Sermon 5-30-2010                          

Psalm 8: 3-9                                                                          John 16:12-15

“The Trinity”

Why do we celebrate the Trinity?

“Trinity Sunday provides the opportunity to reflect on the wonder of divine love and to consider what it means to worship one God in our particular way as Christians.

The doctrine (of the Trinity) grew out of reflection on worship:

How is it that we praise a risen Christ who meets us at the table and walks beside us in daily life? Why d we pray for the Holy Spirit to move in our lives? How can we do this and still affirm that God is one? On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ; on Pentecost we celebrate the outpouring of the Spirit on the church. On Trinity Sunday we ponder the meaning of these stories, how God can be one and three…and three in one.”

                                                                                     Worship Ways, UCC, 2005

PRAYER

To talk about the Trinity I need to start at Pentecost…

“On Pentecost, the awesome power of God is revealed seven weeks after the death and resurrection of Jesus…. As the eleven worshiped, there was a noise so loud that it could not be ignored….

No one was excluded. No mortal could engineer the vivacity of the coming of the Holy Spirit sent by the awesome God of Jesus Christ.”

                                      (Linda Thomas, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol.3, pg. 14-18)

For me it’s in Acts 2, that the clear Trinity is shown. Not only that, but also,

“at the heart of text, we do not find a historian terrified about diversity, but instead witnesses… ‘amazed and astonished,’ because each person heard and understood what was said in his or her own language. In a breathtaking reversal of the story of the tower of Babel, when proud humanity was divided by the pluralism of languages (Gen. 11:1-9), Pentecost represents the in breaking of God’s purposes for all humanity, bringing humanity together in understanding, despite their differences.

Even as Genesis begins with the stunning good news that humanity was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27) and that our highest purpose lies in trusting God – a trust was violated by inappropriate self-confidence and independence at Babel – Pentecost tells us the good news that our humanity, ruined and distorted in our distrust, has been restored in Jesus Christ. The spirit that animated his life, that united him to God the father and empowered him to be fully the human image of God, is now shared with us.

Not everyone, even on the day of Pentecost, was convinced that a good thing was happening among those who were caught up in the Spirit of God.

Some in their amazement, were ready to attribute the ecstasy to God, while others simply thought the disciples and other visitors were drunk. When Peter stood to preach…he moved quickly to state…these people are not drunk. They are the living fulfillment of the long promise of God. God’s Word

is being heard! God’s Spirit is being shared, and God’s communion is being brought into existence among humanity here and now. The Acts 2 text ends with the vision… the vision of the perils that are yet to come… genocide, ethnic cleansing, religious and tribal purity; fanatic nationalism, patriotism… And so people fear difference, otherness, the strangeness of the stranger. But the real threat… lies not in the differences that God has woven into all parts of God’s creation, including humanity. The great danger… lies in any group’s lust to power over others… The image of God in which we were created is the image of the triune God of grace… When we say God the Trinity, we are saying that God is in God’s own being, a ‘Holy Family.’ In the image of the God who, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is eternal and a living community, differentiated in person, united in love, we are ourselves created for community, and never fully live in God’s image until we live in communion.

Communion assumes difference – not uniformity, not conformity to a single idealized form of life, or nationality, or ethnicity, or tribe.”

                                      (Michael Jinkins, Feasting on the Word, Year c, Vol.3, pg. 14-18)

Where are these thoughts leading us today? For me today I am struggling between justice and abuse. Are we not creating another wall of separatism between our neighbors, the neighbors to the south who now have become our enemies. I am talking about the Mexicans and the undocumented people that cross the borders to work for ‘cheap labor’ and are confronted by racism, discrimination, deportation and death.

I am not in favor of illegal immigrants nor injustice, but when we permit and hire the undocumented immigrants, are we not also guilty of breaking the law? Are we not guilty of covering our own abusive ways to unfairly benefit from the most vulnerable?

Do you know that a mile of wall is costing us, you and me the tax payers one million dollars? What does it say about fairness, justice, mercy, love and humanity? What are we to do as a Christian community in the middle of this injustice? Do you know that the Arizona law is coming to be in effect in several other states? Is Mass. in that list, I believe so, and then what are we called to do? Do we stand like Peter and declare that they are not 100% guilty because we are responsible for at least 50% of their guilt?

In the text of John, he sounds a bit idealistic but… “John imagines a Christian community that is not locked into the past but understands what Jesus means for its own time. He anticipates that changing circumstances and the emergence of new questions - (like immigration reform, health care reform, the Arizona law) –will require from us the community to think afresh.

“John is confident that, relying on the guidance of ‘the Spirit of truth,’ the community will be led where it needs to go…

John is confident that such a community is possible because of ‘the Spirit of truth’ whose ministry it is to ‘guide’ the followers of Jesus ‘into all truth’ (v.13). the text seeks to instill a similar confidence into the church of every time and place.

The Spirit will come, not with new truth, not with a new revelation, but to glorify Christ…

The community can face the future with confidence because the Spirit will ‘declare…the things that are to come.’

The promise is not that the community will have advanced knowledge of future events, but that it will be able to grasp the meaning of Jesus’ revelation and remain faithful, no matter what the circumstances.”

                                (Eugene C. Bay, feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 3, pg. 46-48)

I am confident that the Spirit of God, in Jesus Christ will unite us as a people and as a community.

BENEDICTION

Go in peace, witness to the gospel, and remember that Christ is with you even to the end of time. May the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit inspire all we do. Amen!