It's Okay If You Don't Get It—A Sermon for Trinity Wednesday

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

On the sign out front, it says that the Belfry is a Lutheran and Episcopal Ministry. Not everyone here identifies as Lutheran or Episcopalian, which we’re actually pretty into, right? But what we’re up to is certainly Christian—we focus our learning and our worship on the stories about Jesus, and how Jesus relates to God the Creator and to their Holy Spirit. We’re not always sure about the meaning of those stories, but we’re in it together—we learn from each others’ stories, too. I don’t know if you go home from here each week and wonder about the things we read and sang, but you keep coming back, so there’s something happening that’s of value to you.

Being UC Davis students, or LEVN volunteers, you’re in a developmental stage known as “emerging adulthood”—you’re still in the process of becoming yourself, differentiated from your family of origin. You’re absorbing information about the world and yourself at breakneck speed, processing and processing and processing. That’s enough to keep anyone lying awake at night.

I’m just moseying my way out of emerging adulthood into regular ol’ adulthood—boring, not recommended—and I occasionally find myself experiencing something called “night dread.” Waking up at some ungodly hour like 2:37am because my brain has chosen that moment to run through the whole list of things that need resolving IMMEDIATELY for some reason.

Has this happened to you? What do you do? Do you will yourself back to sleep? Do you toss and turn until the sun comes up? Do you watch a movie on netflix? Do you scroll through tumblr? Do you get up and try to do some of the stuff you’re worried about; answer some of the questions your brain won’t stop asking?

In our Gospel story for this week, I think Nicodemus had night dread. The story says that he came to see Jesus by night. This is probably for a few reasons—no one would see him, he knew where Jesus would be, and perhaps he just couldn’t sleep without going and asking. I imagine him half-whispering, “Rabbi, we know you’re a teacher come from God, for no one can perform the signs and wonders you do, unless by the power of God.” To say this out loud, as a Jewish religious leader, is to admit that this rabble-rouser just might be for real. He has probably been tossing and turning about this since he first encountered Jesus.

As usual, Jesus does not simply say yes or no, but says, instead, that the truth of the matter is that in order to truly experience the beloved community of God, one has to go through spiritual transformation. Nicodemus doesn’t know what to do with this, either, because he takes Jesus literally, assuming he needs to be re-born, which even in the first century, they understood could not be done. Three times, Nicodemus speaks to Jesus in this encounter, and all three times, he focuses on the logical possibility of explaining what God is doing, and all three times, he gets more confused. And he’s not alone.

This week, our liturgical calendar brings the focus to the Holy Trinity, our favorite confusing Christian paradox. God the three in one, one in three. We name God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We name God the Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. We have countless names that could go on this list—Savior, Rock, Shepherd, Prince of Peace, King of Kings, Source of Life, Fountain of Mercy, Wisdom, Healer, Mother, Advocate...I imagine you have a favorite or two. Our scripture and our hymns are full of these images and metaphors and names for God. Are there any I left out that you love?

Trinitarian monotheism is a critical component of our Lutheran and Episcopal Christian theological heritage. Councils have been called, creeds have been written, heretics have been burned, and wars have been fought over this and other doctrines of our church. You may be a person who is very concerned with orthodoxy—and you are not alone—and so you are committed to understanding the sticking point of the Son being “begotten, not made, of one being with the father” in the words of our Nicene Creed. Or perhaps you are drawn to the Gospel According to John, in which it is written than “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the word was God” (John 1:1).

You may be unsure what any of that is that I’ve just said, and are pretty okay wrapping your head around just that God the Creator, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit are fine by you. Often, I find myself safely in that camp. Yep, I have a seminary education and so am technically proficient in explaining that the Holy Trinity is consubstantial, and that the words “person” and “substance” in their ancient languages are not quite direct translations to our clumsy English. I could point you toward the writings of Martin Luther and many others about the delicate intricacies of this divine dance, to try to ensure that you’re not committing a heresy in the process.

But several years ago, a pastor of mine reminded me that the Holy Trinity is not merely a complex theological concept to be comprehended, but a relational reality to be lived. God-for-us, God-with-us, God-in-us. [1]

It is awesome—and by that I mean the slang of my Southern California home and the literal inspiring of awe—that God relates to us in these varied ways. God created this universe and everything in it. God came among us, their beloved creation, as one of us. God continues to move through us and inspire us.

We need not be able to explain why or how this is so in order to respond to it.

