Sermon 6/6/04
A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That - Romans 5:1-5
(view lectionary notes for this text)
This is another one of those strange Sundays where it seems like everything collides at once and no one gave any advance thought to how things would look when it all came together. It is Trinity Sunday - the day we are supposed to celebrate the unique three in one nature of our God - Creator God, God as the Christ, and God as the Holy Spirit. It is also Peace with Justice Sunday, one of six designated special Sundays in the United Methodist Church to emphasize and raise funds for certain ministries that fall into this area. Then, in our own congregation, today we celebrate Confirmation, the completion of a school-year long journey for some of our young people. Now, just try to tie all of that in with our scripture readings that we've heard this morning, and we've got ourselves a service - a rare selection from Proverbs, one of my favorite Psalms, and good stuff from Romans and John as well!
The thing is, confusing as it is, all this doesn't seem so unusual to our chaotic and crazy lifestyles. We're used to multi-tasking, right? So I can't promise we'll hit everything. But part of the fun of our lives is that everything is connected to our faith and to our God, and we can always be surprised at the way things weave together in our experiences.
In my mind, though, the toughest task of the day is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity alone provides quite a challenge. Whole courses in seminary, several books, more essays, are devoted solely to the topic of Trinity. The concept of God as Trinity, a central doctrine to Christianity, is one that we barely grasp at best. We can probably name the three parts of the Trinity: God as Parent, Child, and Holy Spirit. But beyond that? How can we describe a God who is one and three at the same time? Followers of other faith traditions often wonder how we can call ourselves monotheistic - believing in one God only - when we have this idea of Trinity. Which is it - do we believe in one God or three? And while we want to believe in the Trinity, and will affirm our faith in the Trinity at times when we recite the Apostle's Creed, when questioned about it, our knowledge and beliefs might be a little harder to explain. Do we believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the same thing? Or that God our Creator is the same as Jesus Christ? Is that what the Trinity means?
In part, the Trinity helps me understand the thoroughness, the pervasiveness, with which God wants to be part of our lives. Not just our Creator, God wants to be right here with us, will even take human form with us. Not just limited to becoming human, God wants to actually abide in us, breathe the Holy Spirit through us, so that God is in us and we are in God. God wants to really, actually be our all in all, and God will try any and every tactic in order to relate to us. That's the best I can explain to myself how and why the Trinity is meaningful.
For our Confirmands, and for the rest of us as well, I pose, then, this challenge: If God who is the Trinity is so dynamic that God seeks to be part of our lives in every way possible, then we also must work to make God a part of our lives every day, in every way. That means that God and God's work in our lives is not confined to our time at church, to Sunday mornings. It means that God is with us at school, at work, at home, when we're hanging out with our friends, when we're watching TV. God is present, in us, around us. What will we do with God's presence in our lives? That's the question we have to respond to each day by our words and actions.
The apostle Paul wrote to the Romans about his experience of God's presence in his life. For Paul, as for most Christians, his experience of God came primarily through his relationship with Jesus Christ. In fact, Paul writes that this relationship with Christ, specifically his faith in Christ, has justified his life. Justification means 'set straight', like the tool on computer programs that allow you to make the left and right margins line up straight. Paul writes also of experiencing God's love specifically through the Holy Spirit - that through the Holy Spirit, God's love is poured right into us, right into our hearts, our very cores.
For Paul, this experience of the three-in-one God enables him to make some amazing leaps in his world view. He starts with mentioning his suffering, but ends up rejoicing in his hope. Listen to his fancy foot work: He writes, "We . . . boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts." Are you able to take such a view of the suffering that occurs in your own life? I admit that I am not always so bright in my outlook. But Paul's experience leads him to react this way - he has experienced a relationship with God his Creator, God in the risen Christ, God in the Holy Spirit dwelling right in his heart. And if God is with him in all of this, in all these ways, perhaps it is not so difficult to expect that hope can spring from our sufferings after all.
But how we seek to respond to God's pervasiveness and persuasiveness is essential in how we will experience the transformation of our own life experiences too. Each day, we are bombarded with choices and decisions. We are faced with our own emotions, our own reactions to the highs and lows in our lives. Paul encourages us to respond as he responds, first by recognizing God's presence in every part and every event in our lives, and then by our faith, as we learn to trust and hope that God's love will be poured into us through every experience, no matter how difficult or challenging or painful.
This attitude is certainly not an easy adjustment. On Peace with Justice Sunday, we are reminded that there are situations in homes and in regions and in places around the world where there is a desperate need for your peace and your justice, for your presence to be made known. But Paul reminds us: hope does not, does not, does not disappoint us - because God's love has been poured out, into our very hearts. So death becomes life in Jesus Christ. Suffering becomes hope transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit. And our faith becomes action, supported by the love of the dynamic Three-in-One God who created us. Amen.