Genesis 21:8-21
The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.
But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”
So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt.
I spent this past week in Athens at the North Georgia Annual Conference. The week was a roller coaster for me of ups and downs emotionally and spiritually. There are always some very enjoyable parts of the annual meeting of clergy and lay delegates from every church and ministry in the conference, like seeing the people who are to be ordained at the evening worship service on the first day of the conference. Last week got off to a particularly good start with the opening worship service on Tuesday afternoon. It was a memorial service in which we remembered the clergy and clergy spouses who have died since the last time we gathered for conferencing. The preacher for that service was our own district superintendent, the Rev. Jim Cantrell. He challenged us to remember why we were gathered there: to celebrate and give thanks for the ministry we have been able to do in the name of Jesus in the past year and to look forward to what is to come. He said, “I hope we are not here to pat ourselves on our Methodist backs for all the good we’ve done; I hope we are here to hear the call of Christ to continue to be in ministry in our communities in every way that we can.”
It was a really good way to set the tone for the conference: looking to the future and having great faith and hope for what God is calling us to do together that is new and exciting. I was reminded of St. Paul and the possibilities that we face for ministry in our community, and I was excited and invigorated for the work of the year ahead. We have a diversity of people, situations, and needs in this community, and I continue to pinch myself when I wake up to prepare to come here for worship and prayer. What an incredible opportunity we have here to bridge gaps that we human beings have created among and between ourselves based on how we are different and how those differences make us uncomfortable! What welcome we offer here to those who aren’t necessarily like us in every way! That is a gift that not every Christian congregation can claim. Our commitment to inclusiveness and the embracing of diversity are things of which I am very proud when I think of all the reasons I am blessed to be the pastor of this real-life congregation.
And then I attended the ordination service at Annual Conference last Tuesday night. The preacher for the night was a retired United Methodist elder who spent many years as president of a seminary in Kentucky. He has written lots of books and is known to be theologically pretty conservative. Not considering myself to fall into that category, I went to the service with as much of an open mind as I could muster, hoping he’d have some things to say that would encourage me to look upon him as a brother and not as an enemy. You see, I am aware of the great danger we are in as we continue to draw lines in the sand from both sides marking where the correct theology stands and the incorrect continues to be misguided. And most of what he preached was interesting and not offensive to me; I thought I was safe in getting away with listening to his sermon without feeling alienated from him and his pronouncements about what the Christian faith should be. But toward the end I was saddened to hear him say to the ordinands to be careful of theology and practices of ministry that would lead them away from the heart of the Christian faith and the true call of Jesus. “Ministers who are concerned with diversity and inclusiveness are being led away from the true meaning of the gospel,” I heard him say. I was immediately sad and angry at the same time. How did he and I come from the same church, the same polity, the same theological traditions? How do we claim to have relationship with the same God and the same Jesus Christ and the same Holy Spirit? I could hardly stand to listen to it; had I not had friends who were being ordained, I might not have stayed for the rest of the service.
I thought about his words all week: we shouldn’t be concerned with fostering diversity or inclusiveness, and we shouldn’t even be friendly toward other religions that steer us away from the true heart and ministry of God. I thought about how differently I consider the practice of hospitality toward people of other faiths, people who are different than I, people who are otherwise excluded from many parts of the life of faith in the church. I realized that I wished that this preacher had never opened his mouth and spread that kind of thinking to the thousand or more people who were gathered in that room. What better faith and theology I have! What poor interpretation of the Word of God he has! I am a part of the real church, and the church he proclaims is some kind of an imposter. Surely there is no gray area here; only black and white.
And then I attended the breakfast meeting of the Methodist Federation for Social Action where I heard a young woman speak about her experience in advocacy for Palestinians in the midst of the war and strife of the Middle East, particularly those living in the West Bank. Beth Corrie’s cousin, Rachel, was killed in 2003 while standing in front of the home of a Palestinian in the West Bank, challenging a bulldozer meant to bring the house down. After several retreats, the bulldozer seemed to back off before it took one last charge toward the house and ran over Rachel Corrie twice in its path to demolishing the Palestinian home. Beth spoke about the difference between being anti-Israel and being sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians losing their homes in the occupation of the West Bank by Israel. It is possible, she said, to fight for the rights of Palestinians and to have respect for the story of the people of Israel. Has God ultimately shown favor for one people over another?
For generations we have read this passage for today as the story of the singling out of Isaac to be the continuing patriarch of the people of God after Abraham. Taking care of the struggle between his 2 sons, Abraham is convinced to send the troublemaker, Ishmael, away with his mother—possibly to die alone in the wilderness, away from the place where they had made a home for themselves and their family. And for what cause? Because Ishmael dared to have a relationship with his half-brother Isaac. I know that sibling relationships are not all happy days and flowers, but we learn important life lessons through struggling with and growing with our siblings. We learn how to approach difference, how to hear the story of someone who is living a different life from our own, how to live with someone whom you don’t love all the time, and how to make a life that is worth something together with another who may not be worth very much to you from time to time.
Two days after the ordination service, I sat in the business session in which the conference was to be addressed briefly by the new dean of the Candler School of Theology, Dr. Jan Love. Always excited to hear her speak, I was looking forward to seeing her. I looked down the row from where I sat and saw her one row in front of me sitting with none other than the preacher from the ordination service who had made me so angry, whom I had decided was not even worthy of being called by the same name of Christ by which I call myself. They were chatting and laughing together, looking as if they were long lost friends. Now, I’m not naive: I know there is not much love lost between the two schools they represent and probably, therefore, between themselves. But could they come together in the spirit of Christian conference and conversation to see each other as rooted in the same God, the same Mercy, the same Steadfast Love, and the same Forgiveness? Could the living God and the compassionate Christ actually have sent the Holy Spirit into the world to bind us together when we want to pull each other apart?
