BELIEVING IN UNBELIEVABLE LOVE

A Sermon for The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 24, 2007
by Pastor Laura Gentry

Isaiah 65:1-9
"I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, `Here am I, here am I.' All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations—a people who continually provoke me to my very face, offering sacrifices in gardens and burning incense on altars of brick; who sit among the graves and spend their nights keeping secret vigil; who eat the flesh of pigs, and whose pots hold broth of unclean meat; who say, `Keep away; don't come near me, for I am too sacred for you!' Such people are smoke in my nostrils, a fire that keeps burning all day.

"See, it stands written before me: I will not keep silent but will pay back in full; I will pay it back into their laps—both your sins and the sins of your fathers," says the LORD. "Because they burned sacrifices on the mountains and defied me on the hills, I will measure into their laps the full payment for their former deeds." This is what the LORD says: "As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes and people say, `Don't destroy it, there is yet some good in it,' so will I do in behalf of my servants; I will not destroy them all. I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah those who will possess my mountains; my chosen people will inherit them, and there will my servants live. (NIV)

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I am going to begin my sermon today by singing you a song by folk musician, Christine Lavin. Here is the title of it: "Regretting what I said to you when you called me at 11:00 on Friday morning to tell me that 1:00 Friday afternoon you were gonna leave your office, go downstairs, hail a cab, to go out to the airport, to catch a plane, to go skiing in the Alps for two weeks. Not that I wanted to go with you; I wasn't able to leave town, I'm not a very good skier, I couldn't expect you to pay my way, but after going out with you for three years, I don't like surprises." In this song, Christine attempts to take back everything she said to her boyfriend while standing in a phone booth at the corner of 49th and 3rd. Click here to read the lyrics at Lavin’s site.

When people experience break ups—particularly if the relationship started out in a loving, committed way, they tend to get pretty upset and sometimes downright viscous. This theme is common in stories, poetry, plays, movies, and songs like this one by Christine Lavin. These sentiments aren’t very nice, but they do reflect a very human way of dealing with unfaithfulness. We don’t like getting dumped.

In today’s Hebrew Scripture lesson from Isaiah, we hear about God getting dumped—God is the one facing the pain of abandonment. We don’t often think of God as having human-like emotions, but this text shows how much pain the Israelites caused God through their unfaithfulness.

Israel had patriarchs and matriarchs, kings and prophets and teachers of wisdom. It had its sacred stories, which were handed down through the generations—reminding them that they were the chosen people of God. They knew they were the ones God loved and treasured, the ones with whom God had made a special covenant, a promise of steadfast love. Through hard times and good times, the stories served to remind them that God was with them, guiding them, providing for them, loving them. The stories served to explain how their world worked and their place in it.

But somewhere along the way, the people stopped hearing the heart of the story. They knew the story was about the relationship between God and them. They remembered the events in their history. But somehow, they had lost the core of the story—they forgot the meaning of it all. And so, the promise of Messiah, the promise of redemption and release for a long-suffering people, became muddled by their new-found political aspirations and visions of imperial domination.

And as they became caught up in these things, they began taking on the cultish practices of their neighbors. Through Isaiah, God accuses them of “sacrificing in gardens and offering incense on bricks,” (Is 65:3) which were pagan practices. They would also “sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places” (Is 65:4). These things were done in order to communicate with the dead and receive visions—such things were an abomination to God. And they began to “eat swine’s flesh, with broth of abominable things in their vessels,” (Is 65:4) which were strictly prohibited by Jewish law. Furthermore, they would say “Keep to yourself and do not come near me, for I am too holy for you” (Is 65:5) which indicates that they had become sanctified by some idolatrous, pagan rite. To us, these things might not sound all that bad—after all, many good believers here today also eat swine’s flesh and if you’re not that great of a cook, perhaps there is broth of abominable things in your vessels as well! But these all were significant sins. They had dumped God. They had decided that they could rely upon the popular religious practices of the day instead of holding fast to the God who had delivered their ancestors. You see, the Israelites had not upheld their end of the covenant—they had deliberately been unfaithful to God when they knew that was the one thing that would hurt God the most.

So God’s anger flares up. “These [practices] are a smoke in my nostrils, a fire that burns all day long. See, it is written before me; I will not keep silent, but I will repay; I will indeed repay into their laps their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together,” says the Lord (Is 65:5-7) This is graphic language: there is smoke in God’s nostrils, burning all day long. This kind of wrath is much worse than telling someone you hope they get mangled by the downstair revolving door.

The Lord continues, “Because they offered incense on the mountain and reviled me on the hills, I will measure into their laps full payment for their actions.” (Is 65:7) This God, who says, “I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people,” (Is 65:2) has been deeply hurt—deeply hurt by the ones who matter the most. And if we’ve personally been hurt by a loved one, then perhaps we can understand what God must be feeling: the kind of hurt and anger that will not relent.