There’s a famous old diagram of the Trinity that attempts to express how it is possible that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but also that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. They are all of one being, but they are not the same.

That’s helpful, kind of. But theologian Kee Boem So says that “the Trinity is not an abstract doctrine but a practical reality with implications for Christian life.” [2] Nicodemus came to Jesus hoping to understand who Jesus was, in order to assess those implications. Coming to believe that Jesus was the Son of God would mean radically transforming his life, his community, and his religious practice. The same is true for us! Recognizing the community built into the God who loves us—God the Creator, God the Redeemer, God the Sustainer—should lead us to build a community, too. If God is multi-faceted, and co-creative, we ought to be, too.

Throughout our lives as Christians, there will be times when we understand most deeply God as Creator, and then there will be times when we really dig into relationship with God as Redeemer, and there will be times when we really feel the movement of God as Sustainer. This is the beauty of our Trinitarian monotheism. God is always doing a new thing, making us new, keeping us moving.

God-for-us, God-with-us, God-in-us.

God-for-you, God-with-you, God-in-you.

That’s awesome. Amen.

_____

[2] Kee Boem So, "The First Sunday After the Pentecost" in Preaching God's Transforming Justice: Year B, 259.

Get Good and Dusty—A Sermon on Ash Wednesday

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

When Rob Lee was here two weeks ago for the St. Augustine lecture, we had dinner with some of our board members and local faith leaders. It’s important to know that Rob is severely allergic to peanuts and to shellfish. As we were about to order dinner, I double-checked with him about how other folks’ orders could affect him, and he said shellfish was just his problem, but he needed us to all abstain from peanuts. Our server stepped in and said that the restaurant was actually a peanut-free establishment. We were delighted! She then said, matter-of-factly, “you will live one more day.” We all laughed at her frankness, and Rob thanked her for the reminder.

We have a cultural saying, don’t we, about taking things “one day at a time”? It’s sort of questionable advice, right, because there are things we need to plan ahead for. If you never looked at a calendar, you would be unprepared all the time, and never accomplish anything that took more than one day’s advance planning. Usually, though, we err too far from this “one day at a time” plan. We are always counting the weeks of the quarter, or checking the calendar for when our friends are coming to town, or perhaps looking ahead to our next birthday, or even the impending anniversary of a personal tragedy. We are so occupied by what’s next, what’s next, what’s next that we rarely live in this moment, here, and now. We are so busy living that we rarely stop to consider if we like the lives we’re leading.

Frankly, we are so busy living that we rarely even notice that we are all dying. We know, intellectually, that we are on this earth for a limited time, and that our death is eventual. Most of us are healthy enough to be fairly confident that our own deaths are in the distant future. And most of us are fairly uncomfortable with that fact, anyway. We just go on living like it will always be this way. Even though we know that can’t be true!

Our friend Martin Luther, instigator of the Protestant Reformation, had a habit of theological paradox. (We reflected on this in LEVN this week, doing some reading about feminist and womanist theologies.) For Luther, it is perfectly sound to say that we are all simultaneous saints and sinners. You’ve heard that one before? What about that we’re simultaneously empowered and humbled? What about that we’re simultaneously bound and free? What about that we’re simultaneously living and dying? We’ll skip that last one, thankyouverymuch. Death-denying is one of our favorite activities.

Except tonight. Tonight, in observance of Ash Wednesday, we’re intentionally reflecting on the inescapable truth that we all will die.

As surely as you live and breathe, you will surely die. It’s okay! It doesn’t always feel okay. The death of a loved one earlier than expected is one of the worst human experiences. The tradition of Ash Wednesday is not to trivialize the pain of death. It serves as an annual reminder, an occasional familiarization, a slow softening.

In our world of 24-hour news, we are no stranger to violence and death. We see images and read headlines of natural disaster, gun violence, police violence, domestic violence, car accidents, mass shootings, war, terrorism...we are nearly desensitized to mass deaths of innocent people. It’s unjust. We cry out to God, wondering why any of this is happening. We cry out to God, wondering if God has noticed that God’s people are dying. God has noticed. The deaths of thousands of people every day to hunger, disease, war, famine—God sees those lives and those deaths. The long, quiet goodbye of an elderly family member—God sees those lives and those deaths. The devastation of overdose and suicide—God sees those lives and those deaths. Each life and each death is precious to the God who created each and every person, each and every creature.

