Great Prayer

Text: Luke 11:1-13 Other texts: Genesis 18:20-32

You haven’t lived until you have watched a bunch of children dancing and gesturing and singing as loud as they can: G R E A T B — I B L E. Great Bible Reef. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen an equal number of adults, so called, doing the same thing, all singing and waving their arms. Singing: We’re gonna go where the word is, And the word is God’s love. We’re gonna dive into the ocean. We’re gonna swim in God’s love. And you really haven’t lived until you are doing that all yourself.

Faith held a great vacation Bible school last week. It was called the Great Bible Reef. G R E A T B — I B L E. It was amazing. It energized everybody who came and everybody who helped. Each day eight or so children and often their parents came for singing, dancing, hearing stories, making crafts, eating, learning about God’s love. At coffee hour today you’ll see all the decorations, which are still up, and a video of pictures of some of the events and people. It could not have been better. It was all we had prayed for.

I want to talk today a little about prayer, and about getting what you pray for. And about swimming in God’s love. And about trusting God.

If God is perfect and unchangeable and knows all that is going to happen, there is not much use to prayer. At least prayer that asks God for things. If God is already going to do what we pray for, then it doesn’t matter if we pray. If God is unchangeable, there is not much point in our asking God to change. If God knows all that is going to happen, then there is not much our prayers can do about it. But fortunately for us, this kind of God is not the God we read about in the pages of the Bible.

God appears to Abraham, according to the story we heard this morning from Genesis. God has some plans about the city of Sodom. God’s plans include destroying the city; sweep it away, as the text has it. But Abraham begins to bargain with God. What if there are fifty good people in Sodom, Abraham asks God, what about that? Will you destroy fifty good people, to “slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked?” God says to Abraham, No I guess not. For the sake of the fifty, I’ll save the city.

God has changed God’s mind. The plan was destruction, but because of Abraham’s plea, Abraham’s convincing prayer, God does something different. Something unplanned-for until Abraham spoke up. Abraham, seizing the moment, says: So what about forty people. Would you kill forty good people? God says, No, I guess not. Not forty. And so it goes: Not thirty, either. Not twenty, either. Not even ten. Abraham, maybe figuring he has pushed things far enough, stops there. But I sometimes think he could have gone on. How about five? how about one? How about none? Could Abraham have convinced God to not destroy Sodom at all? We’ll never know. But we do know that Abraham prayed in the certain knowledge that God would listen and that God might change God’s plans as a result.

Jesus prays to God as if he expects that he will be heard and his views considered. And Jesus advises his followers, his disciples then and now, to pray. In Luke, the Lord’s Prayer asks for a godly and good world, for food to eat every day, for sins to be forgiven, for freedom from being tested. And Jesus tells them, through a parable of a sleepy-but-in-the-end-willing host that first, God will pay attention and that second, we ought to be persistent and bother God a lot. And that we should expect favor for our prayers, for God loves us as a good parent loves a child.

You might argue that God does not answer all our prayers and in particular has not answered your prayers. You might argue that, but we are not really having an argument here. There are all sorts of explanations about this, none of which I personally have found convincing, but we are not explaining anything here. Nor was Jesus. Jesus is talking about the question: does God listen? does it make any difference? Jesus says the answer is Yes! and Yes!

Every Sunday we pray that God bring to this church people who will be nourished here and who will nourish this church. This is a prayer of hospitality and need. Providing nourishment—primarily in spirit but in fact also in body—to all who find themselves here is our reason for being and guides all that we do here as a church. Being nourished by those same people is how it happens. We borrowed this prayer from [a local pastor] of the [a local church] down on [street] Street. That church is a vital and energetic place, but it was not always so. And when I asked him what they did to become the church it is now, he said that they had tried all the sorts of things you read about in books about growing healthy churches. But none of them worked. So then they started to pray that God would bring people to the church to be fed. And so God did. As God has done also here at Faith.

We as a church had hopes for vacation Bible school. And we included those hopes in our prayers during the past few Sundays and in people’s personal prayers. We prayed that about ten children would come, and more than a dozen did. We prayed that children from the neighborhood who had never come to this church would attend, and three families did. We prayed that all the worshipping groups of the Community of Faith—the Eritrean fellowship, Calvary, and the Lutherans—would participate, and all did. We prayed that lots of members of Faith would help, and lots did. We prayed that everyone would have a great time, and learn something, and make new friends, and have an amazing experience, and it was clear that everyone did. Were these things answers to our prayers? I can not say for certain. I do know that that is what we prayed for. And that is what we got.

The Lord’s Prayer is like a conversation with God. In it we say hello, we ask for things we need, we talk a little about our hopes, we express our admiration in and trust for God, to whom we speak.

