A Gut Feeling

Matthew 9:35-10:4

During the sermon on Holy Trinity Sunday last week, we heard through text and sermon about how God’s activity through the Holy Trinity is God’s living out the divine promise of “I’ve got you covered.” The Trinity’s ongoing presence and work as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit functions to show us who God is and how God operates throughout the universe. We acknowledge that though the Trinity is a mystery, and we don’t fully understand exactly how it is possible, it is through in Trinity that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has us uniquely covered – simultaneously creating, redeeming, and making us a holy people.

So, last week’s “I’ve got you covered” text and sermon addressed the how and what of God. This week’s gospel starts out by telling us the why of God. 

Today’s gospel text begins by telling us how Jesus went about the cities and villages – in other words, how he went to every type of people and every kind of community. Then, we come to verse 36 we read: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Here we have it – this is the why of God. God has compassion.

In and through Jesus, God responds to our suffering out of compassion. Jesus brings God’s comforting Word, teaches people who need to hear that Word about the true nature of God, and heals their sicknesses out of compassion. But the thing is, this word as we read it here, compassion, is truly a watered-down version of what the word written in Greek really means.

So, for instance, when you hear the word, “compassion,” what do you think of? What does it mean? <accept responses> To feel for? To take pity on? To want to help?

Good answers. It’s a good start. Yet if you look at the etymology of the English word, compassion, it goes a little further; ‘compassion’ comes from the Latin cum, meaning ‘with’ and passio, meaning ‘suffering’. So, when we have compassion, we are suffering with another person, or feeling their suffering.

To go a step further,  we have the Greek word actually written into this text; splanknizo, or, in this case, splanknizomai, since it is in verb form, means to “feel in the viscera.” In plain English the closest way I can put that is, ‘to feel in the gut’ – to feel to your very core – to have a gut-wrenching reaction to something - to feel it so deeply in your insides, that you literally feel something within you move.

God sees the helplessness of God’s creation and God acts out of compassion. God doesn’t simply feel badly for the people who are suffering, God acts because God feels our pain and is moved to the very core by the plight of humankind. God knows how harassed – how out of sorts, beleaguered, and overwhelmed we are - how much we suffer from depression, oppression, and suppression; that is what affects God, moves God so much that God sends Jesus Christ to us as the Word incarnate, to heal our pain and brokenness, and save us from our sin.

That is the truest meaning of the word translated here, and it reason for God’s action; it is the reason that Jesus reaches out and heals and cures the people he encounters on his journey through the cities and towns and villages; through the city streets and along the country lanes through which he passes. Jesus doesn’t simply feel badly for the people, pity them or judge them as pitiable, rather, Jesus sees their humanity, and he is moved to ease their pain.

But Jesus cannot do this work alone, because he knows that one day, he will leave this earthly plane and will need workers to carry on the work he has begun. He will need apostles who will likewise speak the Word, teach, and heal.

So, in a touch of irony, Jesus summons these early disciples, and instructs them to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.

Now, when I was in seminary, a very wise professor told us, “when you pray, be sure that you do not pray for something, for which you are not willing to be the answer.”

In the very next verse of our text today, Jesus calls twelve of these disciples and gives them the authority – read this as marching orders – to do the same as he has done. So, on the one hand, Jesus says, ‘pray for workers to help with the harvest’ – on the other hand he says, ‘now, you are to be first among those workers.’

Jesus calls his disciples – those who learn from him, not only to pray for the solution but to be part of the solution. And Jesus asks the same of us today, as community together with and for each other, and as harvest workers for the world around us. Jesus calls us to be moved to the very core of our being for the suffering ones – the harassed and helpless ones, the grieving and hurting ones, the hungry and homeless ones - and to respond; to reach out with compassion and heal those we encounter along our journey.

As the disciples go, they will proclaim the good news of the kingdom of heaven, and they will do this not for pay, nor for their own glory or benefit, but only for the sake the other, and the fullness of God’s kingdom.

I recently had a conversation with a woman who told me this story: she, along with her husband, had just joined a new church, but were not yet well known there, when an unbelievable tragedy befell their family. They were devastated, grieving, and suffering great pain and loss.

The incredible tragedy they had suffered was announced to the congregation in several forms of communication that went out, and members felt deeply sorry for anyone who would suffer such a loss, and they dutifully prayed for her family.

But what the woman told me was that not one person from that church called, sent a card, or reached out to her and her husband.

She and her husband had joined that church seeking to be part of a faith community. But perhaps because they weren’t all that well known yet, it seemed like the compassion of the members of the church was only skin-deep.

While prayer is very important, that family needed to know by the actions of their faith community that they were moved to the very core of their being by the pain and loss the family had suffered. Instead, the silence they experienced was deafening and only served to increase their pain; they felt betrayed and isolated by the community they thought would stand by them in their hour of need.

