Sermon - Trinity Sunday - Farewell at St Michael

                                                             The Trinity

On Tuesday, Charlie announced that Trinity Sunday was his favorite Sunday on the liturgical calendar.  Because I agree with him, I had to know why it was so meaningful to him.  “Because of the music,” he said.  Of course. 

Trinity ranks high on my list because it is both an opportunity to teach what might be the most overlooked tenet in our theological system (i.e. that we worship God in Three persons, and thus avoid the heresy of Christomonism) AND Trinity Sunday allows me to talk about what is most central to why I am a follower of Jesus.  I get to talk about relationships. 

Relationships are front and center as we gather today.  The relationship we have formed over these last twenty months is about to change.  On Tuesday, you will begin to share your spiritual experiences with Pastors Bates and Bates.  It is those shared experiences, particularly unique shared experiences, which help to build relationships.  And relationships are what build community.  And community is what enables the Church to be the Church.  Without relationships – hardly anything at all is possible. 

I know that isn’t the kind of line that elicits an “amen,” even from the most vocal of religious traditions.  But it is going to be hard for me to press on, without some level of agreement from all of you.  Would you agree with me that relationships are essential to the whole enterprise we call “church”?  How many of us would be here (be at a Christian worship service) if it weren’t for a relationship with someone who considered Church to be an important part of life?  Maybe it was a parent, a grandparent.  Perhaps a close friend, or college roommate.  It may have been the person you asked to share your life – they may have been the one who brought you to worship and helped you to understand how regular participation could enhance the relationship between the two of you. 

Relationships build community.  Community is what enables the Church to be the Church.  Without relationships – hardly anything at all is possible. 

As I considered what to preach on this, Trinity Sunday, I could think of no better approach than to address the issue of relationship.  It is (I am going to assume from your agreement with my previous comments) relationship which lead to your being here to hear this sermon.  What I would like for you to hear is that our experience runs parallel to the realities of the God whom we gather to worship.  Without relationship, we would not be here.  Without relationship, God would not be the God to whom Christian Theology gives witness. 

That is the heavy line.  Now we can break it down a bit. 

Relationships are essential to God.  This is true for God’s person; it is true for the purposes God intends. 

God’s person, and the purposes God intends, is revealed in the relationship God establishes with us.  While some would like to ponder whether God could be God without creation, it is a vexing theological question to which we will never have an answer.  We can’t arrive at an answer because we can never overcome the reality that we are here.  Sure, God is God and certainly God could exist independent of anything else, but then God wouldn’t be the God to whom scripture bears witness.  God is spoken of when those whom God has created begin to speak.  God is praised when the creatures inhabiting God’s earth look to the heavens.  

There is a line in the Eucharistic liturgy we used in campus ministry.  It speaks of God creating a world into which the Son would be born.  In the very first act of creation, that prayer would suggest, God was already at work, setting up the circumstances in which He would leave behind the heavens and enter the places where we live our lives.  God is all about relationships.  God’s prime concern, from the very beginning, has been His relationship with those whom God has created. 

God is all about relationships.  Without relationships, nothing of much consequence is important. 

I hope that you hear the tremendous word of affirmation in all of this.  Yes, God can be God without a relationship with us – but that isn’t the way God wants to exist.  God seeks/God acts in such a way as to ensure that we will be invited into relationship.  I am not afraid of sounding a bit like a Pentecostal preacher in asking (then challenging) you to carefully consider your relationship with God.  If that relationship isn’t well established, maybe it is time for you to come down to the river and accept Jesus Christ into your life.  God has come to be with you.  God will not be content as a thought or as a statement of convention or belief. Enter – enter fully – into the relationship.  Or follow the path of the rich, young ruler who turns from Jesus to walk away sorrowful. 

Without relationships, nothing much is possible.  This is true for our life in the world; it is true for our life as participants in the Church of Jesus Christ.  It is also true when we speak of God.  Unless there is a relationship between us, we are merely learning the lessons and repeating the historical accounts. 

