Learning to Lament                          

                                                   2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27

 

          The book of 1^st Samuel ends with a wounded King Saul falling on his own sword rather than allowing himself to be captured and brutalized at the hands of the Philistines. The story of David continues in 2^nd Samuel with David returning from victory over the Amalekites, only to be confronted by a young Amalekite man who brings David news of the deaths of Saul and his son Jonathan.  David and his men mourn and weep for hours until evening, when David re-examines the young Amalekite. David finds enough holes in the his story to punish rather than reward him. Then David sings a song or maybe utters a poem, of lament. It is a poem about Saul and Jonathan, a poem about grief.

          I have read the commentaries about David’s lament. They explain that the book of Jashar was a book of important songs and poems that has not survived. That this lament was contained in it is not disputed, but the book was lost to us long ago.  The commentaries note that David wanted the people of Judah to be taught about the lives of Saul and Jonathan, that they should be taught his lament in order to remember them.

          So this passage is called David’s lament, a strikingly secular poem which never mentions Gods’ name, nor does it mention any elements of Israel’s faith.  So why is it suggested in the Book of Common Worship that this text be used as the source of a message?

           There is a reason that this passage is in the Bible. Many might say it is there because it was important to see the many talents of David, or so that the customs of the people of that time could be observed. Maybe it revealed something new about Saul and Jonathan. All these statements are true, but I don’t think that even collectively they are enough. The Bible doesn’t have “extra.” Everything there, every word, has the potential to reveal God’s truth. What is in this poem that we need to know?

            David says that Israel’s glory lies dead in its high places. Israels’s glory here is her king now slain. I think David is saying what many of us felt when John Kennedy was assassinated or when the twin towers came down. Someone hurt us and hurt us badly. It’s sad beyond words.

            He says don’t tell it in the cities of the Philistines. Don’t tell it where people can gloat and misinterpret the news. Keep it “in house” and let’s mourn on our own. It is understood that the defeat represents not Philistine victory, but disobedience to God.

           David goes on. No rain, no offerings. The best of us was offered and it was found lacking. We have been defiled, embarrassed in this loss and the sting is bitter. They fought, and they stood, but they were not enough. It hurts to know such loss.

          In the next two stanzas, David talks about the strength and unity of these fallen warriors. Then he encourages the people to cry. He tells the daughters of Israel to cry over their fallen leader. The new leader and future king is giving the people permission to express their grief.

          Then, in one of the most tender expressions of loving friendship and respect in all the Bible, David talks personally of his friend Jonathan. Their relationship was deep, covenantal, and David is wounded to his core. In this extraordinary admission, he says the love of these two men for one another was greater than even that of a man for a woman. There is nothing sexual about this admission. It is the disclosure of how intimate true friendship can become.

          Three times in this lament, David says this term: “How the mighty have fallen.” He seems to be observing and asking simultaneously. “How the mighty have fallen.” Perhaps young David, already a veteran of many battles, is foreshadowing his own troubles to come. Perhaps he is already feeling the loneliness of leadership. David sees clearly that kingship is no guarantee to safety. Whatever he is thinking, David shows us that he hurts as deeply as anyone, grieves as publicly as anyone and is not ashamed to invite his people to grieve with him.

          Do you remember where you were when those planes hit the towers on 9/11? Do you remember your reaction? As the stories of heroism and loss began to come in, do you remember how you felt? I think I shook as though it were happening to me. And in a very real sense, it was. When loss is profound, as it is in the case of a lost leader or loved one, it is personal and it is the kind of loss that future king David was saying to us: Grieve! Cry! Hold each other and express your loss. It is not weak. Rather, it shows your humanity.

          C. S. Lewis was one of the most famous Christian writers of the twentieth century. A great mind, he sought to discredit Christianity and on the way through that process, he was converted. Later in life, he had a short marriage of four years. His wife had cancer. It eventually took her life. Lewis was devastated. He devoted an entire book to that chapter in his life. The book was called A Grief Observed. Here is one of the things Lewis said about his experience.