Friends, I chose this passage from the lectionary today so that it could serve as a reminder to us that God is a bigger God than we can name, imagine, describe, or even fight over. The love of God who sent Jesus to us sends us each to each other so that we can learn from each other lessons of grace, forgiveness, diversity (even when we don’t see its value!), inclusiveness (even when we preach against it), and mercy. The God of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, the sons of Paran, and Jacob…the God of us here at St. Paul is not a God we contain here or control here. Our God does not even agree with us all the time. But our God does love us all the time, and not just us but all people—even the ones who turn against God in word or in deed, and we have all found ourselves among those numbers at one time or another in our lives.
I believe it is time to stop calling each other names and pointing our fingers in one another’s faces; I believe it is time to let our children play and struggle together, not to separate them into homogenous groups as we have done ourselves as we grow into adulthood. I believe it is time to recognize that as much as we preach and teach the love of God here, it does not only exist here. It exists in the worshiping community to which my brother from the other seminary belongs; it exists in the congregations whose theological beliefs seem to be completely opposite and maybe even competing with our own. I believe that God has made a great nation out of Ishmael—a nation that rivals only every other nation created in the eyes and heart of God on the earth. We are brothers and sisters, friends, not bosses and servants.
How do we live this out? How do I go to my brother who preaches what is in my opinion such offensive Christian theology and make peace with his spirit so that we can begin to see the Spirit of God in one another? How do we join hands with other congregations in our community or extended community whose theological beliefs and practices are so different from our own that we can hardly recognize the prayers they pray as directed at the God to whom we pray?
How can we do it? How can we quit patting ourselves on our Methodist backs? On our theologically-open backs? On our open-to-diversity-and-inclusiveness-as-long-as-it-comes-to-us-first backs? On our mission-oriented- but-not-as-active-as-we-could-be backs? On our we’re-open-to-them-but-they’re-not-open-to-us backs?
How are we going to do it, friends? How are we going to do it?
Monday, June 23, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Good Neighbor Day
Luke 10: 25-37
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
I don’t consider myself to be a vagabond, but I have found myself on more than one occasion walking on the road due to some poor circumstance that has left me without the usual mode of transportation. Once when I was about 15, my dad and I were driving home from Athens to Madison on 441. If you don’t know, 441 South between Athens and Madison is dark at night—I mean, dark. There aren’t many street lights along the way, and there are very few homes and businesses to light up the side of the road other than the occasional gas station combined with a bait and tackle or Subway. Now, my dad and I are not known for our commitment to observing the gas gauge in the car; we are both known to be completely surprised when we run out of gas. So, here we are driving along when the car starts to shake and rattle a bit. “What is happening?” we both wondered. Only when the car started to sputter and slow down did we look at the gas gauge. It was empty. I mean, empty empty. There was nothing left. The car was stopped on the side of the road home, in the darkness, with no one else in sight. When deciding what to do, my dad faced quagmire: do I take my daughter with me along the dark road with no sidewalk where anything or anyone could encounter us and mean to do us both harm; or he could leave my alone in the car where anyone or anything could break in and mean to do me harm while he was walking a couple miles to the next gas station.
So, as we walked along together along the dark road with no sidewalk and all manner of things possibly hiding in the dark to either help us or do us harm, no one drove by on the road. It was like we were the only people who existed. Finally, a car came by and whizzed past. Then another one passed and a few more which and prompted me to say to my dad, “Why does no one stop to help us?”
“Well,” said my dad, “we could be anyone. For all they know, we could have a gun and mean to hurt anyone who will stop to find out if we need help. We could potentially be as dangerous to them as they could be to us.” A culture of fear has brought us to the place where we are afraid to help people we don’t already know. So we kept walking a little farther and another car passed. This one turned around in the road and came back toward us. I guess my dad was a little frightened; I was relieved. The driver rolled down his window and asked if we needed a ride. My dad said we were just heading to the BP a little farther down the road; I said, “Yes, thank you!” Perhaps a little over anxious, I headed for the car. My dad instructed me to get in the back seat and he’d get in the front. I struck up a conversation with the man in the car who told us he was an Episcopal priest who was on his way south from Athens. He knew the road and knew what a long walk it would be to the gas station, so he wanted to help. He had seen the car with its hazard lights blinking back behind where we had been walking and assumed we might be in search of fuel. When we got to the station, we got a gas can, filled it up, and headed back for the car.
It was still there when we returned. We put the gas in, thanked the priest for the ride, and headed home. We might have been ok if that man had not come along; but it was nice to know there are still people in the world who will help when you need help—stranger or not.
Just a few weeks ago, I was walking home from the Marta station near our house. It’s only about a mile’s walk, and normally I have no trouble walking it. This particular day, as soon as I stepped out of the station, I heard it in the distance: the storm siren. Figuring as I looked at the sky that it might be a tornado siren, I said a little prayer for safety and a swift walk home and started on my way. I was hoping all the way down the street across from the station that this was for a watch, not a warning. As I continued into the neighborhood, I saw people rushing toward their houses from their yards and a woman standing on her front porch. She called to me: “You know that’s a tornado siren, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just live a couple of streets over; it’s not a long walk.”