Prayer is a conversation. And not a trick conversation, like when you are chatting someone up to get something you want or to sell something. Like when someone calls you on the phone during dinner and asks “how are you doing today, Mr Stain,” it sounds like the beginning of a conversation, but you know it is not. It’s a transaction. Prayer is not a transaction.

The favorite song among the children at The Great Bible Reef was one called Trust the Lord. And it goes like this:

Trust the Lord, Trust, trust the Lord. Be strong and take heart, And wait on the Lord. Trust the Lord, Trust, trust the Lord. Sing alleluia, Sing alleluia, Trust the Lord!

It was a favorite of the adults, too. That should not be a surprise. Trust is the basis of prayer. Prayer begins in this trust. Trust is the foundation of a real conversation. Prayer emerges from trust. Trust emerges from the love God has for all us God’s children.

That’s the word. And We’re gonna go where the word is, And the word is God’s love. We’re gonna dive into the ocean. We’re gonna swim in God’s love.

Thank you, God.

Resurrection Life

Text: John 20.1-2, 11-18
Other texts: Ruth, Exodus

The motto of some one of our partner churches is “reformed and always reforming.” This is to make clear that though the church came out of the Reformation in the 1500s, God continues to work in the life of the church today and every day. God’s ongoing presence in the life of the institution of the church is a good thing to consider from time to time. But more immediately and closer to home is to consider God’s ongoing presence in each of our own individual lives and the life of the world. And when we do that, we might adopt the motto: “transformed and always transforming.”

In one sense, transformation is just a synonym for change. And we are always changing. Being adaptable sorts of creatures, we react to things around us, including especially people, and so change is built into us. About to cross the intersection, and noticing that the car barreling down the street at us is going to run the red light, we change our plans. But we usually mean transformed to mean changed in a big way, even a fundamental way. It is said of New England weather that if you don’t like it, wait a bit and it will change. You would probably not say the weather was transformed from cloudy to partly sunny. You might say, though, that if every summer day in New England was like yesterday, 72 degrees and not too humid—California weather—you might then claim that the weather had been transformed.

Change is common, but it is not always welcome. And transformation less so. We may not exactly like where we are now, but leaving here and going there is not something we automatically long for. And if something makes us do that—if change is from necessity and not from desire—then it makes us even more grumpy. Change can be great, and we can see it as renewal and life-giving. But people can see change as death as well as they see change as resurrection. Or, they can’t see it at all.

The passage today from the Gospel of John is the story of the discovery of an empty tomb that was supposed to be occupied by the body of Jesus. It was not what Peter and another disciple expected, and it was not what Mary Magdalene expected, either. But Peter and the other disciple, John, reports, “did not understand the scripture, that [Jesus] must rise from the dead.” And so “then the disciples returned to their homes.” Too much of a surprise for them to handle, I think. Time to go home.

But Mary hangs around the tomb. Good thing, it turns out. She sees a man whom she does not quite recognize. It is Jesus. We know that, but she thinks he might be the gardener. And she thinks they have carried Jesus away. She cannot fathom anything else. What would it mean if Jesus were not here because he had been raised from the dead? It is nearly impossible to contemplate. Hard to get your head around. What Mary sees is a mistake in procedure, and she offers to fix it: Tell me where the body is and I’ll carry it to somewhere more suitable. She must have been strong in body to consider carrying the dead weight of the corpse and strong in mind as well.

Sometimes change is welcome. Sometimes we long for a new life. For new health and a new future. When we are stuck in sorrow or grief, when we continually find ourselves doing the same old thing, but not wanting to, or not doing the thing we most desire. Then change is resurrection. The days ahead are never just today repeated over and over again. The future is not the same as the past. We can be given a new life no more trapped in old patterns, not destined for regret and shame, and not forever longing.

When Jesus calls Mary by name, she realizes that things are a lot different than she thought. A change that could be called a transformation. Something new has been revealed about life and death in general and about Jesus’ ongoing connection with Mary in particular. But not totally new. Jesus is not some alien from outer space or a spirit presence. This is Jesus, her friend and teacher. Rabbouni! She calls him. This name is a sign of affection as much as it is of respect. It’s like: “My dear rabbi,” to be old-fashioned. Or “It’s my man, the rabbi.” A greeting you might give to an old teacher or mentor, respectful but maybe a little familiar. Mary knows. This guy is Jesus.

Not totally new, but not quite the same, either. She goes to hug him. Not a good idea, he says to her. Something is different, something has changed. This is Jesus, but a transformed Jesus.

Our lives are rarely changed in an instant. Even an encounter with Jesus takes time to work its way through us. Healing and recovery unfold little by little. Renewal is both created in time and revealed over time.

