Trinity Sunday. What Doe You Mean By This?

In theology class in seminary we were talking about the Holy Trinity.

It was an intense conversation and we were all struggling with trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity.

One of my classmates finally said, “Well it is all a mystery.”

My professor said, “That is true, but you are going to have to preach every Sunday for the next 30 years. So you better have something else to say other than it is a mystery.”

Today is a weird church day because it is dedicated to the doctrine of the Trinity, which is difficult to understand even for seminary students.

When talking about the Trinity I often I feel like Nicodemus does while talking to Jesus.

“What do you mean by this?”

What is this all about?

It is a very difficult teaching to understand.

This is the reason why Nicodemus is having a hard time with this conversation with Jesus.

Have you ever had one of those conversations with someone where it was obvious that neither one of you was really talking to the other person.

I have had many of these conversations with religious people.

I have those conversations where the other person is using language and concepts that I never heard and I simply don’t understand what they are talking about.

This is the problem that Jesus is having with Nicodemus.

He is talking about a physical birth.

And Jesus is talking about a spiritual birth.

Nicodemus as a religious person only knows what he knows.

Jesus is offering a new way of thinking about God, a new way of seeing God.

And Nicodemus is stuck in the old ways of seeing things.

Nicodemus is talking past Jesus and not really trying to understand what Jesus is saying.

But let us be fair to Nicodemus, it is hard lesson what Jesus is saying.

We too often can’t understand the ways of God.

And often it is not useful for us to try and understand, because God is often working in secret.

God is working in ways that we don’t and won’t understand.
We are better off leaving those things to God.

But you all have shown up so I better have something to say.

What Jesus is trying to help Nicodemus understand is that God moves among us, inside us, and within us all the time.

But unless we are in touch with God we can’t and won’t understand.

Unless we remember that it was God who made us.

It is God who breathes life into us, and gives us spirit.

I really think this is essential to understand ourselves and the world.

God made you.

God put you together the way that you are, and that is special and unique.

There is no one on this earth that is like you.

You come with your own uniqueness, dreams, thoughts, feelings, ways of seeing the world.

There is nothing about you that God didn’t want to be the way you are.

The problem here is that if God is the one who creates you and everything then God also creates everyone else.

God created the person who really annoys you.

God created that person just as uniquely as you, and has given them dreams, thoughts, and feelings, ways of seeing the world that are exact opposite of you.

To see all people as God’s creation is to see them as deserving the same things that you have love, mercy, goodness.

As Jesus says he didn’t come to “point an accusing finger.”

Jesus came to show the world God’s love for them.

It goes beyond merely creating us and letting us go on our merry way.

God loves us enough to be involved in our lives.

God sent his only son to show us what it meant to live a Spirit filled life.

God sent his son so that we would know how much he loved us.

We as Christians do not know God except for the God shown to us in Jesus Christ.

Jesus showed us and told us that God was about the Kingdom of love, grace, mercy, hope, joy, goodness.

We know that when we are lost, hurt forsaken, sinful, and broken we can turn again to Jesus Christ.

We can see in Jesus the loving God we yearn for and want to know better.

It goes beyond even just being involved in our lives.

It also is something that guides our lives.

The Spirit is what leads us towards a deeper relationship with God.

The Spirit is our inner voice that helps us in our weakness to know which way to go, and where to follow.

The Spirit is that mysterious breeze that blows through us and tells us to go visit an old friend, stop and bring Aunt Betsy some cookies, send a card to Uncle Joe.

It helps us grow into our relationship with God.

The Holy Spirit is what goes with us into all our days.

We need to remember that God created us, constantly calls us back home, and makes us holy.

All of us experience these aspects of God in our own way.

We all experience them in the ways that God knows we need to understand them.

Living in them, naming those times when they are present gives the ability to be children of God, be led by the Holy Spirit.

And when we think about the Trinity not as a doctrine but about the way that we know and experience God it makes it easier to understand what we are talking about.

Last Sunday I went to the internment of my friend Sarah.