The result? The woman told me that though her faith in God was not shaken, her faith in the community of the church was shattered. They now felt it futile to belong to a church. What was the point? The community had failed them. The lesson for us all: our compassion needs to be more than skin-deep and it needs to be evident in our words and actions.

Whether the need comes from someone within the community itself or comes from one of our neighbors, Jesus calls us to know gut-wrenching compassion for those God places on our path and along our journey.

As a church, we’ve been doing a lot of talking about numbers. We talk about the numbers of people who come to worship. We talk about the numbers of people in the community around Easton whom we would like to bring into the body of Christ at Grace.

Jesus calls us to look past the numbers and see the people who are hurting, harassed and helpless. Jesus calls us to reach out to those in need of hearing the good news of God’s “I’ve got you covered” in a believable way – through our words and our actions. The best way to tell others about God is to show others about God, by modeling the love and compassion of God not only by what we say, but also by what we do.

The compassion of Jesus described in this text is a model for all of Christ’s disciples. Our text names those disciples whom Jesus sent out, even names some who failed him in some ways. Yet even in their failure, they have served the larger purposes of God.

In our baptism, we were each named as well. We were named children of God and workers in the new community to which we were joined, along with all the other laborers needed to serve the harvest of God.

The work is not easy. It is taxing. It is emotionally exhausting, it will not always be successful by our measures of success. But faithful service to God serves the larger purposes of God’s kingdom, to heal the hurts and feed the souls of those who most need to experience the love of God through the care and fellowship of the followers of Jesus.  It matters not whether we are able to discern “success” or not. We may never know the difference we have made in a person’s life – the reward is not ours to enjoy. But showing compassion through action in the name of Jesus Christ is our purpose in life and in this community for the ministry we share in God’s kingdom here on earth.  

Jesus sends us out in mission: to be the heart and guts of Christ for people. Jesus urges us to pray not only for our work but that more workers may join us, for the sake of the mission of God. Jesus models loving, compassionate caring that is more than skin-deep, but is demonstrated as well in faith through action.

Through the Holy Spirit, God grants us gifts of ministry for healing, and blesses us with the apostolic mission of the church. God grants us fellowship with all the workers who are sitting in the pews beside you here today, plus other workers who are sitting in pews in other churches hearing the good news of the compassion of Jesus and our commission to follow in his ways. This fellowship includes those who have yet to join us.

So today we go from “I’ve got you covered” to “Feeling it in the gut: the mission and ministry of Christ”. How does that work as a title for this message? It may not be very catchy, but it’s pointed. Christ’s love and presence are real, and he calls for ours to be, as well. May God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, grant that it may be so.

Amen.

It is what is it, - just don't ask me what!

Holy Trinity Sunday

I recently realized that there are three words that I mention – a lot! - in my preaching. Well – spoiler alert - I’m about to do it again. Those words, which come up again and again because they are so much in the nature and work of God, are “relationship,”                “forgiveness,” and “communion. One of those words is especially connected to the scripture texts we just read. (Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17)

The assigned verses we read this morning reveal to us the deep desire of God to exist in relationship with all God has created, especially with humankind. As I thought about what I might say today as we turn our focus to God as Trinity, I of course considered how I could best describe the Trinity when the truth is, God’s workings and nature are in so many ways indescribable.

I guess, it should come as no surprise that I came up empty.

I mean, there are all kinds of cute little analogies that are often repeated whenever we attempt to define or explain the three-in-one, one-in-three nature of God, but of course, none of these quite cut it and we find ourselves asking, as Nicodemus once did, “How can these things be?”

The truth is that we always fall short when trying to define God or explain the reality of who God is and how God works, let alone when we attempt to tackle the complexity of God’s Trinitarian nature. It seems that there are some things that are simply too mysterious and infinitely astounding to pigeonhole, to fit into a box, or explain with human words. Human knowledge and language will always fall short, will always be inadequate, will always be unequal to the task of satisfying our longing to fully understand how the divinity can possibly exist in trinity.

Peculiar as it might seem there is something profoundly comforting for me in that. It seems to me that as much as I want to have a clear, concise, precise way to describe and explain God, the very nature of definition is that it sets limitations and boundaries on that which is being defined.

It is ……this.

It isn’t …..that.

But who wants a God who is limited? We do not worship a God who observes boundaries, especially not boundaries drawn through our ideologies. Such a divinity would not be anyone’s idea of a God who meets the vast needs of the cosmos.  Nor is it a description of the holy one who creates, redeems, shapes and sanctifies us, who abides in this unique and wonderful relationship with us.

Instead, we belong to a God who is transcendent; different from anything that is or ever will be confined within our finite human experience or understanding. Try as we might, and many have tried – the reality is that our best attempts to explain the Trinity are simply a means to master with our words what is truly only God’s to know.

While some have rejected the very idea of a triune God because of the inability to precisely contain and explain the Three-in-One divinity, it is God’s deep desire to make God’s self intimately known which is reflected in the unique expression of a God who is perpetually relational, who goes to means as extreme as joining us in our humanity to bear this relationality out.