For most of us, transformation starts with an encounter with another person. An encounter that is emotionally powerful. We are transformed when we are loved by someone. As Moses was changed in today’s reading from an abandoned slave child to a member of the royal family of Egypt. Moses was changed by the love given him by Pharaoh’s daughter. We are transformed when we love someone else. As Ruth was changed from a gentile in Moab to a Jew in Bethlehem. Ruth was changed by her love for Naomi.

And we are transformed by God’s love for us and our love for God. As Mary was, and the disciples were to be, and as I’m sure Jesus was. By his love for them and by their love for him, by his encounter with Mary, with the other disciples, and now with us.

Being a follower of Jesus changed the disciples as it changes us. Jesus becomes a lens through which we try to see the world and our actions in it, a guide when we try to decide what to do next, and a comfort when we need a human-sized God next to us.

Our theology says that the resurrection of Jesus changed the world. How it does that is something that the theologians can ponder. But it was the resurrection experience that powered the growth of the early church. It certainly powered Paul’s missions.

Mary was the first apostle, the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection. What the resurrection of Jesus taught her and the first Christians and us is not so much that Jesus in particular could be raised from the dead but that anybody could. Not that only Jesus could be resurrected, but that resurrection is a part of life, built into the human experience.

Christianity at its core is a religion of healing and restoration. There is no dead end. There is no end to renewal and rebirth. There is no end of possibility. We are a resurrection church. For followers of Jesus, transformation is not only possible, it is inevitable.

What Neighbor Am I?

Text: Luke 10:25-47 Other texts: Deuteronomy 30:9-14

When we pray to do God’s will, our prayer contains two parts. One part is that may have the courage, focus, and compassion to do God’s will. That is, that we are able enough. The other part is that we may know what God’s will is, that we may know what God wants. That is, that we have enough knowledge. Often, both parts are wanting. The Bible is as full of prayers saying “make me strong so I can do what you want” as it is full of prayers saying “tell me what you want me to do.”

The law, the law of Torah, the law referenced in the reading today from Deuteronomy, is a list of things God wants people to do. Such a list is one way of making sure we have God’s will straight. The law is a form of grace, meaning a gift from God to people to help them know what to do.

The lawyer who greets and tests Jesus is an expert in this law, this list. Of course, the list of things to do and not do is not always clear in every situation. The list is a code of law, and like the civil code of law that we live by, it needs to be interpreted. The lawyer would have known not only the code, but how the code had been interpreted so far, and would have speculated on how it might be interpreted in the future. When he comes to Jesus, he comes seeking an interpretation.

Both the lawyer and Jesus would have known the summary or the basis of the law. From Deuteronomy, Love your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. And from Leviticus, Love your neighbor as yourself. But what, asks the lawyer, does this mean? What does it mean for me? asks the lawyer.

The law, it says in today’s reading, is in your heart. But in many ways, relying on a code of law is easier that relying on the urgings of one’s heart. It is not that the heart is an unreliable guide. On the contrary. It is that the heart is a strict and stern judge. The heart knows when we are loving our neighbor, the heart knows when we are loving God. Or not. The scope of our heart’s critique is unbounded. Some things that we do that our hearts would condemn are just fine according to the law of the land. The letter of the law, as we say.

Though Luke says that the lawyer is testing Jesus, his question is not frivolous. The lawyer is not being a jerk here. The answer is important. Rules of culture and law define a society. They reflect back to us who we are. In our society, it is not OK to shoot someone, usually and it is OK to carry a gun. It is OK to limit highway speeds and not OK to limit the production of fast cars. It is not OK to drink in public and it is OK to pass by someone lying by the side of the road. These distinctions are not arbitrary, they reflect what we value. And laws change when cultures and conditions change.

The lawyer asks Jesus to help him define the boundaries of compassion. He wants to know in particular what people are outside those boundaries, people to whom he need not be compassionate. He is not trying to expand the envelope to include more people. He wants to be safe with God and with his nation, his people. The lawyer wants to know who deserves his compassion and, more important, who does not. Whom he can safely ignore when thinking of the law and its requirements of love. He wants to know not so much whom he should love but whom he does not need to love.

In response to his question, Jesus tells him a story. The story is an interpretation of the law that both Jesus and the lawyer agree is fundamental. You are familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. I won’t repeat it. But there are two things that you should know. First, the characters who pass the man by—the priest and the Levite—are not meant to be seen as somehow lacking in character. These would have been the most respected and honored people. They are chosen not because they are the worst sort of people in the culture, but the best. Even the best pass the man by. And second, you should know that the man in the ditch and the Samaritan who helped him were deadly enemies. Samaritans and Jews had a history of violent strife that would match conflicts in our own time, with village-burning, mass crucifixions, and beheadings.

The Levite and the priest pass by the man who had been beaten and left for dead by the side of the road. For whatever reason, they did not stop to help.

