Holy, Holy, Holy (Reflections on Holy Trinity Sunday 2023)

 

^“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

I don’t know about you, but I always find Holy Trinity to be a pain in the gluteal tissue (metaphorically speaking, of course) for pastors. This feast celebrates a doctrine, not an event, so there isn’t a good piece of storytelling we can hang a sermon on. I can, however, remind you, dear reader, that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was first set down around the year 325 by a bunch of bishops who were summoned by the Roman emperor Constantine to the town of Nicaea[i] in what is now Turkey for the purpose of deciding just what the heck it means to BE a Christian.

Now, your average Joe Pewsitter might not know this, but the Christian faith has been a potluck macaroni salad of ideas from the get-go. Our ancestors in the faith might’ve all called themselves Christians, but it took about 300 years for lovers of Jesus to agree on precisely what Christianity was all about—and then it was only because the Roman emperor (who didn’t really have an opinion on the subject but wanted political unity) decreed that some kind of statement of faith was in order. Don’t believe me? Just check out the Gospel text for Holy Trinity Sunday (Matthew 28:16-20). Look at verse 17: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” 

Can’t you just picture that? Eleven dudes standing around, eight of them saying, “Wow! It’s the Lord!” and three guys saying, “I don’t know. You think we ought to be here? You guys sure this is Jesus..?”

God will always be a mystery to us, and whenever we think we have it all figured out, we’re probably only fooling ourselves. Still, I believe (political history aside) those bishops came up with a pretty good doctrine all those centuries ago. They started with an old Jewish premise echoed in the Hebrew prayer called the Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” I like to think they discovered the unity, the interconnectedness of all things, and declared that this unity is God. God in creation. God in the wisdom of Jesus Christ. God in life, breath, knowledge, and all things—including us. As Saint Paul is said to have proclaimed on the Areopagus, God is he in whom “we live and move and have our being.[ii]” God is all around, even if we’re no more aware of God than we are of the air we breathe.

This understanding of God should widen our perspective, not narrow it.

The authority Jesus displayed (v.18) in his ministry was never an authority to judge or punish or condemn. He had authority to cast out unclean spirits—spirits of sickness and evil. It was a healing authority, a power and a commission to bring people back to wholeness and fix what was wrong. And it was the authority to forgive sins and restore human beings to a right relationship with God, with each other, and with themselves.

Jesus’ authority was not like the authority of the emperor. Old Constantine could tell the bishops, “You guys make up a doctrine for the Christian faith. Then we’ll tell everyone to sign off on it—and I’ll have them put to death if they don’t.” Jesus doesn’t work like that. When Jesus called us to teach and obey, it wasn’t about assent to a doctrine. It was about living the life of compassion, mercy, and faith he revealed.

I worry that we as American Christians have dumbed down our belief system to “Believe in Jesus or go to Hell—and, if you’re NOT a Christian, too bad. Sucks being you.” We may have turned our faith into one giant Billy Graham Crusade, focusing only on our individual salvation and turning our understanding of the sacred into a good work. But if the Triune expression of God is really what we believe in our hearts, then we have a compassionate responsibility to see the holiness of God all around us, to love all God’s children, and to care lovingly for the world God spoke into being.

May the peace of God which is beyond our understanding keep your heart and mind in Christ Jesus—now and unto the close of the age.

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[i] Fun facts: The ancient city of Nicaea is now part of the north-central Turkish city of Iznik. Why the name change? You’d have to ask the Turks that. My favorite piece of Nicene Creed trivia, however, is the fact that Nicholas of Myra (aka Santa Claus) was present at the Council. History doesn’t record what he did or said there, but it’s pretty cool to know he represented, don’t you think?

[ii] See Acts 17:28.

Peace be with You (Reflections on the Day of Pentecost, 2023)

 

“Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side…” (John 20:19b-20a)

It took a few minutes for the transport staff that cares for disabled individuals to get Mary[i] to the gravesite in her wheelchair. She was saying a last good-bye to her sister, Jean. Jean had been a career woman, never married, and had no children. She had spent the last years of her life in a care facility due to protracted illness and, as such, was no longer in contact with co-workers or neighborhood friends. Mary was also childless. The family marker at the grave bore the names of Mary and Jean’s parents and two siblings who had predeceased them. There remained two blank spaces on the monument, reserved for Jean and Mary. Besides Mary and myself, there were only two other people present at the funeral service—Mary’s close girlfriend and a male caregiver who pushed Mary in her chair and assisted with her portable oxygen tank.