          God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love

          in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was

          I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the

          witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that

          my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making

          me realize the fact was to knock it down.” 
                                                     ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

 

          Lewis is reminding us that there will come a time for each of us when our faith is tested, when our belief system is shaken to the root. For Lewis, as it was for David, we must not only observe that grief; we must understand that much of grieving is not meant to be private. Sometimes, we must cry as a people or as a church or as a nation. The loss of nine Christians to senseless tragedy at Emmanuel AME Zion Church in Charleston on June 17^th is such a loss--a public loss of such magnitude that all Christians grieve.

          In this poem of lament by David, we are reminded that such is exactly the task to which we should be about. If we can celebrate our victories, we can also mourn our losses. Grief has its private moments, but it also has a public face.

          “How the mighty have fallen,” said David. How we grieve in such loss. So David grieved, and then he went up to Hebron and was anointed king of Judah. So it is with our Savior. How Jesus suffered on that cross! And how his disciples grieved that loss. So Jesus was dead and buried, and then he arose from the dead to sit on the right hand of God!

          So maybe that’s why David’s lament appears here in 2^nd Samuel. Hr reminds us to give life to our grief/ Grieving should be observed. It’s part of healing. And for Christians, we only fall to rise again.

Partnering With Jesus                                                         

                                                2 Corinthians 5: 20-6: 13

 

 

         I have a friend I met in seminary.  Actually, he just graduated in May. His first act as an ordained minister was to perform the wedding of his sister at the coast. On the way back home, he and his wife, their 2 year old son and their unborn second son were hit by a tractor trailer. The wreck was horrific. While my friend and his wife survived, neither their son nor their baby did.  A little over a week later, my friend, a man of great faith, stood in front of the congregation where he is worship leader and forgave the driver of the truck. He witnessed about his son and their faith. His message was one of hope and forgiveness. I know this man. I know he and his wife have suffered the greatest loss imaginable. And yet, I am not surprised at his witness. For some time, long before that moment of tragedy, he has chosen to partner with Jesus.

         During the early 50’s in first century A.D. Paul embarked upon his third missionary journey, during which he spent about eighteen months in the city of Corinth planting a church. He later moved on to Ephesus, where he stayed three years. While at Ephesus, he wrote to the church in Corinth about some of the problems that were surfacing there. We do not have a lot of detail, but it can be safely inferred that there were actually four letters from Paul to the church in Corinth. Two of them were lost. Those that survive are the second and fourth letters, which we know as 1st and 2^nd Corinthians.  They were plagued with serious problems of division, sexual immorality and social snobbery. It is to these issues that Paul writes what are known as “occasional” letters, meaning letters written to address a specific occasion or situation.

          Paul tells the Corinthians that he and his partners in mission are “ambassadors for Christ…that for our sake he (God) made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Barely a week after that horrible tragedy, my friend addressed his congregation about forgiveness. He said in essence: we have to forgive him (the truck driver) because we know that Jesus has forgiven us our debt. He called on family and friends to “forgive anyone in your life whom you hold something against.” In the aftermath of tragedy, my friend is still partnering with Jesus.

          Paul tells the Corinthians that he too is partnering with Jesus, saying this: “Working together with him (Jesus), then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.”  Understanding that the coming of Jesus and his death and resurrection have inaugurated something for which we need not wait, Paul reminds us that “now is the time…now is the day of salvation.” It is the here and now to which Paul is referring. We are living in the age of the end times. No matter that two thousand years have passed. May it be that many thousands more come and go, for every generation that comes is one more generation to which Christianity can be introduced.

          Paul then itemizes a life of ministry and he uses himself as the example.  He prefaces his list by referring to the “great endurance” that marks Christian service, a term Paul uses often. He then itemizes nine affliction or sufferings, set out in three sets of three, identifiable with ministry. The first trio might be called general trials or working conditions, and includes “afflictions, hardships and calamities.” Set in more modern language, afflictions might become the burdens of life, hardships those things which cannot be avoided, and calamities those life situations from which there is no escape.

