Scorpions, Hens and Chicks: the Cosmic Hesed of God

Luke 13:31-35

There is a story of an old man who used to meditate early in the morning under a big tree on the bank of the Ganges River. One morning, after he had finished his meditation, the old man opened his eyes and saw a scorpion floating helplessly in the water.

As the scorpion was washed closer to the tree, the old man quickly stretched himself out on one of the long roots that branched out into the river and reached out to rescue the drowning creature. As soon as he touched it, the scorpion stung him. Instinctively the man withdrew his hand. A minute later, after he had regained his balance, he stretched himself out again on the roots to save the scorpion. This time the scorpion stung him so badly with its poisonous tail that his hand became swollen and bloody and his face contorted with pain.

At that moment, a passerby saw the old man stretched out on the roots struggling with the scorpion and shouted: “Hey, stupid old man, what’s wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for the sake of an ugly, evil creature. Don’t you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?”

The old man turned his head. Looking into the stranger’s eyes he said calmly, “My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save.”

Just because it is his nature to sting, that doesn’t change my nature to save. Doesn't that sound to you a lot like Jesus?

The lament of Jesus in our gospel today sounds an awful lot to me like the lament within the old man’s statement. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he cried out, and we can hear the sadness in his words, “….How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you did not want me!” (a literal translation of the Greek).

And yet, Jesus perseveres. From his birth to the cross, Jesus reaches out to the people of Jerusalem. Indeed, he gets stung again and again and again. Yet, even as he makes his final march toward that city, the Pharisees come to him to warn him away. Were they really looking out for Jesus or was their motive more sinister?

Jesus' response, of course, foreshadows what we know of as the Great Three Days of our salvation. Despite humanity’s nature to sin, despite the institutional rejection of Jesus by the Jewish leadership, despite his upcoming persecution, passion, and death at the hands of the Romans, Jesus perseveres in his walk of love, mercy and compassion. On the third day, through his resurrection, Jesus will indeed finish his salvific work on behalf of the stinging creature, humankind.  

How many times has God set out to establish equanimity with humankind, to show his love, to show us a better way of being at one with God and with our neighbor, and we would not follow, would not listen, would not obey God. No matter our nature to turn our backs on God, God’s nature to save continues.

As I met with other clergy in a text study on Wednesday, one of my colleagues remarked about how through the various readings we have before us this week, we really do get a vision of God that is one of cosmic nurturer. Isn’t that a beautiful way to picture God? As the one who nurtures the universe and all that is within it; as the one determined to save, regardless of the cost.

Abram and Sarai, his wife, have reached a point of hopelessness over ever being able to conceive a child of their own union. Yet, God promises and delivers not just a child but countless offspring through vast generations to come. As God so often does, God does not just meet the need but fills the desire with overflowing generosity.

See the heavens stretching out before you? [God asks Abram] Can you number the stars? They are more than you can count, aren’t they? And God promises to fill the cosmos with descendants in numbers as vast as the stars in the sky. And God keeps God’s promises.

A couple of months ago, Patti invited all of us to write our names on stars that she then hung from the ceiling in the hallway leading to the education wing.[If you didn't get a chance to put your name on one, we have them laid out again on the table with the nametags in the narthex).

Every time I pass through that hallway, I look up. All those stars suspended in the air overhead is heavenly. You can read some of the names…Mel, Pat, Ruth, Bob, Julia, London, Nazie, and so many more names; even my name is up there, somewhere. God’s generous answer to Abram’s need is a vast abundance that includes you and me.

While all Abram wanted was a single heir, God’s vision was so much bigger. It extends thousands of years and all around the globe. 
Today there are three major religions of the world,, known as the Abrahamic religions whose adherents worship this God who is so generous, so creative, and so masterful. We each have our own ways of understanding the nature of God and how God relates to us, but we all believe in the same God, one God, and the content of our stories and our scriptures overlap.

In Islam, God is rendered “Allah” in Arabic, literally “the God”. God is the absolute one, all powerful and all knowing ruler of the universe, and the creator of everything in existence. Islam emphasizes that God is strictly singular and unique, inherently One,  all-merciful and omnipotent.  Muslims consider God neither a material nor a spiritual being. According to the Quran and teachings of Islam, "No vision can grasp him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things."

In Judaism, God has been conceived in a variety of ways. Primarily, Jews hold that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the national god of the Israelites, delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Law of Moses at Mount Sinai as described in the Torah, their holy book.

God is understood as the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable supreme being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. Traditional interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is personal yet also transcendent, while some modern interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is a force or ideal.

The names of God used most often in the Hebrew Bible are the Tetragrammaton (YHWH Hebrew: יהוה) and Elohim, also, El Shaddai and Shekinah. Whatever name is used, there is but one God .

