A Trinity of Stories

Sermon preached Sunday, June 16, 2019, Holy Trinity Sunday, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA.

Holy Trinity is one of those Sundays that cause preachers to either crack a lot of jokes or give themselves major headaches. That’s the trouble with a day dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The saying is that if you talk about the Trinity, eventually you’ll enter into heresy. There’s a meme going around that says, “How not to commit heresy preaching on the Trinity: say nothing and show pictures of kittens instead.” I also thought about just coming up here and saying two words—“Holy Mystery”—and sitting down.

The trouble is, the Trinity is not something any of us can explain…but, geez, is it tempting to try! Even preachers who know better end up wading into a pool of metaphors and unhelpful allegories. We use language that feels innovative like “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer” instead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We talk about things being “three-in-one,” like how water can be ice, liquid, or steam, but it’s always still water. But even still, these things don’t do enough. They relegate our God into modalism, the idea that the persons of the God-head are simply functional and not actually innate qualities of who our God is.

Our scripture readings don’t really tend to help us out, either. They are selected because they, in different ways, refer to God in the persons of the Trinity, but they don’t go much further than that.

Ultimately, it isn’t important for us to explain how the Trinity works or what the Trinity is. We won’t ever be able to, and it doesn’t affect the meaning of the Trinity for us. Instead of explanations, it is enough simply for us to know that the Trinity is. The Trinity reveals a fuller image of God, but it does not reveal the full image of God. If we only had one person of the Trinity, we would be missing part of the story of God.

That’s why I want to do something a little different for my sermon this morning. I just want to share three stories. To my mind, they each highlight or illustrate a person of the Trinity. You might hear them differently. But just as one person of the Trinity does not showcase all of God’s work, these stories work together to give us a slightly fuller picture of the ways in which God works.

We start at Camp Nawakwa, the sanctuary in the woods where I and five of our confirmation students spent the past week. This first story is meant to connect to the first person of the Trinity: the Father, the Creator of the universe, the one who brought order and beauty out of chaos. It’s no wonder, then, that I want to share with you a story that takes place in the midst of the natural wonder God has made.

Camp Nawakwa has begun a new adventure called the Growing Project, designed to help address hunger in Adams County. The Camp decided to use some of the land it owned to grow vegetables that can be donated to different feeding ministries in the area and provide hungry people with good, whole, and healthy foods.

On Wednesday, the campers at Confirmation Camp had the opportunity to help plant, weed, and otherwise care for this new garden. It was a hands-on way to experience how God has provided all that we need. God has given us an incredible world that is intricately connected and perfectly designed to feed and nourish us. This person of the Godhead presented itself once again.

And then there’s a story shared by Pastor Tina, a colleague and seminary classmate who serves a congregation outside of Cleveland.  She was taking communion to one of her members. This woman is ninety-years old and lives in an assisted living facility. They had a great visit and Pastor Tina had brought communion to her. When they had finished their time together, this woman offered to walk Pastor Tina out of the facility.

Apparently, it was a slow process, as this woman was limited in her mobility. As they moved down the hallway, this woman kept inviting her neighbors out to meet Pastor Tina. She would make introductions and then ask these unsuspecting neighbors if they wanted communion. When they said yes, this woman looked at Pastor Tina and said, “Get to it, Pastor.”

What followed was something incredible. Pastor Tina describes it as a fishes and loaves moment. There were so many people who wished to be communed that Pastor Tina ran out of wine in her communion kit and they ended up using some Arbor Mist someone had leftover somewhere. Pastor Tina expressed how thankful she is “for this senior’s desire to spread the means of grace.” She wanted to spread the means of grace, and she also wanted to share Christ. That “fishes and loaves” was a moment when our God, the body and blood of Christ was passed, was shared, was offered, was received in an unassuming hallway.

Finally, I heard another story from a Lutheran congregation. Recently, a family from Romania had ended up in the area. They came into this country fleeing danger in their own, but they entered without a legal immigration status. They were caught, but while their case to be given refugee status is pending, they are allowed to stay in the country, as long as they wear trackable ankle bracelets.

Somehow, this family made its way to this congregation and connected with the pastor. There was a huge language barrier: the family speaks almost no English and no one at the church speaks Romanian. Regardless, a relationship was beginning to blossom and the congregation was searching for resources that might be able to help this family.

One Sunday, a woman came to this congregation to worship for the first time. She said that she didn’t know why she was there, she just felt compelled to go to church and compelled to go to this church. She had no earthly reason to go there, other than this feeling she couldn’t ignore.

During the sermon, the pastor mentioned this Romanian family and their needs and the resources they were trying to find. All of a sudden this woman knew why she had felt compelled to be at this church on this day. See, this woman spent the early years of her life in Romania. She had moved to the states with her parents when she was a child, but there were things she remembered. She still had connections to her cultural heritage and spoke fluent Romanian. After the service, she sought this family out and began a rapid fire conversation with them, informing them of where they could connect with other Romanian people and helping to translate between the pastor and the family.

It was incredible. It was a Pentecost moment and it just so happened to occur on Pentecost Sunday. It was the Holy Spirit, moving hearts and bodies and minds and mouths to connect people with God’s love.

Three stories. An incomplete vision of our Three-in-one God.

Holy Trinity. Holy Mystery.

Amen.

The Reign of God

Sermon preached Sunday, July 17th, 2018, the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA. Audio can be found here.

What do you imagine when you think of the “Kingdom of God”?