Her ashes were laid to rest at the chapel on what is called Jackman’s ridge at Camp Calumet Lutheran.

For those who have never been there about a quarter of the way to the top of this ridge there is a small chapel with some benches, an altar, headstones of other people who have had their ashes laid to rest there.

It is a lovely spot that you can see the tops of the mountain on the other side of the valley, and part of the lake.

The problem is that most of the time it is too hot, too cold, or too buggy to spend too much time there.

Last Sunday we had the short service laying her ashes to rest.

And then we just sat there together.

The wind this day was blowing ever so slightly.

The sun was shining.

It was the perfect temperature.

There were no bugs because of the breeze.

And we all just sat there together quietly.

In that moment God was certainly present.

We were in God’s creation, laying to rest one of God’s creations in my friend Sarah.

Jesus was there to remind us that we are not dead but that there is a resurrection for us all.

We heard the pastor speak those words of promise.

And the Spirit of God gently blew through us, to remind us that our prayers buried deep in our pain that couldn’t be said at this time were carried to God.

God was present in that moment in the fullness of God.

God was there comforting us, creating us, loving us, drawing us closer to each other and to God.

The doctrine of the Trinity might be too much for us to wrap our heads around.

But we can always understand that God’s presence is with us in multiple ways.

That in God’s relationship with us we know God in many ways, but it all is still the same God.

I hope in your life that you know this God of great mercy and grace who has created you, loved you, and given you Spirit and life.

So that you might know God’s comfort, support, and love. Amen

Faith Is Caught Not Taught

When I started out teaching confirmation I came up with lots of ways to make sure that the students did what was expected of them.

For example, I had told them that they were expected to be at X amount of worship services.

So every Sunday they had to come into the office to sign in, if they wanted to get credit for being in church that day.

One time right before Easter a student and his mother came to visit me in my office.

They were distressed because on Easter Sunday he had to stand outside of a supermarket to sell raffle tickets for baseball.

His Coach had told him that if he didn’t do it then he would not be able to play on the team.

The mother and son were devoted church people, but because of baseball he had missed a number of Sunday worship services.

They were distressed and worried that I wouldn’t confirm him.

This type of situation played itself out many times in my early ministry.

What I began to think about was what message I was sending to confirmation students with all of these systems, and schemes to keep them in the Church.

It seemed that I was sending a mixed message.

I was teaching them that the faith was about the Holy Spirit.

That we have faith not because we can make ourselves believe, but because of the Holy Spirit.

As Luther writes in the Catechism about the third article of the Apostle’s Creed, “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.

But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.”

It came down to what is it that we as the Church not only teach, but live out.

This place here, this Church is supposed to be where we experience together God’s grace, mercy, and love.

It is supposed to be the place where the Holy Spirit calls us through the Gospel to have faith in God.

And what I was doing was acting exactly like the world.

Just like the baseball team, I was saying, “do this or else”.

Do this or you cannot participate.

And what God invites us to, what God invites these three young women to, is a life that says, “Come and see that the Lord is good.”

So I changed a lot of what I was doing with confirmation.

Because I came to see that faith is caught and not taught.

Faith is something that pulls us in and doesn’t let us go.

The proof of that is in our Acts reading this morning.

People who were Jesus people had gathered together on the Jewish festival of Pentecost.

Not because they thought something amazing was going to happen, but because that is what you did.

And while they were there something extraordinary happened, something disturbing happened, something out of the ordinary happened.

We know that it was not planned because we are told that “suddenly” rush of violent wind and fire came upon them.

The Holy Spirit was acting on them without them having taken a class, answered the right question, or attended a certain number of worship services.

Now it is hard as we sit here today to trust the Holy Spirit.

Let us be honest, most of the young people that get confirmed seem to disappear after confirmation.

Even though I say it every year confirmation is not graduation from Church, people don’t seem to be hearing me.

Polls are telling us that the Church is shrinking and dying.

That young people are leaving Churches and never coming back.

Our natural reaction is to panic, to fear that the Church won’t be here anymore.

We want to circle the wagons and make a lot of schemes to keep people coming to church.

