Cutting the Cord (Trinity Sunday)

Matthew 28: 16-20

A few weeks ago, I was crocheting a baby blanket during text study, the weekly get-together where pastors chat about all kinds of things (sometimes, even, the Bible). I was using two skeins of yarn at the same time and, somehow, a horrible snarl had happened. Thus, most of my time on that particular day was spent untangling the snarl, attempting to salvage the yarn. I pulled at the tangle, carefully weaving one free end over and around, up and down, through and back again.

The other people thought I was crazy. One pastor thought I should cut it and be done with it, knotting two free ends back together and then going from there. I didn’t want to do that, I reported. I wanted to undo the knot. I knew that I could. It just took patience and a lot of effort. I knew untangling that hideous knot would be worth it in the end, I just had to stick with it.

I worked on it for two hours that day and for an hour and a half during a meeting the next day. Of course, during the time that I was working on the knot, what wasn’t I doing? I wasn’t working on the baby blanket. I was ignoring my main task for this side project, which was slow. Focusing on untangling the knot gave some real pleasure, but I did not make any ground on the real work of finishing the blanket so that I could put it in the mail.

Should I have just cut the knot as soon as I saw it?  Maybe.

Should I have set an amount of time to wrestle with it and then gotten back to crocheting? Maybe.

Should I have made more of an effort to remember that creating the blanket was my main goal, rather than untangling what was likely about six feet worth of yarn that cost $4 a skein? In my mind, now, definitely.

This knotty problem kept bubbling up to the surface of my mind this week as I reflected on the mystery of God’s own self as Trinity and Unity. I used to thrill at attempting to explain the Trinity, even if you didn’t love my attempts. Unraveling that knot, making useful yarn out of it, seemed so worthwhile and valuable. I loved the possibilities that seemed evident in considering the questions and the answers of how God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- are together and separate in an eternal dance of love, creation, redemption, and grace within their own relationship to one another and within their relationship to us.

Suddenly, this week, I realized the more time that I spent on explaining the Trinity, the less time I spent on talking about or doing the actual work of making disciples, of bringing people into the Way of Jesus. Whoops. Since 325 and the first church council at Nicea, when believing in the Trinity became a hallmark of orthodox Christian thinking, there has been immense significance placed on the intellectual understanding of God’s relations within God’s self. Getting the knowledge correct replaced actually doing what Jesus commanded of his early disciples and expects of his present disciples (that’s us).

Frankly, it’s too easy for us to feel like we have to work out the knot, that we need to have everything neat and perfect and completely understood before we could begin to share the good news of Jesus. After all, what if we were trying to make disciples and someone asked us about the Trinity? What would we do then? What happens if there’s a question we can’t answer?

We make a cut, tie the ends together, and keep crocheting (or knitting or fishing or whatever).

Yesterday, several people from this congregation stood in the drizzle on the Park Strip and manned (and womanned) a booth for the PrideFest. The sign on the booth read “People who love Jesus and you, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America”. For hours, we stood- handing out bracelets, inviting people to church, selling children’s bibles and cookbooks, and listening to stories. We answered all kinds of questions. We listened with sympathy to how people had been hurt by church people. We encouraged.

Not once in 8+ hours, as far as I know, was anyone asked about the Trinity.  (Rats!) Not once we were asked to explain our understanding of how God could have three expressions. We weren’t quizzed on any Bible passages related to the Trinity (though we did get questions about some other things).

Does it mean that dogma doesn’t matter? No, but it does mean that if we sat here for the same amount of time yesterday, struggling to completely understand that teaching- we would have missed those interactions, those stories, the chance to witness to the hope that is within us. In any kind of work, there is always a little side project that needs to be done or that can be done. (Ask me how often I clean my desk rather than work on a hard text.) The side project in itself is not a bad thing. It’s worth untangling some knots. It is when these little things become our focus that we have a problem.