          Paul’s second triplet could be characterized as attacks of opponents or suffering inflicted by others. He has endured “beatings” and has the stripes to prove it. He has been “imprisoned” at least seven times. We know he was imprisoned in Philippi, Jerusalem, Caesarea and Rome for sure. “Riots” were also part of his experience, having been literally driven out of town more than once.

        Paul ends the trials of ministry portion of this text with a third group we might call self-inflicted hardships or hardships that are part of the work. He names these labors, sleepless nights and hunger. When Paul talks about “labor,” he is almost certainly talking about work to the point of exhaustion. He experienced many “sleepless nights” because of duty, discomfort or danger. “Hunger” here most likely has not to do with fasting, but rather lack of time or money.

          Having covered outward circumstances, Paul now turns to inward qualities of ministry. While he does not address specific instances, we may be certain that Paul had been slandered and vilified by people either unsympathetic or opposed to him or his ministry. Instead of directing his comments to them, he talks about characteristics and qualities he has attempted to exhibit in his own life. His list includes purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, genuine love, truthful speech and the power of God. His reference here translated as the Holy Spirit would probably be more accurately translated as the “gifts or graces of the Holy Spirit” (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Abridged Ed., 1994). The list sounds more than slightly reminiscent of the fruits of the spirit he names in Galatians 5. This only re-enforces the point that the inner qualities of ministry reflect the same qualities sought by every Christian. Partnering with Jesus is not just for missionaries and pastors.

          Verses 8-10 outline a series of paradoxical contrasts, Paul

talks about the effects of ministry. Honor may feel like dishonor, slander like praise. Truth telling that results in being called impostors, about to die and yet living. Punished but not killed. Brought to sorrow yet finding room to rejoice. Enriching lives in their poverty and even having nothing of earthly value while possessing everything. Such contrasts, Paul tells the Corinthians, are the stuff of ministry. Such contrasts, I believe, are the stuff of faith.

          Most of you have met my daughter Emily. Emily has her own catalogue of misery. Several bouts with malaria, her upper lip cut clean through and stitched on a kitchen table, parasites that made her look as if full term in pregnancy, no electricity, almost blinded and mugged on a boat crossing the river to the eye doctor, to name a few. Like Paul, she calls it all part of the job and feels the call to more. She too has partnered with Jesus.

           When Paul is emotional and passionate, he calls us by name. He does so in this passage, calling his audience Corinthians. He talks to them by name. Such is his passion for them. He ends the passage by telling them that “our heart is wide open.” He has held nothing back. His heart is there in his hand, offered in peace and love.  Such is the stuff of ministry, for if we are to reach out, we must do so in truth and love, not fearing the repercussions.  And ministry comes in all shapes and sizes. God has not made a single one of us who is not gifted and fit, with his help, for some sort of ministry.

          My seminary friend shared a final story about his son. He had been learning the line from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God.” He was only two and had trouble with it. But on the day of that marriage, when everyone was in a frenzy to pull off a beach wedding, his son came to him and said that line perfectly. “Be still ans know that I am God.” It calmed my friend at the time, but more importantly, he said, it gave him and his wife “the words that would guide us in the storms to come.” 

          How do you get through the storms of life? The same way you climb the mountains and fiord the rivers and traverse the valleys. The same way you celebrate the joy that comes in the morning of our lives no matter what storm or test may be laid in your path. You do what Paul exhorted the Corinthians to do. You partner with Jesus!

        Do not receive the grace of God in vain.

  “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Let us pray.    

