Genesis 1.1-5; Matthew 28.16-20
It’s Trinity Sunday …
Three-in-one, One-in-three …
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But different words can bring out a lot of fresh meaning:
We might say:
Mother, Daughter, and their Love for one another -
Goodness, beauty, faithfulness.
The way, the truth, and the life.
Grace, mercy, and peace.
Faith, hope, and love.
And not just any love:
Trinity-Love.
Trinity-Love spills out into the universe …
it cannot contain itself.
embraces everything …
holds us tight … won’t let us go …
All of this love requires power … lots of power …
All of this power requires love, lots of love …
If God were only powerful … like an ancient ruler, like Henry the 8th, like a dictator of the 20th or 21st Century … we’d never be quite sure.
Power by itself is never trustworthy.
We never know when power will move in dangerous ways:
Power says one thing,
and then does another,
because it can.
Power has but one objective: maintain itself!
The mystery writer, Eric Ambler, has a Mr. Peters describe a vicious drug dealer to a Mr. Lattimer: Yes, Mr. Latimer, most of us go through life without knowing what we want of it. But Dimitrios, you know, was not like that. Dimitrios knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted money and he wanted power. Just those two things; as much of them as he could.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Sometimes the church has presented God as “all powerful” … along with that idea came some pretty bad stuff: the church wanted to be “all powerful” just like the god it proclaimed.
Out came the tools of power: shame and punishment; hellfire and brimstone; eternal death and everlasting hell: some of you have known that story all too well.
Some Christians these days champion violence in Jesus’ name … a politician suggested Jesus could have defended himself with a few AR-15s.
A church in Pennsylvania invited people to bring their AR-15s for a blessing.
On a lesser scale, but still serious:
A parent told her misbehaving child that she was going to tell me, “the minister,” all about it, and that I would come to the house and punish the child.
I was appalled … but not surprised …
The love of power has infected much of Christianity, and it’s never been good, except for those in power.
Men over women, adults over children, whites over Blacks and Asians … true-believers over heathens … real Christians over not-so-real Christians, and so on and so forth.
It’s not a pretty picture … but there is hope.
The church, in its wisdom, also talks about love … it’s all there in Scripture, when we want to see it.
Not the love of power, but the power of love - love focused in the Second Person of the Trinity … Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God, Incarnate.
It’s a message we need to hear more and more … and proclaim loudly:
The Love of God for all of God’s creation.
The Love of Christ for all the world.
The Love of the Holy Spirit for you and for me.
This is my command, says Jesus, that you love one another as I have loved you.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
Love needs power to be effective … and power needs love to be safe.
God is love … and God is power.
There was a time when God trusted power too much … God said, I’m done with those people, I’m fed up; I want nothing more to do with them … God drowned the world in angry tears … raw power … mean and nasty.
When it was over, God took a deep breath and said, That didn’t work …
Even God had to learn the hard lesson: power without love is death … without love, power destroys.
There is but one power worthy of God, and that’s the power of love.
Strong enough to save … strong enough to leave heaven and come to earth, to be born of the Virgin Mary, in little Bethlehem Town … strong enough to overturn some tables … strong enough to suffer under Pontius Pilate … bear the cross to Golgatha … strong enough to die …
On that cross, strong enough to forgive … strong enough to care for the criminals on either side of him, and the soldiers at the foot of the cross …
Strong enough to roll the stone away on Easter Morning.
Power and love … but wait, there’s one more word …
Presence: God with us!
In the rising of the sun,
in the passage of time.
in the race we run.
and the mountains we climb.
The Holy Spirit … the Advocate, the Defender, the Giver of Life.
Moses says to the people:
Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread … because it is the LORD your God who goes with you.
Jesus says: My Father will send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.
From the Book of Hebrews:
Keep your lives free from the the love of money, and be content with what you have; for God has said, I will never leave you or forsake you. So we can say with confidence:
The LORD is my helper;
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me.
There have been a few times in my life when God’s presence was as real as anything could be …
Only a few times … God is kind enough to not overwhelm us and make a big deal of it …
Frederick Buechner writes of a time when his adult daughter, 3000 miles away, was hospitalized, near death … and when they made it there, he says:
The power that created the universe
and spun the dragonfly’s wing
and is beyond all other powers
holds back, in love, from overpowering us.
I have never felt God’s presence more strongly, he says,
than when my wife and I visited that distant hospital
where our daughter was.
Walking down the corridor
to the room
that had her name taped to the door,
I felt that presence
surrounding me like air -
God in his very stillness,
holding his breath,
loving her,
loving us all,
the only way he can without destroying us
One night, Buechner writes, we went to compline
in an Episcopal cathedral,
and in the coolness and near emptiness
of that great vaulted place,
in the remoteness of the choir’s voices chanting plainsong,
in the grayness of the stone,
I felt it again -
the passionate restraint and hush of God.
Trinity Sunday, dear people …
Be of good cheer.
Love one another.
Stand tall for the welfare of the world.
Hallelujah and Amen!
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