If pressed, we would say “of course, we know that.” But as it’s happening, we don’t always remember. Tonight, we remember. We remember that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We remember that just like every person who has lived and died in the generations before us, we are made of the same substance, the same mud into which God has breathed life. The same bundle of cells that somehow become the miracle of humanness. The paradox here, dear ones, is that you are made of the same stuff that everyone has ever been made of, and you are the only you there has ever been. You were created by a God who loves you, and you live each day in that belovedness.

I know this to be true about me and about each of you, and about every human who has ever lived and died and will ever live and die.

Remember how Martin Luther liked paradoxes? And that one of them is that we are simultaneously bound and free? As created beings, we are bound to our God—we depend on God for our very existence. And, at the same time, because of the grace we have received, we are free. We are free to be fully human. It is not hard to see, as we look around at our fellow full, free humans, that we do not always do what is right with our freedom. We sometimes use our freedom to inhibit the freedom of others, to directly oppress others, to indirectly allow someone else to use their freedom to oppress others. The scripture that we read on this Ash Wednesday reminds us of the connection between our bondage and our freedom.

The prophet Isaiah basically mocks the community, saying that their fasting is empty because they do it only for show. They cover their faces in ash, they wear sackcloth, they writhe about in performative anguish. After everyone has seen them behave in this most holy of ways, they return to their wicked ways: oppressing their workers, quarreling, and fighting. The prophet tells them that he has seen—and God has seen—right through them. Their fast is false until they fast from oppression. Until they fast from injustice. Until they fast from unchecked power. They must change their ways. They must share their food with the hungry, and clothe the naked, and invite the homeless into their families.

Jesus, too, goes down this same path. “Do not be like the hypocrites,” he says. Do not come here to this place of holiness and perform your sacrifices. Do not come here to this refuge and make false promises to your God. Come here and put this ash on your face and feel the scratch of this sackcloth on your skin only if you mean it.

It may seem like a very odd choice for us to hear these words and then proceed to mark ourselves with the sign of the cross, and then walk out the door into the world. It may seem like we are doing exactly what these prophets have told us not to do. When you walk back out into the world with a cross of ashes on your forehead, someone is definitely going to look at you funny. Maybe you’ve gotten used to that over the years. Or maybe this is going to be your first time receiving ashes, and you’re sort of worried about it. Wherever you are, God is there.

When you receive these ashes tonight, listen to the blessing that accompanies them. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Remember your fellow creatures, and treat them well. You are made of the same stuff. You are bound to the God who loves you, free to love and serve your neighbor. Free to do as the prophet Isaiah challenges: loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke. Untangle yourself from the things that hold you back from being your best self, from treating everyone like their best self. You are made of good stuff. Remember yourself.

My friend Emily, who is a Lutheran pastor in Iowa, writes a blog from a queer perspective. They sometimes write re-imaginings of stories from scripture, or traditional prayers, to reflect queer identities and the true vastness of God’s family. They wrote the most beautiful blessing for Ash Wednesday, and so I will close this homily by blessing you with it:

“Blessed gift of God’s good creation, it is true:

You are dust, made from the rich, dark matter of the earth, a human from Earth’s hummus.
You are from this life-giving ground and one day you also will return to the earth.
    Nourishing it as it has nourished you.
    Nourishing others as they have nourished you.
But, beloved one of God, it is not just dust and soil that make you up.
You are made of stardust, scattered like infinite glitter, sparking and sparkling throughout the universe.

As you journey through Lent this year, return to who you are.

May the Creator bless the dust in you and around you.
May the Word made flesh, who crossed boundaries and borders, affirm your humanity.
May the Spirit spark imagination and wonder in the stardust that lives in you.
You are dust and stardust, and to the cosmos you will return.”

Give to God what is God's—A Sermon on Life and Taxes

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.
 

It has been a minute since I’ve been in this pulpit, after a busy month of traveling all over the place. And y’all have been busy while I’ve been gone! The quarter is seriously under way, the LEVN year presses on, and life outside of your programs carries on, too. It’s a big world out there.

If you’ve been here the last few Wednesdays or maybe the last few Sundays, you’ve been trekking through the lectionary as Jesus tells confusing parable after confusing parable. There were mustard seeds, and wedding banquets, and vineyards, and talents. Just as we have been immersed in Jesus’ stories about what the kingdom of heaven is like, his original hearers were putting the pieces together, forming a picture of a new and different world.