She skipped one beat then said, “Would you like a ride? I don’t think you should be walking with the siren going like that.” Thoughts of that night on 441 South from Athens flashed through my mind and I wondered if she wondered if I were safe to ride in her car. Would I pull a gun on her? Would I try to steal her car? She stepped inside to get her keys and driver’s license and came right back out and said, “Get in.” So, she drove me the 2 minutes’ drive from her house to mine. I thanked her as I got out of the car, and she asked, “Do you have any place you can go in your house to get away from the storm?” I told her I had a basement, and so she seemed satisfied that I’d be safe and said her goodbyes. I thanked her again and walked into the house thinking about the risk she took on me and how grateful I was that she did.
The lawyer asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. He had some kind of understanding that what we do in this life has an effect on the next and wanted to be sure that he was doing everything he could to secure his place of comfort and happiness there. Jesus, the crafty arguer that he was, turned the question on him: how do you think you should do it? How do you think this life is linked with the next one? And the man’s answer was to love God and love neighbors. That seemed to be the basic gist of how Jesus would have answered, so he says, “Yep, that’s it.”
But that wasn’t it for the lawyer. He wasn’t satisfied with Jesus’ answer so he asked, “Who is the neighbor that I’m supposed to love?” And, like any good preacher, Jesus told a story to make his point. He told of a man who fell into dark and dire circumstances along the road. And the point of his story was that this man’s neighbor was not anyone he had thought of as a neighbor but someone who he just plain didn’t think of at all. As you probably have heard by now, Samaritans and Jews were not neighbors but enemies. Instead of loving one another, they ignored and sometimes hated one another. And, although we often tend to focus on how the Jews felt about the Samaritans, the feeling was mutual. The Samaritan in the parable Jesus told took a risk helping the Jew and the Jew took a risk receiving help from the Samaritan—even in his greatest hour of need.
So, there they were: 2 people who naturally didn’t give a flying fig about one another treating each other as if they were the 2 most important people in the world to each other.
When you think about your neighbors today, don’t think of the people you already know and love. Think of the people whom you may be inclined to ignore or dislike or just look over. Is there a part of noticing their needs and responding in your journey to coming into communion with God? What if they noticed and responded to your needs; would you accept their attention and possibly help? When Jesus asks who your neighbor is, he doesn’t just hope you’ll name the people who live in the homes around yours. The Spirit of God hopes that you will recognize the Spirit of God in others, especially those in whom you may not expect to encounter it.
So, how can we be as gracious and merciful and open to our neighbors as the Samaritan was to the Jew in Jesus’ story? First we have to take notice of the people God has placed in our path. Are there people we tend to overlook? Perhaps we should notice the people in our neighborhood struggling to keep their home and keep them in functioning, working order. Are there people we are prone to dislike? Maybe we need to look into their eyes and their situations in life and recognize their places of need and offer a hand. Are there people who are showing up on our doorstep looking for reasons why God makes a difference in life? We probably ought to be out there living lives that show them what a difference the love and forgiveness of God makes to us and drawing them into that difference in their own lives and in the life of St. Paul. Are there people out there who are not finding love and grace anywhere they look? They should be able to find that in every part of life here. Are there neighbors who need a helping hand, a place to belong, a place where mercy and forgiveness are real and practiced as much as they are preached? Then we need to be good neighbors who live what we believe in such a way that we show the world what God has to offer here.
This past week in Bible school, our children, youth, and adults learned about serving God through serving family, friends, neighbors, community, and Jesus. Last Sunday Jim Cantrell asked us what kind of church we wanted to be. Don’t we want to be a church that people are proud to claim as a good neighbor in Grant Park, in the city of Atlanta, in this community where we have been given a life worth living together? Aren’t we made and called to be the church who serves family, friends, neighbors, community, and Jesus? Don’t we want our neighbors to live it with us, no matter who they are or how they come to us? Shall we be, as a community of faith, a good neighbor in the “Jesus” sense of the word?
It is simple: “And who is my neighbor—the one who showed mercy. Go and do likewise.”
Amen.
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
I don’t consider myself to be a vagabond, but I have found myself on more than one occasion walking on the road due to some poor circumstance that has left me without the usual mode of transportation. Once when I was about 15, my dad and I were driving home from Athens to Madison on 441. If you don’t know, 441 South between Athens and Madison is dark at night—I mean, dark. There aren’t many street lights along the way, and there are very few homes and businesses to light up the side of the road other than the occasional gas station combined with a bait and tackle or Subway. Now, my dad and I are not known for our commitment to observing the gas gauge in the car; we are both known to be completely surprised when we run out of gas. So, here we are driving along when the car starts to shake and rattle a bit. “What is happening?” we both wondered. Only when the car started to sputter and slow down did we look at the gas gauge. It was empty. I mean, empty empty. There was nothing left. The car was stopped on the side of the road home, in the darkness, with no one else in sight. When deciding what to do, my dad faced quagmire: do I take my daughter with me along the dark road with no sidewalk where anything or anyone could encounter us and mean to do us both harm; or he could leave my alone in the car where anyone or anything could break in and mean to do me harm while he was walking a couple miles to the next gas station.
So, as we walked along together along the dark road with no sidewalk and all manner of things possibly hiding in the dark to either help us or do us harm, no one drove by on the road. It was like we were the only people who existed. Finally, a car came by and whizzed past. Then another one passed and a few more which and prompted me to say to my dad, “Why does no one stop to help us?”