There is one other aspect of relationships that I would like to touch on.  Here we move to the heart of the observance of Holy Trinity Sunday.  In order to help us understand the relationship God has with us, the Church has spoken of God’s person.  Trinity Sunday is our annual observance of something that we acknowledge every time we gather.  Namely, that the God whom we worship is one, with three persons.  God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  I needed to read the previous sentences very carefully.  Sometimes, less well reasoned comments slip from our mouths.  It is a heresy to speak of God as one who is experienced as three persons.  The Doctrine of the Trinity affirms that God doesn’t merely appear to be three persons, God is three persons. 

We can have the hard-line theological discussion at another time.  What I want you to discuss this morning is what this says to us about (you guessed it) relationships.  Relationships are important; relationships are essential.  So essential, that relationships lie at the very heart of God’s own person.  God, in God’s self, is a relationship.  A relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Always being extremely careful not to subjugate one person of the Trinity to the other two, we can point to the Biblical references of this relationship.  Jesus says, I and the Father are one.  From the cross, Jesus cries out, My God what have your forsaken me?  As he is about to depart from the disciples, Jesus tells them, It is to your advantage that I go away, the (Holy Spirit) will not come to you;  but if I go, I will send him to you. 

God is this web of relationships.  God IS this web of relationships.  God desires, above all else, to be a relationship with you.  Relationships among us are what make the life of the Church possible and fulfilling.  Relationships are essential. 

I don’t know if today’s worship experience will accomplish it goal.  Will we leave this gathering, strengthened in our relationships with one another?  Will we depart this time more confident of God’s desire to be a part of our lives?  Is it reasonable to hope that anything which happens here today will strengthen us in our resolve to seek relationship opportunities?  We will see.  We will hope.  And above all we will pray that this might be true. 

Some of you remember when the Rev. John Heyer was pastor at Our Saviour, Greenville.  He spent his latter years sitting in the pews at University Lutheran, Clemson.  He would ask me of every sermon – “What did you tell them to do?”  Here is what I am telling you to do – be more confident in God’s desire to have a relationship with you.  Be convinced that God is eager to be in that relationship.  Live out your relationship with God in all of your human relationships.  See those human relationships as the reflection of your relationship with the Divine.  And then, when opportunity presents itself, speak to others of God’s desire to be in a relationship with them.  You don’t need elaborate answers or lots of memorized Bible verses.  All you need is the confidence that God is seeking you out.  Speak of the relationship which is God and the invitation from God to enter into this affirming, loving relationship.

 Amen.

Sermon - Pentecost Sunday - Year B

Acts 2, Ezekiel 37

                                                   Dry Bones do Live  

“The spirit of the Lord … set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones …. dry bones.”  

That sounds like a scene of utter despair and horror.  A valley filled with dry bones!  But this is very place where God’s way will be revealed. 

This valley is intentionally set opposite to the reading from Acts, Chapter 2.  To the upper room where the disciples are “all together in one place.”  “All together in one place” is somewhat of a euphemism for “hiding out and scared out of their wits”!  The disciples find themselves facing despair and horror.  Jesus was crucified;  now he has departed; they could easily be the next candidates for crucifixion. 

I do want to draw a further comparison to us – here at St Michael and in the One Holy and Apostolic Church.  We are somewhere halfway into these readings in that we can see that God is preparing to come among us and do an amazing thing.  Where the comparison or contrast is appropriate is whether we can yet anticipate how the flames of fire or the rattling of bone joining bone will give direction. 

While Acts 2 is the text which explains why we celebrate Pentecost Sunday, I do want to focus on the Ezekiel image.  Ezekiel 37. 

As is true for most of the Old Testament, you have to start in the middle and work your way to the beginning and to the ending. 

Look at verse 11.  Here we see to whom it is that God speaks; to whom God sends his messenger.  It is “whole house of Israel.”  These are a people whose circumstances and misfortunes have led them to conclude “our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” 

We won’t turn this into a history lesson, but if you are unaware of why the people of Israel might have felt as if all hope was lost, set that thought aside or at least take my word for it.  Those whom God chose as His people were continually being harassed and bombarded by those who prefer to live differently.  Take your pick as to why this was the case.  I might say take your pick as to why this is still the case. 

It was to a people who feared that all was lost that God comes and breathes life. 