But the Samaritan did. The Samaritan stopped to help. What makes the Samaritan different from the other two is what he did. Not what he believed, or what he figured out. He helped the man. The Samaritan first came up to the man, Jesus tells us. And by coming near the man, he then was moved by compassion, and his compassion led him to extraordinary service. Who cares what he believed? This story Jesus tells is about doing.

The lawyer wants to know who his neighbor is. Who qualifies as neighbor and who does not. Who deserves to be treated as neighbor and who does not. The story does not answer the question. Jesus does not tell the lawyer who his neighbor is. Instead, Jesus tells the lawyer what a neighbor does.

Who of the three, asks Jesus, is the neighbor to the man in the ditch? The answer is obvious. The man who helped him. The Samaritan. Do the same, Jesus tells the lawyer.

The lawyer’s question has a dark question inside of it. And that question, which the lawyer does not state but which he does imply, is Who is my enemy? But Jesus will not answer that questions, because he has already made it clear in Luke’s gospel. The answer is: Nobody. Love your enemies, he has said, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you. The lawyer wants to demonize a group of people—how far does love reach: where can indifference or hatred start—but Jesus will not indulge him. There is no such border.

The lawyer hopes in his question that Jesus will make the law clearer by enumerating cases. Your neighbors are the persons in your town, your church, your office, your nation, your race, your class, some grouping we can distinguish. But Jesus will not do so. The rules of law and culture limit some of the wickedness that we do. And they obligate us to do some good. But how we love God with all our hearts and souls and strength and mind and how we love our neighbors as ourselves cannot be based on limits or obligations. Our love for God and neighbor stems from our compassion, from our wise and knowing hearts. It will not do for us to be like the lawyer, seeking to be good by making lawful distinctions.

Show me your ways, prays the psalm. Teach me your paths. Lead me, prays the psalm.

We can get trapped as the lawyer does when we try to differentiate between love for one people and another. Whose suffering do we relieve and whose can we cause? Whose cries do we heed and whose can we be deaf to? Whom do we come near in compassion and whom do we feel comfortable passing by? We ask these kinds of questions all the time. But there is no answer to them from Jesus, our teacher and our lord.

The question we get an answer to is not: What kind of person is my neighbor? but: What kind of person am I? Not: what must my neighbor do for me to love him? But: What shall I do, having loved him? Not: Who is my neighbor? but: Who am I?

Holy Guests

Text: Luke 10:1-11

Holy guests. That’s what the seventy apostles were, the ones whom Jesus sent out into the world. At their best, that is what missionaries are. Holy guests.

When we gather at Faith, we are hosts. When people come to worship here for the first time, they are guests. We have cards labeled “Guest” in the pews as one way for guests to introduce themselves. After you have been here once or twice, you become one of the hosts. The job of the host is to welcome guests, to help put them at ease, to introduce them to others, to answer questions they might have, to let them tell you about themselves if they wish, to feel at home. When it is at your home, you are the host. In some sense you are in control, the initiative is yours. So people sometimes say about a church that it is hospitable, or we say we practice hospitality, meaning it is something we do actively. If you don’t do anything to welcome a guest, people say the church is cold, or inhospitable. When some members of Faith moved to the West, the first church they visited said not one word to them the whole time. The folks in the church just stared at the wife of the couple and made her feel, she said, like an alien creature. One would not call that church hospitable.

But when you go out into the world, as a Christian, you are the guest. And not the host. And you practice something else, where you are not in control and the home is not yours, but someone else’s.

This story in Luke begins as a training class, where Jesus explains to seventy new apostles what they can expect on their mission (they can expect danger, like lambs walking among wolves—wolves like to eat lambs). And explains to them how they should pack (they should pack very lightly). And explains to them how they should behave (they should behave like guests). You can imagine them carrying little laminated reminder cards: how to be a missionary for Jesus. On one side it says: Introduction: Ask permission first to enter. And on the other side, to be used if and when you have been welcomed, are three clear steps: 1. Eat what is put in front of you. 2. Heal those who are hurting. and 3. Leave them a gift when you go.

The introduction: ask permission to enter. The apostles are given a small protocol to start with. Say to the host, Peace to this house. And if the host responds in kind, proceed. If not, leave and try again somewhere else. Not everyone wants to hear what you have to say. Some people are downright antagonistic, and some don’t care, and some are just too busy at the moment. The protocol is a way of asking someone: can I speak to you now? People go their own way on a path to God, and your help may be welcomed or not, depending not on you but on them. Or maybe it does depend on you, and they just would rather talk to someone else. You are only a guest when the host invites you in. Then you can turn over the card and follow the steps.