“Well,” said my dad, “we could be anyone. For all they know, we could have a gun and mean to hurt anyone who will stop to find out if we need help. We could potentially be as dangerous to them as they could be to us.” A culture of fear has brought us to the place where we are afraid to help people we don’t already know. So we kept walking a little farther and another car passed. This one turned around in the road and came back toward us. I guess my dad was a little frightened; I was relieved. The driver rolled down his window and asked if we needed a ride. My dad said we were just heading to the BP a little farther down the road; I said, “Yes, thank you!” Perhaps a little over anxious, I headed for the car. My dad instructed me to get in the back seat and he’d get in the front. I struck up a conversation with the man in the car who told us he was an Episcopal priest who was on his way south from Athens. He knew the road and knew what a long walk it would be to the gas station, so he wanted to help. He had seen the car with its hazard lights blinking back behind where we had been walking and assumed we might be in search of fuel. When we got to the station, we got a gas can, filled it up, and headed back for the car.
It was still there when we returned. We put the gas in, thanked the priest for the ride, and headed home. We might have been ok if that man had not come along; but it was nice to know there are still people in the world who will help when you need help—stranger or not.
Just a few weeks ago, I was walking home from the Marta station near our house. It’s only about a mile’s walk, and normally I have no trouble walking it. This particular day, as soon as I stepped out of the station, I heard it in the distance: the storm siren. Figuring as I looked at the sky that it might be a tornado siren, I said a little prayer for safety and a swift walk home and started on my way. I was hoping all the way down the street across from the station that this was for a watch, not a warning. As I continued into the neighborhood, I saw people rushing toward their houses from their yards and a woman standing on her front porch. She called to me: “You know that’s a tornado siren, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just live a couple of streets over; it’s not a long walk.”
She skipped one beat then said, “Would you like a ride? I don’t think you should be walking with the siren going like that.” Thoughts of that night on 441 South from Athens flashed through my mind and I wondered if she wondered if I were safe to ride in her car. Would I pull a gun on her? Would I try to steal her car? She stepped inside to get her keys and driver’s license and came right back out and said, “Get in.” So, she drove me the 2 minutes’ drive from her house to mine. I thanked her as I got out of the car, and she asked, “Do you have any place you can go in your house to get away from the storm?” I told her I had a basement, and so she seemed satisfied that I’d be safe and said her goodbyes. I thanked her again and walked into the house thinking about the risk she took on me and how grateful I was that she did.
The lawyer asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life. He had some kind of understanding that what we do in this life has an effect on the next and wanted to be sure that he was doing everything he could to secure his place of comfort and happiness there. Jesus, the crafty arguer that he was, turned the question on him: how do you think you should do it? How do you think this life is linked with the next one? And the man’s answer was to love God and love neighbors. That seemed to be the basic gist of how Jesus would have answered, so he says, “Yep, that’s it.”
But that wasn’t it for the lawyer. He wasn’t satisfied with Jesus’ answer so he asked, “Who is the neighbor that I’m supposed to love?” And, like any good preacher, Jesus told a story to make his point. He told of a man who fell into dark and dire circumstances along the road. And the point of his story was that this man’s neighbor was not anyone he had thought of as a neighbor but someone who he just plain didn’t think of at all. As you probably have heard by now, Samaritans and Jews were not neighbors but enemies. Instead of loving one another, they ignored and sometimes hated one another. And, although we often tend to focus on how the Jews felt about the Samaritans, the feeling was mutual. The Samaritan in the parable Jesus told took a risk helping the Jew and the Jew took a risk receiving help from the Samaritan—even in his greatest hour of need.
So, there they were: 2 people who naturally didn’t give a flying fig about one another treating each other as if they were the 2 most important people in the world to each other.
When you think about your neighbors today, don’t think of the people you already know and love. Think of the people whom you may be inclined to ignore or dislike or just look over. Is there a part of noticing their needs and responding in your journey to coming into communion with God? What if they noticed and responded to your needs; would you accept their attention and possibly help? When Jesus asks who your neighbor is, he doesn’t just hope you’ll name the people who live in the homes around yours. The Spirit of God hopes that you will recognize the Spirit of God in others, especially those in whom you may not expect to encounter it.
So, how can we be as gracious and merciful and open to our neighbors as the Samaritan was to the Jew in Jesus’ story? First we have to take notice of the people God has placed in our path. Are there people we tend to overlook? Perhaps we should notice the people in our neighborhood struggling to keep their home and keep them in functioning, working order. Are there people we are prone to dislike? Maybe we need to look into their eyes and their situations in life and recognize their places of need and offer a hand. Are there people who are showing up on our doorstep looking for reasons why God makes a difference in life? We probably ought to be out there living lives that show them what a difference the love and forgiveness of God makes to us and drawing them into that difference in their own lives and in the life of St. Paul. Are there people out there who are not finding love and grace anywhere they look? They should be able to find that in every part of life here. Are there neighbors who need a helping hand, a place to belong, a place where mercy and forgiveness are real and practiced as much as they are preached? Then we need to be good neighbors who live what we believe in such a way that we show the world what God has to offer here.
This past week in Bible school, our children, youth, and adults learned about serving God through serving family, friends, neighbors, community, and Jesus. Last Sunday Jim Cantrell asked us what kind of church we wanted to be. Don’t we want to be a church that people are proud to claim as a good neighbor in Grant Park, in the city of Atlanta, in this community where we have been given a life worth living together? Aren’t we made and called to be the church who serves family, friends, neighbors, community, and Jesus? Don’t we want our neighbors to live it with us, no matter who they are or how they come to us? Shall we be, as a community of faith, a good neighbor in the “Jesus” sense of the word?
It is simple: “And who is my neighbor—the one who showed mercy. Go and do likewise.”