I said that St. Michael may be a bit closer to the middle of these texts – in that we can see the new thing that is happening.  Pastors Bates and Bates moved to Greenville this week and into their new home.  They have come by the office, though all of us need to avoid asking them to start their ministry here until they have completed their farewells to the congregations in North Carolina.  We can see that God is among us and active. 

But where will God take us?  And how will the Spirit lead us? 

Look again at Ezekiel.  

The act which causes the bones to connect and for sinews to hold them in place is the same as the act which allows them to live.  The prophet “breathes” on them.  God’s messenger shares the air which he has inhaled. 

Hopefully you know (and will remember) that the same root word is interpreted into English from Hebrew.  The word can be understood as 1) breath, 2) wind, 3) air, and 4) spirit.  Knowing this allows us to perceive how it is that the prophesy of the messenger pours out the spirit of the Lord on those dry bones.  Ezekiel is sharing the spirit of God, temporarily being stored in his lungs. 

This allows us to further understand why each breath is a gift from God.  Each breath is the Spirit entering our lives.  And death is that condition in which God is not in us and part of us. 

In the Acts reading, there is also spirit/breath/air/wind.  In Acts 2:1 we are told “there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house.”  It may be the “sound” which filled the entire house, but the sound seems to have been a byproduct of the moving of the spirit.  If it is the moving of the spirit which we note, I would also want us to see that the writer speaks of it as a “violent wind.”  “Violent” can mean strong or undeniable.  But it also gives rise to questions of unpredictability and a force likely to rearrange things.  

How appropriate that St. Michael is about to enter a new phase of ministry so close to Pentecost Sunday.  And how helpful these lessons are as we open ourselves to the ways and places in which God is breathing life. 

For too many years we have watched and worried about the rise of those churches which follow a less formal liturgy and/or remain bound to historical and doctrinal statements.  Call them the “mega-churches,” or “evangelicals,” or the ‘Non-denoms,” there is this ever-present fear that we are losing members and losing ground.  The witness of a God who breathes on the very bones of those who are his people dispels any fears or worries we might have.  Maybe we will lie for a while in a dry valley.  Preserving our way of life is not the issue.  The only concern is whether we are following God.  And if we find that we have forsaken the mission of Jesus and allowed ourselves to seek other ends, then we of all persons ought to be prepared to admit our failures and repent. 

COVID is going to change the way many if not most think about “church.”  I am appreciative of those who have corrected me when I started to speak of “getting back….”  We can’t go back, we won’t be able to go back, and on this Pentecost Sunday some of my colleagues are shouting that we shouldn’t go back.  Let’s not be so frightened by a sound like that of a mighty wind that we fail to feel and follow the Spirit’s push to get out of our gathering places and into the world.  Out there, in the world, there are Parthians and Medes, and homeless and hungry, abused and neglected.  They need the Good News of Jesus.  On the beach, Jesus doesn’t advise his disciples on liturgical settings he asks them to tend his sheep and feed his lambs. 

Can these dry bones live?  Of course they can.  And by the very breath of God they will.  The life they live is the life God has in mind. 

Amen.

Sermon - 7th Sunday of Easter (Ascension Texts)

 Acts 1:1-11;  Luke 24:44-53                                                  

While today is technically the Seventh Sunday of Easter, we are reading the lessons associated with Thursday’s Feast Day.  The Ascension of Our Lord comes forty days after Easter, which means it never falls on a Sunday.  Unless we pretend the following Sunday was the previous Thursday, we never get to hear the lessons associated with the departure of Jesus and his charge to his followers.

 Jesus does leave.  His Resurrection is not a return to a life lived among his disciples.  He emerges from the tomb so they will know that he lives.  But he is only with them long enough to assure them they should listen to him and share the Good News which he brings.

     We read the lessons in the wrong order this morning.  The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles is written by the same author.  They are Book I and Book II.  So, we should have read the closing verses of the Gospel of Luke and then the opening of Acts. 

 Jesus tells his followers at the end of Luke that while he has shared everything they need to KNOW, there is still something more coming their way.  He tells them to sit tight, be patient.  “Stay in (Jerusalem) until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

 Then, in the opening verses of the book of Acts, Jesus leaves them.  He departs.  He “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

 This is a very critical, pivotal moment.  While so much has gone before, the largest portion of the story is not only yet to be written, it is yet to be determined.  What will happen to the message and movement which took shape and form as Jesus traveled the countryside?  What steps are next for those whom Jesus sends for as “witnesses of these things”?  Jesus has preached and taught and ministered, but it will take a whole lot more if “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed… to all the nations.”

