I read somewhere, probably Facebook, “It matters less what we are called than what we answer to.”  I had to think about it for a while until I understood that what I am called is a reflection of what others believe about me while what I answer to is a reflection of what I believe about myself.  The world, the people around us will give us a name.  It is easier for them if they can label us and expect us to live up to the label.  Very often, when I am speaking with someone about what is troubling them, the person will share with me what they believe to be true about them because it is what they were told by a parent, a sibling, teachers, pastors, or their friends.  They will tell me how they were called, clumsy, cheerful, quite, irresponsible, or always responsible for anything that went wrong.  The fact that people made judgments about them is significant and may be based in some truth but what is really critical is they have accepted these judgments to be part of their identity.

One of the healthiest activities we can do for ourselves is to examine what we believe about ourselves and why.  Too often we believe what others have told us without considering that they may have been wrong.  They may have been trying to put some of their issues on us.  Parents sometimes want their children to be the cause of their problems so they don’t have to work on themselves.  They try to convince the child they are the source of tension in the home or problems in their marriage.  Parents may also be concerned if they give their child too much praise, the child will grow up egotistical so they offer more criticism than praise or they may try to convince their child to live out some dream the parent had but couldn’t achieve.  These parent tapes get stuck in our head and we respond to them as if they are truth about who we are and what we were meant to do.  Some of us had teachers who told us we couldn’t achieve and shouldn’t expect to do much with our lives.  There was a study done once where teachers were given false information about some of the students in their classes, they were told the children were particularly gifted in one or more areas when their aptitude scores were just average.  These students excelled in the areas the teachers were told they had special abilities.  The same is true for teachers who decide because of a child’s ethnicity, appearance, or behavior the child does not have potential and those children can be discouraged from being all they could be.  Pastors and faith leaders have told some of us that we are outside of God’s grace and we do not have a future in God’s dominion.  Some of us have been discouraged in expressing our God given gifts because of our gender or our gender expression and some of us have been discouraged because of who we love.  Others have been told by their pastors that they are just no good, demon seed because the pastor didn’t approve of the way the child lived their life.  Maybe we have been given labels by those we chose as life partners.  Maybe they have told us we are unlovable, or called us untrustworthy, or needy.  They may have told us we are responsible for their happiness or their survival.  Not everything someone else tries to put on us sounds bad but it can be bad when it isn’t who we really are and what we want to answer to.  Some of us live our lives trying to be what someone else expects of us rather than the person we know we are and who we want to be.  Some people are working at careers that bring them no pleasure because it is what someone else wanted them to be.  Some people are unwilling to speak up or assert themselves because someone told them it was wrong to do so.  Some people are married to people they don’t desire intimately because they were told they couldn’t marry the person they did desire.  The healthiest thing we can do for ourselves is to silence the tapes of others telling us who we are and what we ought to be and listen for the voice of God to affirm we are just who God meant for us to be just as God created us.

Today, we will baptize Tim into the family of God, we will call him child of God.  It is a wonderful ritual to bring someone into the family of God and into membership of the church but our calling Tim child of God will make no difference unless Tim chooses to answer to the name Christian.  We call ourselves Christian, we call each other Christian, but it really doesn’t really matter unless we answer the call of God saying, “Christian follow me.”  There is a catch phrase that has been around for a while, it sounded less possible when I first heard it, it says, “If it were illegal to be Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”  The world seems to be moving more and more toward wanting to make laws to treat others in ways unlike Christ calls us to treat them.  People want us to answer to calls for self-protection, to calls for hostility toward those who are different, and calls to answer poverty by blaming its victims.  It does not matter what names others call us, it matters to what name we answer.  Amen.

Yogi Berra is quoted as saying, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”  Yogi was more famous for his statements that made people laugh than he was for his skill as a baseball player or manager.  But Yogi was right when you come to a fork in the road you do have to take it, you have to choose which path you will follow or if you will take a new way where there is no path.  We are confronted everyday with choices and we must make a choice.  We decide to pick one or we decide not to pick one of the choices and that is a choice in itself.  Today we heard the story of Mary and Martha and many times the story is used as an example of whether we choose to be busy working or whether we choose to sit and listen to Jesus.  I don’t think that is the choice we should be concerned about.  If we listen to God speaking to us, there will be work for us to do.  We can be working and hear God speaking to us.  The choice isn’t between working and listening.  The choice is how we respond when we are working and serving.  Martha could not hear what Jesus was teaching because her head and her mouth was full of concerns and complaints about how hard she was working and how Mary wasn’t helping.  We make the poorer choice when we let our service become a reason for us to complain about what others are or are not doing. 