Amen.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Pentecost +3
Romans 1: 16-17, 3:22b-31
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. 27Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
Recently I attended a wedding of a friend of mine who is a fellow “PK.” In case you aren’t familiar with clergy lingo, the initials “PK” stand for the term “preacher’s kid.” In fact both my friend the groom and the bride were PKs, so you might imagine that the room was filled with quite a few preachers. In fact, the table at which Dave and I sat during the reception hosted 6 clergy people at any given time while we were each up and down speaking to people all over the room as we crazy preacher-types are wont to do. And, since our Annual Conference is only a few weeks away, people were talking about it and what might happen there. Someone mentioned General Conference, too, and a few of the things that happened there. (This makes other single-vocation-heavy parties sound really exciting, doesn’t it?) A colleague and I got into a discussion about the fact that our denomination passed a resolution at General Conference in Texas in April to change our mandatory retirement age of clergy from 70 to 72 years of age. This, apparently, brings into question people who may be turning 70 between now and when the new Book of Discipline and its rules and guidelines take effect in January of 2009. What about people who turn 70 between July 1 and December 31 of this year? Are those people and those months included in our “old” rule that clergy retire at age 70, or could those people be grandfathered in and get the chance to have active clergy status for another 2 years?
If you’re still awake and paying attention, bless you. Your reaction to this conversation may be much like mine. I looked my friend in the eye as she explained this “controversy” to me and said, “Why on earth do we continue to fight outright over issues like this and scratch each other’s eyes out under the table on others that are for more important to the future and integrity of the ministry of the Church?”
Paul, being a man of extensive inner conflict and a tendency to appear to change his mind or at least think differently about issues from one letter and context to another, is a model for us in the church for how to work at resolving conflict. Think about the conflict you experience in your life: within your family, among your friends, in your workplace, and sometimes (though we are unlikely to admit it) in the church. What is it that is usually at stake?
Many times when we find ourselves in the midst of an argument or struggle, whether on a personal level or a corporate one, we find that our own interpretation of the world and the way it is supposed to work is what is ultimately at stake. In Paul’s case, what was at stake for him was his ministry. His critics were making claims that he was leading people away from a true understanding of faith, and their understanding had to do with practicing the law of Moses. In order to be a follower of Jesus, who was himself Jewish, one had to attempt to become Jewish in as many senses of the word as possible. But Paul, who was himself a Jew, was not interested in forcing the particularities of what set his people apart on the rest of the world. It was what was in their hearts that mattered.
Did one believe that God was the one God of the whole universe as the Hebrews had proclaimed long ago as recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4, the shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one,”? Did one know for certain that Jesus was the son of the one God who was sent to this world to atone for our sin? Did one have faith that God would remake all of us into the righteousness for which we were intended, the image of the holy and righteous self of God? If you could positively answer these questions, Paul was glad to receive you into the faith; so what was the problem with his practice of acceptance to the others who were out there preaching the faith?
They stood to loose something.
The fight between Paul and his critics was over how to act like true followers of the Way. Which was the most correct way: was one to believe first and then act based on that belief, or was one to practice the law of God as people had been handing it down generation after generation in order to achieve true faith and belief? Was the relationship one we earned or one we received? To believe it was one we earned was to devote oneself to the law and the practice of religion. To believe it was one we received was to devote oneself to the teachings of Paul and the other evangelists who taught the way of Christ: love, acceptance, hospitality, grace. But did this kind of life exist only free from the law of Moses? Not at all. And did the law assume that the ways of Christ had to be legislated in order to be lived out by the people of faith? No. Did the Hebrews stand to lose their identity in the movement of Christ among the people? Did the Gentiles stand to lose their independence and status and face becoming second-class Jewish converts?
Paul gives us a clue to as to the real conflict going on among the newly converted followers of Christ, no matter their background. What they are having the most trouble giving up is the right to be right—about each other, and all the time. As I read Paul, it is less about what they are doing wrong and more about the fact that they accuse, try, and convict one another from their own places of sin and misdeed. Do we continue to do that to each other today?
I fear that we spend far more time examining one another’s sins and misdeeds than our own, just as the people of the early church did generations ago. In the church we do it by trying to choose groups of people to exclude for one reason or another that we pick and choose, deciding to let the flaws in our own character and faith life go (we hope!) un-noticed and, therefore, in tact. One on one we do this by spending a lot of our energy pointing out the flaws in others and passing judgment on each other and each other’s right to a good life. That’s what it is ultimately is about: who will lose life? The good life? The life we have come to know? Compromise means someone looses; meeting in the middle means leaving the place where you are comfortable. And we come again to our old friend and challenger, Paul.
Paul left the life he knew, the traditions he lived, and met Christ on the road, in the middle…of no where, and it changed his life. He lost what he had before; and he gained a life he never imagined for himself. In the struggles of your life, what do you stand to lose? Paul encouraged both the Jews of his own heritage and the Gentiles he came to love to lose those things to which they held so tightly and gain faith in God and new life in Christ. If, in the struggles of your life you stand to lose something, what is it you stand to gain in its place?
Conflict is our way of life. We area really not that different from the earliest Christians. In our society, in our church, and in our private lives, we struggle between haves and have-nots; between one world view and another; between who has the correct interpretation of the Bible and who does not; between who calls God by the correct name and who does not; between who’s individual rights and privileges are the most valuable, between who has the right to life as they want it, and who does not. But in the life of faith, as followers of the Way of Christ, as children of God and companions of the Holy Spirit, we find the promise of God’s faithfulness to be true. In the mist of conflict, we find peace that passes understanding. In the midst of the loss of control, we find that we gain a remarkable and everlasting relationship with God.
And so let’s celebrate that today as we gather around this table to re-member the body of Christ, to give thanks that our shortcomings do not tear us away from God and they don’t have to tear us away from one another. The grace of Christ offers us new life, all of us--relief from our struggles, the chance to forgive ourselves and one another, and peace that passes all understanding. No matter what we lose in the fight in the mean time, we can never gain any reward better than that.
