"The Purpose of LIFE;" Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday by: Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins, FODM

What always makes this Sunday in particular special for me is thinking about or wrestling with the “dreaded” Athanasian Creed.  I am not coming from a place necessarily wrestling with it as a Lutheran pastor more than I am hearing the struggles the author of the creed lays forth every time I read it.  Every year I have composed worship, I have re-tooled hearing this creed.  I have partly done this because of the problems it has had in being received in worship (since its two miles long!).

This year I have approached teaching this creed as a litany of response—the part I say is in the role of an apologist (no, not apologizing for reading the creed! But as a confessor, witness…) and the part the congregation says serves to hear segments of the creed more prayerfully.  More prayerfully is the key here, and before this begins to sound like a theological essay on the creed… The point I’m truly trying to address is beyond how we receive the Trinity but do we genuinely wrestle with realizing the sovereignty of God—three persons and our humble role as His children of Grace and promise in the world, but not of it?

There was an amazing quote I saw on social media made by the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth.  He says: “The chief danger that confronts the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, Forgiveness without repentance, Salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell…”

Wow, that is one seriously loaded paragraph of concern this man lays forth to think about…  Sounds like it could almost be the promotional poster quip for George Orwell’s book 1984.  Chewing on this Sunday’s Gospel text you can hear just how radical and counter-cultural Christ’s Words are towards the Jews who just accused Him of harboring a demon… “⁴⁹Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. ⁵⁰Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks it and He is the judge.  ⁵¹Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my Word will never see death.” 

Now Jesus repeats this… since they really aren’t listening to Him.  They choose to misunderstand Him since He is not fitting their worldly understanding of God.  They are missing the boat as the saying goes and as soon as Jesus nearly echoes the Words of YHWH by saying: “…Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am…”  They started grabbing stones to consider stoning Him!

What is truly ironic about how this story unfolds in the Gospel, is that many of these “leaders” of the church saw many of His miracles and probably heard many a sermon He delivered while He was ministering those three years throughout the ancient world…  Think about this in the here and now, God, as Christ came down into the world, to, in three years’ time, try to teach us and lead us by His New Natured example, the changed heart and path one must take to truly “LIVE.”

It’s now 2,000 plus something years later and what the world has evidenced in some senses is a further falling away from God.  Just listening or seeing some of the news lately has been painful spiritually for me in wondering… what if we did truly listen to Him and live into reaping that New Natured seed… How different would the world genuinely have become? 

Just the other day, Brother Ken from the Franciscan Order I am involved with, posted a very disturbing video from a young college student’s dorm window… She filmed something like three minutes of the planes going into the World Trade Center towers…  As you can imagine, the voices of these young girls screaming and crying at the horrible site of this diabolical evil taking place before their very eyes was nearly too much to bear!  When I heard, as well as saw what I saw, taking place in this tiny film… a beautiful and tragic thought entered my heart through the tears, what if at that very moment God once again came down into every evil heart and instantly changed them to immediately grieve, repent and turn to Him?

Just hear that again:  God entering every evil heart and immediately transforming, regenerating the individual to make a complete 180 ° turn around in what they were about to commit? On a smaller scale, I wondered about this in hearing about another horrible story where there was an awful “planned murder” of an entire family of four adults and two children by a relative for merely $550 dollars, an X-Box toy console and a child’s piggy bank… Chicago this year in particular has become a blood bath for murders, robberies gone wrong and other heinous crimes. Not only was this individual who committed these murders not hearing God, yet alone the Holy Spirit, but in going back to that statement by William Booth, this person felt no sense of accountability or regard for life—there was no heaven or hell for them at all…

The prayerful purpose of Holy Trinity Sunday following right after Pentecost is contemplating: Do we know in our hearts, do we live into our hearts as Disciples—who God is as Father, Son and Holy Spirit?  It’s all around us!  The earth beneath our feet, the flowering trees, blue skies, birds chirping… our very BREATH or as said in the ancient Hebrew—Ruach, coming in and out of us! LIFE is God’s gift to the world.  Through Christ Jesus coming down ministering to us, taking up that Cross, Resurrecting and Ascending for us: we now have New Life planted within us waiting to be reaped by our growing faith.  The Holy Spirit is our guide, Christ is our model, the Father is our Heavenly parent and promise.