I mentioned a few weeks back when my friends from Michigan were visiting that they got me back on track toward ordination.  I was so excited to realize my call to ordination had not been a mistake that I threw myself whole heartedly into leading that small Bible study group.  Soon we were planning to do weekly worship services.  I set about to find a church we could use on Sunday afternoons, and then I set about to create a worship service, I would create the order of worship and I would make tapes of worship music.  I would show up an hour before worship and set up the altar and communion elements.  During the service I would lead worship, do most of the readings, and operate the boom box for the music.  After church I would take down the altar and return our items to storage.  At first it was great fun and I felt I was learning so much but then I started to think about why was I having to do all the work.  Why weren’t other people helping to make worship happen?  I was concerned if the people attending were asked to work on worship that they would stop coming.  I thought people would be more apt to come to worship if they weren’t expected to do anything.  I finally approached the board for some assistance with worship preparation and with setting and taking down the worship space.  The board said there were many people who wanted to help; they just didn’t think I would let anyone help.  That was my first lesson in how not to be Martha.  My second lesson was probably an even harder lesson.  I had to learn to let others do things differently than I would do them.  I learned there is not just one right answer to everything.  There are many different right answers and just because someone does something differently from the way I do it does not mean it was done wrong.  Martha knew how a guest should be hosted and she was not able to consider there might be another way.  I like to think of Martha insisting on an elaborate cooked meal while Mary was thinking cold meat sandwiches would do.  Sometimes we get so caught up in making what we do impressive that we forget why we are doing it.  I have learned it is less important that worship look perfect than that worship be perfect abandon to the spirit of God.  If we are worrying too much about doing it right, we miss the opportunity for the in breaking of the Spirit in our worship.

If we are to believe Amos and Paul from our readings today, God is much more interested in the motivation behind our choices than the correctness of our choice.  You know, when you come to the fork in the road and you choose one path or another, you may find that path comes back around to meet up with one you didn’t choose.  The real concern is why you picked one path over another.  Were you looking for the easy way, were you looking to avoid someone that might need your help along the way, were you looking for the path that would bring you pleasure at the expense of another?  Paul says we find our harmony with the world, and we find our mending of our lives when we choose the path that Jesus chose the path of service without complaining, the path of centering ourselves in what God would have us do and not worrying about what God is asking of someone else.  As I read the Gospels, I cannot think of many examples of Jesus telling others what they had to do.  Jesus used parables to help people think through what would be the right answer.  Jesus asked people what they thought they should do and then confirmed for them that they knew all along what to do.  Jesus challenged those around him as to why they felt they had the right to judge but he did not tell they how they had fallen short.  Jesus taught the disciples and then sent them out to do their ministry as each one found it.  We are so blessed the disciples didn’t come up with a cookie cutter way of telling the Good News, each one brought the Good News to different people in different ways.  They didn’t always agree and they sometimes tried to tell each other what was right but they ended up agreeing that the Spirit moved them in different ways and that each one’s ministry should be honored.  We must find the way to live together as a community of faith that allows each to explore their own way of being in service and honor their offering of service without worrying about whether it is the way I would do it.  We must offer our own service to God without comparing whether we are doing more than another.  When our service flows out of our time of listening to God’s Word and not out of some sense of obligation or self-importance, then we too will have chosen the better way.  Amen.

Each of you has had the opportunity to plant a seed.  What do you know for sure will happen as a result of planting that seed?  What information would be helpful in knowing what to expect from the seed you have planted?  It would help to know what plant the seed came from, a flower, a vegetable, a fruit, a tree, or maybe a weed.  It would be good to know what kind of soil the seed needs and how much sun and water it needs to grow.  We don’t actually have to know any of these things to plant the seed or for the seed to grow on its own.  I don’t have to be a knowledgeable farmer to throw out some seeds and have them take root and bear some kind of fruit. 

The seeds of our words and actions are the same.  We send them out and they land on the soil of people around us and they grow and they produce their fruit.  It really doesn’t take any work on our part to have them grow and produce.  The critical question is what kinds of seeds are we putting out?  Are we planting the seeds of beautiful flowers, words of comfort or actions of love and compassion?  Our words and actions have the potential to bring beauty into the lives of the others around us.  We can speak words of affirmation that allow the other person’s soul to blossom.  We can act in ways that lift the hearts of those around us so they soar like eagles.  We can plant seeds that will grow into beautiful flowers.  We can plant seeds that will bear fruits to bring others pleasure in the eating.  We can speak words of love to another that leave a sweet taste in their mouth.  We can dance for others so they spirits are set free to dance too.  We can wrap others in reassuring hugs that show them they are safe in this world.  We can plant seeds that will bear sweet fruit for those who receive them in the soil of their lives.  We can plant vegetable seeds in the lives of those around us.  We can give them sound advice that will ground them and guide them in ways that will nourish their lives.  We can give them words that will teach them how to care for themselves and for those who depend upon them.  We can act in healing ways that will give them the strength they require to go on.  Sometimes vegetables are not as much fun for us but we know we need them if we are to have healthy lives.  Sometimes we need to plant seeds that are not easy for the other to hear or receive but they are what they need to live as healthy and productive as God desire them to live.  We can just scatter these seeds and hope for the best.  But it is better if we take time to make sure they are planted in the right soil and get the right amount of sun and water.