6/21/15

                                    Look on the Heart                            

                                              1 Samuel 15:34- 16: 13

 

  

          After fifteen or so years out in the hinterlands perfecting his craft, the apostle Paul has come in from the cold and has embarked, along with Barnabas and John Mark, upon his first missionary journey. They set sail from the island of Cypress and land at Perga. From there, they journey to Psidian Antioch, a town not to be confused with Syrian Antioch, where it all started for Paul. Psidian Antioch was a Roman colony with a large Jewish population. It was pluralistic in its worship practices and had several temples in addition to the synagogue. For unknown reasons, John Mark left them there and returned to Jerusalem. As was his wont, Paul went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, where he was asked to speak, and he did. His rousing message was continued the following Sabbath before most of the city. This prompted enough jealousy among the Jewish religious leaders to see to it that Paul and Barnabas were driven out of the city. But not before they had filled the disciples there with joy and the Holy Spirit.

          Among Paul’s comments in that first synagogue message recorded by Luke in Acts 13, is this: that God raised up David to be the king of Israel, and that God said of David that he was “a man after my heart, who will do my will.”

          Flash back a thousand years. Saul’s reign is coming to an end. God has decided to replace him.  He has had a colored kingship. He has done things right, but he has gone on his own too much. God wants a change. Samuel, who didn’t want a monarchy to begin with, now doesn’t want a change. He grieves over the failing of Saul. Then God comes to town. He tells Samuel to quit grieving. God has one more job for Samuel and it is to anoint Saul’s successor.

          How does God pick a king? Well, how do we pick our leaders? Will that be informative of how God acts? We pick our leaders based upon democratic principles. People line up support with big business connections and when they think they can raise a couple hundred million dollars, then they tell us that they want to be President. Then they spend all that money raising more money and lining up more support. Eventually they run off all but two people. They make a lot of promises and we go to the ballot box and decide who makes the most sense or causes us the least worry. One of the first mistakes we make in democracy is letting anyone run who actually wants the job. We should only elect those who don’t want the job. But hey, that’s American politics. God is no politician.

          So how does God pick a king? According to 1^st Samuel, he doesn’t use the yardstick many of us use. He doesn’t even look at the outside of a man or woman at all. God looks on the heart. Tall, fit, handsome, pretty, smart, educated, polished, all wonderful attributes. For instance, Eliab, the oldest son of Jesse, was thought to be a pretty good catch. Even old, experienced Samuel took one look at him and said surely he was looking at God’s anointed. But God said “next.”  In fact, God passed on seven sons of Jesse. Finally, the youngest was called. He was a teenager, probably red-headed and freckled. He was a shepherd of his father’s sheep, nice-looking but young and inexperienced. God said yes. That’s the one. Anoint him. And Samuel obeyed the Lord.

          It was to be eleven more years before young David actually took the throne as king of Israel, but God had brought him from a pasture next to a tiny town barely on the map and picked him out of a lineup of brothers. In the process of calling these men before him, God tells Samuel how it’s done. “Do not look on his outward appearance or on the height of his stature…For the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

          So that’s how God picks out his own. He pays little if any attention to the outside of a person. God looks on the heart. What is the heart? Is it different in the original languages? Yes, a little. In the Hebrew, the language used in 1st Samuel, the word is lebab (בב£), which means inner man, mind, will, heart. When Luke uses the word in Acts, it is kardia (καρδία), which means the seat of the inner self. For me, I think heart in these uses means the core, the bottom line feeling where we are who we are. I think that’s what God looks for in us. Who are we when we are found out, when we are raw, when we must show that of which we are made . That is where God goes to see us.

          In the story of the anointing of David, we find God seeking out a man after his own heart. God looked deep inside to find what he was looking for. Can we do the same? I think we should try, but I don’t think we should ever expect to have God’s vision. That’s not in the cards. But that’s the wrong approach anyway. We don’t need to look that deep into the core of our friends and family. Instead, we need to allow them to see us at our core. Who are we, really? Can our friends and family, indeed a total stranger, look at us and realize that we are who we present, that they can look upon our hearts and find us to be who we say we are?