But just like anything else, the Gospel has become lost in translation.  Lost to our hearing of it with humble and prayerful ears. Lost to our hearts truly incorporating its message to LIVE into being truly children of Grace and Promise.  The Jews to whom Jesus was directing His message to in today’s Gospel most ironically not only refused to listen but in many senses even negated what Abraham gave to them through faith which was the thought of the Promised land of being or considering themselves a chosen people!

For thousands of years before Jesus, they were a people with a huge identity crisis because they kept getting “screwed” by various invaders, conquerors and whatnot out of feeling that they have a place to call “home” or an identity beyond that.  Being and becoming a Chosen people got lost in translation back then into becoming a spiritual straight jacket of rules and regulations they thought would bring them “closer” to God. We know this today as works righteousness. Last week if you recall, with the Tower of Babel text, it did not. Why? Because it is not something we can intellectually create or control…  The moment we begin to develop ideologies and agendas over and above God is when we deny where God is really wanting us to develop—which is a transformed Heart.

We have received Grace from the Beautiful Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, the Lord—He planted that seed in our hearts to be reaped by faith.  A faith that isn’t easy, takes a life-time of experiences, failures and victories NOT about ourselves BUT beyond ourselves! In essence, Peter’s speech in the Book of Acts makes this clear in saying: ^“32This Jesus God raised up, and of that— all of us are witnesses. ³³Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you both see and hear. ³⁴For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, ³⁵until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ ³⁶Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Returning to the voices of those young university girls’ screams and tears of seeing what they saw and the clipped phone recording of one of the young victims in the family massacre, pleading for his life to be spared… What if the wheel would instantly be pulled up and the planes would miss the World Trade towers… The jihadists upon hearing Christ telling them how Satan deceived them to try to commit mass murder; they instantly felt great grief and repented and abandoned what evil they were about the commit! The same goes for the young man and his indifferent, bystander girlfriend; what if they had Christ meet them at that very moment before walking up those steps of his relative’s home with the intent to rob and murder? Perhaps not only would they both feel the pain of the evil they were thinking of committing but decided to seek help and spare three generations of family members’ lives…

Growing faith, living into a faith where you can truly know, hear and see God active in your life is very little of what God seeks from us to live into something very grand, He has given! The Kingdom of God is not in the clouds… it is in the tabernacle of the Heart, that first church.  It is that New Nature seed planted and waiting to be reaped with love, humility, patience, kindness, selflessness, compassion, mercy and so much more! Living it, to be giving it, is our natural purpose from prayerfully aspiring to grow a faith that could move mountains! One of my favorite scriptures to motivate my spiritual formation journey is Psalm 69:32—“Let the oppressed see it and be glad; You, who seek God, let your hearts revive!” Another favorite that encourages me is Philippians 4:13—“I can do all things through Christ who indeed strengthens me!”

The Living Word of God alongside the Trinity is our true guide and our true future.  Without it, are we really in control of the “life” we’re leading consequences and all? Have we given ourselves the kind of worth, purpose and mission God needs us to harbor? If we can’t or won’t realize the meaning of Heaven…  Hell is something we’re already knee-deep in, unaware of what it really is… and where it truly leads

Let us pray

Gracious and Loving Trinity

Help to continue to shape our hearts

To stay on the right path—

The way this is done is by coming

To see, hear and know you with a humble and opened heart

Help us to realize being and purpose and mission

Through the lens of Your Gospel—FAITH

A faith that could move mountains

It is from all You have given us

That we grow a Godly knowledge through the heart

As children of Grace and Promise

AMEN

May 22nd, 2016; Holy Trinity Sunday; Year C; SOLA Lectionary

Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M. Collins, FODM

Psalm 8; Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Acts 2:14, 22-36; & John 8:48-59

The immediate link below is to the sermon's delivery at the Grace Hub's house church service at 8am:
https://youtu.be/ykZKXEzGS9Q

Check back for a link to the sermon's delivery at the Gathering North church's evening service at 7pm.
https://youtu.be/5TwK7DNrlCw