The best way to have our seeds produce beautiful flowers, tasty fruits, and nutritious vegetables is for us to tend to them regularly.  Coming back to the people in whose lives we have sown our seeds and check to see if the seeds are being fed and exposed to the light often enough for them to take hold and really root in the person’s life.  One encouraging word is good, one act of kindness is better than none, one piece of advise will help but it is so much better if we follow them up with more encouragement, more kindness, and reinforced advice.  The fruit of our words and actions will be greater if the seeds have been nurtured.  It is not always the one who plants the seeds that tends to it, or is around to see the harvest.  Sometimes we are asked to nurture the seeds someone else has planted.  Maybe they are seeds that were planted by a caring parent, or a good friend, or seeds that were planted by a total stranger.  We can nurture those seeds by exposing them to the light, reminding the person of what they have heard before and affirming the truth of the good things that are growing in them.  Nurturing the good things growing in someone else is one of the most precious things we can do.

It is also true we can spread the seeds of weeds.  Weed seeds take root much easier and are much harder to get rid of once they have been spread.  We can spread the weed of gossip.  Gossip is very much like a dandelion, once spoken it produces billions of seeds and they are quickly scattered on the wind.  Once you have released the seeds of gossip it is impossible to get the seeds back again.  They will lodge in the minds of countless people who will believe what you said was true and that it was your story to tell.  You may try to fix the harm your gossip has done but you will never be able to pull out all the weeds that sprout from your careless words.  We spread the weed seeds of hate when we speak out of our prejudice or our bigotry.  It is amazing to see how easily a hatred plant will choke out the plants of love in a person’s life.  When we feel hatred or rejection, it is very hard for us to believe the words of love that have been spoken to us.  We can spread the weed seeds of discouragement.  We can criticize the work of another, we can go around and fix what they have done, and we can be quick to point out their shortcomings.  Unlike the good seed, weed seeds need little care to take root and grow huge.  I think it is in our human nature to focus on the weeds someone has planted in our lives, to nurture our insecurities. 

God calls us to plant good seeds in the lives of those around us.  God also asks us to pull the weeds out of our own lives so we don’t have them available to produce weed seeds we cast out into the lives of others.  God wants us to produce only good fruits, we will be known by the fruits we produce and the seeds we plant in the lives of those around us.  Amen

I am very fond of the Elisha and Elijah.  The story tells so much about how we are mentored and how we mentor as people called to share God’s prophetic word.  The portion for today included Elijah’s warning that Elisha’s request for a double portion of spirit was a difficult thing.  It is possible he meant it would be difficult to give Elisha a double portion of his spirit and I think it is possible that he was saying that having a double portion of spirit could result in a difficult ministry.  I believe many who are called to ministry begin with this desire for God to use them to do great things.  We don’t realize how much our lives will change when God uses us to do even small things.  We want to transform the world without changing ourselves at all.

Many of us were taught to be ashamed of our behaviors, our passions, and our desires.  We were taught the changes we were to make and to require of others was not to enjoy ourselves and to make sure no one else was having a good time either.  Through my involvement in the Metropolitan Community Church and my education at Chicago Theological Seminary, I have abandoned shame based theology.  I believe God gave us our behaviors, our passions, and our desires as part of God’s gifts to us.  We should not be ashamed of our sexual expression and our enjoyment of it and we should stop talking about it and teaching about it as if it were evil and something to be denied.  I believe when Paul teaches, “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery; …drunkenness, orgies, and the like.”  He was not speaking against sexual expression or drinking.  He was, as in the other items listed, speaking against an attitude of exploitation and abuse of others, of wanting our own way over the welfare and good of others.  This is supported when we read what he says the fruits of the Spirit are, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.”  When we pray for a double portion of the spirit, we are praying to double our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.  While this sounds good on the surface, we should be warned like Elijah warned Elisha that such a thing will be very difficult.

