Those Irish and Lutherans. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. 🙂
HT: Dr. C.
Daily Archives: May 26, 2013
Jeremy Taylor on the Trinity
No man can be convinced well and wisely of the article of the holy, blessed, and undivided Trinity, [unless] he that feels the mightiness of the Father begetting him to a new life, the wisdom of the Son building him up in a most holy faith, and the love of the Spirit of God making him become like God.
—Sermon, Via Intelligentiae (1657)
Our Triune God
From the archives. Sermon originally preached on Trinity Sunday 2011.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is Trinity Sunday. From the late 12th century onward, the church has chosen the Sunday after Pentecost to celebrate the nature of our triune God, a term that simply refers to God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. True Christian worship is always Trinitarian and this morning I want to look briefly at why it is important for us as Christians to celebrate and worship this triune God of ours. To do that, we will need to do a quick survey of the story of God’s plan of redemption found in Scripture.
In our OT lesson from Genesis this morning, we are told that God created all things good, both creation and creatures, humans included. If God created everything good, why then is there so much brokenness, suffering, and deformity in the world? For example, were this spring’s batch of deadly tornadoes a good thing? How about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan? What about children born with birth defects or the host of diseases and maladies that afflict us? Are we to look at them as good and God-intended?
Of course not! Because Scripture also tells us that God’s good creation was despoiled by human sin. When humans decided to try and elevate ourselves to God’s level and take his place, it was a game changer for us and for all of God’s creation, and we have been living with the consequences of our sin ever since. It is a heartbreaking story but it is a story that is going to turn out well.
Why is that? Because Scripture, both old and new testaments, is the story of how God intends to use his people (cf. Genesis 12.2-3) climaxing ultimately in Jesus to put to right his fallen and broken creation and creatures. Scripture will likely not make much sense to you if you do not read its stories in the context of this grand, overarching narrative. Neither will you likely begin to comprehend the triune nature of God—at least as best as we humans are able—until you try to understand it in the context of seeing God at work restoring his broken and fallen creatures and creation. Only then can we begin to make sense of how God has made himself known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When we worship God the Father, we worship our Creator, the Source and Author of all life. God created us in his Image to be stewards of his creation and to have relationship with him, and we must never forget that. Genesis 1:31 poignantly reminds us of this when it says that after God created humans he looked at his creation and saw it was very good, not just “good” as God had declared his other creative work to be. But then the Fall came and human sin was a disaster for both humans and God’s good creation. Genesis 3 tells us that our sin brought about God’s curse to both his creatures and creation, and we wince and lose hope over that. If God is against us, how can we possibly survive?
But it is precisely at this moment of despair that we see God pursuing his sinful and fallen creatures in the garden, wondering where they are because they are hiding from him (Genesis 3:8-9). As we watch this lonely God of ours searching for his beloved but rebellious human creatures and wondering where they have gone, we begin to realize the pain our sin and separation has caused him. And we begin to see the very heart of God, the heart of a Father, not the heart of a merciless judge who relentlessly pursues us in order to destroy us.
In Isaiah and the other books of the prophets we hear God’s continuing anguish over his sinful and rebellious people expressed through his prophets (there’s that human agency thingy again) as they warn Judah that their idolatrous ways can lead only to death, and plead with them to repent of their sins before it is too late. This is especially heartbreaking because we remember again God’s intent to redeem his fallen world through Abraham and his descendants. However, Israel had become part of the problem instead of God’s intended solution. But then in Isaiah 53-55 we read about God’s remarkable grand plan, a plan he had from all eternity, to overcome our human weaknesses, to redeem both humans and creation from the bondage of sin and death, and to free us to become the humans he created us to be.
Isaiah 53 speaks of the Suffering Servant who will bear the punishment for our sins so that God’s justice may be fully satisfied. In Isaiah 54 we read about the new covenant God will make with his people because the work of his Servant has been fulfilled. Then in Isaiah 55, we read of God’s plan to redeem his fallen creation in a mighty act of restoration, not unlike that which we read about in Revelation 21-22. God is not only going to redeem us, he is going to reverse the curse in Genesis 3:17-18 and set all of his creation aright. In each of these stories we see a God who loves us and all of his creation passionately, and has compassion for his sinful creatures beyond our ability to completely comprehend it all.