Amen.
16For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
For there is no distinction, 23since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. 27Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
Recently I attended a wedding of a friend of mine who is a fellow “PK.” In case you aren’t familiar with clergy lingo, the initials “PK” stand for the term “preacher’s kid.” In fact both my friend the groom and the bride were PKs, so you might imagine that the room was filled with quite a few preachers. In fact, the table at which Dave and I sat during the reception hosted 6 clergy people at any given time while we were each up and down speaking to people all over the room as we crazy preacher-types are wont to do. And, since our Annual Conference is only a few weeks away, people were talking about it and what might happen there. Someone mentioned General Conference, too, and a few of the things that happened there. (This makes other single-vocation-heavy parties sound really exciting, doesn’t it?) A colleague and I got into a discussion about the fact that our denomination passed a resolution at General Conference in Texas in April to change our mandatory retirement age of clergy from 70 to 72 years of age. This, apparently, brings into question people who may be turning 70 between now and when the new Book of Discipline and its rules and guidelines take effect in January of 2009. What about people who turn 70 between July 1 and December 31 of this year? Are those people and those months included in our “old” rule that clergy retire at age 70, or could those people be grandfathered in and get the chance to have active clergy status for another 2 years?
If you’re still awake and paying attention, bless you. Your reaction to this conversation may be much like mine. I looked my friend in the eye as she explained this “controversy” to me and said, “Why on earth do we continue to fight outright over issues like this and scratch each other’s eyes out under the table on others that are for more important to the future and integrity of the ministry of the Church?”
Paul, being a man of extensive inner conflict and a tendency to appear to change his mind or at least think differently about issues from one letter and context to another, is a model for us in the church for how to work at resolving conflict. Think about the conflict you experience in your life: within your family, among your friends, in your workplace, and sometimes (though we are unlikely to admit it) in the church. What is it that is usually at stake?
Many times when we find ourselves in the midst of an argument or struggle, whether on a personal level or a corporate one, we find that our own interpretation of the world and the way it is supposed to work is what is ultimately at stake. In Paul’s case, what was at stake for him was his ministry. His critics were making claims that he was leading people away from a true understanding of faith, and their understanding had to do with practicing the law of Moses. In order to be a follower of Jesus, who was himself Jewish, one had to attempt to become Jewish in as many senses of the word as possible. But Paul, who was himself a Jew, was not interested in forcing the particularities of what set his people apart on the rest of the world. It was what was in their hearts that mattered.
Did one believe that God was the one God of the whole universe as the Hebrews had proclaimed long ago as recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4, the shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one,”? Did one know for certain that Jesus was the son of the one God who was sent to this world to atone for our sin? Did one have faith that God would remake all of us into the righteousness for which we were intended, the image of the holy and righteous self of God? If you could positively answer these questions, Paul was glad to receive you into the faith; so what was the problem with his practice of acceptance to the others who were out there preaching the faith?
They stood to loose something.
The fight between Paul and his critics was over how to act like true followers of the Way. Which was the most correct way: was one to believe first and then act based on that belief, or was one to practice the law of God as people had been handing it down generation after generation in order to achieve true faith and belief? Was the relationship one we earned or one we received? To believe it was one we earned was to devote oneself to the law and the practice of religion. To believe it was one we received was to devote oneself to the teachings of Paul and the other evangelists who taught the way of Christ: love, acceptance, hospitality, grace. But did this kind of life exist only free from the law of Moses? Not at all. And did the law assume that the ways of Christ had to be legislated in order to be lived out by the people of faith? No. Did the Hebrews stand to lose their identity in the movement of Christ among the people? Did the Gentiles stand to lose their independence and status and face becoming second-class Jewish converts?
Paul gives us a clue to as to the real conflict going on among the newly converted followers of Christ, no matter their background. What they are having the most trouble giving up is the right to be right—about each other, and all the time. As I read Paul, it is less about what they are doing wrong and more about the fact that they accuse, try, and convict one another from their own places of sin and misdeed. Do we continue to do that to each other today?
I fear that we spend far more time examining one another’s sins and misdeeds than our own, just as the people of the early church did generations ago. In the church we do it by trying to choose groups of people to exclude for one reason or another that we pick and choose, deciding to let the flaws in our own character and faith life go (we hope!) un-noticed and, therefore, in tact. One on one we do this by spending a lot of our energy pointing out the flaws in others and passing judgment on each other and each other’s right to a good life. That’s what it is ultimately is about: who will lose life? The good life? The life we have come to know? Compromise means someone looses; meeting in the middle means leaving the place where you are comfortable. And we come again to our old friend and challenger, Paul.
Paul left the life he knew, the traditions he lived, and met Christ on the road, in the middle…of no where, and it changed his life. He lost what he had before; and he gained a life he never imagined for himself. In the struggles of your life, what do you stand to lose? Paul encouraged both the Jews of his own heritage and the Gentiles he came to love to lose those things to which they held so tightly and gain faith in God and new life in Christ. If, in the struggles of your life you stand to lose something, what is it you stand to gain in its place?
Conflict is our way of life. We area really not that different from the earliest Christians. In our society, in our church, and in our private lives, we struggle between haves and have-nots; between one world view and another; between who has the correct interpretation of the Bible and who does not; between who calls God by the correct name and who does not; between who’s individual rights and privileges are the most valuable, between who has the right to life as they want it, and who does not. But in the life of faith, as followers of the Way of Christ, as children of God and companions of the Holy Spirit, we find the promise of God’s faithfulness to be true. In the mist of conflict, we find peace that passes understanding. In the midst of the loss of control, we find that we gain a remarkable and everlasting relationship with God.