At the grave Mary began to cry. “They’re all gone,” she said. “I’m alone. I wish the Lord would come and get me.”

Her friend and the transport staff—who apparently knew her well—circled around her, giving hugs of comfort. Some had tears in their own eyes, crying for and with Mary. I recalled something a funeral director had said once, and I shared it: There are a lot of different ways to be a family. The compassionate staff that had gathered around the grieving woman assured her they were her brothers and sisters in Christ, and that they loved and cared for her as if she were their own flesh and blood.

God never stops being good just because we, temporarily, stop seeing God’s goodness. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to gather and unite us.

It is, however, very easy to get “locked-up” in sadness and anxiety. In the Gospel lesson for Pentecost (John 2019-23), Jesus enters the closed-off place where his loved ones are huddled and blesses them with the gift of peace. “Peace be with you,” he says to them—twice. And Christ’s peace is essential, because there can be no empowerment without knowing peace.

Jesus then goes on to show the disciples his wounds. When they see the scars of the nails and the spear they know the one who blesses them with peace is truly their crucified friend. Nevertheless, I think the scars he reveals do more than just provide identification. These wounds proclaim his genuineness. They say he was willing to suffer, that he has endured all that they endure and fear enduring. His peace comes from this endurance, and he is speaking the truth. There is something which bonds and unites us whenever we’re willing to show our scars and share our woundedness.

And Jesus’ wounds tell those whom he loves he has been victorious over death, and they will be also.

Pentecost is the birthday of the Christian faith, the day our scared and wounded founders felt the peace of the Holy Spirit descend on them, letting them bang open the locked door of their grief and fear and joyfully proclaim the goodness of the Lord. I don’t see this festival day to be a Hallelujah-shouting, speaking-in-tongues event here at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia. But I hope it will be a day when the peace that comes from Jesus is felt in our hearts. I hope we will find renewed appreciation for the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts which bind and unite us, and have done so over the years. I see this celebration rather like a birthday party for a 100-year-old lady. No, she won’t be getting out of her wheelchair and dancing a rumba across the floor of the care facility common room. Rather, this will be a contemplative celebration recalling the wonderful things she has seen, the many people she has loved, the faith that has sustained her to this advanced age, and the constant goodness of God.

And God’s goodness is never ending. I believe God is busy doing a new, and unexpected thing. We may not see how the Spirit is at work, but she’s certainly working. I learned recently that a study of generosity and volunteerism has revealed millennials are twice as generous and volunteer with twice the frequency of the two generations which have preceded them. There is a new spirit of love and responsibility emerging, and time will tell how it will impact the Church.

In the meantime, let’s rejoice for what the Spirit has done and is still doing. As Luther taught:

“I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with her gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as she calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in one common, true faith. Daily in the Christian church the Holy Spirit abundantly forgives sin—mine and those of all believers. On the last day the Holy Spirit will raise me and all the dead and will to me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true.[ii]”

May God’s Spirit grant you the peace which passes all our understanding.

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[i] “Mary” isn’t her real name. I’m changing names out of courtesy as this event was fairly recent.

[ii] Luther’s explanation to the third Article of the Apostles Creed, from The Small Catechism (Here We Stand Student Book, Augsburg Press 2010) I have subsitituted the feminine pronoun out of respect for the gramatical gender of the original language and in a spirit of inclusivity.

Wait a Minute (Reflections on Easter 7, Year A 2023)

 

"Christ Ascension" Fugel 1893

“All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer…” (Acts 1:14a)

Don’t you hate to have to wait for stuff? The best piece of advice I think I was ever given was: Most of life is spent waiting. So bring a book.

In the First Lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary for Easter 7, Year A (Acts 1:6-14) we find the Apostles standing around looking up at the clouds as Jesus ascends into Heaven. This is actually the lesson for the Feast of the Ascension, one of the six principal festivals on our liturgical calendar This festival should have been observed last Thursday, but for some reason we at Faith Lutheran just never got really jazzed about it. I mean, there aren’t any “Happy Ascension Day” greeting cards. Plus, we’ve just had Easter and Mother’s Day, and there may have been proms or graduations and such for some of us recently. I guess we’re kind of “festivaled out” at this point. We’d like a week or so to catch our breath before we celebrate Pentecost. Fortunately, this reading about the Ascension gets repeated in our Sunday lessons.