 A pivotal moment indeed.  A make-or-break opportunity.  Everything is on the line.

 And those who watch Jesus ascend into the clouds are the first to realize whatever is to come will come as a result of how they respond.

 I would say they did pretty well.  After all, here we are some two thousand years later, and we are still telling and re-telling the Good News.  There are Christian congregations in every time zone around the world and the words of Jesus are recorded in every language and tongue.  They done good.

 Which only makes it all the more critical that we consider how well we are doing, or will do, or might do.

 There are a lot of events intersecting as we gather today.  We will recognize our college students and honor our high school graduates.  There is a baptism.  Owen Thomas Chong will be bathed in the waters of God’s grace and Jesus’ resurrection.  And over it all looms the beginning of a new pastoral presence as Pastors Andrea Bates and Kyle Bates lead their final worship services in Welcome and Granite Quarry and get ready to move this way.

 A pivotal moment indeed. 

 To the baptismal candidate – today your parents hand you over to baptismal sponsors and the pastor of your community.  Those parents will remain part of your life and support you in all that the future will bring, but they are acknowledging the limits of what they are able to offer you and present you in the hope and with the expectation that others will be able to aid you when their presence or strength will not be enough.

 To the graduates.  You will quickly experience the departure of so many of the things upon which you have come to depend.  The freedom associated with the lack of pre-determined schedule and set of expectations is one side of a coin which also bears the image of a future as open as the skies into which Jesus ascends.

 To this congregation, as you welcome your pastor and bestow that title and honor upon them.  You are in an identical spot to that of the Apostles gathered on that hilltop outside of Jerusalem.  Your future has not been written nor has it been determined.  It is up to you, the members of St Michael, how these pastors will serve and what they will be able to help you accomplish.

 There were forty days between Jesus’ Resurrection and his Ascension.  There are ten days between Jesus telling the disciples to wait and the arrival of the Holy Spirit.  Ten days is not that long – but it is enough time for fear and anxiety and worry to replace the assurances which had come.  It is enough time to lose confidence in the one who had lead them for the first years of their work.  It is also enough time to anticipate and to prepare and to be ready for where it is that God is calling us and how it is that God will lead us.

 Today is the Seventh Sunday of Easter.  We are reading the lessons and receiving the encouragement of the Feast of the Ascension.  In seven days, we will welcome the Holy Spirit and the following Sunday we will affirm the triune God who is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. 

 A pivotal moment indeed. 

 Amen

Sermon - 5th Sunday of Easter - Year B

John 15:1-8

 I am the Vine, You are the Branches

The events in the bible occurred during a time when folks were a little more connected to the production of their food.  The agrarian images may allow us feelings of nostalgia, but too often we miss what the reference is intended to tell us.  Last week it was sheep and shepherds.  This week it is grapevines.  And I wonder how many of us have ever tended a grapevine or noticed what is involved in tending a vineyard.  So, I made sure that the opening image of our e-news was of a well tended grapevine.  It is in the yard of a neighbor, Joe Allen.  That is the same image which kept coming up in the PowerPoint this morning.  And I actually put a few copies in the narthex and on some of the pews.

 Joe does what you are supposed to do with grape vines – he prunes them.  And when you prune as you ought, what you get is a very well established vine, and only a few runners which are following the wires of the trellis. 

 I always admire Joe’s little vineyard.  When I realized I would be preaching on John 15, I took a little extra time to look at those vines, and to learn from them what Jesus is trying to say to us when he calls himself the vine, and his Father the vine-grower, and us the branches.

 When Joe prunes, the vine looks pretty pitiful.  It was only a few days or weeks earlier when the trellis is totally hidden by the leaves and fruit.  There are sometimes birds hiding in there – big birds – eating their fill.  On more than one of our early morning walks, Laura and I have come upon a deer.  The vine looks so huge.  And then, Joe cuts all that away.  And you have a vine and only a few branches are left. 

And one would be inclined to ask, “Why?”