But wait! Surprise! Instead of carrying out this plan of destruction, God’s bitter wrath immediately turns into mercy. The very next verse says, “As the wine is found in the cluster, and they say, ‘Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it,’ so I will do for my servants’ sake, and not destroy them all. I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah inheritors of my mountains; my chosen shall inherit it, and my servants shall settle there.” (Is 65:8-9) Soon after this prophesy, God restores the unfaithful chosen to the promised land that has been desecrated by the invaders from Babylonia. Through the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, God brings the Israelites back home to their land.

I think this is an amazing story. You and I would not have responded to the Israelites the way God did. If it were up to us, the smoke would probably still be in our nostrils and we would have cut off all our ties with these evil people and perhaps said things worse than what we heard in Lavin’s song. But God stoops down to love them again—even after they have positively proven their unworthiness. It just doesn’t make any sense why God would forgive this wretched lot. But God’s Love is unexplainable, incomprehensible, and relentless. The stories of the Bible bring us this message over and over again. God’s Love cannot possibly be quenched. Oh my friends, that we might drink in this incredible news and let it renew us again!

Twenty-five hundred years separate us from the rebellious children of Israel in this story, and yet we, too, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We too, have turned away from God and brought pain and suffering upon our Creator. God loves us anyway. The eternal God reaches into our postmodern world with outstretched arms, ready to be sought out by those who do not ask, ready to be found by those who do not seek, saying “Here I am, here I am” (Is 65:1). Our sins no longer matter to God, for we have been clothed in Christ. Our New Testament reading from Galatians reminds us that because we are clothed in God’s grace:

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one is Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.
—Gal 3:28-29

Oh, if we could really hear this news! We are heirs according to God’s promise! We are all one in Christ Jesus! The categories with which we like to divide ourselves into do not matter to God. We are all one. All forgiven. All loved.

Our responsibility is to throw our hearts into believing in God’s unbelievable love. And that’s not as easy as it sounds. Because human love is so conditional, most of us have experienced many emotional hurts—both growing up and in our adult life. It is hard to believe in love. It is hard to believe that we’re lovable. But God’s ways are higher than our ways. And the Bible assures us that no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done or neglected to do—we are loved beyond comprehension.

How amazing! How exciting this simple message is! We are loved and it is our job to believe in this unbelievable love and let it transform us into the kind of loving people that God knows we can be.

Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

A GRACE-FILLED LIFE

A Sermon for The Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 10, 2007
by Pastor Laura Gentry

Luke 7:11-17
Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country. (NRSV)


Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Before this scene in our gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus has healed a highly valued slave of a centurion. But it is the faith of the centurion himself that is most impressive. He believes if Jesus just says the word, his servant will be healed. And sure enough, he was right. Jesus says, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” (Luke 7:9)

Now, Jesus arrives in the town of Nain. As he enters the gates, Jesus notices a funeral procession leaving the town. They are carrying out a dead man. He is the only son of a mother who has already been widowed. Now she has no men to protect her and provide for her financial well-being, as these were the rules of her patriarchal culture. The scripture doesn’t tell us just how devastated this woman is, but given her circumstances, we can be sure she is immeasurably grieved.

A pastor friend of mine officiated at a funeral of a baby that was stillborn. The child’s mother knew from early in her pregnancy that the child would not live, but still she carried the baby for many more months, hoping for a miracle. Alas, when delivery time came, her child emerged into the world fully formed, beautiful, but not alive. At the graveside service, the tiny casket was placed into the hole in the earth because it was too small to sit on top like they do with adult-sized caskets. The mother was so overwhelmed with grief, that she jumped into the hole to embrace the casket of her tiny child once more. It was a devastating moment for everyone. Sometimes grief is just too horrible to even witness.

So it must have been for the mother of this adult child in Nain. Then, along comes Jesus. He sees the mother’s intense grief and he says to her, “Do not weep.” How can she not weep? It almost seems like he is mocking her pain.

But then he moves toward the dead body and he says, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” (Luke 7:14) The dead man sits up and begins to speak. Resurrection! Before everyone’s eyes.

I have always wanted to witness something like that, haven’t you? I remember when I was a child, one of the first visitations I went to was for an elderly woman named Mrs. Zurcher. She was a dear friend of our family. I was somewhere around third grade when she died and as I stood before her casket, I just could not believe Mrs. Zurcher was gone. She looked so lifelike. I was absolutely determined that if I watched closely enough, I would see her chest rise and fall. I kept a close eye on her throughout the time we were at the visitation because I had concocted an elaborate fantasy that she would suddenly open her eyes and begin to speak to us, saying something like, “Oh for Pete’s sake, dry your eyes everyone! I’m not dead anymore.”