Step 1: Eat what is put in front of you. When you a guest in someone’s house, you eat what you are served. Unless it’s a potluck, you don’t bring your favorite meal with you. You don’t see what they have and then decide to send out for something else. You don’t tell everyone how you hate squid or fried food or eggplant or whatever. And you don’t look over the guest list and decide to go home.

The host sets the context. When you talk about your faith with someone, it is in that someone’s context. It is the host’s ears, not your tongue, that makes the connection work. His or her history, prejudices, prior experience, hopes and fears, that makes it work or not. And words that make sense to the host, not words that make sense to you. You cannot start a conversation by giving someone a dictionary of the words you’ll use. And the people the host hangs with are the host’s friends. It is not the job of a Christian to separate people from their culture.

Step 2: Heal those who are hurting. The ministry of Jesus Christ is a ministry of healing. That’s what the word “salvation” means. To heal. The word “redemption” means to free. The apostles are welcome—at least at first—not because they have interesting things to say or are enthusiastic about their convictions, but because they bring comfort, relief from unbearable burdens, freedom from fear, peace to replace anxiety, health to replace sickness. People are affected by healing actions more than by convincing arguments. It is the generosity, compassion, and persistence in the face of fear that makes people admire Christians. And when Christian are vicious, vengeful, and greedy, people unfortunately notice that, too.

Step 3: Leave a gift when you go. A guest sometimes leaves more than a “thanks for the grub.” A gift says how much the guest appreciates the host’s time and anticipates an ongoing relationship. The apostles do have something to say. They bring good news and present it when they leave. The kingdom of God is not some fantasy, they say. The world will not always be a place of suffering and violence. Despair is premature. Underlying Christianity is the conclusion that the broken world can be fixed, and that the world will someday be as God had hoped in creation. Jesus’ ministry is a sign and a demonstration.

The apostles are sent as an advance crew for Jesus. And in that sense they go as representatives of God. They reflect the ministry of Jesus that we share: communities around a common meal, healing, and guidance in our lives. God the creator, redeemer, and comforter is represented in the actions of these holy Guests.

This story in Luke is unique in the Gospels. Though there are other stories of the twelve sent out (even such a story earlier in Luke), this is the only time when other, unnamed followers of Jesus are sent by him. These are not special people, not priests, not leaders. They are you and me, ordinary people who are trying to follow Jesus and to help bring about a renewed world. We are not missionaries by trade, but when we speak of our faith to others, we speak as those who were sent.

Christians can be evangelical without being arrogant or bossy. We model the God we serve, and in that model, it is God who serves. When we speak of our faith, we come to others not as hosts. Not as beneficent givers of truth. Not attempting to control what happens and what the outcome might be. We come listening, healing, and giving. We come as holy guests.

Getting What We Most Desire

Text: Galatians 5:1, 13-25 July 1, 2007

How will we get what we most desire?

The letter of Paul to the Galatians is famous as a treatise on the freedom of a Christian. But for Paul, at least here, freedom does not mean autonomy, does not mean independence. Autonomy means self-law. Free to do what I want, go where I want, say what I want, have what I want. Within the constraint that I don’t hurt anyone else. A philosopher, a contemporary of Paul’s, wrote about this kind of freedom, saying: “One is free who lives as one wills, who is subject neither to compulsion, nor hindrance, nor force, whose choices are unhampered, whose desires attain their end, whose aversions do not fall into what they would avoid.” And though we might be sympathetic to this definition, Paul would not be.

When Paul writes to the Galatians about freedom, he has something specific in mind and something general. Specifically, some people—rivals of Paul, evidently—have been telling gentile Galatians—those who are not Jewish—that they have to adhere to certain Jewish traditions before they can rightly be followers of Jesus. For Paul this amounts to an entrance exam to God. Particular acts that serve as hurdles on the path to God’s favor. But Paul says that because of Jesus, there are no such hurdles. Generally, Jesus Christ has freed people from any special requirements, any special behaviors, to be right with God, to be OK as far as God is concerned.

Christ has set us free, Paul says. But not in the way the philosopher wrote. Not autonomous. Freedom affects and benefits me, but it is not about me, about myself. Its point is not me by myself. Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, Paul warns. Do not allow freedom to turn into self-indulgence. But instead, to become slaves to one another. This would have sounded as weird to Paul’s readers then as it might to us now. But for Paul, focusing our energy and efforts and good will on the behalf of others is exactly what God had taught. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Paul sounds annoyed with the Galatians. But he is not annoyed because some of them are engaging in immoral acts that threaten their individual souls. He is annoyed because what they are tempted to do is threatening the community of which they are a part. They are, he says, gratifying the desire of the flesh. The desire, not the desires. Singular, not plural. It is not the special fleshy sins that so much concern Paul. It is instead the commonplace desire of creatures made out of flesh to think about themselves first. Of the works of the flesh he lists, over half are specifically about getting along with other people (strife, quarrels, envy, and such), and the rest are what we might call individual sins whose effects disrupt the community. Such acts mess up the coming of the kingdom of God, Paul warns.