Then in the NT, we see God’s plan for the redemption of humanity and all creation continue to unfold in history and reach its climax in Jesus of Nazareth. That is why we worship God the Son. For the NT tells the story of how God in Christ intends to redeem his wayward and rebellious creatures. God loves us so much that he took on our flesh, lived among us, allowed himself to be tortured and hung on a cross to die a horrible death for us. In doing so, he bore the punishment for our sins and made it possible for us to live with him, now and forever. As we read the story of Christ’s passion and death, we are suddenly struck with the awesome realization that the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53 was God himself! Incredible! But it had to be this way because only a human can fully bear the punishment for humanity’s sin and rebellion and that is one of the main reasons why God became human for us.
However, the Good News doesn’t stop there, does it, because the cross is not the end of the story. Had it been, there would be no Christian faith today. No, on the third day God raised Jesus from the dead and gave him a new resurrection body. In doing so, God validated who Jesus is and confirmed to us that his promises to redeem his broken and fallen creation are true. The resurrection is God’s powerful testimony and promise to us that he has begun the final phase of his plan to restore us and all of his creation to what he intended it originally to be. I cannot quite imagine what this new creation will look like. None of us can. But I do know that there will be no more tears or sorrow or sickness or death or infirmity or deformity or suffering. How do I know that? Because the death and resurrection of Christ proves that God is true to his word.
But what about the interim or end times? The time between Jesus’ resurrection and the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption? This is where God the Holy Spirit comes in. The wonderful thing about the Gospel is that it is no self-help remedy. God does for us what we cannot do ourselves and he promises never to leave or abandon us. As we saw last week, he does this primarily through his Holy Spirit until God in Jesus comes again to complete the restorative work he began at the resurrection. The Holy Spirit is God himself working in us, helping us in our infirmity, helping us grow in grace and faith, and guiding us to do the redemptive work he calls us to do in this world (there’s that human agency thingy again). And it is important that we do God’s work in this world because in the resurrection of Christ, we are reminded that God plans to restore his broken creation, that this world is important to him, and so it must be for us as well.
So what difference does worshiping a triune God make? What does it really matter in our daily lives? Just this. Worshiping our triune God reminds us that we have a God big enough to handle all the problems of his world. This gives us hope, even in the face of suffering and evil. We no longer have to ask what God is doing about all that is wrong with this world as it currently exists because we already know that in the death and resurrection of Christ he has taken on evil himself and defeated it, even if it is not yet fully realized or apparent to our senses and reason. That is where faith comes in, not a blind faith, but rather a faith based on the evidence from the biblical story of creation and salvation. Yes we must live with ambiguity and questions, especially the mystery of suffering and evil. But the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ are God’s mighty promises to us that we and all of creation are in the process of being restored to his original intention.
And as today’s creation narrative and Psalm remind us, since God in his infinite wisdom has given humans a major role in bringing his healing love and redemption to God’s broken creation, that means we have work to do right here and now as we await our final redemption. But we cannot be God’s Kingdom workers on our own because we are too profoundly broken. That is why God has given us the Holy Spirit to live in us and equip us to do the work he calls each of us to do. When we really believe this we can be confident that our efforts here on earth are not in vain because it is God himself working through us to accomplish his good will and purposes, both for us and for his creation.
This is why it is important for each of us to know God’s plan and story of redemption thoroughly. This, in turn, compels us to read our Bible on a regular basis so that we don’t lose our Christian hope and are reminded of God’s grand plan and our respective roles in it. For you see, if our work as Jesus’ agents of New Creation is not thoroughly grounded in our faith in him and driven by his Spirit living in us, our efforts end up being just another form of human activism that is doomed to fail. In short, we cannot change the world unless we allow God to first change us. Knowing the story of God’s eternal rescue plan is a critical part of that process.