          David is a great example for us all. It’s not that he lived a perfect life. Far from it. He committed adultery, arguably even murder. His reign was marked with examples of extreme violence. But whenever God called him on it, David confessed. He agonized over his shortcomings. He worked hard to change. And he loved God. Oh, how he loved God and hated to disappoint him. Our passage tells us that at the anointing, the Spirit of God rushed upon David from that day forward. Unlike other heroes of the Old Testament, the Scripture never mentions the Spirt of God leaving David.  The chronicler tells that God’s Spirit stayed with David!

          What does it mean to be a person after God’s own heart? Charles Swindoll puts it this way: ‘It means your life is in harmony with the Lord. What is important to him is important to you. What burdens him burdens you. When He says ‘Go to the right,’ you go to the right…When He says, ‘This is wrong and I want you to change,’ you come to terms with it because you have a heart for God. That’s bottom-line, biblical Christianity.”

          Look at David. What was his secret? He loved God. That’s the first and greatest step. There is no reason that every single one of us cannot become persons after God’s own heart. He made you so you could do that. What are you waiting for!

                                         Choosing Sides                            

                                              Mark 3: 13-15, 20-25, 31-35

 

           A hundred years ago when I was in grade school, we used to meet on the playground every day after school. We played softball. If you were in seventh grade, you got the big field. If not, you went to the smaller one. We played pickup games. There were two captains. They were either the best players or the best leaders. They would flip a coin or run hands up the bat for first pick. Then they would choose. The best players went first and on down the line. Then there were the rules. No umpires, so we called ourselves safe or out. If you hit the church wall in right field on the fly, it was a homer.  We had no shirts, no uniforms. Some of us had ball gloves and loaned ours to others. A bat was stowed out of sight for use each day. As you got older and better, you got picked sooner. Choosing players was an exercise in fairness and diplomacy.

          Choosing sides in pickup softball was a lot easier than choosing sides in other contests. As I journeyed down the road of life, choosing sides or friends or faiths became more and more difficult. Choosing sides can be a huge decision, and the ramifications of our choices can have long term impacts on our lives. Choosing sides comes with a cost.

         In the third chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus makes some choices. Mark tells us that “he went up on the mountain and called to himself those whom he desired.” Remember that phrase because it may become even more important in understanding what follows. At any rate, then Jesus appointed the twelve disciples, the circle that would become his intimate friends for his entire ministry. They were, in many ways, his new family.  Then, Jesus went home, but the crowd gathered again. Apparently they were in his home and there were so many that Mark tells us that there was no room to eat.

          Now, Jesus had been busy. He had come from his baptism at the hand of his cousin John to forty days of temptation in the desert to a walking ministry throughout the region of Galilee where he had healed a man with an unclean spirit, cleansed a leper, healed a paralytic and, according to Mark, healed many more as he began to capture the attention of the people. The demons were calling him the Son of God. Many people were doing the same. The scribes coming down from Jerusalem to see him were calling him possessed by Satan. It was to this dangerous mix of worship and hate that Jesus’ family responded. At this point, no one in Jesus’ family other than his mother accepted him as the Son of God. They set out to rescue him. Mark says they thought he was out of his mind.

          At first blush, it seems unusually harsh to read that Jesus’ family thought him crazy. We must keep in mind what Mark is driving at. Mark’s gospel is all about the identity of Jesus. He pushes that concept over and over. Mark wants his readers to know that Jesus is nothing less than the Son of God. Mark’s gospel doesn’t even cover the birth of Jesus. He starts it with the baptism of Jesus and the beginning of his ministry, for that is Mark’s prime concern. The question Mark asks us throughout his gospel is: Who is Jesus? Here in this passage, we see people who are trying to answer that question, from the crowd to the disciples to Jesus’ family to the religious leaders of the day.

          Jesus laughs off the accusations of the scribes. He points out their flawed logic. His response in today’s terms might go something like this: Tell me again why, if I were possessed by Satan, I would cast out demons of Satan. Isn’t that just a little bit counter -productive? Why would I divide myself that way?