We have no trouble asking God to give us love for others, give us joy, peace,, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control until we consider what it will require for us to possess these things even in a single portion.  Possessing the fruits of the spirit require us to put the needs of others ahead of our own.  Loving another means wanting more for them than for ourselves, having joy requires us to rejoice even when circumstances are hard, peace requires us to give up what we want so that all may have what they need, patience means delaying what we want now, kindness means caring for the other more than ourselves, goodness mean living justice even when it is to our disadvantage, faithfulness means trusting God even when it appears there is no reason to trust, gentleness comes with tempering our strength to protect another, and self control comes only when we are willing to deny self.  Asking for a double portion of these things is to subject ourselves to a very difficult way of living, I believe an impossible way of living unless we truly surrender ourselves to God’s Spirit.

This brings me to our Gospel lesson for today.  Jesus has the universe at his disposal and yet he has no home; no place to lay his head.  Imagine you have the power to provide yourself with the finest living arrangement and you choose to live without a place to lay your head because this is what God asks of you.  Jesus has the power to destroy those who disrespect him but he chooses to rebuke the disciples who suggest this and moves on with his message of God’s love to another community.  Jesus is clear the price of discipleship is very high.  If we ask God to use us, we must be prepared to surrender all else that we hold dear.  Jesus says to let the dead bury the dead and those who look back to family and friends when God has given them a task are not worthy of God’s dominion.  These seem harsh words and I suppose they are.  Who would not want to be allowed to bury someone they loved or to say good-bye to family and friends.  We must read this with minds and hearts open to understanding.  There is some clarification of the original when we understand the meaning of the person’s request to bury his or her parent.  This did not mean the parent had just died and the person was asking to make funeral arrangements.  Most likely the parent was very much alive and the person was asking to wait to follow Jesus until he or she had his or her inheritance.  They wanted to have something other than God to depend on while following Jesus.  If we choose to follow God, we must do so in faithfulness and not depending on our own planning to see us through.  The second person who wishes to say good-bye to family first is not unworthy because of his or her desire to say good-bye, they are unworthy because they want to delay what God has given them to do until a more convenient time.  If we are to serve God, we must be prepared to act when God tells us to act.  God is a loving God and God will give us opportunity to say our good-byes when the time is right so we must not decide for ourselves when is a good time to serve God.

I know in my own call to ministry I find handling a single portion of God’s Spirit to be challenge enough, I will learn from Elijah’s warning and be content with a single portion.  Amen.

Why are we here?  We are here to serve God with our worship, worship service.  The word worship literally means the work of the people.  Worship is not a passive form of entertainment, you are not here to observe worship, to critique the execution of worship, or to sit back and wait to see if you get anything of value out of worship.  You are here to work and serve and fully participate in worship.  In The Phoenix Affirmations, the fourth affirmation is about worship and it includes an assertion to the effect that pews should come equipped with airbags and seat belts to protect us from impact of our encounter with the Divine during the worship service.  Too often we come to worship with too low expectations and if we encounter something too high energy or too life changing we get frightened.  We become like the people of Gerasenes, we want the Spirit to move on, too much happening too fast, we are pushed outside our comfort zone.  It is easier for us to deal with one person acting crazy than to deal with letting God come and radically change our world and our lives.  If we truly enter into God’s service, our lives are no longer our own.  We belong to  God to be used as God desires.

Being in God’s service is not like being in military service or civil service.  God’s service does not have standard work hours, vacation days, or a retirement plan.  Serving God is a twenty four hour a day, seven days a week proposition.  Elijah felt he had done enough in God’s service.  He wanted to just be done with it.  How often I have been there, how often I have told anybody who will listen how difficult being a pastor is, or how hard it is to keep going to new places to work with congregations on hard issues.  I want to just go to my home, my broom tree and lay down and rest.  Sometimes I feel like Elijah that I am all alone that all have lost sight of what it means to be child of God.  I will have my own pity party.  And, just like Elijah, God will say rest, eat, and we will talk a little later.  I have to be willing to listen for God, not let myself be distracted by the voice of the world that blow by me like a hurricane, or by the trembling voice of fear that shakes me like an earthquake, or the burning voice of my own desires but instead I listen for the still voice of God that speaks to me to reassure me that I am not alone, to tell me that I have the strength I need for the journey God is sending me on, and to trust God will give me the tools I need to do the work God has asked me to do.  Being in God’s service is not about what we bring that God needs.  It is about being willing to be used by God the way God sees fit.