The relational existence and outpouring of Godself seems enticing, in that we can delay action on anything as long as there is something in our faith that remains less than completely understood. Understanding the Trinity is the Gordian knot of contemporary theology. We must cut it, rather than seek to untie it. We celebrate who God is and who we are to and in God. That's something to think about!

Trusting that God is Source, Savior, and Sustenance moves us into the realm of the life of faith, rather than only the study thereof. In a time and place that calls for actions, we need a God of movement, of internal and external activity, of past action, present guidance, and future clarity. That, fortunately is the God we serve. God’s way of revealing the Divine nature and ability to meet those needs is expressed through what we have seen and experienced true in the movements of the Holy Parent, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit.

We have work to do, specific work to which we have been called. Nowhere is that work defined as total comprehension of the nature of God. There is no shortage of ways to stand with and for the little, the least, and the lost. We take what we trust is true about God, even with our reservations, and we run with it, for the sake of the common good, for the sake of our communities, for the sake of communion, for the sake of Christ in the world.

Sunday Sermon: Costs and Benefits

Reading: Mark 5: 1-20

Everything we do has costs and benefits. In each decision we make, we weigh the pros and cons, coming up with a little balance sheet. For example, it’s late. If we order pizza, we don’t have to cook and there’s only a little clean up afterwards. There’s a bonus, too, in that it comes to us. On the other hand, we have to spend the money, we’re not eating food we already have, and we always eat too much pizza when we order it.

Even decisions that seem automatic have costs and benefits. Do I go to the bathroom right now or wait five minutes to finish this task? In all situations, we weigh costs and benefits and then make a decision. That’s what the people did in today’s gospel story. Jesus gets into a boat and he crosses over to the “country of the Gerasenes”. This means that he is expanded his ministry into Gentile territory.  How do we know that? The presence of pigs is a big clue. This isn’t one or two pigs- it’s 2000- the livelihood (and food) of most of the village. This village also has a town crazy man, who has been plagued by demons for years. When the original readers of Mark’s gospel heard this story, they would have picked up on several different things we need explained. A legion is a group of six thousand (6,000) Roman soldiers. Not only, then, does the man have a large number of demons, but the story is constructed to have the hearers think about how Rome has “possessed” their land. They would also recall how they, like the Gerasene demoniac, had hoped the Messiah would bring an exorcism. However, in this story, the people weigh the costs and benefits of having Jesus in town and the cost is too great.

Gerasenes
Costs	Benefits
Pigs (livelihood)	Healed Man
Change	6000 demons gone
Community order	God in their midst
Stability	Change

What does it cost the Gerasenes to have Jesus in their territory? First, it cost their livelihood. Pigs can swim, but apparently not demon-possessed pigs. It’s like Jesus
shut down the mill- this affects the whole town- not just the man who came for healing. This is very high cost. Secondly, Jesus brings change. He takes the livelihood of the town and heals the crazy man, he upsets the order of things and how they’ve been handled for years. Lastly, Jesus is messing with their stability. They have an understanding of God, through either their own practices or what Jewish leaders tell them. They probably have a town hierarchy. Jesus rocks the boat in a big way.

On the plus side, they do have a healed man who can be restored to family and friends, if they’re accepting of him. They are rid of 6,000 demons. (Though, it’s arguable that they demons were really only bothering one person.) They have God in their midst. (But do they know that?) Finally, again, Jesus is bringing change. Change to the status quo can be a huge benefit, if people are able to accept it. The people of the town weighed this situation in the balance and they were afraid. The benefits did not outweigh the costs that they could see, so they ran Jesus out of town.

That’s okay, though, because Mark is a sixteen chapter gospel and this is only the start of chapter five. After this, people will totally be able to perceive what Jesus has to offer and they will laud him as Emmanuel, God-with-us…

Wait, what? That’s not how it will happen?

Well, what about today?