          So now Jesus’ mother and brothers arrive. There is no room to get in the house, so they send in word to him. The message is passed along until word reaches him that his mother and brothers are outside, seeking him. What happens next is one of those life changing decisions. Jesus is going to choose sides.

          No one is exempt from choosing sides. Sometimes it comes easily. Sometimes it is agonizing.  Should you go to college? If so, what college?  Should you pursue this relationship? Should you take that job? Should you get up and go to church? What church? Why that church? Should you talk about God with this person whom you like? It could change your relationship, maybe even end it. The list is endless. Each time you choose sides, other choices disappear, some to never come again.

          Jesus answers them. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” In typical style for Jesus, he answers with a question. The words hang there in the air unanswered, perhaps for an extra moment before Jesus continues. Who are my mother and my brothers? Jesus has turned a simple comment into a crossroads. His hand is on the end of that proverbial bat handle and he is about to choose sides.

          Jesus says to those sitting around him: “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and my sister and my mother.” Stop for a moment and let that sink in. Jesus looked out upon that “Jesus circle” he had established on the mountain and he said to them: You are my family. Jesus was in a rural environment much like the one in which we worship here, one in which family and extended family were the core of their value system, and in this environment he choose to go another way.

          One might properly ask: Doesn’t this fly in the face of the Fifth Commandment? Aren’t we supposed to honor our father and our mother all the days of our lives? Of course we are. Remember, the Bible never contradicts itself. If it appears to, then we must search for the higher meaning that explains the apparent contradiction. In this case, it is the difference between physical family and spiritual family.

          Theologian Manford Gutzke explains it simply. He says that in one sentence, Jesus set social relationships lower than spiritual relationships.  Are family relationships important? Absolutely! They are so important that they are included in the Ten Commandments. Are they of the highest importance? No. The first two commandments make it clear that God shall be served above all other relationships. In most cases, our loyalty to family will only serve as a heightening of God’s call in our lives. But there are those times when we must choose sides.

          We know how much Jesus loved his family. His dying words were uttered to John to take care of his mother. After his resurrection, Jesus’ half-brothers came to believe in the gospel and to play significant roles in the development of the early church. Jesus’ love of his family is not the issue. Mark’s interest is not in the social network, but rather in spiritual priorities. In this story, Jesus family was an innocent pawn in a bigger story. Mark uses it to illustrate for us that our highest allegiance must be reserved for our adopted family, those who are the true people of God. 

          In the twenty fourth chapter of Joshua, he has gathered all the tribes at Shechem to renew the covenant. Joshua has come to the end of his service and will soon be called home to God. He challenges the people to put away their false gods and serve the Lord. He witnesses to them, saying “choose this day whom you will serve…But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”    Some thirteen hundred years later, the Son of God sits in a little room and tells those he has chosen as disciples that he has chosen them to become part of his spiritual family. It is a remarkable statement, even moreso considering that the whole thrust of Mark’s gospel is about the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, and yet here Jesus has identified true believers as family, and in that family he includes both women and men as he refers to sister and brother.

          Choosing sides. It can change your life. Take a moment and try to imagine what might happen if you don’t choose Jesus.  What if, just imagine what if, Jesus had gotten up and gone outside and gone home with his family that day? Where would we be now? What if he asks you to choose? He will, you know, and not just once, but many times. Will you choose the right side? It will change your life. There will be a price to pay, but it is a price worth paying! Each time you choose Jesus will make the next time that much easier.

          “For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and my sister and my mother.”