Some of us have been told we are not fit for or have limited potential in God’s service.  We have been told God can’t use women as preachers, God doesn’t call same gender loving people into ministry, or God doesn’t have a place for gender fluid persons in God’s service.  We have been told we aren’t the right type of person for God to use.  But God tells us we are just fine in God’s eyes.  God does not see a woman or a man, young or old, gay or straight, intellectually challenged or genius, citizen or alien, poor or rich, God sees a soul worthy to be in God’s service.  Humans get all caught up in appearances, labels, and rules while God cares only about what is inside of us.  It is a lot easier for us if we live by rules, we don’t have to think what is the right thing to do, we just cite the rule.  We don’t have to think about who a person is, we just put them in a box based on the labels we give them.  As Paul tells us, we were given rules to help us live until we were able to have a direct relationship with God.  Before we recognize God’s still small voice, we need some standards to guide us toward God.  But, when we mature and we can hear God’s gentle, quiet whisper, we need to drop the labels and the rules and learn to serve God in faith.  Part of what frightened the people of Garesenes and the religious leaders was that Jesus was doing things they had never seen before, he was doing things the rules said shouldn’t happen, he was healing on the Sabbath, he was eating without ritual cleansing, he was hanging out with people at the margins of society, and he was forgiving sins.  As I read in a Facebook conversation this week, living in God’s service sometimes means we don’t tie a knot at the end of our rope and hang on, sometimes it means we let go of the rope.  Living in God’s service not only means we not only live only in the present and trust the future to God, it means we are ok with not having any promises about what the future will bring other than the promise that God is in that future.  There is another big difference being in God’s service has from military or civil service, being in God’s service doesn’t end when this mortal life ends.  You’re God’s service now.  Amen.

Did you have role models when you were growing up?  People you wanted to be like when you grew up, heroes and sheroes if you will.  Lift up the names of some of your role models.  Do you have role models now, people you admire and who mentor you?  Have you ever had the experience of seeing or hearing of your hero doing something that disappointed you?  I grew up believing my father knew everything and could do anything.  When I went away to college and was exposed to a broader world than Midland, Michigan provided, I found out my father had grown up with a negative view of some people, my father was prejudiced and I was crushed when I learned this.  I am proud to say my father was able to give up his prejudices as a result of being willing to meet people different from himself and discovering they were just people like himself, some he liked, some he didn’t, but it had nothing to do with racial or cultural differences.  I think most, if not all of us have been disappointed when someone we look up to has proven themselves to just be human with the failings that implies.

How we pick our role models is also interesting, some of our role models are the people who are close to us, the people who have taught us and helped to mold the person we are today.  Others are people who have come to our attention because of some talent or notoriety.  I am a child of the John F. Kennedy era.  He became such a big influence on me because of the change he brought in the attitude of the country, but also because he died serving his country.  People have revealed information about him that has caused some to question his moral character and his political tactics.  I do not know how true the stories are and it really doesn’t matter to me, I have great respect for his efforts to revitalize this country and the great sacrifice he and his family made because of his willingness to serve.  There are others who have a great talent such as acting or singing that brings them notoriety and they become role models while their talent has little to do with strong character or wisdom.  We build these people up to be bigger than life and then set about to prove how flawed they are, it seems to be an obsession.  I do not know why we would assume a great actor or musician would have greater insight into how to live a noble life than someone who struggles each day just to get by.  I am impressed by those who gain notoriety and then use their time in the public spotlight to speak out in behalf of causes to make this world a more compassionate place to live.  What makes a person a role model has less to do with their talent and more to do with what they do with the talents God has given them.

The same is true of political leaders, they are due respect because of the office they hold, but being elected does not mean you are a positive role model.  I have heard it said, “We are all examples, some good and some bad.”  I hope for a time when we elect our leaders not based upon their slogans, or their media images, or even whether we agree with everything they say and elect our leaders instead on whether they are intelligent enough to make wise decisions, whether they are compassionate enough to serve those who are powerless, and spirited enough not to walk away from the hard questions.  I believe we often need leaders who are willing to tell us truths we do not want to hear.  It is not possible for the government to do more and cost us less, it is not possible for us to reduce our dependence on oil without changing our way of life, and it is not possible for 10% of the world’s population to consume 90% of the world’s resources without conflict.  We need to find leaders and role models that will treat us like adults and not like spoiled children who want our way without cost.  We need role models we can trust to be honest with us.