There are two ways we can live, Paul tells us. We can live out the desire of the flesh, or we can walk with the Spirit. The Spirit and the flesh are in opposition. They are two modes of being. On the one hand, If we live according to the flesh, we do all those things (obvious things, Paul says) that make us—the world, that is—miserable and mean. On the other hand, if we live according to the Spirit, we do all those things that lead to the kingdom of God. The question here: is to whom do we turn? Do we turn to ourselves and things we make and do, or do we turn to God?

We are good at making things and doing things. We build economies, we develop systems of medicine, we create massive militaries, we make great and fun toys like animation and iPhones. We invent educational systems to teach our children, and science to learn about how things work, and technology that uses that knowledge. We entertain and amuse ourselves. We figure out how to cope with adversity, we create places and substances of retreat. We fleshy creatures are smart.

Do we worship these things? Do we turn to them in need, thank them in gratitude, praise them for their awesomeness? God, says the psalm, is “my greatest good,” “my good above all others.” Are these things that we make and do our greatest good? Have we turned them into gods, false gods, as the psalm says?

And are these things reliable? Will they save us from danger and sorrow? Have they? Will they bring about the kingdom of God that Paul writes about? Have they? Are they trustworthy? Are we ourselves?

How, then, about God? Do we think God is trustworthy?

Paul writes that we must walk with the Spirit. “Live by the Spirit,” our Bible says, but walk in the Spirit is a better translation. When you walk you stand a certain way, you go fast or slow, left or right, walk alone or with others, stop for rest or carry on. How you walk in the Spirit means how you live your life. If you walk in the Spirit, you will not live according to the flesh.

For Paul, walking in the Spirit is sufficient. All the other things we do, as helpful and pleasing and powerful as they might be, are inadequate and unnecessary. God is trustworthy. The Galatians felt, or were persuaded as Paul thinks, that unless they followed the law and tradition, that the world would descend into chaos and moral confusion. As we think it would without armies and law and punishment and barriers. If we say we trust God in the way Paul says we must, we sure don’t act like it, any more than the Galatians did. The risks of relying on the Spirit evidently seem greater to us than the risks of relying on ourselves.

Paul has been given a vision of the kingdom of God. In it, all people share in God’s favor and all people deserve ours, our favor. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—this verse comes from this epistle to the Galatians. We cannot continue to be divided as humans and expect the kingdom of God, Paul says. Christ has made all the things that we do that separate ourselves one from another as worthless. Not necessary. Not applicable.

What humanity seems to most desire is to enjoy lives full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness. The fruits of the Spirit.

To walk in the Spirit is the strategy. The tactic is to become servants of one another. Though this advice is two thousand years old, though it comes from a person we say we revere, we haven’t much followed it. Perhaps it is time we gave it a try. As Paul writes to his church, there is no law against it.

Expect Much of God

Text: Luke 7:11-17 Other texts: 1 Kings 17:17-24 June 10, 2006

Bishop Dr. Munib Younan is the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Lands. He spoke this past Friday to the assembly of the New England Synod, a once-a-year gathering of lay people and clergy. He was the keynote speaker. The churches that he shepherds are some of the very few Christian churches left in Palestine and Jerusalem.

In his speech, Bishop Younan said that “the power of faith is the driving force of justice.” Such a statement implies that God is an active participant in the affairs of the world and of human endeavors. Such a statement implies that God expects much of us and that we are instruments of God’s mercy. But it also implies that we are right to expect much of God, and that we expect with certainty that God can and—we hope—will, intervene in history. As scripture tells us God has done in the past.

You might have seen that the first lesson and the Gospel reading tell essentially the same story. Or rather two stories with the same plot, character, and outcome. This is probably not a coincidence. The stories are alike in many ways. In both, a widow has lost her only son. In both, a godly person—Elijah in the first, Jesus in the second—is moved and his heart goes out to the mother. In both, that person touches the dead son. In both, the son is revived. In both, the son is given back to his mother. Those who heard or read the story about Jesus would certainly have known and recognized the story about Elijah, and the power of the first story would have lent both power and credence to the second. They would have said, “Ah ha! This man Jesus reminds me a lot of the great prophet Elijah. He is like the prophets of old.” That being a good thing.

We who are always aware of the resurrection of Jesus should not be too distracted by the resuscitation of the dead in this story. The raising of the dead is not exactly the point of either story. The stories are healing stories, though healing of a sort of extreme kind. But the people of Jesus’ time would not have seen a ton of difference between raising someone from the dead and healing someone who could not walk or enabling a blind person to see.