For Christians, God is one God in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons are indivisible – not three gods, but one God. As we state in our creed, we believe that God is the creator, all knowing and all powerful, who took on flesh and became human in the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the savior, the incarnation of a god who is so in love with humanity that he will do anything to save us from our sinful, warring madness, even join us in our own suffering and die for us, to ensure our eternal life with him through the resurrection.

God continues to bless, sanctify and endow fill our spiritual needs through God’s Holy Spirit, who contains all the aspects of God within herself.

The heart of Christian belief is that indeed, God did not keep Jesus from receiving the final sting of death, but allowed it, that all might be brought to eternal life through the power of the resurrection.

It’s a lot of heady stuff, all pointing to one thing – that despite our differences, these three major world religions basically share the same main beliefs about God: that God is one, that God is the creator who engages with humanity in ways that are unique and mysterious and merciful. And this immensely interconnected, generous and creative God exists for us all, binding us together in one humanity.

That’s an important truth for us to grasp, especially today.

Human conventions have created ideologies around each of these religions, resulting in misunderstanding, creating factions of extremism within each, and producing conflict, war, and struggles for power.

We see the result of this in our world today. Sadly, we even saw such division used this week as one inspiration and justification for a horrible act of terrorism and hatred directed toward a religious community.

Mercifully, however, we have also seen an international and interreligious response of support for the Muslim community and condemnation for the cowardly and hate-filled act taken against them.

We are right to pray for and support our Muslim brothers and sisters in New Zealand and anywhere in the world where they face injustice, prejudice and hatred. Adherents of true Islam are indeed our friends, created in the image of God as are we, and deserving of our love and support. As worshipers of one true God, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike speak out against injustice and promote peaceful coexistence, and in so doing, have become easy marks for power-hungry, extremist, and hate-filled groups in the world, and we see attacks against all three groups with increasing regularity.

We all seek comfort and consolation from the brutality of the world from the same loving, merciful God. The image of God as a hen who desires to gather her brood under her wings, is the picture of an incredibly nurturing God.

The lament of Jesus and his true sorrow is that despite God’s nurturing nature, despite covenants offered and needs addressed, rejection of God’s love and mercy abound. And now, as the incarnation of God’s hesed – God’s abundant, steadfast love and mercy embodied in Jesus Christ, the scorpion stings – but the true nature of God persists.

Lamentation is Jesus’ response to the sting; the cross is God’s response to the rejection. Even now, Jesus is calling us all into loving relationship with him. Even now, God is providing for our salvation through the cross. Even now, God reigns supreme, regardless of the worldly reality of sin, hatred, violence and denial.

The thing is, it is the nature of God to continue nurturing the cosmos. For the same God who sent Jesus as love for love’s sake is with us still, washes us in the waters of baptism, feeds us through the holy sacraments, blesses and empowers us through the work of the Spirit.

Thanks be to God, mothering, fathering, blessing, loving, merciful creator and redeemer. Amen.

  

Three's Trouble

Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Ps 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

Today we celebrate what is known as Holy Trinity Sunday - a moment in the church year in which we celebrate the gracious gift of God’s three-fold presence in human life; we rejoice over God’s benevolent existence and creative activity throughout the entire cosmos. Today we take time to acknowledge and praise God for God’s presence in trinity from time immemorial. And because we are human, we are often compelled to try – and we inevitably fail – to come up with the best way to precisely describe and explain who the trinity is and how the trinity works.

As Lutherans, we claim a Trinitarian identity. We gather together each time we worship in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. After the gathering hymn the worship leader greets everyone gathered together with what is known as the apostolic greeting - “The grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” - those same words we just heard coming from the second reading today. And you return the greeting. We make the sign of the cross upon ourselves or acknowledge the signing, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Together with most other Christians, we confess God in three persons - trinity. There is a “Trinitarian shape” to our faith. Yet, if someone came up to you and asked you what God – as - trinity means and how God in trinity works, what would you say? How would you explain this one-God-in-three-persons reality without committing heresy? Let me warn you that many theologians and scholars throughout the ages have tried – and most have failed to do so.

Here are some common analogies that most of us have heard or even used ourselves to try to explain the Trinity – and here are the problems with them:

Who here hasn’t witnessed the water as being like Trinity explanation – you start with a piece of ice, right? Then you heat it until it melts forming liquid, and continue heating it until it makes steam. One substance, three forms – solid, liquid, vapor - just like the trinity – right? Bzzzzzz! Wrong. That explanation is too much like the heresy called Modalism, which the early church condemned. It says God isn’t really one God in three distinct persons but merely reveals himself in three different forms. Not good.

Or, take the example of the sun –star, light, and heat – The trinity is like the sun, right? Bzzzzz! That explanation falls into another heresy which states that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are simply creations of the Father, and not one in nature with God; rejected centuries ago as a heresy called Arianism. Also, not good.