Knowing how much I wanted Mrs. Zurcher to reawaken from her slumber of death, I have a sense of how relieved and amazed the people of Nain must have been when the man was resurrected. How surprising! How amazing! What a miracle! I don’t even think they could have put into words what they were feeling in that moment.

Let’s think for a moment how different this healing story is from the one just before it. In that instance, the centurion dazzled Jesus with his great faith in his request to have the servant healed of his illness. Here, the woman is minding her own business, going along with the funeral procession of her son. She doesn’t ask Jesus to heal him, she doesn’t demonstrate any faith. We don’t even know if she harbors the hope of her son waking up as I did with Mrs. Zurcher. Maybe she’d like Jesus’ help very much but she doesn’t feel worthy to ask for it. We have no idea what was going on in her head. All we know is that her only son has died and she is weeping.

Unlike the centurion, the mother has demonstrated no faith—at least none that the gospel writer saw fit to mention. And when her son is raised, there is no report that she even thanked him.

So, it doesn’t seem to me that this story is about faith. It doesn’t even seem to be about gratitude, though both of these things are wonderful. No, I think what Luke is trying to teach us by including this miracle story is that our God, as demonstrated by Jesus Christ, is a God of grace. Grace—the unearned, unwarranted, unbelievably lavished-upon-us love of God—comes to us not because we are faith-filled or particularly thankful but because God is good, because God simply wants to love us. The resurrection in the story doesn't happen because of a mother's strong belief. It happens because Jesus has compassion for her. This story is not about the woman or her son, but about the amazing compassion and grace Jesus offers. The point is that when grace comes into our lives, it requires nothing of us but to receive it.

How have you experienced grace? In my years in ministry, I have heard some pretty remarkable grace stories. Some people have beat cancer or other life-threatening illnesses. Others have even been pronounced dead and seen the light and heard God’s voice and then been brought back to life—to have a second chance. Some people have come out of a deep depression to find joy and wholeness. Some have found reconciliation in a relationship they thought was entirely over. Still others have found the strength to move on with their lives after a tragic loss. And a great many haven’t had anything dramatic happen, but they have experienced the grace of knowing Christ as a Savior who walks with them throughout their lives.

You see, this story teaches us that God’s grace is all around us at each and every moment. That we are alive is itself a miracle, a gift of God. We cannot do anything to make God love us any less because God is just that loving. God is a God who zealously seeks out and snatches up the lost sheep. And so grace is not just some abstract concept, some idea we like to toy around with in the church. It is a concrete reality. It brings life out of death. It brings hope to the hopeless. It forgives the unforgivable. It promises us eternal life with God. And it has to power to so transform us, that we can offer grace to others as a natural outpouring of the delightful grace in our own hearts.

In this season of Pentecost, we focus upon the Holy Spirit—how it is at work within our lives and how it seeks to develop deeper, more substantial faith in us. And today, as we witness the miracle of grace in our gospel story and we are invited to ponder anew the amazing power of grace at work in us. How is grace working in and among us? How completely loved do you feel? And how does this grace compel you to take bold and loving action in the world? May these questions draw us to an even more grace-filled life. Amen.

© Laura E. Gentry 2007

TRINITY MEANS COMMUNITY

A Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday
June 3, 2007
by Pastor Laura Gentry

John 16:12-15
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (NRSV)


Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Today, we celebrate Trinity Sunday—the only day of the church year dedicated to a theological teaching of the church not associated with the life of Jesus and given the name “Trinity,” which is not even in the bible. To this, you probably respond, “HUH?” Why in the world is such a ancient and difficult-to-understand festival sandwiched right into our church year? How did it begin? And what purpose does it serve?

It all began in the ninth century where Christians in French monastic communities would celebrate the festival of the Holy Trinity. They were carrying on the tradition of the early Christians, who developed the teaching of the Trinity in order to give them a common understanding of God , which helped Christians understand that God was one, not three gods. Later, in the fourteenth century, the festival became so widespread that it was added to the church calendar and has been celebrated throughout the world ever since.

Saint Augustine, one of the most prominent Christian thinkers, often puzzled about the whole idea of describing God as a Trinity. He described an incident in which he was walking along the beach and observed a young boy with a bucket, running back and forth to pour water into a little hole. Augustine asked, "What are you doing?" The boy replied, "I'm trying to put the ocean into this hole." It suddenly occurred to Augustine that just as this boy was pursuing the ridiculous goal of putting the whole ocean into the hole, he was pursuing an equally ridiculous goal: trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind. We, with our very limited brains (in comparison to God’s wisdom), have come up with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity—the belief that God is expressed in three parts as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But we must recognize, as Augustine did, that we could never fully understand God—we could never capture God’s entire essence with a doctrine.