I’d imagine that something slightly different comes to mind for all of us…but it’s something I think anyone who’s read the Bible thinks about. After all, it comes up with some regularity in the New Testament. Jesus frequently refers to it, especially in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew.

Chances are, I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I actually don’t prefer “kingdom” as the best translation from the Greek. “Kingdom” usually makes us think of a physical place, a defined location. The word basileia, however, can also be translated as “reign.”

Think about what changes if you hear “reign of God” versus “kingdom of God.” [Beat] “Reign” is more of a way of living, a way of being, a way of organizing the world.

Today, we hear Jesus tell parables about the reign of God. Want to hear it again?

³⁰He also said, “With what can we compare the reign of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” (Mark 4:30-32)

How many of you have heard this parable before? How many of you have heard it more times than you can count? How many of you tend to retell it by talking about having “faith the size of a mustard seed?”

If you’re thinking, “I have,” you’re not alone. This parable is most often cited when someone is experiencing a crisis of faith, or if resources are limited in a faith community. “You know what the Bible says, all you need is a small amount of faith, a mustard seed.” Sound familiar?

But does Jesus say anything about faith? No, he asks, “With what can we compare the reign of God?” The reign of God is like a mustard seed, not a person’s faith.

To be honest, I’m not even sure I fully realized the implications of this distinction until relatively recently.

What does it mean that the reign of God is like a mustard seed, “which, when sown upon the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs…?”

I think it means that we might not always realize it when the reign of God is at work, or when the reign of God might be breaking in, sowing a seed that’s just waiting to sprout and grow.

Like many of you, this week I was inundated with pictures and reports of children being housed in reprehensible conditions and being separated from their parents. This is not the reign of God, even if a verse of scripture taken out of context is used to justify it. In fact, if one continues reading in that very same chapter of Romans, one finds this passage:

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:8-10)

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Love does not wrong to a neighbor.”

To be honest, I’m not sure I can come up with a much better description of the what the reign of God looks like, except that it is an environment and a culture and a community in which everyone loves and everyone is loved—a setting in which all come together to build one another up.

I don’t know much for certain, but I know that, I know it deep within my soul. And, as fate would have it, I caught a few glimpses of it this week.

As most of you know, I spent the past week at Camp Nawakwa with eighty middle- and early-high schoolers for our area’s All Saint’s Confirmation Camp. It was an excellent week with an excellent group of kids and, as always, I was amazed at the seeds God is sowing in our midst—mustard seeds, you might say.

I glimpsed the reign of God at the low ropes course. Smaller groups of campers would have to find ways to work together to complete tasks and overcome obstacles. They learned to talk to each other and, more importantly, they learned to listen to each other. The drew upon each other’s strengthens and supported each other in their weaknesses. They realized that they only succeeded if they all succeeded.

I glimpsed the reign of God when I took our older campers on a field trip to a local farm. The owner and his family displayed remarkable hospitality as they showed us around their orchard and vegetable patch. The owner reminded us of the intricacies and wonder of God’s creation as he explained the process of planting and caring for this tender produce. He told us about the joy he feels being able to feed the people in his community. We were embraced and even fed by these people, as they pulled last year’s apples out of cold storage and let us feast on the still delicious fruit.

And, perhaps most vividly, I glimpsed the reign of God on Friday morning when we held our all-camp activity. Our theme this year was hunger, so we decided to involve the kids in a large food packing event. After breakfast on Friday, a couple showed up from a local organization in a van loaded with supplies. While the campers waited outside, the pastors, youth leaders and camp staff quickly set up seven tables as assembly lines to put together macaroni and cheese meals for hungry people.

One by one, the campers filed in with hairnets on their heads, aprons on, and hands freshly sanitized. As they took their spots at the tables, we explained the process of how to build the meal kits. One person for each stage. Everyone had a role, and everyone needed everyone else.

Within minutes, the music kicked on and the room was buzzing with activity. These kids dove in, working quickly and yet very conscientiously. The organizers of this event had let us know earlier that the meals we were currently putting together would be going to Puerto Rico, a place still reeling from last year’s hurricane and a place where 11,000 people are still without power, seven months later. It was this news that spurred all of us into action. It was the knowledge that our siblings, that fellow children of God were suffering, and we could do something to maybe make life a tiny bit better, to possibly keep even one person from going hungry.

We chatted and laughed. We danced and sang along to Queen, Abba, and Disney songs. And we worked. Bag after bag was filled and sealed. Box after box was taped up. And we cheered loudly with every announcement of a bench mark: “One thousand meals done!” “Two thousand meals done!” “Three thousand!” “Four thousand!”

Anyone want to guess how many meals we packed? Eighteen thousand. In a little over an hour!

After lunch, we had a chance to split up into our congregation groups and talk about our highs and lows for the week. When we leaders talked about it later, we discovered that almost all of our kids listed the meal packing event as a major high.

It wasn’t just the process: scooping macaroni through a funnel isn’t all that exciting. It wasn’t just the music, although I’ll never forget singing songs from Moana with a table full of twelve-year-old boys. It was the knowledge that they were making a difference, that they were helping people—that they were able to be the hands and feet of God in service to other people.

The reign of God is like a field trip to a farm. The reign of God is like a low ropes course. The reign of God is like a meal packing event.

The reign of God is like anything that builds relationships and expands understandings and, most of all, expresses love to one another.

The reign of God is love.

Amen.