Personally, I find a lot of meaning in the Feast of the Ascension—weird as the story seems to be. Jesus has been making some surprise visits to the faithful off and on for the last forty days. He’s hung around just long enough after his resurrection to let his posse know about this eternal life thing. Then, suddenly, he takes them on a hike to Mt. Olivet and—right in front of their eyes—he takes off like a Saturn 5 rocket and leaves them standing there staring at the clouds with their mouths hanging open. Then some mysterious guys in white show up out of nowhere and promise that he’ll be back.

Someday.

And now the waiting begins. Can you imagine these eleven Galilean dudes looking at each other saying, “Okay. The Boss is gone. He promised us an Advocate, but he or she hasn’t shown up yet. What should we do?” Luke has them hanging around, waiting, and praying with the rest of the community they’ve assembled.[i] In fact, they were devoting themselves to prayer—which isn’t such a bad way to spend those periods of uncertain waiting.

This then begs the question: what were they praying for? In our Gospel lesson (John 17:1-11) Jesus prays that they—and, by extension we—will be unified. Luke says the disciples were still waiting for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel (v.6). Boy! They’d have to wait an awful long time for that, and I suspect they might’ve been a bit disappointed when it finally arrived in 1948.

I mention the restoration of Israel as a nation because its seventy-fifth anniversary was observed this past week. The United Nations chose to mark the event as the anniversary of what Palestinians call the Nakba, or the Catastrophe. Yes, Israel got her land back, but she did so by displacing thousands of Palestinians and destroying their villages. This “restoration” has given us seventy-five years of terrorism and brutal reprisals. Not exactly the unity Jesus was praying for in our Gospel reading.

American Christians are also divided on this subject. There are those who have been told that the restoration of Israel is the first stage of the “End Times.” Once Israel becomes a completely Jewish nation again, the Second Coming or the rapture or something will happen. The rest of us believe that such eschatological thinking will cause us to ignore climate change and other threats to our planet’s health (Hey! Who needs to care for the earth if the Second Coming is right around the corner, right?) and will encourage the Israeli government  to further human rights violations.

Some in Israel/Palestine are praying for a two-state solution, but more and more we hear talk of a one-state solution—a time when Israel will realize that theocracy and democracy are inherently incompatible, and that Arabs (be they Muslim of Christian) and Jews will live together under one government in harmony with each other, recognizing that diversity is a gift and not a threat. That would be something worth praying and waiting for—and not just in the Middle East, but here in the US, too.

Waiting for change is hard. I guess the Apostles must’ve felt it would be really cool if Jesus were with them always, but Jesus had to go so these guys could grow up. He took his leave praying for them and not for the world, because the world won’t change unless the people of God change it. This liminal period of prayer and reflection must’ve been the time when the followers of Jesus realized they were moving into new roles. They were once Jesus’ students, but now they have to become his ambassadors. And I’ll bet they felt scared and confused.

I feel like we’re in the same place these guys and gals were in back at the get-go of our faith. We know things aren’t going to be the way they were, but what are they going to become? Looks like we’ll have to wait and see.

We don’t know where our world, our congregations, or our own lives are headed. This might be just the right time to devote ourselves to prayer. It might be time to say, “Okay, Lord. You’re in charge. I don’t know what’s coming, but help me to face it with love, acceptance, patience, understanding, and wisdom. Whatever comes next, help me to proclaim the love that came from the cross.”

Do yourself a favor, okay? If you’ve just read this, take a minute to pray for guidance and peace. And may the Lord be with you.

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[i] This community, by the way, includes several women. They don’t get named in the Bible because the Gospel writers wrote in a patriarchal society, but I think it’s important to note that they were disciples too.

Paul's TED Talk (Reflections on Easter 6, Year A 2023)

 

Paul at the Areopagus, Raphael 1515

Back in the early ‘80’s, when I was a grad student at the University of Wisconsin, a fun way to spend a spring afternoon was listening to the debates at the Free Speech Platform located in a quad on the campus. Most of what passed for “free speech” was left-wing cant, but there were sometimes lively exchanges of a religious nature when a bombastic evangelist known as “Sister Pat” took the platform and harangued the students with a bloodthirsty barrage of vitriol which would’ve made Jimmy Swaggart soil his shorts. Pat called all the female students whores (which was rather vile of her, I thought) and accused all the male students of lusting after them (which was probably true). Some brave souls would attempt to argue with her, but they would get shouted down by Pat’s ferocious stentorian bellowing. I never attempted to engage her in conversation as I have a rule about arguing with zealots and crazy people. To my knowledge, no UW student ever broke down in tears and accepted Jesus at Pat’s urging, but I suspect the evangelist felt she’d done the Lord’s work all the same.