Some folks were not as sold on Jesus’ new way of being in relationship with God and with one another—some religious authorities and, of course, the Roman Empire. They, too, were connecting the dots between Jesus’ stories and their reality.

Remember, Jesus and company lived under occupation by the Roman Empire. Everyone was expected to revere and respect the emperor—Caesar Augustus—above anyone or anything else. The coin that Jesus is talking about depicts the Roman emperor as a deity, or as a conduit for the deity. You see, the emperor maintained a relative peace by allowing those under his occupation to worship their God, as long as they also pledged allegiance to him. You can bet that Jesus had a problem with this, because that utmost devotion is not for earthly kings, but for God our Creator, alone.

The tension between Jesus’ movement and those with political power was only growing. And while this week’s story is not a parable, it’s not exactly straightforward. Some of the folks who were opposed to Jesus’ movement tried to trap him, tried to get him to either openly pledge allegiance to the emperor or openly disparage the emperor.

They ask him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Jesus knows what they’re after, and replies with another question, like many teachers do. “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” He says. “Show me the coin.” When they show him the money that is used to pay taxes, emblazoned with Caesar Augustus’ name and title, he tells them “give to the emperor what is the emperor’s and give to God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22)

Sometimes, when we tell this story, we do something a little anachronistic and turn it into a modern question: is it Christian to pay taxes? And that’s sort of an interesting question, because our tax dollars do a lot to build up our communities—pay for our schools, roads, fire departments—and that’s an important Christian value. We provide services and resources to members of our community who would otherwise go without.

But, we don’t all agree about how much of our tax dollars should be allocated to which things, or about which things should be covered by our tax dollars at all. A large portion of our tax dollars goes toward building weapons of war—not so much a Christian value. But we know, as citizens and residents of the United States, that we are accountable to one another and responsible for paying taxes.

So is it Christian to pay taxes? Yes...and no. But is that what Jesus is talking about?

Not entirely. Jesus is pointing us toward a larger question: are we servants of God or are we servants of the empire? And not just in the literal political sense—though absolutely in the literal political sense—but in an even more basic sense.

This is the most fundamental building block of our faith. In the commandments given to Moses, we start at the very beginning: “I am the Lord your God...you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3).

Everything that we have comes to us from God. Yes, we live in a society with a government and with corporations and other trimmings of capitalism, but as Christians we are governed by God first, and by the empire second.

What, that is not our capital-G God, have we devoted ourselves to instead? What do we cling to that is not the triune God?

More than a few things. Money. Power. Status. Security. Institutions—like our governments, our universities, our Churches. National sovereignty. We routinely place our trust and our devotion in things of this earth that cannot possibly sustain us in the way that God can. No human person—charismatic leader, revolutionary, emperor, dictator, or otherwise—provides us that which God provides. Our political leaders are not our saviors.

The commandments given to Moses, the ones that start with “I am the LORD your God,” go on to say, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4).

When we talk about these “idols” or false gods, it’s important to note that we don’t mean other people’s gods, like the deities of other religions. The idols we’re not supposed to be making are things that the empire would deem holy—namely, itself. “Things we can get confused about that we think are divine, things we believe are of ultimate concern, things we might give weight to above all else that are not really holy.”

“Our institutions are not God; the Church is not God; the American flag is not God; our reputations and our egos are not God; comfort, convenience, and safety are not God.”[1]

Have you noticed that I always say the same little prayer at the beginning of my sermons? Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into, and it’s so simple that you may have stopped really hearing it. I certainly rattle it off unconvincingly, sometimes. But I say it every time because it is the truest truth I know. Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

There are important things in the world around us that we commit ourselves to, yes, but those things are not God. Those things are not eternal. Those things will end. The empire will fall. God will be with you, always.

Remember, beloved children of God, that you—and all of us—were created in the image of God. You, as you are this very minute, are holy. You are not merely a number in a database—the university’s or the Internal Revenue Service’s. You reflect not the shiny gold coin of the empire, but the face of God.

Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s and give to God what is God’s. Give to the empire only that which bears its image, and give to God that which bears God’s image—you. [2] You have been given the gift of this life by the God who loves you. Devote yourself right back to the God who is devoted to you. Remember who you are whose you are. Amen.

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[1] Margaret Ernst, “Say Unto Caesar: Whiteness is Not God” on The Word is Resistance from Showing Up for Racial Justice, showingupforracialjustice.org/podcast, 20 October 2017.