Cases like this demonstrated most of all that the healer—Elijah or Jesus—was an authentic prophet of God. Which is how each story concludes. “I know you are a man of God” says the widow to Elijah. “A great prophet has risen among us,” the crowd says of Jesus. Raising someone from the dead is not seen as a sign of divinity, it is a sign of prophecy.

A prophet speaks for God. A prophet acts with the power of God. It is not the prophet who does the work, but God. It is God who does the raising. The extreme nature of the healing (that is, reviving someone who is already dead) confirms the authenticity of the prophet. But it is God’s power at work. For the people who first heard these stories, it would be obvious that God could do such things. Not only in a theoretical or theological way, that God has the potential, but in a practical and everyday way. That God has the interest in doing so. That God does do things like this. It would go without saying that God has the power. People would have been interested to see in what way that power works.

But the question for many now in our time is not how it works but whether it works. Stories like the ones we are talking about make people wonder what the trick was. What the explanation was, what was really happening. Though it still might be obvious that God can do such things, it goes without saying, almost, that God would not. Times have changed over the past two thousand years.

We seem invested in the notion that God is a hands-off kind of god—except in a way I’ll talk about in a minute. I wonder whether we have an interest in keeping God at arm’s length. Sort of a kindly rich uncle whom we like and for whom we are grateful, but who doesn’t really mess with important family affairs. Maybe we prefer the world to be predictable (which it is not when God interferes with things, especially things like physics and biology). Maybe we protect ourselves from the potential of being disappointed in God. Maybe we are afraid of the intimacy that God provokes when we let God get too close. Maybe we are ashamed of ourselves and think that we are not worthy of God’s attention. I don’t know. But it seems that we prefer a God who is less than actively involved in the day to day events of our lives. When we do this, we make God more like a chaplain, someone who comforts us in times of trouble and, as they say in counseling jargon, is a quiet presence.

That is not how people thought who saw God’s presence in Elijah and Jesus.

What is clear from the stories in the Bible, including the ones we are talking about today, is that God likes people. This is demonstrably so. That is, God demonstrates that in what happens. And when God acts, it is because God is really interested in people in a major way. When Jesus sees the widow whose son has just died, he has compassion for her, it says in our translation of the Bible. But other Bibles get it better. It was heartbreaking, says one. Heart-wrenching. The word in Greek means his gut was all twisted around.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, the song goes, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost and now am found. If you ask people who have hit bottom, the very bottom, and raised up by God, God is much more than a quiet presence. God is an active and powerful and truthful friend, boss, and mentor. They were down and God pulled them up. No question.

Our fear, our sometimes stunted imaginations, and our poor sense of humor can keep God out except in an ethereal way. But if so, the power of faith is muffled and the future of justice is darkened. We seem to allow that God may expect much of us. We need to be willing to expect much of God. If we desire to move forward in any frame of mind other than wishful thinking or despair, we need to be willing to expect God to act in the present.

We harm ourselves and the world if we put stories like the ones we heard today in the relics section of our minds. Probably this will not be the last time someone raises a child from the dead. We need to allow ourselves to think that that is so. To have that be our posture. For as shocking as it sounds, God is still working.

Trinity: The Nickname of God

June 3, 2007

Is it possible to love the Trinity? Is it possible to be loved by the Trinity? Not if the Trinity is an organization, an institution, even a team. Not if the Trinity is an association of three persons, like a small board of directors or a special task force. Who can love an organization, who can love a task force? How in the world would an association, a board of directors, love us?

Today is called Trinity Sunday. It is the only Sunday that is named for a doctrine. Who can love a doctrine? Did the church powers-that-be make a mistake? Or is there something else going on here?

Maybe we find a hint when we hear that this is also the first Sunday after Pentecost. This time in the church year is called ordinary time. Not a time, like Christmas or Easter, when we celebrate some extraordinary event in the life of Jesus. Not a time, like Advent or Lent when we prepare ourselves for those special events. Ordinary time is the time when in lessons, songs, and worship we focus on the day to day life of Christians. And, in parallel, the day to day life of Jesus as he went about the countryside, as he went door to door, as he went about his regular job—as we focus on his ministry. So Trinity Sunday is not part of any of the special seasons of the church. It is the first Sunday of ordinary time, and is therefore, we could guess, about our day to day life in the light of our following Jesus.

Yet it seems so complicated and weird and not at all connected to normal life. The Trinity is the idea that God is one God but in three persons. “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” as we sang in the opening hymn. Some great theologians and philosophers—people who think about things like this—have dismissed the Trinity as unimportant or at least irrelevant in a practical way. When I was growing up, I asked my mother—a smart church-going person—about the Trinity, and she said to me, “Well, it’s a mystery.” By which I took at the time to mean: “Beats me. I have no idea.”