 The answer is that leaves and a thick cover don’t produce fruit.  Only strong and vigorous branches.

 When Jesus says that the vine-grower is coming, with pruning shears in hand, I think about Joe’s grapevines.  And as much as I hate to think of the removal of thick green leaves, I know that when God prunes it strengthens the harvest.  It may look a bit weird or counter-productive to push aside and even discard what is pleasing to the eye and so easily mistaken for indications of plenty.  But this is what God does.  The vine-grower knows the end toward which we need to move.  And while the steps needed to get to that end might not seem good to us, the one who tends the vine has the wisdom to know what to do.

 Sometimes the Church and its ministries become too attached to the leaves and the overgrowth.  In too many instances, we shy away from the pruning necessary if we want next season’s harvest to be rich and lush and flavorful.

 There may be times when the pain of pruning so overwhelms our senses that we fail to share in God’s celebration of the harvest which this pruning makes possible.

 That is the first thing I want to draw from this text for this congregation, today.  We may see Farewell as painful – and it can be.  But it is also a Godspeed.  And Godspeed is what joins our gaze to that of our Father (the vine-grower) who is able to see how this separation allows the good news to move from one location to many, many others.

 Here is the second thing I observed about Joe’s grape vines.  And, I want to be careful.  I realize that this observation may not sit well with a number of God’s precious children.

 That vine, growing out of the ground, isn’t very straight.  It is really crooked.  And while few things ever grow perfectly straight.  At least part of the reason a grape vine bends from side to side is because of the tugging of the branches.  The branches, when they get going, pull mightily on the vine.  And the force they exert does affect the vine.

 As an image, not as some divine revelation, this encourages me to remember how responsive the vine (and the vine-grower) are to the efforts of the branches.

 Jesus establishes his Church; and then he entrusts it Peter, and James, and John, and the rest of his followers.  God and Jesus may never change, but the way they live in the midst of the Church does change. 

 We waste too much time trying to return to an earlier mindset or to some construct of doctrinal affirmations.  The ancient creeds of the Church will always be foundational and essential to our life as Christians.  But, from the image of the vine and its branches draw the awareness that over the years and through the seasons what happens in the life of the branches exerts influence and bends the vine.

 In preparing for next season’s growth, the vine-grower will take note if the vine is being pulled too far in one direction or another.  And the pruning shears will address the problem.

 Do not be afraid or shy away from the ways in which you, as a precious branch on the vine is tugging and pulling.  Even when you realize that the vine is being moved. 

 Among the things most important for any preacher to communicate is the depth of God’s love for us and the assurance that God interacts with us.  To be a person of faith is to live in the presence of God and to know that God is living among us.  Branches are not dead, impassionate objects.  They are living and growing and changing and producing.

 The last image I would attempt to share with you from Joe’s vineyard, is how the vines and the branches have utterly destroyed the trellis.  The power and strength of those little bitty branches have snapped 4X4’s in half.  Joe has patched it up, with some new boards and stakes, but it is a losing battle.  The vines and the branches are going to do what they are going to do.  And the structure imposed by a mere mortal ain’t going to get in the way.

 Keep that in mind.  Like others, I have come to think that the Church is going through a time of transition every bit as significant as the one experienced in 1517 a.d.  The vine, the branches are likely to crush more than a few of the structures so carefully crafted by decision makers and policy setters.  That is okay.  Don’t fret.  Trust the vine and the vine-grower.

 If you haven’t observed a vineyard, I hope you will find a chance to do so.  The images of the bible drew on what people experienced in their daily lives.  Our lives are so distanced from an agrarian culture it may be difficult for us to comprehend the image.  That is one of the reasons why so many new writers are retelling the ancient stories in differing ways.  Their images and style may surprise or shock us – shock us because or lack of knowledge about vines and branches, about sheep and sewers of seed makes it difficult for us to grasp the twists and turns of Jesus’ images.

 1.      Don’t be afraid of the pruning

2.     As a branch – tug with all your might in order to correct the previous misalignment of the vine - even as you remain open to the possibility that yours might be the tug which needs a counterweight.

3.     And when structures and institutions come crashing down – do not be afraid.  The vine and the branches are much stronger than frames erected to hold them.

 

Amen.