Nothing reveals this deep desire more than the incarnation of Jesus. And then, God leaves no stone unturned as God comes to us again and again repeatedly extending what God has promised: forgiveness, accompaniment and eternal love over, and over, and over again as grace upon grace.

At the reception following Confirmation last week, I had a lengthy conversation with one of our guests. He happened to be the grandfather of one of our confirmands, and from the perspective of quantum mechanics, he tried to describe a certain relative theory to me. To be fair, he did more than try. He explained it, and very well, I am sure –   it was me who was doing the trying - and failing - to understand what he was saying. Every now and then I had a glimmer of an inkling of an idea that a window might be opening and I was perhaps actually grasping a little bit of what he was saying, but then the curtain would come down, the light bulb would go out, and my head would start to hurt – it turns out I am no physicist, quantum theorist, engineer, or mathematician, my friends.

Then, after describing in great detail and with authority what scientists in his field have long understood to be absolutely true, my new friend looked at me and told me that lately, after reading about recent discoveries and current theory development he has come to firmly believe that our theories in this field are all wrong. He has come to believe that despite all the study and attention and development in his field over the past few decades, despite the mathematical certainty with which theories have been advanced, he is convinced - we really don’t know a thing.

Quantum mechanics aside - I kind of know what he means.

After a lifetime of reading and hearing the scriptures, at least enough to know many of the stories; after decades of going to church, and studying the foundations of our faith; after being involved in parish ministry in various capacities for decades, I had the bright idea to go to seminary. Well, truth be told, it wasn’t my idea, but that is another sermon for another day. Anyway, I went.

And, after taking classes like Biblical Greek, Old Testament, New Testament, Ancient and Medieval Christianity and the Gospels, all very early in my seminary career, I quickly reached the conclusion that all of my neatly drawn knowledge and determination about who God is and how God works was just wrong.

Despite my certainty that I had a solid foundation on which to begin my studies, the more I read and studied and learned, the more I realized I didn’t know a thing. I discovered my confidence and even my faith wavering because, if I couldn’t trust my intellect; if the facts and rules and laws I had learned and understood to be true about how God interacts with the world, if what I thought about these things was wrong, what in the world was I doing in seminary?

I have to tell you that my succeeding years in seminary, internship and subsequent study have only succeeded in confirming that while prayer and study and immersion in the scriptures is important, none of that is what really what matters. How can this be?

The thing about belonging to a relational God, is that, sooner or later we learn that God is more interested in the relationship than in what bits of knowledge we have amassed and may or may not possess. God is more interested in the relationship God has with each and every one of us – than in how well any of us understand this doctrine or that teaching of the church, or the law, or scholarship.

God is so interested and passionate about existing in eternal relationship with us, that God came to us, sealing our relationship in flesh and bone. God’s deep, gritty, amazing love for us comes to us through God’s all-encompassing drive and movement to save the world.

It is God’s activity in and through Christ that leads us to a new reality and experience of God’s love for the entire creation. God in relationship with us is constantly changing our perceptions, giving us new perspective, challenging our assumptions, shattering the boundaries we draw around our own ideas and theories, and drawing us into an ever deepening relationship and experience of God through the work of the Trinity – thus transforming us for daily discipleship.

This is the good news for today. It is our experience of God in holy relationship that informs our best understanding of who God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is.

All the rest – the mystery, the theories, the doctrine, the analogies, our every attempt to “explain” the trinity falls far, far short of the reality of who this God is, except as one who draws us all so deeply into relationship and gives us faith to keep us there. It is for the sake of love that God reaches out into the universe, claiming us each as heirs of the promise, heirs of the prize of God’s enormous gift and treasure of God’s love.

David Lose writes,

“Some say that’s why God created the cosmos and humanity in the first place, to have more people to love. But the Trinity goes even further, saying that from the very beginning of time the dynamic power of love that is at the heart of God’s identity and character can only be captured – and that dimly! – by thinking of the love that is shared…..And so God’s essential and core being has always been a giving and receiving and sharing of love that finally spills out into the whole of the universe and invites all of us into it. First through creation and God’s series of covenants, then and pre-eminently in the sending of God’s Son to demonstrate in word and deed just how much God loves us, and now as the Spirit, bears witness to God’s ongoing love for us and all creation.

Which means, I think, that when we talk about the Trinity as God being three-in-one, we really haven’t captured the heart of the doctrine and reality unless we recognize that God is three-in-one in order always to add one more – and that’s us, all of us, an infinite “plus one” through which God’s love is made complete in relationship with all of God’s children.

And that’s what these passages testify to – the profound love of God that draws us into relationship with God, with each other, and with the whole of creation and the cosmos.”

And so, yes, that big word, “relationship,” is again at the core of our message today. Today we embrace the fact that God in trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the relational power of God to reach out in love for us, for the sake of the world. Thanks be to God!

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.