Finally, we have the perfect solution - trinity is like a three-leaf clover. And the buzzer sounds so loudly it breaks. The problem with the beloved clover analogy is that it would seem to indicate that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each simply one-third of the godhead, and each not, as we confess is true, fully God.

Perplexing, isn’t it? As humans we analyze, seek to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, invent logical, demonstrable explanations and definitions for everything. And faith challenges those impulses. Faith isn’t logical, it isn’t explainable, and it isn’t quantifiable. In an attempt to fully explain the trinity, somewhere around the sixth century, the Athanasian Creed was developed. Perhaps you remember seeing it when we used the green hymnal. It was in there, and you may have even (rarely) recited it – most likely on Holy Trinity Sunday. Here is how this creed describes the Trinity:

          “…we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity…For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one… The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated… The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite…” Clear as mud, right?  

        Simply stated: There is only one God, made up of three distinct persons, who exist in co-equal, co-eternal communion as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

          Martin Luther claimed that while the name “Trinity” is not found in the Holy Scriptures, rather, is a term invented by man, the scriptures do in fact testify to the existence of the trinity. From our reading of Genesis this morning, to the Gospel text from Matthew where Jesus commissions his disciples to go to the ends of the earth baptizing people from all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; from the psalms to the writings of the prophets to the Gospels and Epistles, Luther finds evidence for the scriptural witness to this Trinitarian God.

          The problem is, that even in our most expansive ideology or language, even with our most progressive thinking, we are limited by our humanity to come to terms with, or fully understand the nature of God, or the very being of God. So, how can we unravel the tangled language and explanations of this Trinitarian supreme being? And what does God in trinity mean for us in our lives today?

          Theologian Miroslav Volf noted that “Because the Christian God is not a lonely God, but rather a communion of three persons, faith leads human beings into the divine communion. Communion with this God is at once also communion with those others who have entrusted themselves in faith to the same God.”

“Communion” is key to understanding and grasping at the centrality of the Trinity of our lives. God loves us so much, and is so desiring of relationship with us, that God reveals Godself in various ways, as creating and omnipotent Father, as the incarnated Son and as the sanctifying, empowering Holy Spirit, constantly working together to bless and redeem us through God’s mercy.

God manifests Godself daily in ways that speak of God’s continual, tirelessly creative activity in our lives and in our world. God simultaneously joins us in our pilgrimage on earth, joins us in our living. God is so intimately connected to us that God knows and feels our joys, our pains, our struggles and our victories. God works tirelessly to empower, console, to give and grow faith within us, and to bless us in our work. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are constantly building relationship with us and within us.

          Friends, the good news of this gospel is that there is more to God than we could ever understand. That is what divine mystery is all about. God cannot and will not be confined to our narrow understandings or words or ideas. Rather, God is constantly revealing Godself to us and relating to us in new and exciting ways, always engaging in the world around us. The good news of this gospel is that God cares about us so much that God is compelled to meet us where we are, and to fill our every need.

          The good news of this gospel is what it says about this loving God who is so relational that God provides for communion, assures that we will never be alone, places us in relationship with every living creature, and provides the blueprint for balance in creation. God creates not only dry land but also water; not only beasts of the field and cattle but also birds of the air and creatures of the sea. God creates not only light but dark, not only day, but night, not only the chosen few, but all nations. And when these things exist in balanced relationship to one another and to God, God declares, that it is good.  

It is in the sharing of community, that God is best blessed and glorified. In this place and around this table of grace, God sanctifies faith as a holy offering to God. God wills us to be fully in communion, with the Trinity and with all that God has created, including and especially one another. God fills us when we reside in relationship. It’s all about relationship.

 God made us to live in community. In the image of God we are created; male and female God created us to be with God and for God, with each other and for each other. God created us to be in diverse, inclusive, loving, abiding relationship. A community that walks together, supports one another, prays for one another; a community that says, “When you can’t walk, sing, pray, or even believe, we will do it for you, until you can stand on our own.” That’s what community is. That’s what community does. And God in Trinity strengthens, and inspires us to these works and others that are greater than any we can imagine.

And so, we take our analogies, however flawed they may be. We take our limited understandings and confess that while we may not fully comprehend, we believe.

We ask this God in trinity to bless us when we welcome others in and when we open the doors of the church; when we remove the borders around “our” community by taking God’s Word, love, and compassion outside the assembly of people gathered here, and into the world, thus widening God’s community. We ask this Trinitarian God to bless our proclamation that it may be a true witness to the power of the triune God to many and diverse people and we pray God’s blessing on the mission of God in this place, that we may be equipped to serve as disciples and witnesses of God in all of the ways that God reveals Godself to us. In, through, and around all of this activity, we pray:

May the communion of the Holy Trinity inspire us and abide in us forever. Amen.