Garrison Keillor once said of love, “We should not think that we have figured this out, because it is not a problem, it’s a mystery and always will be.” The same could be said of the doctrine of the Trinity. We don’t have to think of it as a problem to be solved, but rather a glorious mystery in which to relish.

How, exactly, God can be three-in-one, we cannot know, but we can know God in three various ways. Through the biblical accounts, we have come to know God as God the Father—the Creator of our entire universe. In this morning’s lessons, we heard from the Genesis story of creation in which God calls the universe into being by the power of God’s word. God the Father is the all-powerful, eternal, yet loving source of all life.

We also know God as Jesus, the only son of the Father—the Eternal God become flesh, Emmanuel, God-with-us, who came to earth to live a life of service and to die and rise again to redeem us from our sin. Jesus made it clear that to know him was to know the Father, for they are one. In the letter to the Colossians, Paul says that "Christ is the image of the invisible God." In Christ, God created everything; in union with Christ all things hold together; in Christ all things are reconciled to God, bringing peace on earth and in heaven (Col. 1: 15-20). Jesus Christ has reshaped our understanding of God.

And we know God as the Holy Spirit —the one who is with us in this very moment, inspiring us, illuminating the Scriptures, animating our faith and worship, interceding for us in our weakness "with sighs too deep for words," leading us, strengthening us, turning on the lights for us when our paths become unclear, blowing as powerfully as the wind.

Three forms, and yet one God. The Athanasian Creed (on page 54 of the LBW) states “And in this Trinity, no one is before or after, greater or less than the other; but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal; and so we must worship the trinity in unity and the one God in three persons.” These three, equal persons of God work together in community as one, unified God. Some theologians insist that what is most important about belief in a triune God is not that we see God in three ways, but that we understand God as dynamic community. Within the triune God there is a special energy which expresses the love of God experienced in Jesus Christ.1

What is unique about Trinitarian theology, is that it explains that there is an inner relational energy within God which spills over into the Christian life. John of Damascus, an eighth-century theologian, described this way of understanding God by saying that there is an exchange of energy between the persons of the Trinity by virtue of their eternal love. The unity of the Trinity is not static substance, but an open and loving community. He used the Greek word "perichoresis" to describe the relationship going on within God. This word comes from the same root as the word "choreography." It suggests that there is a movement, a dance within the internal life of God. 2 When we worship God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we celebrate the love which flows in God's mysterious dance of togetherness.

So if God is community and we are created it God’s image, what does that mean? It means that we are created to be in relationship, just as God is in relationship. The doctrine of the Trinity gives us a vision of a community of women and men in church and society who treat each other as equals and work together in shared responsibility of unity and love. You see, when we understand God in terms of the doctrine of the Trinity, we can see within the very person of God, a radical example of a community built on justice, relationship and care. It gives us a vision that the self and the other should be treated as of equal worth; that despite differences in power, things should be fair; that every person should be responded to and included and that no one should be left alone and hurt.

This reminds me of a true story of a priest who was sent to serve an inner city church. His passion was for young children and families, yet this parish was a small congregation—just a handful of elderly people. “How can I possibly have a fruitful ministry here?” He wondered. After a few months, he happened to be visiting the hospital and stopped in to a visit a mother with her newborn son. She talked to the priest of her experience of childbirth, and said sadly, “But the problem is that we had this baby all alone.” He asked her what she meant by that. She went on to explain that their parents lived across the country from them. The young mother said, “This is a little scary for us. We have no one to go to for advice about parenting. Most of the people in our neighborhood are also young couples like us. I wish this baby had some grandparents nearby.”

And suddenly a light came on in the priest’s head, “Grandparents!” he thought, “My church as grandparents! The whole congregation is made up of grandparents.” So he talked some people in the church into visiting the home of the couple. They had such a wonderful visit! The young couple had been desperate for someone to be excited about the birth of their child and the elderly visitors had been desperate to get some young people into their church community. It wasn’t long before the couple started coming to church where their baby was doted on by dozens of “grandparents.” The couple got excited and started telling their neighbors about the wonderful congregation of older people who made such great surrogate grandparents. Little by little, more of the young families began attending the parish and what happened was a fantastic synthesis of old and young people, which caused the church to be reborn. In relationship, loneliness and solitude gave way to loving new community.

You see, as people created in the image of the Triune God, our greatest human longing is to be in union. To be whole, we need each other. That’s how God is made and that’s how God made us.

So that is what we are celebrating today. In very clear terms, the profound mystery of the Trinity tell us who God is: the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Spirit who exist in perfect community with one another. And as people formed in God’s image, it tells us who we are, and why we crave community. May our hearts follow this natural impulse to search and out and find connections with God and with one another that we may be one as God is one.

May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.


© Laura E. Gentry 2007