I was struck by the way Eugene Peterson paraphrased the verses 16-17 from today’s reading from the Book of Luke, chapter 7.  I enjoy having the readings for Sunday read out of the Message Bible because I think we hear the stories in new ways and we can see new meaning in them.  I think we need a short course on Bible translation to better understand The Message Bible.  The Message Bible is not a translation of the Bible, it is a paraphrase.  Eugene Peterson did not use the ancient texts that we have of the Bible and do a literal translation of the words found in the texts.  What he did was to read the stories in the Bible and find ways to tell the same story using contemporary language.  He attempted to take the common phrases of the ancients and state them as common phrases we use today.  Bible scholars do not give much credibility to a paraphrase because it is subject to the person doing the paraphrase injecting their own perceptions of what a phase or word might mean in contemporary language.  What Eugene Peterson has paraphrased as “God is back, looking to the needs of his people.” is “God did look upon his people” in Young’s Literal Translation.  The ancient languages of the Bible did not use tenses to indicate past, present, or future as we do in our language so it is difficult to read the meaning as to something that was happening, did happen, or would happen.  The original text does not contain anything to support the people were saying God had gone away and was now back and caring for the people.  Maybe Eugene Peterson paraphrased it the way he did because he sensed the people’s excitement came from the fact that something that had been missing in their lives had returned, they once again felt God’s caring presence.

It makes sense to me the people might have felt that way and responded that way to seeing Jesus restore the Widow’s child to her.  It is a challenge for us to sense God’s care and presence when life is difficult and seems unfair.  I can only imagine how the widow in the first story felt and whether she felt abandoned by God.  She did not have enough to feed herself and her son and she was ready to use the last of the food they had for a simple meal and then die.  Elijah asked her to trust him and trust God and give him the last morsel of bread she had and God would take care of her and her child.  I wonder if she also felt God was back and taking care of her needs.  The question is whether God ever goes away and leaves us uncared for or do we get so distracted and self-absorbed that we do not sense God’s presence and care.  Illness, financial problems, relationship problems, or the loss of someone we love can press so hard on us that we feel we are all alone and no one cares.  We can get ourselves so caught up in how we are going to manage, what we are going to do, and even what we think others need to do for us that we fail to stop and let the presence of God wash over us and care for us.  Sometimes the church can be like this also, we get so focused on the problems, the short resources, the dwindling membership, the disagreements between us that we think are ours to manage that we forget this is God’s church and God loves it like a person loves their beloved spouse.  We forget to stop and let the Spirit of God fill us as a congregation and show us the way God has called us to go.

My title does not refer to the debate about whether the church should or should not be blessing unions of more than two people.  Today is Trinity Sunday.  The Trinity was formalized by the church in the Third Century as a result of trying to make sense of how Jesus could be fully God and fully human.  You’ve got to love how theologians are not comfortable with the mystery.  One of my seminary professors said to us, “Yes it is a mystery but that cannot be your whole answer.  You must struggle with the mystery.”  And so, we struggle with the mystery.  MCC officially subscribes to the Doctrine of the Trinity and that makes me something of a heretic.  As my title suggests, I believe three persons of God is too many and that three manifestations of God is too few.

My current understanding of Jesus’ earthly ministry, and I am very aware that my understanding of most everything is subject to change, is Jesus was a human being.  He did not perceive himself as God, he did not require, expect, or even desire the worship of those who were his followers.  Jesus was humanity perfectly connected to God, not separated by any disobedience or self-importance.  Jesus sought only to know and do God’s will.  In this perfection, Jesus gives us the ideal of how we are to live as children of God.  Jesus told the disciples they would do all that he had done and even greater things than he did.  How likely is it that any of us could surpass what God was able to do in human form?  My sense is the church has lost the original message of Jesus that he came to point us to God, not to be God or to  be worshipped in place of God.  Do not get me wrong, do not start heating up the tar and opening up the feather pillows.  I love Jesus, I love Jesus because Jesus has made it some much easier for me to understand how I am to live as child of God.  I love Jesus because Jesus taught me that God loves me and I can come to God without fear of punishment or rejection.  I love Jesus because he taught me there is joy in service and there are worse things to fear than death.  I love Jesus because he made the Word of God come to life for me.

I also believe in the Spirit of God who comes and inspires my understanding of God.  I believe God’s Spirit is directly connected to my spirit and it is through the connection of our spirits that God and I truly commune together.  The Spirit opens up my understanding of what Jesus said and did two centuries ago.  The Spirit reveals to me new understanding of the revelations of God in sacred texts.  I have seen and felt the Spirit moving in me and in the world around me.  I love knowing the Spirit of God surrounds me and connects so intimately with me.  My problem is not that I do not believe in God manifest in the life Jesus or in the presence of the Holy Spirit, my problem with the Trinity is that I believe God is One and God is manifest in many, many ways.  I do not oppose these three manifestations of God, but I do not worship them.  I worship God.  For me, the Doctrine of the Trinity, denies the validity of other ways of understanding God and being in right relationship with God.  To assert God is three persons in one essence would require us to believe that anyone who seeks to know and serve God but does not accept Jesus as God does not know the true God and I no longer can believe this to be true.