But I learned early that I have to trust the Holy Spirit.

I put Reilly, Grace, and Angelina today into the hands of the Holy Spirit.

I will trust that the Holy Spirit will continue to work in their lives.

In fact, during out time together I noticed times when the Holy Spirit was at work.

I would like to share two of those times with you this morning.

The first was when that day we were supposed to have class there were two deaths of young people in bow.

Also, that day one of our confirmation kid’s parents lost their job.

What I was told by one parent was that her daughter wanted to come to confirmation that night.

It just happened that on that night we were studying the second article of the Apostles creed about Jesus.

We were talking about what benefits we have in knowing Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

It was a class filled with the Holy Spirit, because we were able to talk about what it means to know Jesus in life when things were bad.

All three of the girls agreed that it was a Holy Spirit night.

The second thing that happened was that one of our confirmation students was struggling with a moral issue.

They were not sure what to do about a situation that involved some of her friends.

On this night we were talking about the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy will be done.”

The question was how we know in difficult life situations what God’s will is.

That night I saw all of the students help each other to figure out what the best thing was.

I was really proud of the way they wrestled with the question and the unselfish answer they came to.

This was another Holy Spirit moment in our time together.

The Holy Spirit gave us the right lessons for the right time in our lives.

And these stories also show the best part about belonging to a community of faith.

It is within that community that we receive support when we are down.

It is within that community that we are reminded of God’s grace and love for us.

It is within that community that we come to ask hard questions, and together seek answers.

That is what I want this community to be for all of us.

I don’t want it to be a community of, “do this or else”.

But one that is invites us into a deep relationship with God.

One that is loving and grace filled.

One that is not like the world we live in that is always demanding things from us, but one that is a haven of support.

One that surprises us because we are sitting around on a Thursday night of confirmation class and “suddenly” the Holy Spirit fills the room.

Today all three of these young people have chosen for themselves a Bible passage.

It was another Holy Spirit moment.

One of our students wanted to know if they should be looking up Bible passages before class.

I said no because I wanted it to be something that we did together as a class, and something that would be Holy Spirit led.

They picked bible verses that speak to the essence of faith.

“Keep alert, Stand firm in your faith” the world will try to rip away your faith.

The world will make do this or else demands on you.

Remember to look out for the Holy Spirit that is always inviting you in.

Stand firm in the faith that tells you of a different life of welcome and love.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” A reminder that indeed this is what God is for us, this is what God does for us.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart.” This is what we are talking about this morning is trusting that God is with us in all things, and that the Holy Spirit will lead us to faith.

Reilly, Grace, and Angelina you are really special people.

You all are so caring, thoughtful, and ready to learn.

I know today that the Holy Spirit will continue to surprise you, guide you, and bring you closer to Jesus.

I have faith in the Holy Spirit.

I hope all of you here today, if you are friends, family, a member of this congregation will have faith in the Holy Spirit to lead these young women.

I hope that you have caught faith, and that it will continue to be part of your life.

This morning may we all have faith that the Holy Spirit will continue to surprise us with visions of God’s love, mercy, and goodness.

Amen

A Bleeding Heart

This week I was at the public hearing for the senate as they heard testimony about the State budget.

As I sat and listened to testimony after testimony I realized something I am a bleeding heart.

I heard stories of mothers who lost their children to drug overdose and I wept along with them.

I heard stories of mothers who spent long hours helping their children with developmental disabilities and I wept.

I listened to mothers who had children take their own lives because of depression that went untreated and my heart broke.

When I hear someone tell their story that is struggling my heart does bleed for that person.

I have tried to fight it.

I have tried not to let those stories get to me, but they do.

I know it is not good to be a “bleeding heart”, but I can’t help it.

And I think that is how you want your pastor to be.

I don’t think that you would want a pastor who didn’t care about people, about their stories and where they came from.

This morning’s Gospel is about letting our hearts bleed for others.

It is about opening those hearts so that we might be able to love each other as Jesus Christ loved us.