Us
Costs	Benefits
Time	Relationships
Certainty	God in our midst
Control	Change
Physical resources	Light
Your life is not your own	Consolation

We too have to weigh the costs and benefits of our life in faith. Believing in God, trusting in Jesus, and relying on the Spirit all take their tolls. The first cost is the greatest. It takes time to be in relationship, whether deep or superficial. It takes time to pray, to listen, to help, to praise, to wrestle. Sometimes we just want to sleep in or do it tomorrow or wait until the kids leave home.

In faithful living, we sacrifice certainty. While we continue to believe in scientific discovery, expanding human knowledge, and deeper intellectual understanding, we also come to know that there are just some unknowns, some mysteries that will always be beyond human comprehension. We don’t understand how Jesus is present in communion or how God acts in baptism, we only know that these things have been promised to us and we go on in faith.

In faith, we circle the reality that we are not in control. Each of us has to remind ourselves of this daily, just as we are reminded of the One who is. In remembering that all we have is a gift, we spend our physical resources. The costs of money, energy, goods, and services are part of what living faithfully entails. Each expenditure reminds us, again, that our life is not our own.

These huge costs are weighed against the benefit of relationships- with our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer and with other people. Faith brings us into unexpected quarters and finds us with unplanned allies. We are encouraged, enticed, and sometimes forced to interact and commune with those whom God loves, even if we do not know how that’s possible. In these relationships, we encounter Emmanuel, God-with-us. Jesus promises to meet us in people all around us and so he shows up, invited and unexpected.

Just like for the Gerasenes, Jesus brings change. Salvation is an event and a process and we who are being saved are also being changed, becoming more fully the people God intends us to be. In the life of faith, we are participants in this change through obedience, repentance, and boldness in love. We are brought more fully into the light no darkness can overcome. We are consoled in our knowledge of grace, our belief in the life of the world to come, and God’s work in Jesus Christ.

We constantly weigh these costs and benefits. Do the benefits outweigh the costs? We all want to say, “Amen! Hallelujah!” Yet, we know plenty of times when we were unable to perceive the benefits or unable to bear the costs.

There is one more being in this scenario. One other who weighs costs and benefits and makes decisions.

God
Costs	Benefits
Everything	Relationship with all creation

God’s desire is for relationship with the entirety of creation, to bring justice and peace to the world that God has created and loved. What does it cost God to have that relationship? It costs everything.

We cannot know the mind of God, but if we consider the actions of which we know…

The outpouring of the Trinity into the creation

The frustration we see in the histories and in the prophets

The hope with which God comes into our world as Jesus the Christ

The triumph over the power of death and the grave

The continuous expectation that creation will respond to grace and mercy

How is this any less than everything?

We look at our cost and benefit list and it seems difficult. And it is. That’s true. We are only able to incur the costs because we have already received the benefits. This is the knowledge we have that the Gerasenes did not, because we are Easter people- already rejoicing in resurrection.  

We are able to pay the costs because we have been loved first, received grace first, been born out of a desire and call for relationship. We are able to love because we have first been loved… by the One who is Love.

The thing is, God has decided repeatedly… on your behalf, on mine, for the sake of the world… the cost is worth it. Every. Time. 

Amen.

The Chore List

Holy Trinity Sunday, Year A

19 June 2011

Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

            For me, this is the “most wonderful time of the year” because it’s my favorite Sunday. As most of you know, I love the concept of the Holy Trinity. The Three-in-One and One-in-Three God. A relational God whose love outpours in a variety of ways- creating, redeeming and sustaining the world. We have the Father who brings us into a holy and eternal family, the Son who is our brother in faith, and the Spirit who is our advocate.

            I spend a lot of time thinking about the Trinity- possibly more than you do. In fact, I worry that when I mention the Holy Trinity, your eyes glaze over and you stop listening because it is a difficult concept. Thinking about God is challenging enough. Thinking about God in Three persons can seem nearly off-putting.

            So, let’s back off from the idea of the Trinity for a minute and just think about God. Or rather, what do you think God thinks about us? It’s often taken for granted that God thinks about us. We think of what we believe about Jesus and the Spirit. Believing that the coming of Christ and the presence of the Spirit are signs of God’s love for us, then surely God does think about us.