I thought about the Free Speech Platform when I read the First Lesson appointed in the Revised Common Lectionary for Easter 6, Year A (Acts17:22-31) which takes place in what I imagine to be a similar venue, the Areopagus in Athens. This locale was once the site of Athens’ judiciary. It was a place where cases were decided. The name means “Hill of Ares” because Ares, the god of war in Greek mythology, was supposedly tried there by the other gods. By the time Paul took the Free Speech Platform, the official function of the place had long ended, but the Athenians, it seems, still liked to hang out there and talk religion and politics.

A little back story: Paul (who, you’ll remember from last week’s First Lesson, was once Saul, a persecutor of the Christian faith) was on his second missionary journey throughout the Mediterranean world. He’d been doing pretty well in Greece, but he ran into a rather mixed crowd In Thessalonica. Some of the Greek Jews and not a few gentiles really dug his preaching, but for some the message about Jesus’ love, forgiveness, and resurrection was just too hip. They wanted to get out the tar and feathers. Paul had to scoot out of town in a hurry, and even the next town over was too close. That’s how he ended up many miles away in the cultural center of Athens.

For a cosmopolitan guy like Paul, Athens would be a pretty cool place to hang out. However, the Bible tells us Paul was “deeply distressed[i]” to discover he could barely stand with his hands on his hips in that town without elbowing a statue to some pagan god.  As was his custom, his first place to preach was in the local synagogue, but he also took his witness to the open air and started debating folks in the marketplace. The Bible says he argued with stoic philosophers (those who believed it was a human being’s place to live as simply as possible without the clutter of luxury) and with epicureans (those who believed life had no real meaning so just enjoy yourself while you can and party on). Unlike the Thessalonian hicks up north, the urbane Athenians were always interested in novel ideas, so they invited Paul to the Areopagus to give what I imagine was a First Century version of a TED talk.

I have to give our apostle props for the way he handled this invite. Unlike the above-mentioned Sister Pat, Paul didn’t start dissing the crowd for their paganism. Instead—if you accept the New Revised Standard Version translation—he actually complimented them for their religiosity. To be honest, the translation here gets a little tricky. What he said was they devotedly feared (in this case fear means “respect”) the demons. He could just as easily be telling them they’re superstitious[ii], but I like to think he’s taking a more gentle approach.

The polytheistic Greeks have a boat load of gods. They’ve even set up an extra shrine in case there’s a god out there they might’ve overlooked. This gives Paul an opening. He can tell them about the “unknown God.”

The God he wants them to know doesn’t have a specialty. This God is the maker and ruler of all things. This God doesn’t require a shrine. Rather, this God wants to live in the hearts of the faithful. This God doesn’t want an animal sacrifice. This God wants us to recognize the sacred in each other, love one another, and make our sacrifices to and for one another. This God doesn’t live up on Mount Olympus far out of touch with us. This God has promised not to leave us orphaned. This God promises that the Spirit of Truth will be with us and in us, and that we will have a relationship with God.

This God promises love and revelation. This is not a god of condemnation like the one I heard Sister Pat screaming about all those years ago, nor is God a god of wealth, a personal ATM, as some other preachers proclaim. This is the God who wishes to be known to us in community, in sharing, in respect for the world this God created.

I think the Spirit of God spoke to our Church Council at Faith Lutheran last week when we had our monthly meeting. God wants us to reach out, and so it’s been planned that we’ll have another Neighborhood Day in early June and invite the local flea market folks to sell their wares on our lawn. Any money we make from this will be donated to Family Promise of Philadelphia. We may only clear a few hundred dollars, but if that helps one family pay some bills it will be worth it.

This unknown God is not unknown to us. When we pray, when we fellowship together, when we do deeds of love and mercy, God is present. This is our Father’s world. God shines in all that’s fair; in the rustling grass we hear God pass, God speaks to us everywhere.  

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[i] The old King James Bible translated this as “his spirit was stirred in him” upon seeing the idols. The words in Greek literally translate as “his spirit within him was painfully excited.”

[ii] That’s how the old KJV translates this.

Keep Your Eyes on Jesus (Reflections on Easter 5, Year C 2023)

 

"Stoning of St. Stephen" Lucini 17th Cent.

“But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55)

As the striking Hollywood writers remind us, stories are important. I mean, what is our religion but our belief in ultimate things like the existence of the soul, the meaning of life, our ethics, how we relate to one another and the world—all illustrated through our common story? And, of course, our common story is reinforced through our rituals and traditions. I like to tell and hear stories. In fact, I love to tell stories. You know: like the old hymn says, “I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love.”

Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of story-telling I can do with the Gospel appointed for Easter 5, Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary. John’s a little long on theology here and short on narrative. But fortunately, the First Lesson (Acts 7:55-60) gives us the stuff of which great epics are made—our first murder in the New Testament.

As you might expect, this story needs a little back story to set it up. Our martyr here is Stephen. He’s one of the first seven deacons appointed in the Christian Church. If you recall from last week, the early Christians practiced a pretty radical form of social justice. They held everything in common, gave as they had the ability, and received as they had need. But, alas! The early church was still made up of sinful folks just like the rest of us, and a little favoritism started to creep into the distribution of their social ministry. It seems the Jewish widows and orphans were getting a little bit more from the Community Chest than were the non-Jewish widows and orphans. The Gentile converts complained to the apostles. The apostles then did the very church-like thing of creating a committee to oversee the church’s social welfare program.

This committee of social servants—known in the church as deacons from the Greek word for servant, diakonos—was comprised of seven good, honest, and faithful guys. The apostles laid hands on them and prayed for them, and then got back to their own praying and preaching while the deacons handled the administration. Stephen was, apparently, a really good deacon. The Bible says he was full of faith and the Holy Spirit[i], and folks liked him. I guess he was sort of like a Meals on Wheels driver whom all the old ladies want to introduce to their granddaughters. In any event, he was very popular with folks. In fact, the whole Christian movement was becoming really popular. It was so popular that people were converting by the thousands, and even some Jewish priests were wondering where they could sign up to become disciples of Jesus.[ii] I think we can conclude that there’s something of great promotional value about a religion that’s caring, non-judgmental, and unconditionally accepting. It really works.

However: in this freaky world of ours no good deed ever goes unpunished. Some of the big shots from the local synagogue just weren’t about to get on the Jesus bus, so they started arguing theology with Stephen. Stephen was a pretty sharp cookie who knew his Tora, and he could make a real good argument for why he was embracing this new way of living the religious life. This got the old-timers pretty steamed, so they accused him of committing blasphemy and got him hauled up in front of the council on charges.

Stephen acted as his own attorney and took up all of Acts Chapter Seven proving his orthodoxy by reciting a Readers’ Digest version of Genesis and Exodus. But then he talked about the Temple—a very touchy subject when you’re talking to the Temple Authorities. He finishes up by saying that the leaders of the people, the ones who should’ve known the commandments and the prophecies, not only called for Jesus’ death but also ignored God’s Law.

As you can imagine, this did not go over well.

“When they heard these things,” says verse 54, “they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen.” And the rest is history. Stephen is the first Christian murdered for his faith—the first martyr.

I often approach storytelling by asking, “Who am I or who are we in this tale?” It’s important to remember that Stephen wasn’t a Christian calling out the Jews. He was still a Jew commenting on the behavior of his own people. It’s easy for us as Christians to be the angry mob ready to stone someone whenever we’re called out on our own hypocrisy, lack of charity, or some other brand of bad behavior. There are just some folks who never want to be told they’re wrong. If our sense of identity or self-image is threatened, we’re ready to get out the torches and pitchforks. Amazingly, the more we’re proved wrong, the more we tend to double down on our error, grinding our teeth in indignation.

Of course, we might also be like Saul, whom Luke introduces for the first time in this story. He’s not actually doing anything wrong, but he isn’t doing anything to support or help the victimized either. As the murderers doff their coats so as not to soil them with the blood of the innocent, Saul is more than happy to look after them, quietly thinking that the man being killed in such a brutal and horrific way probably had it coming. He has plausible deniability, but his inaction or indifference make him just as guilty.

And then there’s Stephen himself. He speaks the truth, and takes the consequences. What is striking about him is his lack of rancor toward those who oppose him. Rather, his gaze is fixed on Jesus in glory. Jesus fulfilled. He looks past the present conflict, refusing to put the spotlight on those who hate and malign, and keeps focused on the goal. He knows, as Dr. King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.[iii]”

In spite of Stephen’s death, I see this story as a tale of hope and of perseverance. It’s a reminder that we possess the ability to navigate life in truth and in the way of Jesus. Or—since I like to quote hymns—as the old song put it:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Keep looking up, and thanks for stopping by this week.

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[i] See Acts 6:5

[ii] Acts 6:7

[iii] King was actually paraphrasing a quote from a 19th century abolitionist, Theodore Parker.