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Ps.
8, Prov.8.1-4 (22-310),
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Ps.
8, Prov.8.1-4 (22-310),
We believe in one God
The father almighty
We believe in one Lord Jesus
Christ the only son of God
We believe in the Holy
Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Who with the father and the son is worship and glorified.
How to talk about God?
The scripture we read today, we call the word of God.
From the book of Hebrews we learn that:
“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword,
piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joint from marrow; it is able to
judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
We have this treasure
in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power
belongs to God and does not come from us. I Cor. 4.7.
How to talk about God. That is the preacher’s dilemma.
We who are the creature of his creation are at best only
approximate what we mean by the word “God.”
(Illustration from “Children’s Letters to God”)
Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost.
The day that God appeared –Wind and Flames and people were
moved to speak in other languages.
The word Trinity is not in the Bible but there are plenty of
references to God as Father, as Son, and Spirit.
In recent years popular fiction has given us the trinity in
such best sellers as Dan Brown’s the Da Vinci Code and William Young “The
Shack” where God is pictured as an Afro-American woman who specializes in
Southern cooking…
I don’t know if you have noticed the icon that has graced
the chancel for the past few weeks.
It is called the Holy Trinity or the OT Trinity.
The original was painted by Andrew Rublev in 1425 in memory
of the great Russian Saint Sergius who died in 1392.
The concept of Icons comes to us from the Eastern Church or
Orthodox Church.
An Icon is not a religious painting as we understand it, but
a means of communicating with God.
Icons are not representations but rather become ways for God
to come to us… like a sort of prayer.
This particular icon is a gift by a monk to all of us to
contemplate the mystery of the Trinity…
A way to keep our hearts centered on God…
By gazing on this icon for a long time, Henri Nowen a 20th
century monk, once said:
As I sat for long
hours in front of Rublev’s Trinity I noticed how gradually my gaze became a
prayer. This silent prayer slowly made my inner restlessness melt away and lift
me into the circle of love, a circle that could not be broken by the powers of
the world.
The words of scripture are ancient words,
words that have come down to us through the centuries,
through many cultures, many languages, and some oral, some written.
Today we are blessed in being able to read the Word in our
own tongues…
A Southern Baptist minister and New Testament scholar,
Clarence Jordan, who founded Koinonia a Christian co-op in
gave us what he called the Cotton Patch Version of
the New Testament. A translation from the Greek into the dialect of the
Southern Black… Let me read a few vss. from the Gospel of John where Jesus
attends a wedding and changes water into wine. Jn.2. 1-5.
The preaching business is about Language.
When we graduate from seminary it signifies that we have
hopefully learned something of how little we know about what I call “god
speak.”
About the language of God.
So on this day we are reminded that God has revealed herself
at different times as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Father Creator – look around, taste, touch, smell,
listen, drink in the beauty of it all.
Our windows are not covered because we wanted all who come
here to see that the church is more than four walls...
We also ran out of money.
God as progenitor – The God of the prophets…
Micah 6.8. What does
God require of you? But to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with
your God.
Or Amos 5.22 Take away
the noise of your songs. I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let
Justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream.
They, like us, were hard of hearing so God sang a new song…
“Away in a manger no crib for his bed the
little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head…”
God in the flesh.
Living and dying as one of us.
To quote the late Scott Peck whose book The Road Less Traveled
sold over 6 million copies and was translated into 20 languages:
If Jesus had spoken to
us in words alone, only then to retire on his pension plan, his words – while
beyond belief – would never have touched us.
It is for this reason
that Christ is not words but THE WORD. God’s gift to us all wrapped up in the
single, whole, living/dying, human/divine, suffering, penetratingly real
package of his flesh.” P.123
We believe in the Holy
Spirit the Lord, the giver of life.
God in his love and wisdom knows us well.
To keep in touch God gives us this final gift of himself as
Spirit.
It is God with us now today in this place in this moment.
In our time it is fashionable to read books by avowed
atheists.
Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” and “God is Not Great” by
Christopher Hitchens... are held up by many as disproving God. Give me a break.
Now Nietzsche or Voltaire had something to say, but in the
end what they said has come and gone… as by the way have they.
We live in a time, if it can’t be weighed, measured, or seen,
it doesn’t exist… rather than admitting our limitations we try to limit the
world.
Unable to cut it down to our size we deny the immeasurable…
our arrogance masks our fear.
We are afraid of the immeasurable Spirit – the power of
Love.
We want to be in control – we even take out insurance
against acts of God.
The voice of God can demand of us what we are not ready to
give. Her voice sometimes seems a little bit crazy.
Paul once said that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
If you understand that, do you understand what that means?
As the apostle said in another place, God is closer than we
are to ourselves… hmm?
So while the Holy Spirit might work in us she is not of us.
I use the feminine in the sense of the Old Testament reading for today...“Does not wisdom call and does not wisdom
raise her voice?”
I have one prayer for us all.
That each in our own way be filled with wisdom’s call.
The call to be open to the indwelling of God the Holy
Spirit, God the Son, and God the Father of us all.
________________________________________________________________________
Sources
quoted:
Nouwen,
H. “Behold the Beauty of the Lord.” Ave Maria Press. 1987
Peck,
Scott MD, “What Return Can I Make?” Simon/Shuster, 1985