First Sunday After Pentecost Year A

May 18, 2008
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

The Story in the Name

I started asking people yesterday about the Trinity.

I asked, “What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?”

One said she thought of the Holy Spirit as Tinkerbell.

Another one said, “I got the Father and the Son. It’s the Spirit I don’t get.”

Some just looked at me funny and changed the subject.

I’ve talked to some other pastors this week and they think today’s passages are about the great commission. Do you know that phrase, “the great commission?” Jesus gave us a job to do. Did you hear it in the passage?

Are you busy with that job? Are you working on it?

I heard a Christian this week having a moment of revelation. He said, “I’m finally seeing it. We’re all here to make Christians. We’re all here to help each other to grow our spirits on the inside.”

I heard another Christian this week telling me, “God won’t let me alone. I keep trying to walk away but he keeps coming back.”

What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?

My observation? Most of us in the moderate churches, what we call the mainline, have reduced God down to bite-size pieces, like those little wafers we use in communion. And we want our preachers to comfort us in this by offering up to us cute little stories that warm our hearts, by telling us, “that’s right, it really isn’t mysterious, it’s just what you’re already doing, it’s just what you already know.”

But this isn’t what faith is about and you know that. Because you walk out of here and go deal with children with brain tumors and typhoons that kill thousands of people and a society that is consumed with consuming and family members with incurable addictions and parents who abuse their children and losses in your own lives that are just not fair.

Because you think, really, don’t you, that if you ran the universe, things would be different. Don’t you really think that sometimes? You wouldn’t send a typhoon to kill innocent people if you were God, would you? Would you? And if you were God, you wouldn’t have this bad thing called death, right?

Don’t we really think we know better?

And don’t we know that our own motives are good? Don’t we know that the society we live in is just and fair? Of course, it troubles us that it doesn’t work. Because of course, we know it doesn’t. In fact, the whole world isn’t really working at all.

Now why is it, if our motives are good, that things aren’t working?

It may be that our ideas about the best way to run things is not actually a good idea at all.

The scriptures tell us this morning that we didn’t make the world, and we didn’t make ourselves. Did you hear the message?

There’s that old story about the scientist who told God he’d figured out a way to create a human being out of dirt just like he had.

God said, “Okay, let’s see it.”

And the scientist said, “well, first we take this dirt here.”

And God said, “Oh no. Get you own dirt.”

The story of creation and the story of the Holy Scriptures begins with the idea of purpose. Genesis is telling us we are made for a purpose.

Did you hear that purpose?

And God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. First off, God created humankind and not the other way around. And second, somehow, human beings, both male ones and female ones, are meant to represent God in the created world.

This is a little hard for us to get clear about now. But in ancient times, people made statues to represent their gods. The bible calls these statues “images” or “idols,” objects made to represent a hidden spiritual being. The God of the bible is therefore unique inasmuch as he fashions his own image or idol: us.

The contrasts are important. The idols human beings make to represent gods do not move or breathe or live. But the idol God makes to represent himself lives and moves and breathes. The principle here is that God lives, and is therefore represented by a living image, whereas all the other gods do not live, because they are represented by idols made of stone or wood or gold.

But humankind rejected their purpose and the creator that gave it to them. Why? Well, because we know better, right? We know better what is good for us, and more important, what’s good for everyone else. And it is this belief that runs the world. And it is this belief that ruins it.

What do you think about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?

Here’s what I think.

I think it’s a story, and the story is the greatest news I’ve ever heard.

It’s a story about Jesus whom we call the Christ.

The story is about how one man returned to his proper purpose and revealed a way for all of us to follow him back into the right relationship with God and with each other. In fact, this man shows us a way to go even farther. He shows us a way to a new creation, a new and better way.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This is not a code of ethics or a system of living. This is a way to be transformed into something different than we are. This is a way to be re-created.

Disciples of Jesus seek to open themselves, as he did, to the Holy Spirit. And when we do this we are changed from creatures carved out of the mud and inflated with the divine breath. We become instead children, sons and daughter, born from God.

God is no longer God, some distant invisible and unknowable thing. God becomes our Father.
In the twelve-step fellowships, the poor addicts and alcoholics who come shambling in are convinced that they need to change their habits, that they need to control themselves and start making the right decisions, rather than the wrong ones. They imagine they must work very hard to do this.

But the old-timers there will tell them they’ve got it wrong. What they need to work on, if anything, is opening themselves to a spiritual awakening. If they turn their lives and their wills over to God, they won’t have to work at all.

They won’t have to work at all.

As disciples of Jesus, we seek the Holy Spirit. We seek to be awakened, and then to stay awake. With the Holy Spirit, we will not need to know anything about rules or ethics or laws. We will instead desire with our deepest beings to do the will of our loving Father, and as his begotten children, we will be infused with his power so that we can.

Amen.