                                              Trinity                                     

                                                  2^nd Corinthians 13: 14

 

 

          Several years ago on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning, the kind of morning when you want to get the yard work done in time to get to a pool or a river or your favorite fishing hole before the day gets away, I was at my desk trying to put the finishing touches on the Sunday message when the doorbell rang. Since everyone who knows us comes to the kitchen door, I knew it was a stranger because it was the front doorbell that rang. So I stopped what I was doing, trying to retain that last thought, and went to the door.  There stood an eager Jehovah’s Witness with a tract in his hand, just thirsty to share his thoughts. I was impatient. He persisted. Then I told him I was a minister. That really got his juices flowing. He asked me what I believed and I said that I believed in the message of the Holy Scriptures and the gospel of Jesus Christ.  When I said I believed in the Trinity, he stopped. What’s the Trinity? He asked. I didn’t know at the time that Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the doctrine of the Trinity. So I sat down on the front steps and told the young man about the Trinity. He was amazed. Not convinced, but amazed. As he left, I encouraged him to drop in on the New Testament for a little light reading on a man called Jesus.

          Trinity. If you do a word search for trinity in the Bible, you will come up with blanks. There is no such word, no such combination of words. That’s okay. For instance, here’s another word not found in the Bible: Bible! The fact that they are not found in the Bible doesn’t make either word any less useful or invalid. Trinity is a concept or doctrine that became part of church dogma in the fourth century, though the use of its three parts is present in Scripture and was being used as early as 110 A.D. by Ignatius of Antioch. A lot of theories bounced around those first several hundred years, as the Church Fathers struggled to deal with competing concepts over the bible’s meanings. Sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it? We are still doing that today.

          Trinity is one of the Bible’s great mysteries. Put simply, it means God in three persons. Many images have been used to explain it. Here is one:

                             

I’m sure that clears it up nicely for you. The Father is not the Son is not the Holy Spirit is not the Father, and the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. Makes perfect sense, right? Well, yes it does…providing you are God.

          Cut open an apple. What do you see? Skin, fruit and seeds. Three parts that go together to make the whole. Well, that’s true of virtually any fruit or vegetable, for that matter. Even a human is composed in his or her outer shell of skin, hair and nails.  But the Trinity is different. When we talk about apples and people, we are talking about the parts that go to make the whole. When we talk about the Trinity, we are talking about three completely independent persons that function alone, think alone, act alone and yet are not alone. Only God can do that.

          In the book of John, we are told that the Word was with God in the beginning, that the Word was God, that the Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us. In the opening chapter of the Bible, God says “let us make man in our image,” referring not to a one dimensional being, but rather a Trinitarian being. In Genesis 1: 2, the Spirit of God hovers over the face of the waters.

          In their book, Teaching the Faith, Gary Parrett and Steve Kang say this about the trinity: “All of the divine work—from creation to redemption to culmination-is accomplished by the triune God revealed to us in the Bible. Our worship, therefore, must be explicitly Trinitarian.”

          How do we come to God? Who is our intercessor? Who sits at God’s right hand? Who died for you and me? Jesus is our intercessor as we are told by Paul and Peter and the writer of Hebrews. And how do we find Jesus? How do we come to Jesus to begin with? We come, we find, we pray, because we have been drawn and we have been coached and because we have been inhabited by the Holy Spirt! It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we can abide in Jesus and him in us and it is down these blessed avenues that we can come to God. It takes three!

          These days, church leaders spend a lot of time talking about community. The church is community. The church comes together to worship our Lord, God in three persons. When we look at God in his three persons, we again see community. There is the sovereignty and power and unadulterated love of the Father. There is the grace of Son, fully human, fully divine, he who intercedes to the Father for us whom he loves, and there is the abiding comfort and fellowship of the Holy Spirit, guiding us to a more rich existence through life in the Trinity, the community of God himself. He…they is/are unified and diverse simultaneously. Such is the job of the church.          

          The understanding of the Trinity, the quantifying of it, may be out of our grasp, for we are only humans and this concept is Godly. But such is the nature of God. There are indeed high mysteries which in the end may not be grasped, but should be accepted.

          The apostle Paul understood God as triune. Listen to his benediction in the book of 2nd Corinthians, written to a church in trouble looking to be re-united, to whom Paul’s final greeting rings true for all ages: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”