And so let’s celebrate that today as we gather around this table to re-member the body of Christ, to give thanks that our shortcomings do not tear us away from God and they don’t have to tear us away from one another. The grace of Christ offers us new life, all of us--relief from our struggles, the chance to forgive ourselves and one another, and peace that passes all understanding. No matter what we lose in the fight in the mean time, we can never gain any reward better than that.
Amen.
Trinity
Genesis 1:1 - 2:3
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
Preachers often choose a different passage when they know they are going to be speaking about the Trinity. Actually, who am I kidding? We rarely talk openly about the Trinity, except to say that we believe it. We are clear that we believe that God is 3 in 1—the one God in three “persons.” We believe in the God who creates us, the Son who redeems us, and the Spirit who sustains us. But when you start asking questions like what it all means, people start to squirm. So I figured—why not look at this from a different perspective. While we often read the Matthew 28 passage in which Jesus gives the disciples the Great Commission to make disciples everywhere, teaching and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, this passage from Genesis could offer us a fresh look at the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, one of the central tenets of our faith. So, here goes…
What I love about this passage is the creative force that you can almost feel blowing around and past you as you read it. God has been very busy creating—a process I believe God continues even unto our time, right now. By just the words of God’s mouth, everything that we could ever imagine, that has ever lived, that will ever be came into being. And if you try to imagine that in terms of human mouths and speech, you may be pretty limited by what you can imagine. I know, for example, some people who’ve been named “big mouth” in the course of their lives, but it would just about have to be the biggest mouth you could imagine and then some to be able to house vocal the power to make all things come into being, to enclose that kind of life force. And speaking of speaking life as we know it into existence, who was there to hear the Word and respond, and what most those ears have been like?
It kind of reminds me of the old brain teezer about a tree falling in a forest and the question about whether or not any sound is made if there is no one there to hear it. So when God spoke everything into existence, who was there to hear about it?
The answer is in the sixth day of this first creation story in Genesis. This is when we hear God saying that human kind is to be created in “our” image. It is in some more-than-one form that God exists and yet one image from which we are created. How does that work?
It is in the image of God that we were created for each other. God, then, created us in God’s image with the intention that within that image we would find ways to complement each other and work and live together. So in the one-ness of God, there is a plurality of being that makes this world and those who inhabit it at the same time from the same substance and being and with the variety of gifts and traits that make life and the world in which we live challenging and wonderful. It really was a good plan of God’s—not only to make trees make noise when they fall but also to make our ears so that we could receive and interpret the sound!
What this tells us about God, what the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity tells us about God, is that God exists in relationship. It’s not really that God has 3 different personalities from which to choose at any given time; and it’s not that God operates in different modes—sometimes the creator, sometimes the sustainer, but never the 2 or 3 shall meet. It’s not that God changes hats depending on the needs of the world at any given time. It’s that God contains all that we need, when we need it, and is who we need God to be and more all the time!
Think about the different ways you know God: you know God as the creator of all living things—we see that when we look at the sun and the rain and the beauty of the flowers and the wonder of how we are made. So God made us and everything around us in the natural world. And, since God gave us brains to invent all the un-natural gadgets we have come to need in life, God kinda made those, too: sometimes whether God has liked it or not. You know God as savior in the times when you have need a friend or comforting presence and nothing else in life has really filled that gap; or when you have been in real trouble and have felt the love and peace and strength of Christ giving you a way out of distress or help in your time of need. That’s where we get the old church phrase, “a very present help in time of need.” God has shown us in Jesus that not only does God give us life but God also saves us from destroying that life or being destroyed by it—sometimes even when we can’t see or recognize that it is God’s hand at work. You know God as a Spirit, the presence of God with you along the whole journey of life, the good times and the bad. You know that when a child is born or a relationship is healed that the presence of God is there with you to encourage and calm your own spirit and to encourage you to fully engage the life you have been given. Or how about when something terrible happens in the world and you don’t know how to cope, like when we experienced the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and we weren’t sure how the world would continue to go on, at least our world. And here we are almost 7 years later, perhaps struggling, but still going on. And I believe that there are some days when we as a church, we as families, we as friends, we as individuals rely fully on the Spirit of God to sustain us through another day because we have no idea how we will do that on our own. The very life we have been given by God, the very life that is rescued and saved over and over by God, the very life that we live for and sometimes only because of God—that is the way we know God.
And so why do we need this doctrine of faith that the church has handed down for generations? I believe it is because we so desperately need to know God that it is a help to us when we try and figure out who on earth or in heaven God is. It is healthy for us as people of faith to have questions: why did God send Jesus? What is the Holy Spirit supposed to do in our lives? Did God create everything and then send it off into space or is it more personal than that? As we ponder these things in our hearts, we can begin to know God more, to love God more, and to seek God more deeply and sincerely. And what meaning does it all have for us today? We live in a time when a lot of things are known—like the molecular structure of a lot of things we never thought possible a generation ago, and the ways to fight diseases that in the past took the lives and livelihood of countless people. But there are still a lot of things we don’t know—like why some people survive cancer and others don’t, or why we continue to say with our minds that things like racism and classism are wrong but we still do things in our actions that may tell the world we think that the status quo of separate and who-cares-if-its-equal is still ok, or what we are supposed to be doing with our lives (can I get an “Amen!” from a recent or soon-to-be graduate in the house?)…or, if a tree falls in a forest an no one is there to hear it, will it make a sound…or who God was talking to in the creation story in Genesis when God said that humanity was to be made in “our” image.