We worship a triune God because this is how God has chosen to manifest himself in our history and rescue us from all the wrong our sin has caused. When you understand this and really believe it, you will know that your eternal future is ensured. You will also find that you have the Power you need for the living of your days in any and every condition. And that, folks, is a complete package for living life with meaning and purpose, which is Good News, now and for all eternity.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Fr. Ron Feister: Have You Grown Any Fruit Lately?
Sermon delivered on Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2013, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.
Lectionary texts: Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8.1-10; Romans 5.1-5; John 16.12-15.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Last week we studied that role of the Holy Spirit in the Church and we looked at some of the Fruit of the Holy Spirit, that is the results of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and the life of the Church. Among the fruit, we named some virtues Love, Joy, Peace, Forbearance, Kindness, Goodness and Faithfulness among them. The Fruit of the Holy Spirit cannot be limited to just one list but should be seen has a constant flow of gifts that the Holy Spirit brings to us and to the Church as a whole. Today, I want to discuss what is involved in growing this Fruit.
For many years I have enjoyed growing fruit mostly pears, apples, grapes and tomatoes. I have been struck by the wide variety available. As I have looked through the Stark Brother’s catalog, a book that arrives in the middle of winter with photographs of unbelievably good looking fruits and vegetables. designed to encouraged the reader to buyer more plants that he or she could ever grow, I am struck by the wide variety of fruits – many types of apples and pears, more types of grapes than I could imagine. There are even trees that have several different types of fruit on the same tree, in fact just yesterday, on the internet, I saw an ad for such a tree, –  just as there are many types of fruit with come from the gift of the Holy Spirit
I have discovered that there are a number of common things that go together with growing fruit and I believe that some of these same factors also apply to growing or increasing the yield of the Fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Having a small yard, I mostly have grown Dwarf Fruit Trees, these trees are designed to produce regular size fruit on a tree that is relatively small in height. These trees are most often created by grafting a regular branch or shoot of a normal size fruit tree on to the roots or root stock of another tree; sometime the roots are of the same type of fruit, but often it is from another variety, for example I had a pear tree that had been grafted on to the root stock of a Quince tree. This grafting is done to produce a smaller tree or one resistant to some disease. We as the people of God are said to be grafted on to the true vine of Jesus Christ, and it is the Holy Spirit that to a large extent is responsible for this grafting and it is through the Vine which is Jesus Christ that we are joined to the Heavenly Father. We are asked to produce Fruit not on our own but because we are joined to the Father through Christ by the gift or presence of the Holy Spirit.
No matter how good the root stock or the vine to which a fruit is being grafted there are still a number of factors that determine whether the tree will be productive, whether the fruit will be edible or pleasing to the eye, or whether it will survive at all. One of the first decisions that needs to be made is where to plant the tree or vine. Different fruits require different soils, but there are common factors. The soil should be stable, rich in nutrients, and have adequate moisture.
For individuals to bear the Fruit of the Spirit they too need to be rooted in a stable environment; hopefully, this is found in the Christian Family into which they are born or adopted. The family needs to be one that puts its relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the highest priority. It needs to be a family that is rich in spiritual practices, thou like different soils, these may vary greatly from family to family.
Some sadly will never experience this type of family environment, but not all is lost. A bigger family, the community, we call Church, can and does still serve in this role. Many of us have seen the poor looking tomato plant that is being sold in a small container looking barely alive, spring to life and produce abundant fruit once it is transplanted into the larger garden . So it is with some individuals that when they come to the church, perhaps not as strong in their faith as could be hopes, that on finding a church which provides that stable environment, a church rich in faith and commitment to one another, they too can blossom and show forth the fruit of the spirit. Both the family and the church need to be that rich soil.
Even with rich soil, most gardeners and fruit tree growers, find it worthwhile to supplement the soil, no matter how good, with additional minerals and other  nutrients to help the plant to grow stronger, larger and more productive. Christians need to consider spiritual supplements. They come in a wide range of forms these include bible study materials, attendance at retreats or renewal weekends, internet seminars like the one that was made available to this church last weekend, good books written on living the Christian life to name but a few.