            But the question that the psalmist (the writer of the psalm) asks today is why should we expect God to think of us? When we considered the sky and the stars, for us in Alaska the ever-present sunshine this time of year, when we think of the depth of the ocean and the expansion of creation… why should we assume at all that God thinks of us? Who are we, but blips in human history, in creation history?

            But loving fathers, loving parents, remember each of their children. So surely God does remember us and does think on us. How can we know that? Well, one of the pressing memories I have of my dad is the Saturday chore list. We’d get up on a Saturday morning and there would be a list of things to do on the dining room table. Some of them were standard (clean the bathrooms, wash the sheets, vacuum, etc) and some of them were unusual or depended on the season (stack wood, move the chicken coop, turn the compost pile).

            Here’s the thing with a chore list. In order to write it, my dad had to think about my siblings and me- what he knew we could do and we couldn’t. We might not have always wanted to do the list. We might have thought it was unrealistic or unfair and maybe sometimes it was. Nevertheless, the list meant that our dad was thinking of us. He could have done these things himself, but then we wouldn’t have learned how and we wouldn’t have understood what it means to work together as a family.

            Similarly, we know that God is thinking of us because God gives us a chore list. God could do these things without our help, but that’s not how God decided to work with people. The psalmist notes that from the beginning, what we heard in Genesis, God has given us the responsibility of caring for the earth. This is chore list of stewardship, of creation care. We are charged with caring for animals and plants, for helping the earth to produce and for using what is before us to its fullest and healthiest extent.

            From God, we have a chore list that extends into our life in Christ. The risen Jesus tells his disciples to train others in the way of the godly life, in the way of discipleship. They are charged with extending the care of creation into caring for their neighbors. Caring for them means helping them to understand the realities and possibilities of abundant life in Christ, of joyous life in God.

            We know that God thinks about creation and about people because we are charged with carrying out these activities in the world. When I remember back to the chore lists of my youth, I recall that my siblings and I spent a good amount of time yelling at each other to do more work and pointing out who wasn’t doing their fair share. Now where do I see that behavior repeated…?

            Ah, yes. Many times, that’s how God’s faithful people use our time and talents- pointing out who isn’t holding up their end. We know what the chores are. We haven’t been asked to do things that are out of the realm of our possibility. God could do everything without our help, including making disciples, but then we have no role and, furthermore, we won’t understand what it means to work together as a family.  Without our chore list, our relationship to God and to one another is limited. We just exist, our tasks having very little meaning except to move us to the next day.

            Being given responsibility for creation care and for sharing the good news of Jesus means that God knows us and trusts us. It means that God is thinking of us and trying to include us in the building of the kingdom. Having a list of things to do bring us into a working relationship with God and with one another.

            In the story of creation, all things are relational. Nothing exists on its own. The day has the night, the sky has the heavenly bodies, the land gets the water, and the living things work together. Nothing that is made is declared good until it has a relational counterpart. Those counterparts work together for good, for wholeness.

            So it is between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Three-in-One God works together for good, for wholeness. There is a relationship there that may well be beyond our understanding, but it exists because of the love that burst forth from the heart of God. There is not, there cannot be, one expression of that love and God has three expressions… a Loving Creator, a Healing Redeemer and an Ever-present Inspiration. The chores of being God are shared between the members of the Trinity and the love in that relationship flows forward into God’s relationship with us.

            It is easy to feel overwhelmed by what it seems like we are called to do, but it’s a short chore list and it’s specialized to what God knows we can do. God has even given us the gifts to do these things- to care for creation and to share Christ with all whom we encounter. We are able to do these things because of the grace we have received through Christ. We are invited to do these things through the urging of this Spirit. We must do these things for the sake of God’s name in the world.

            What did Jesus tell his disciples when he gave them their chore list, that Great Commission? “I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up until the end of the age.” (Message) You aren’t doing this alone. You’re not even doing it just with other people. The amazing grace of Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God and the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit is with all of you!

Amen.