Tag Archives: Trinity

The Christian Life: Consolation – May 22, 2016

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Sunday’s Reading:
2 Corinthians 1:1-11

+ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen. +

What is the Christian life supposed to look like? How are we called to live together as the people of God who bear the name of Christ? What are some of the characteristics of life in Christ? If the confusion and noise in the church and the world today has you asking questions like that, then these next six weeks are for you. Today we begin working our way through Paul’s Second Letter to the church at Corinth, a letter that has a lot to say about those fundamental questions. Before we dig in, though, a word about why Second Corinthians is a good place to turn to find clues about being members of this community.

I mentioned the confusion that is swirling around us at present. It turns out that the church at Corinth was having a crisis of its own at the time of this letter. The church had been established sometime between the years 50 and 52 AD by the preaching of the apostle Paul, and, in his absence, had found itself divided on the question of spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12-13), confused about the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15), and infiltrated by a rival group of preachers who questioned the legitimacy of Paul’s ministry among them. Many in the congregation had been persuaded to doubt the message Paul had preached among them, and to see him as a false teacher who was leading them astray. The letter before us, though it is commonly called Second Corinthians, may have been fourth or later in a series of letters sent by Paul to restore that congregation to relationship with him and to the truth about Jesus Christ. Over the course of this letter, Paul has challenging words to say about what defines Christian identity and community, words that, I would venture to say, the church of today needs to hear just as much as the church at Corinth did in the mid-first century.

So let’s get to it, starting with the opening of this letter. It might seem odd for us to begin with “consolation” as a key characteristic of the Christian life, but that’s precisely where Paul jumps in with both feet. He acknowledges that both he and the community at Corinth have experienced significant pain, both in their relationship with one another, and in their lives as citizens of the Roman Empire who dared to be followers of Jesus. In a very real sense, their presence in society and their identification with Christ marked them out for suffering – if not physical suffering, then certainly the kind of social isolation that made life as a citizen more difficult. There was all kinds of pressure to make accommodations, to deny their life in Christ to make their lives in society easier, and yet Paul urged them to stand firm in their faith, and to trust in the promise that their suffering would be eased by the consolation that comes from God.

That message of comfort and consolation has continued to be important for Christians throughout the centuries. Whatever we might face, we share Paul’s conviction that God in Christ will be present to us by the Holy Spirit, soothing us with his boundless mercy and love. Part of what it means to be Christian is to trust in the Spirit’s power to grant us what we need to hang on and step forward in faith – whether our need is for consolation, comfort, or encouragement. Paul doesn’t stop there, however. Notice the reason that he blesses God in the opening verses of his appeal to the Corinthians: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, 4who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, NRSV) This consolation, comfort, encouragement, is not just something that we receive from God, but something that we are called to extend to one another as members of God’s beloved community.

On the one hand, being a caring presence for others is a matter of basic human decency; in a way, it’s what we expect people to do if they care about us at all. What makes this such a critical part of our life together as Christians is that it is a reflection of the character of our God. With Paul, we bless God – “the Father of mercies – for the consolation we receive in our time of need. With the church, we give thanks to God for the obedience of Jesus Christ, who became human and suffered both alongside us and in our place so that we might know the grace and love of God that surpasses our understanding. With all the baptized, we experience the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who continues to make God known to us and present to us in ways that defy our comprehension and our ability to speak about them, but which are nevertheless powerful markers of the life we share with God in Christ. All three persons of the Triune God are in the business of consolation, and as people who have been invited into relationship with one another and with God, we are now part of a community that carries that work forward.

That’s why I’ve been so adamant about the fact that the Christian life is about so much more than God and me. As important as that relationship is, we are created to be in relationship with others, both within the community of faith and outside that community. Our faith moves us to care about the suffering of others, to offer prayer for the sake of the whole world and not just ourselves, to be mindful of people in need around us. It’s not just a nice thing to do. It’s who we are, and who we are called to be in the world, and, believe it or not, it something that people notice. Through the work of Lutheran Disaster Response, we have a reputation for being among the first groups of people on the scene when disaster strikes, and among the last to leave. Because of the ELCA Youth Gathering, the cities of New Orleans and Detroit have experienced what it means to have a committed group of Christians take the time to listen to the stories of people in need, to live among them, and to commit to working as partners to help bring healing and hope in situations of hardship and struggle. This congregation has also shown the importance of caring for those in need in ways large and small, from serving luncheons to grieving families to offering expressions of support and encouragement to one another in times of trouble, and many others. Consolation is part of our DNA, and to the extent that we commit to extending this great gift – a gift first given to us in Christ – to those around us, we bear witness to the power of God’s Holy Spirit to bring healing and wholeness out of suffering and loss. As Paul writes, 5For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:5, NRSV)

Next week, brothers and sisters, our survey of the Christian life leads us to reflect on forgiveness. Until then, let us pray that God might lead us to grant consolation to one another and to our neighbors as we have opportunity, and let us bless God for the consolation that makes it possible for us to face each day in confidence and hope. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Holy Trinity – Sunday, June 15, 2014