Some fruits need to have supplements on a regular basis; others do well with just periodic special feedings. Most clergy are either required or strongly encouraged to practice a formal prayer routine often referred to as saying the office. This involves taking time during certain periods of the day to stop and pray with an emphasis on reading Scripture as part of that prayer. Many are enriched by setting a set time of the day for a short period of meditation and reflection sometimes with the Bible and other times just listening quietly for God to speak to their hearts.
There is a part of fruit growing that I find personally very difficult. Most fruit trees and grape vines need to be pruned. This is a process in which parts of the plant are removed because they are no longer productive the part has become damaged or deceased or the limbs have become so thick that the plant as a whole is not thriving. The hardest pruning comes when the new plant, just starting to grow, needs to be pruned so that it will grown into the right shape to be productive.
We also need to undergo the process of pruning. Sometimes that is pruning that we can undertake ourselves and at other times we need others to assist us. Those new to the Faith will often need encouragement to rid themselves of practices and ideas that will in the long run stunt their growth but even more mature members need to be aware that they from time to time need to prune or cutout things from their life which are interfering with their fruitfulness.
Perhaps this is an area of sin. It may not in itself be or appear very serious but if not dealt with can lead to a weakening of a person’s relationship with God. It may be some environment or practice which not sinful places us in situation that we are exposed to temptation or at least not to thoughts or desires appropriate for a Christian. This will vary greatly from individual to individual.
In the last year, I have found that I had to prune several television shows that really enjoyed from my watching due to some of the negative effects that they were having on my thoughts. It may sound silly, but giving up these programs was at first painful, I really did not want to do it, but having done so I can see the positive results. Some many years ago my wife and I attended a Marriage
Encounter weekend. During that weekend one of the things discussed is how a couple can together become more involved in Church life. As we took time to discuss this as a couple, we came to the conclusion that we were actually doing too much – that we were not focusing enough on our relationship. We decided that we needed to prune back some of those activities. They were not bad activities – but they were distracting us from time we needed to share as a young couple and would have kept us from being as fruitful as we could be.
Are there activities that while not bad that are cluttering up your life?
Some fruit plants, to be really productive, need to go through some decree of what we might call hard times. High winds, periods of dryness, severe rain or even frost, allow these plants to flourish or produce exceptional fruit. In fact there is a sweet wine, commonly known as Ice Wine, that can only be produced from grapes that have been frozen. So it is with many if not all Christians, that to be the most fruitful must go through some really hard times. I know that there are many members of this Church that have or are experiencing this. Some of these who have suffered most have produced some of best fruit of the spirit. If you are going through such a time now or in the future, you need only look to the reading of Romans 5 which was our Epistle reading which says “Knowing the suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s has been poured into our hearts through that Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”
But going through difficult times, is not easy, and we like a tender plant or a young tree often need support to stay healthy. Two ways that we in the Church experience such support is through prayer and by personal sharing. The personal sharing can be as simple as bringing meals to someone or taking the time to listed to them. Saint Augustine’s is a community that can rightly celebrate that it is a community that stands in support not only of its members but of others who are in need.
The fruit on the tree is not only meant to be source of food, but the seed of the fruit is also meant for reproduction. The seed from one fruit enters good earth and produces a new tree or vine that in turn produces additional fruit, in fact multiplying the fruit manifold. So it is with the Fruit of the Spirit, when we respond to the Spirit and let the Spirit’s Fruit be part of our lives we help it to spring forth in the lives of others.  As we show Love to others, they are able to discover Love in their lives.As we show forbearance, we encourage others to do so. But the fruit of the Holy Spirit is not limited to just one kind of fruit in its reproduction. We might show kindness and faithfulness blooms in another. We are people of Peace and others are moved to Goodness. We are all called to grow an Orchard of Fruit Trees for the Fruit of the Spirit. Have you grown any Fruit lately?
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.