us eternal life, but also makes possible discipleship, loving God and neighbor, on earth. It is a very active life. Withdrawal from presence in the world is not the goal of Christ for us.

Activism has both conservative and liberal forms, usually in the political arena. It may express itself in service ministries to the poor and needy. It may be politically involved. It often has a suspicion of meditation and prayer as taking energy away from the desperate need for Christian activity. It follows Jesus, but denies the fuel necessary, prayer and meditation, to avoid despair and burn out. A lot of these kind of Christians leave ministry maybe the faith, because they believe in change and don't see it quick enough.

Ascension to Pentecost remind us that there is, as I have said before, a flow to Christian life. We are called and commanded at times to wait and receive power. We are called at other times to out in the power of God to witness in word and deed in the church and the political arena and the world at large. This flow can be done at the same time in our lives. Right now I feel in a growing active spiritual phase, but other areas of my life are still and waiting. Sometimes in our lives we are in a more active and others in a more waiting period. The trick is to know that "this same Jesus" who ascended into heaven, will come again. It does not all rest on our effort and accomplishment. It takes the quiet to give that perspective in our action as witnesses.

So, where are you, as a Christian. Do you need more time for prayer and meditation? You may tell me you don't have that time, but most of us are busy. Can we not find time when commuting from place to place to pray and reflect, even though we should not zone out when driving! I have found that one way helpful in expanding my prayer. It can be done it is a matter of habit formation. On the other hand, what areas of your Christian life are calling you to action? That, too, is an important question. Jesus has ascended, we are called to periods of waiting and action. Where are you on this "grid".

Peace in the Risen Lord,
Jim

Questions

Recently I preached a sermon by that name and I have given it more thought just this week. It seems to me that questions are as useful to the spiritual life as answers, perhaps more so. Too often we Christians give the sort of answers that could be printed on bumper stickers. Some of the facts of our faith are that simple. However, when we go through life we gain question about living. Henri Nouwen reminds us that the kind of questions we ask will determine the kind of answers we get. If we ask psychological or sociological questions those are the kind of answers we get. It is the same with scientific answers. As much as I value theology, if we ask "head trip" kinds of questions, we will often get answers that are intellectual but spiritually unsatisfying.

We need all of the disciplines above to be sure in our world and understood in their proper role they are beneficial. Spiritually, however, they can be unsatisfying. We can get many answers to questions of faith from the disciplines of human thought, but they are not ultimate answers. They are, at best, approximate. To try and make biblical faith fit into scientific categories, for instance, is to compare "apples and oranges". They ask different questions, and use different methods. To put faith in the Bible, as many Protestants do, as the book that has every answer and we don't need science and the other disciplines, is to abuse the book. The Bible is the Word of God and it is a book that does point us to the ultimate source of answers, but there are questions of science that it does not answer we the same definitive answers it gives, say, for who the living Jesus was and is.

How do we get to ultimate answers. Well, we don't if you mean the "head trip" kind of knowledge. We do if we see our answer as a living relationship between ourselves and the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. I would argue that theology does, and should arise out of our worship and service of God. That involves hearing the Word in worship and private reading. It involves communal life through the church and its sacraments and it also involves being open to the Spirit to lead us. Rather than see the faith as a body of beliefs we have and defend, but never grow into, limits our sanctification into what God wants us to be. This involves living interaction with the Bible, the Church, and our own individual lives. We grow in grace. We grow in understanding, but we, in the best of worlds, realize that we have not, and cannot know a God that is beyond all knowing. The adventure of the Christian life is asking God what God wants of us and being open to the answers that are found in the Word of God, the Great Tradition of the Church in its Confessions, the living community of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and in individual prayer and worship. Instead of looking at faith as something on which we have "cornered the market", let us be humble enough to grow into Christ likeness. So what is the ultimate question? "Lord Jesus, what would you have me do with my life". Well that is one, maybe you can come up with others. Let us grow into the Mystery!
Shalom In The Risen Christ!
Jim