In doing my research on Trinity Sunday, I came across an article that gave me a new perspective on the value of Trinity Sunday.  The author, David Lose of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, suggest the trinity is really about relationship.  How great is that?!  God not only understands but values being in relationship.  God wants to be in relationship with us and God wants us to be in relationship with each other.  This new insight opened up the creation story to me in a new way.  God created humankind because God desired to be in relationship with us.  And God also understood the need for us to have people in our lives as helpmates, relationships to support and nurture us.  On this Trinity Sunday, it does not matter if you are a Trinitarian, one God essence in three persons, a Monitarian, one God, or a Polytarian, one God essence with many expressions we can agree our purpose is to be in relationship with God and to be in relationship with each other in God honoring and God affirming ways.  Amen.

Communicating is probably one of the most complicated and difficult activities we do and yet we do it with very little thought or effort all the time.  Verbal communication requires at least four functions.  Your brain has a concept it wishes to communicate to someone else, the concept is translated into words, and tones, facial expressions, and body language in an attempt to bring the concept to the receiver.  The mouth and body then attempt to express the concept.  The receiver then perceives the words, tone, expressions, and body language and conveys them to his or her brain.  The receivers brain then analyzes the words, the tones, the expressions and the body language and creates a concept of what they all mean.  All of this is done in a relatively short period of time.  It takes a little longer for those of us who now play the word search game as one of our primary pastimes.  Perfect communication requires that our brain comes up with the right words, tones, expressions and body language to convey the concept and then that the body and mouth execute them perfectly the receiver sees and hears them perfectly and then their brain has the exact same understanding of what those words, tones, expressions, and body movements mean.  Considering all of this, it is a wonder that we communicate at all.  It is even more complicated when communication occurs in a more limited medium like the written word.  Now our concept model has lost tone, facial expression, and body language.  We try to compensate for this by adding little faces to show we are smiling, smirking, laughing, frowning, or any other number of emotions.  Even with the extra effort, quite frequently there is misunderstanding or even worse hurt feelings.

Two of our readings for today are about communication.  The story of the Tower of Babel explains how God confounded the language of the people so they could not communicate with each other because they were plotting evil.  I read the story as one of the Bible myths that is not necessarily grounded in fact but is a story to teach us a lesson.  The lesson being that when we come together and use our wisdom to try to become God, our efforts will not lead to good things and God will interfere in our plans.  Communication that says we can come together and control other people and use them for our purposes is communication that is trying to make us gods.  Communication that says we can come together and control all of the world’s resources so that we have abundance and others will suffer and die is communication that is trying to make us gods.  Communication that says we can control who is welcome in church and who is not is communication that is trying to make us God and this church our church.

The second story about the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came down like flames, or like red, orange, and yellow helium balloons and rested on the people and they spoke so that everyone heard in their own language.  This is a reverse Tower of Babel story, people are no longer prevented from understanding each other because of language differences.  Once again, I don’t spend a great deal of energy trying to determine if the disciples suddenly were able to speak foreign tongues or whether the foreigners were made to hear what was said as if it were spoken in their native tongue.  It really doesn’t matter to me.  What matters to me is that God determined that what the disciples were saying was very important for everyone present to hear and understand.   They were sharing the mighty works of God.  They were telling those present the Good News.  They weren’t trying to dominate anyone, they weren’t trying to gain advantage over anyone, they weren’t condemning anyone.  They were telling of the might works of God so everyone present could know God as they knew God.  God does not confound our speaking and our understanding when we are sharing what we know about God and God’s love for all we meet.

It makes a great deal of difference in the way we communicate with another if our communication comes from our love for them.  Our understanding of what another is saying to us is much better if we are listening out of our love for them and our belief that they love us.  Communication in our relationships with spouses, parents, children, friends, fellow congregants will seriously break down if our trust in their love for us has been diminished.  In the work I do with congregations and with counseling people in domestic relationships, I frequently hear people say they don’t trust another person, or the person has lost their trust, or other words to that effect.  What they are saying is they don’t believe the person loves them.  It is only when we sense the love another has for us that we are able to trust them.  Communicating God’s love to another is not about the words we say, it is about the love we feel for them.  Jesus didn’t come to just tell us about God, he came to live God for us.  We see God’s love in the life Jesus lived on this earth and we are to live that love so others can see God in us.  Our words will fail us, we will be misunderstood, sometimes we will speak without thinking, and we will do things we wish we hadn’t but, if we truly love others as God has loved us, these things can be forgiven.  If we speak very carefully, and we act very properly but do not speak and act out of genuine love our words and actions are worthless.  The universal language we receive when the Spirit comes upon us is the language of love, God’s unconditional love.  Amen.