Interestingly enough the phrase “bleeding heart” has its origin in the Order of the Bleeding Heart, a semi-religious order of the Middle Ages honoring the Virgin Mary, whose heart was pierced with many sorrows.

This morning we have to start with the idea of love.

It is thrown around a lot in our world.

And the idea that we should love other people is in our culture, it is not just for religious people.

I don’t know anybody who would disagree that we should love other people.

And because of that what Jesus says to us this morning seems kind of like common sense.

I have been reading lots of articles about people who are not going to church anymore because they have heard it all before.

They have heard enough sermons on love to know that we should love each other.

I suspect that many of you already know that you should love everyone.

Right?

Here is the problem.

Love is not that easy.

It is hard.

Love is easy in theory, as a concept that we should generally be aware of and keep in mind.

But love in practice, in the reality of everyday life is much harder, because love demands of us more than merely being aware of it.

Love demands more than merely having groovy feelings about each other.

It demands sacrifice, and action.

Love has to be lived and experienced and not just talked about.

We can’t just say that we love everybody, but we actually have to show that love somehow.

And not everyone is easy to love.

Not everyone is easy to show that love to.

Jesus this morning in the Gospel actually tweaks the golden rule.

Jesus does not say, “Love others as you love yourself.”

Jesus says, “Love each other as I have loved you.”

Jesus loved us enough to die for us.

Jesus loved us enough to meet us where we are.

Jesus loved us enough to make us the center of his attention.

Jesus didn’t just love us in theory, Jesus loved us in practice.

Jesus showed us his love for us.

And perhaps that is why we come here every week.

Not because we get to hear something new and earth shattering.

But because week after week we need to be reminded of what we already know.

We need to be reminded to love others, because doing so is hard and exhausting.

We all have our limits.

We all have that spot that we reach in life when we have exhausted all of our capacity for compassion and we just can’t do it anymore.

And perhaps that is when we need to hear again that love is not easy, and demands the extra mile on our part.

We need to be reminded that it is OK to be a bleeding heart.

That is how we know that we are living right, that we are truly loving and giving of ourselves.

Perhaps that is what mothers know best.

Now not everyone here this morning is a mother.

But we all have mothers.

And perhaps some of our mothers are not the best.

But our mothers are the ones who loved us first.

It is where we learned love.

And if we you are a mother you know that being a mother is heart breaking.

It makes your heart bleed.

Because you will watch as your children do something that is not good for them and yet you can’t stop it.

You will watch as your children suffer through things in life and you will want to take away that pain.

It is heart breaking because you watch your children grow up and you wish that they would be young forever.

You watch them move away, and not fully understand the sacrifices you made.

But that is love.

Love is about having a bleeding heart, about caring for another person enough to give of yourself for that person so that they might have a better life.

I often think that if we could all have a good mother’s heart.

If we could think that it is all of our calling to be mother’s weather we are one to our own children or not.

If we could see all the children of the world as our children then we can become more loving and caring for those people who don’t do well in life, the people who make pure choices and have their lives in ruins that they are our children too.

That we care for them because it isn’t just about our kids but all kids.

In 1872 Julie Ward Howe wrote what came to be known as the Mother’s Day Proclamation.

Julie Ward Howe was also famous for writing the hymn, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”.

Her proclamation was a call to all women to stop the evils of war.

It says in part, “Arise, then, Christian women of this day !

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears !

Say firmly :

We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.”

She wrote this after seeing the carnage of the Civil War and Franco Prussian War.

It is a call to see ourselves as having hearts not just for our own children but the children of our enemy too.

Because you see love is hard.

It is heart breaking to lose your child, your spouse.

It is heart breaking to lose any child and any spouse.

The kind of love Jesus calls us to is to see the heartbreak of another mother for another child.

So we leave here today with bleeding hearts.

That celebrates not only our mothers, but all mothers.

We weep with mothers who have lost children.

Mothers who wish to have children, mothers who failed, mothers who succeed.

We pray that all of us have the heart of true mothers and we might love as Jesus loved us as hard as that might be.

Amen