Yet something like the concept of the Trinity has seemed necessary from the very beginning of Christianity. It is an answer to some problems, which I’ll call problems number one, two, three, and plus. Three-plus problems.

Problem number one was an intellectual problem. Jews, Muslims, and Christians are pretty committed to worshiping just one God. There is only one God. God is one. I am your God; you shall have no other God’s. The worshiping of other gods besides God is represented in the Old Testament as adultery. But, says the intellect, then who is Jesus? If Jesus is divine—and the church was clear about that pretty soon—then is Jesus another God, making therefore two gods? What about the Holy Spirit, whom we are supposed to trust as the Spirit of God, the agent of the creation? Is the Spirit God, and if so, do we now have three gods? And wanting to keep God perfect and unchangeable—to my mind a dubious desire in any case—God cannot be divided or converted into modes, so to speak. So, primarily to protect monotheism in the face of the divinity of Jesus and the ongoing existence of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity says there is only one God (with a capital G) who exists in the form of three persons, equal, divine, and different.

Problem one starts with the oneness of God. The Trinity is about the inner life of God.

Problem number two was a problem of people’s experience of God. People tend not to treat the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same way. Though you might know, intellectually, that the triune God—“triune” is the adjective for the Trinity—you might know that God created the universe, but you might have a hard time getting your head around the notion that Jesus created the universe. Even though we believe it and it even says so, sort of, in the Gospel of John. In a similar way, for a long time people had a hard time saying that when Jesus died on the cross that God died, too. What does that mean, God died? When you pray, you might say you pray to God or to Jesus, even though the word “or” there contradicts the notion that in essence there is only one listener. God or Jesus—isn’t Jesus God? The three persons seem different in our hearts and in our experience. We experience God in different ways at different times and, it seems, in different guises. So, to preserve our sense of the diversity of God in our own daily experiences, the Trinity says there is one God who meets us in different persons.

Problem one starts with the oneness of God. The Trinity is about the inner life of God. Problem two starts with the diversity of God. The Trinity is about the outer life of God.

Problem number three was an emotional problem. A problem of affection, maybe we can call it. People don’t only have thoughts of God. People don’t only have experiences with God. People also have a relationship with God. A relationship that is not just with one of three sorts at different times. When you come to church, whom do you praise, to whom do you sing? Not, I think, just one of three versions of God. Our relationship with God can be as complex—more complex—than with another person. God of the Bible—as opposed to God of the Greek and Medieval philosophers—is someone who had and has a relationship with God’s people, is open to prayer and grief, who listens to our arguments, who suffered as a person, and who guides us and comforts us [from LaCugna]. God and people act as friends, lovers, and sometimes worthy opponents. To know God in an ongoing and joyful and sometimes troubled relationship makes sense to us because that is how we live our own lives, in joyful and sometimes troubled relationships. Parent, child, friend, significant other, partner, associate, teammate. Physicists suspect that even the physical basis of all things is the relationship between fundamental particles, whose existence is called into being through interactions and relationships. The world is not things that interact but interactions that yield things. So, to acknowledge and praise the complex relationship we have with God, the Trinity says that God is not one or even three particles, but a being whose very existence depends on relationships with others.

Problem one starts with the oneness of God. The Trinity is about the inner life of God. Problem two starts with the diversity of God. The Trinity is about the outer life of God. Problem three starts with the affection of God. The Trinity is about the relational life of God.

Nonetheless. The concept of the Trinity in all these formulations is both too simple for God and too complex, and not simple enough and not complex enough. That is, who are we to say that we have figured God out so thoroughly? We know some things. God the creator is big—and little. God’s glory reaches beyond the stars, the psalm says. God in the person of Jesus is physical and earthy. God in the Sprit is near and surprising. But God is not just big. Not just physical. Not just near. Not just anything you can say or imagine. The Trinity is a way to say this. To say that God is “not just …”

Dorothy Sayers, mystery writer and Christian, once said “the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the whole thing incomprehensible.” Not to make fun—or not only to make fun—but to acknowledge the ineffable. What we can most know about God is that God is mostly unknown and unknowable. That is not a bad thing.

For God knows us. We know that God is mindful of us, as it said in the psalm “what is humankind that you remember them,… that you care for them?” We need to have a name for God, which is problem number three-plus. A kind of nickname, really. We know the name God told the Israelites. That’s God’s formal name. But we need a name that fits God like the nicknames we give our friends. Not a perfect name, nicknames never are. One that deals with God’s unity, God’s diversity, and God’s affection for us. So the church has picked such a name. The nickname of God, a name we can call God that seems to fit. The name is: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Trinity is one name of God. It reminds us that God and we are connected. It reminds us that God is “not just …” something we can pin down. It reminds us that this big, small, physical, near God, more than we can imagine, is the God we love and the God who love us.