The faithful throughout the history of the Christian tradition have speculated about the return of Jesus to this world.  The first Christians believed Jesus would return before all of them had died.  Theologians and Bible scholars have claimed to decode the mystery of Jesus’ return and have predicted dates that have come and gone.  I cannot be certain why we are so fascinated with setting the date for the return of Jesus, I have seen a bumper sticker that says, “Jesus is coming, look busy!”  Jesus told his followers that no one knows when he will return, he didn’t even know God’s timetable for his return.  I think one of the reasons we try to predict the return of Jesus is so we can cease worrying about the future.  I have read some documentation to support that some advisors to previous presidential administrations have suggested we do not need to be concerned about environmental damage or about financial responsibility because Jesus is going to return and we won’t have to deal with the consequences of our poor stewardship.  I don’t believe this is what God had in mind when suggesting we prepare for the coming of Jesus.

I believe the return of Jesus has more to do with how we treat each other and the rest of creation today.  Jesus returns each time we live out Jesus’ teachings in our own lives.  We are to care for each other as Jesus cared for those he encountered during his earthly ministry.  Jesus had compassion for others out of the love he received from his Heavenly Parent.  He did nothing out of a sense of compulsion or out of frustration with the people who sought his help.  I wonder when I read the story of Paul and the possessed girl if there isn’t another story I may have missed when I have read it before.  The translation we read today says, "Paul, finally fed up with her, turned and commanded the spirit that possessed her, 'Out, in the name of Jesus Christ get out of her!'"  It doesn’t say Paul had compassion for the girl and ordered the spirit out of her, nor does it say the girl asked Paul to free her from the spirit.  Paul basically got annoyed with her pestering him and ordered the spirit out.  I can only speculate about how things might have turned out if Paul had acted out of compassion rather than frustration.  The end of the story has Paul in prison for his actions and he is singing hymns and praying to God, he was focused on what Jesus had taught him was important.  He wasn’t frustrated, he wasn’t trying to figure how to get out of his situation so, when the opportunity to escape presented itself, he did not take it.  He knew the right thing, the Christ like thing to do was to stay.

The best way for us to see the return of Jesus is for us to be the return of Jesus in the world today.  God knows it is impossible for us to comprehend what it would mean to live like God, but we can comprehend what it means to live like Jesus.  Jesus came to us fully comprehending God’s love and God’s will for us as children of God.  Jesus modeled for us how we, as humans, can live out God’s love in the world.  God is in Jesus, we see Jesus and live like him, and the world sees God in us.  We will be challenged by the demands of this world, we will be frustrated when what we want to do is made more difficult by others, and we will be disappointed when we can’t see any good coming from our efforts.  It will be easy for us to let the challenges, frustrations, and disappointments to discourage from responding with love.  We must remember the world challenged Jesus, Satin tempted Jesus at the beginning of his ministry.  The disciples must have frustrated Jesus when he had to teach them the same things over and over again and still they didn’t get it.  Jesus must have been disappointed after three years of teaching, healing, and loving the people and still they were focused on themselves and willing to sacrifice him when he didn’t produce what they wanted.  He struggled in the garden with whether it was God’s will to end the ministry.  I believe that crucifixion was not what caused Jesus agony, he would after all be reunited with God in heaven as a result of his crucifixion, I believe he agonized over leaving the people without a shepherd and knowing there would be a period of separation from God, these I think are what Jesus found almost unbearable to anticipate.  The challenge for us is to face our challenges, frustrations, and disappointments in the same way.  Not focusing on how they make our lives harder, not thinking about how we deserve better, but thinking about how others might me served better through them.  We should be concerned that our challenges, frustrations, and disappointments have the potential of distancing us from God if we allow them to do so.

The bad news is there are many challenges, frustrations, and disappointments ahead of us.  We will struggle with understanding our past history, we will seek ways to make amends for the times we have not been Jesus to the people who came to us.  We will seek ways to forgive others and forgive ourselves for real and perceived wounds.  We will work on finding ways to do what we have been called to do with limited resources of both money and human power.  We will be disappointed when things do not happen as quickly as we would like or do not turn out the way we had hoped.  The Good News is God understands these things and has given us an example of how to live into the challenges, frustrations, and disappointments, not to avoid them, not to deny them, and not even to pray them away.  We are called to be the return of Jesus and embrace the challenges, frustrations, and disappointments as opportunities to witness to God’s unfailing love for us.  If we do not let the challenges, frustrations, and disappointments turn us away from God, we will be Jesus to those who come to Eternal Joy MCC and to each of us seeking to know what we know about living into God’s plan for us.  Amen.