The WOW! of Faith

Easter Sunday

May the joy of the empty tomb, the blessings of the risen Christ, and the wonder of the Easter mystery be with you, that daily renewal in the promise and power of Jesus Christ to transform your days and your nights and remain with you always. Amen.

            Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

            WOW! Happy Easter! Today is an AMAZING DAY! It truly is the day that the Lord has made! Let us REJOICE and be GLAD in it!

Okay, so I can tell that for some of you, that’s way too much exuberance to be shared, and IN CHURCH of all places, even if it is Easter Sunday!

Excitement in worship is a little uncomfortable for some of us. It’s a little un-Lutheran-like. It’s not very refined or sophisticated. It’s as though the eleventh commandment should be “thou shalt not laugh, clap, cheer, dance, or shout in worship.” Yet, when you think about it, what better place to express over-the-top joy and excitement than in church, and on Easter Sunday no less?!

How did it come to be that so many of us learned that along with folding our hands to pray, bowing our heads and following along in our bulletins, faithfully singing the same songs we have always sung, that church should be all about minding our Ps and Qs and sharing only the most restrained responses to prayers? Today I invite you to let go and let loose with joyful shouts and gleeful alleluias. For Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

What better place to share an entire range of emotion as we fully engage in the story of our faith and build up our witness to the spectrum of our lives as Jesus followers and witnesses. It is together as community in Christ that we laugh and cry, celebrate and mourn, dance and kneel, bearing witness to the presence of God in the entirety of our human experience, through Jesus.

God loves us as we are – silly, giddy with excitement on a day like today, sometimes serious, sometimes sad or reflective, sometimes doubting or searching. Jesus embraces it all. God gave us a wide range of emotion to help us truly experience life and enjoy our relationships and share our lives with one another.

A full range of emotion has been shared in the Holy Week story we’ve heard about in just this past week, and the last three days, in particular.  

Just a week ago, Jesus was honored and acclaimed as he entered Jerusalem on the back of a colt, an event we recalled on Palm Sunday.

During the course of the past three days, Jesus shared a meal one last time with his disciples, giving them the command to love and to serve, and leaving them with a lasting remembrance in the Lord’s Supper, which he instituted at that Last Supper.

Jesus bore fear and dread to the Garden where he prayed, was arrested, beaten, tried, convicted, sentenced to die. Jesus carried his cross to Golgotha, where he was hung like a common criminal. He was laid in the tomb. And on what we now know of as Easter morning, in came the women, disciples and friends of his. 

Whether you have journeyed through Lent, step by step preparing for this day, or find yourself drawn to the majesty and tradition of Easter alone, the excitement of this day is a shared experience. So it is by Christ’s invitation, and so it has been for thousands of years.

It is an invitation to new and everlasting life through Jesus Christ. This is the WOW of our faith.

The Good News of this day is that it is for everyone. – WOW! Christ came that all might have new life, eternal life, abundant and true life, and Jesus accomplishes this for us all through his resurrection from the dead. FANTASTIC!

Today we feed on the Good News of this resurrection.  And yet, it is news that is met with amazement, and not just a little bit of doubt.

For many of us, the story brings confusion, not clarity. Like the disciples who first heard the claim of the women who excited came to tell them all that has happened, there are times when we wonder, if Jesus really is the incarnation of God, why did he have to die? If he really did die, then how did the resurrection happen? Why does the story at the center of our faith seem so outrageously fanciful?

The Gospel says that when the women came rushing back and went into that room where the disciples were holed up, sharing their story of an open, empty tomb, and talking angels who reminded them of Jesus’ predictions and then shared a message, the disciples did not respond, “WOW!” or “THAT’S AMAZING!” or “ALLELUIA!”

The disciples thought the women’s story was nothing but an idle tale; Made up or imagined by hysterical women. So you could say there is good precedent for our doubt; even the disciples struggled with this story! They didn’t expect it. They didn’t understand it, and wrapped in grief and fear, the witness of the women was easier to deny than to accept.

But something struck Peter. While he had his doubts, they were mitigated by just a smidgen of curiosity or remembrance – and hope. And so Peter made his way to the tomb. In fact, he ran to see for himself just what had occurred. When he saw what he saw, or rather, didn’t see, he ran back to the others in excitement, amazed by what had happened.

The truth is that many of us hang out in that place located between belief and disbelief. As post-enlightenment generations labeled Great, Baby Boomer, X, Y, or Z, faith is a challenge to our sensibilities. As post-Enlightenment Christians, we like our faith to be tangible, practical, and most of all rational. But there is nothing tangible, practical, or rational in the resurrection story, is there?

The resurrection calls us from our old belief in death to new belief in life.

We get death. We see it all around us, in stark images and sorrowful experiences. Resurrection? Not so much. It is not within the scope of our experience on this side of the cross. Like the disciples we remain wrapped in grief and fear – and doubt. And yet, my friends, while Easter is perplexing, and to believe in the resurrection is not easy, today we are invited to do just that.

To believe in the resurrection takes a lot of faith and courage. In the place of the bad news that surrounds us, stories of death and destruction, bombs and terrorists, floods and disease, hunger and drought, to cling to hope takes a lot of faith and courage.

In the midst of our struggles and failures, the bad news we hear and the bad experiences we have, the Easter story invites us to believe that none of that will have the last word, because Jesus indeed broke the bonds of death and overcame the power of the tomb to hold him. Such belief shines new light and new life in the midst of our doubt and fear. It is this kind of new life that causes us to exclaim Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Easter raises us up above the chaos of our world  because of the sustaining power of God, who brings life out of death and reconciliation out of conflict.

Opening the door to belief in the power of the resurrection and the victory of Jesus over death opens the door to new life for all the world. New life in the power of the resurrection leads to acts of love and reconciliation for the world. Easter marks the beginning of a new creation.

Today, we follow in the footsteps of Peter. We have heard the rumor that Jesus is alive and to see for ourselves; “What if it is true? What if death is real, but not final? What if Jesus truly does have the last word over death? What if Jesus is not merely past but present? What if Jesus were to meet me here? What would life be like then?” Life would be – WOW!

Easter continues far beyond the beautiful music and flowers and prayers of Easter Sunday. It is celebrated every Sunday when we come together as community; it is at work in every instance of healing and forgiveness and reconciliation; we can see it in every sign of new life around us.

As the Body of Christ, we remember and celebrate this mysterious, miraculous resurrection every time we come together at the Eucharistic table, where we meet Jesus once again and are fed with his body and blood – WOW – given and shed for loving and serving and sharing and proclaiming the Good News of resurrection life. PRAISE BE TO GOD!

The only appropriate response to such a gift is an enthusiastic, no-holds-barred, exclamation of WOW! ALLELUIA! AMEN!

It is that exclamation that I hope you can embrace and shout out whenever you come to receive communion. When you hear the words spoken to you, “the body of Christ, given for you,” I hope your response can reflect over-the-top excitement and gratitude for this Easter day - WOW! AWESOME! AMEN! Or PRAISE BE TO GOD! Let this space ring out with your joy and gratitude.

For Christ is risen from the dead! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Wow!

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.