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Sunday’s Readings:

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

+ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen. +

Almost exactly three years ago today, on June 19, 2011, I was sitting in the pews of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Southfield, Michigan, the congregation where I grew up and was raised in the Christian faith. That Sunday morning, I had the joy of worshipping with the people who had supported me during the first eighteen years of my journey, and that afternoon I was privileged to be ordained into the ministry of Word and Sacrament as those same people surrounded me with their prayers. One of the most interesting things about that day was that, like this weekend, the church was celebrating both Father’s Day and Holy Trinity Sunday, which for me was either an incredible coincidence or evidence that God might just be behind this whole pastor thing after all. You see, though I rarely missed a Sunday at Emmanuel and had great pastors throughout all those years of growing in the faith, it was my dad who first got me thinking about the doctrine of the Trinity as something that really mattered. My memory is a little fuzzy on the details of how that happened – I seem to recall my dad had been approached by a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, though I can’t be sure about that – but I am absolutely clear on what my dad said about how he had ended the conversation. He said very matter-of-factly that because the person he was talking to didn’t believe in the Trinity, there was very little else for them to talk about. I don’t think my dad was being rude. I think that there was something so essential about this point of the Christian faith – that, as one of the ancient creeds of the church states, “we worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being” – that he simply had no interest in compromising that belief, even if there might have been agreement about other important matters of the faith.

Back then, of course, I didn’t really understand what the big deal was. Sure, I’d been professing my own belief in God as Trinity my whole life. I don’t suppose I was as aware of it as I am now, but looking back it’s easy to see that references to the three persons of God permeated our worship services each Sunday, even as they do for us today:

  • The beginning of the order of confession and forgiveness invokes the Holy Trinity.
  • The Apostolic Greeting, which is taken from today’s second reading from Second Corinthians, evokes the Trinity in referring to “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.”
  • The Prayer of the Day often ends with references to all three persons of the Trinity.
  • The Creeds each lead us to proclaim our faith in the God who exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Despite all that, I just can’t say that I ever considered this belief to be important until my dad talked so bluntly about his insistence on the truth of that teaching.

As we gather this weekend to reflect on the Holy Trinity, this mystery that has confounded all attempts to explain it from the very beginning, perhaps you’re like me, and you wonder if this whole Trinity thing is really all that important. After all, the word Trinity doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the Bible. There is no single place in Scripture in which this doctrine is present in any concrete way. One of the criticisms of this belief is the idea that it developed relatively late in the life of the church, a claim that is partially true; in fact, it wasn’t until the year 381 that the vast majority of the Christian Church agreed that this belief would be part of their profession of faith. So let’s go back to the question from the younger me: What’s the big deal?

To answer that, let’s take a brief look at our Gospel reading from Matthew. Jesus and his disciples are gathered on a mountain in Galilee, where he commanded them to go after the resurrection. On that mountain, Jesus gives what has come to be referred to by the church as “the Great Commission”, the last set of marching orders received from Jesus before he ascended to the right hand of God: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” You can probably guess where we’re going. Jesus commands his disciples (and all those who would come to believe because of their testimony) to go out into the world and, through baptism, join people to the community of faith that has formed under the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In his reflection on this passage, Pastor Steven Eason invites us to consider the significance of this baptism into the Triune God by asking the following: What if we baptized people only in the name of the Father? Or only in the name of the Son? Or only in the name of the Holy Spirit? Eason argues that Scripture testifies to the experience of God in each of these persons. We experience God as Father when we reflect on the fact of our createdness, when we wonder at the mystery of creation and the vastness of God’s majesty and glory. We experience God as Son when we reflect on the story of Christ, when we marvel at the fact that God became human in the person of Jesus, taking on our humanity, showing us the love of God by his obedient suffering and death for our sake, and revealing God’s power and victory in his resurrection and ascension. We experience God as Holy Spirit when we reflect on the ways that God continues to be present to us now, inspiring us to new ways of thinking and doing as the people of God, surrounding us with comfort and peace in times of anxiety and trouble, and dwelling within us to assure us of God’s concern for us every moment. Each person of the Trinity is fully involved in all of this work, but this language gives us handles for wrapping our minds around all the different ways that we experience the power and presence of God in our lives.

In the end, the big deal about the Trinity is that it is our best guess at explaining how God has acted in history to create, redeem, and save us and the world. So we continue to name God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to invite people into relationship with that God, because the truth of our life lived in that relationship is powerful, even if our way of describing it is impossible to fully understand. This weekend, we rejoice as we continue to fulfill the commission that Jesus gave us: the calling to go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. We celebrate with Helen as she receives the gift of baptism, declaring her desire to be joined to this community of faith that, in the words of Pastor David Lose, has been “called and sent by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed for the sake of the world God created and loves so much.”* Most of all, we give thanks for the many ways that we continue to be invited into the life of the Triune God, surrounded with divine love and grace, and sent out to make that love and grace known each new day. All praise to you, blessed and Holy Trinity, today and always. Amen!

*David Lose, “Trinitarian Congregations”, Dear Working Preacher, June 9, 2014.