6/7/20
Sermon Notes:
Dear EPC family,
This Sunday, June 7th, is Trinity Sunday.
Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Western Christian liturgical calendar (which we follow), and is celebrated on Pentecost Sunday in Eastern Christianity.
Trinity Sunday celebrates the doctrine of the Trinity, the three Persons of God: God the Creator, God the Christ, and God the Holy Spirit. It is the first Sunday of Ordinary time, that long season of “green” we move into after Pentecost and do not leave until we get back to Advent again. That means we have a long time of no seasonal celebrational holy days until Advent.
I was once told that this long season of green (I say green, because that is the color of the paraments for this season) indicates a time of deepening our roots during the “everyday’ness” of life. When we do not have the special messages, devotionals, and services of the holy seasons, we simply live our lives and have the opportunity to rest and wrestle in God as our lives dictate.
In years past, as Presbyterian churches everywhere entered Ordinary Time, church folk got busy with plans for Vacation Bible School, youth retreats and family outings, mission work and mission trips, ice cream suppers on the lawn, and picnics at the creek. This year, our church yards and hallways are mostly quiet. Many churches are still not having in-person worship, and those who do have very few in attendance. We deliver our mission projects in masks and do not get to interact much.
We are still wondering how to live with the presence of a difficult virus and the cultural and economic uncertainties of the effects of our response to the threat of that virus. Many of us are struggling spiritually, mentally and emotionally with feelings of anger, confusion, and powerlessness – sometimes directed at the virus, at others, or at political parties/government groups.
To add to this weight, our nation is now facing an eruption of feelings and actions around the long-entrenched sin of racism, even to the point of entering dialogues about whether or not the laws of our country can ever be truly just when city, state, and national budgets shape cultural and economic forces that favor or oppress unfairly, or when the legal system tends to favor people with money and means for lawyers or lobbyists, or when politicians – liberal and conservative – seem to have price tags rather than actual lived values. Conversations are tense, and facts seem to shift.
Recently, at peaceful protests calling for the end of race-based violence, some people burned and looted public and private properties, and instigated even more violence.
Some say these violent actions are the only options for people whose government does not respect them (likening it to the violence early Colonial Americans chose to engage when unfairly taxed by England), some say these destructive actions are the actions of mentally ill, violent anarchists who seek to dismantle our culture for the love of destruction, still others say they are the actions of white supremacists who seek to frame the protestors and depict their cry for reform as a threat to all who respect the rule of law.
We are in a time in American history of turmoil, pain, and confusion. Some have borne this pain in various ways for years already; some are only now affected.
And yet.
God is still God.
Regardless of what you believe as an American or as a citizen of the world, regardless of your take on covid-19, God is still God.
As a Christian, this truth reigns in your life above all cultural, racial, economic, political or health events of your time.
All are born and live and die. Each has a unique life span and circumstances in the life.
Christians live in the deep security of God, hidden in God with Christ, as Apostle Paul says. This does not mean we are exempt from suffering, nor that we never doubt. We grieve, we lament, we suffer. We learn. We act. We rest. We rejoice. In God.
The Christian struggles with the core sin of idolatry throughout life. We all do.
One may idolize white culture, another may idolize being right, another may idolize food, drink, drugs, sex, certain types of human interaction, or power. Any aspect of human life – physical, mental, emotional, cultural, personal, interpersonal, political – can be the arena of the struggle against idolatry.
The Christian holds to the knowledge that God is God as one would hold to a life raft in the midst of the sea. Right now, for many of us, the seas are stormy.
Emmanuel, we cling to God together.
Even as we might have different views, suffer differently, have different challenges or graces in our lives or be impacted by current events in different ways, we cling to God.
We center on God’s word and pray that the Holy Spirit leads us to light and illumination for our time. And we ask the great LOVE of our GOD to pour through us for we know, as simplistic as it sounds, it is the powerful, active LOVE OF GOD that heals us.
I pray this for me and my family and for you. I pray this for unjustly murdered and for the degraded souls of murderers. I pray healing by the LOVE OF GOD for our nation, for our race relations, for sick, unstable people, for progressives, conservatives, for all who sin, for all who rage, for all who suffer or who harm in any way – by word or deed, I pray for the LOVE OF GOD to heal us and deliver us into the light of true understanding and life abundant, God’s Kingdom Come.
Friends, please do what you can to stay inwardly strong in this time. Rest, pray, take care of yourself. Grieve. Create. Find gratitude. Find joy. Talk to a friend who will let you complain, but will pull you back from the edge of idolizing your complaint. Talk to a friend who will encourage you to dream again. Listen for God’s truth in your life. Breathe. Claim again and again, God’s promise of life abundant.
And please pray with me for each other and our hurting world.
On Sunday we will have Communion and hear readings from Genesis and Matthew, and we will cling together to God who longs to be in relationship with us and never quits calling us to the table to renew ourselves in God, in Love.
Yours in Christ,
Jane