A doctrine that says we believe where we have not seen, we know where we have not known, we try to understand where we can not fully understand—I believe that on most days, that truly is the Word of God. And for all the others when we are not so sure, we go back to God who made us, who saves us, and who goes with us always and realize that there is no area of life of which God is not a part. And that is some really good news.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
Preachers often choose a different passage when they know they are going to be speaking about the Trinity. Actually, who am I kidding? We rarely talk openly about the Trinity, except to say that we believe it. We are clear that we believe that God is 3 in 1—the one God in three “persons.” We believe in the God who creates us, the Son who redeems us, and the Spirit who sustains us. But when you start asking questions like what it all means, people start to squirm. So I figured—why not look at this from a different perspective. While we often read the Matthew 28 passage in which Jesus gives the disciples the Great Commission to make disciples everywhere, teaching and baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, this passage from Genesis could offer us a fresh look at the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, one of the central tenets of our faith. So, here goes…
What I love about this passage is the creative force that you can almost feel blowing around and past you as you read it. God has been very busy creating—a process I believe God continues even unto our time, right now. By just the words of God’s mouth, everything that we could ever imagine, that has ever lived, that will ever be came into being. And if you try to imagine that in terms of human mouths and speech, you may be pretty limited by what you can imagine. I know, for example, some people who’ve been named “big mouth” in the course of their lives, but it would just about have to be the biggest mouth you could imagine and then some to be able to house vocal the power to make all things come into being, to enclose that kind of life force. And speaking of speaking life as we know it into existence, who was there to hear the Word and respond, and what most those ears have been like?
It kind of reminds me of the old brain teezer about a tree falling in a forest and the question about whether or not any sound is made if there is no one there to hear it. So when God spoke everything into existence, who was there to hear about it?
The answer is in the sixth day of this first creation story in Genesis. This is when we hear God saying that human kind is to be created in “our” image. It is in some more-than-one form that God exists and yet one image from which we are created. How does that work?
It is in the image of God that we were created for each other. God, then, created us in God’s image with the intention that within that image we would find ways to complement each other and work and live together. So in the one-ness of God, there is a plurality of being that makes this world and those who inhabit it at the same time from the same substance and being and with the variety of gifts and traits that make life and the world in which we live challenging and wonderful. It really was a good plan of God’s—not only to make trees make noise when they fall but also to make our ears so that we could receive and interpret the sound!
What this tells us about God, what the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity tells us about God, is that God exists in relationship. It’s not really that God has 3 different personalities from which to choose at any given time; and it’s not that God operates in different modes—sometimes the creator, sometimes the sustainer, but never the 2 or 3 shall meet. It’s not that God changes hats depending on the needs of the world at any given time. It’s that God contains all that we need, when we need it, and is who we need God to be and more all the time!
Think about the different ways you know God: you know God as the creator of all living things—we see that when we look at the sun and the rain and the beauty of the flowers and the wonder of how we are made. So God made us and everything around us in the natural world. And, since God gave us brains to invent all the un-natural gadgets we have come to need in life, God kinda made those, too: sometimes whether God has liked it or not. You know God as savior in the times when you have need a friend or comforting presence and nothing else in life has really filled that gap; or when you have been in real trouble and have felt the love and peace and strength of Christ giving you a way out of distress or help in your time of need. That’s where we get the old church phrase, “a very present help in time of need.” God has shown us in Jesus that not only does God give us life but God also saves us from destroying that life or being destroyed by it—sometimes even when we can’t see or recognize that it is God’s hand at work. You know God as a Spirit, the presence of God with you along the whole journey of life, the good times and the bad. You know that when a child is born or a relationship is healed that the presence of God is there with you to encourage and calm your own spirit and to encourage you to fully engage the life you have been given. Or how about when something terrible happens in the world and you don’t know how to cope, like when we experienced the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and we weren’t sure how the world would continue to go on, at least our world. And here we are almost 7 years later, perhaps struggling, but still going on. And I believe that there are some days when we as a church, we as families, we as friends, we as individuals rely fully on the Spirit of God to sustain us through another day because we have no idea how we will do that on our own. The very life we have been given by God, the very life that is rescued and saved over and over by God, the very life that we live for and sometimes only because of God—that is the way we know God.
And so why do we need this doctrine of faith that the church has handed down for generations? I believe it is because we so desperately need to know God that it is a help to us when we try and figure out who on earth or in heaven God is. It is healthy for us as people of faith to have questions: why did God send Jesus? What is the Holy Spirit supposed to do in our lives? Did God create everything and then send it off into space or is it more personal than that? As we ponder these things in our hearts, we can begin to know God more, to love God more, and to seek God more deeply and sincerely. And what meaning does it all have for us today? We live in a time when a lot of things are known—like the molecular structure of a lot of things we never thought possible a generation ago, and the ways to fight diseases that in the past took the lives and livelihood of countless people. But there are still a lot of things we don’t know—like why some people survive cancer and others don’t, or why we continue to say with our minds that things like racism and classism are wrong but we still do things in our actions that may tell the world we think that the status quo of separate and who-cares-if-its-equal is still ok, or what we are supposed to be doing with our lives (can I get an “Amen!” from a recent or soon-to-be graduate in the house?)…or, if a tree falls in a forest an no one is there to hear it, will it make a sound…or who God was talking to in the creation story in Genesis when God said that humanity was to be made in “our” image.
A doctrine that says we believe where we have not seen, we know where we have not known, we try to understand where we can not fully understand—I believe that on most days, that truly is the Word of God. And for all the others when we are not so sure, we go back to God who made us, who saves us, and who goes with us always and realize that there is no area of life of which God is not a part. And that is some really good news.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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