Unless you were living under a rock this summer, you have probably heard of the movie and book The Help.  Kathryn Stockett spun this tale of African American women in the 1960s and the families they served. The Help is a compelling story as it examines the sometimes loving and sometimes strained relationships between society women of Jackson, Mississippi and their household staffs. The story generated quite a bit of controversy. The inequality between the two classes of women still stings and the way in which Kathryn Stockett portrayed the African American characters in her book rankled many people.

The most heart breaking and fascinating part of the book was the relationship between white children and their African American caretakers.  As portrayed in the book, those relationships were often extremely tender and formative.  I believe a large part of the wild success of the book and movie was because of how powerful the relationship is between a hired caretaker and a child and how many people have strong, if complicated feelings, about those relationships.

This type of caretaker or nursemaid relationship was not new to the American South of the 1960s.  Nursemaids and even wet nurses have been used to look after children for thousands of years.  We have different names for them now.  We call them nannies, au pairs, day care centers, but the relationship remains.  Those of us who have the income, or those of us who need to work, hire another person, usually a woman, to look after our children in our absence.  We hope the woman or women we choose are tender and kind.  We hope our children will love them and feel safe with them, but not love them more than us, of course.

During the time the Apostle Paul was writing his letter to the Thessalonians, the nurse was a common figure.  Wet nurses were used not only for wealthy women who did not want to nurse their own children, but were used for slave women as well if their owners did not want them to stop working after the birth of their children.  At times mothers and children would be separated entirely, so nurses would be the only loving caretaker a child would know.  Infants, mothers, and nurses would have been an integral part of the house churches of early Christianity, so the imagery of the nurse would be very familiar to the community.

We think of many images when we think of the Apostle Paul.  We think of the murderous Saul, persecuting Christians.  We think of the powerful leader, developing churches throughout the Middle East.  We think of the strong man who survived shipwrecks and imprisonment.  Have you ever imagined the Apostle Paul walking a screaming baby back and forth all night or changing a stinky diaper?

In the second chapter of First Thessalonians, Paul describes himself and the other Apostles as someone who would do just that.  Not only that, he also mixes his metaphors and describes himself as the infant. While the NRSV translates the Greek as “gentle”, many New Testament scholars, including my mother-in-law, believe that use of the word gentle is an error caused by similar spelling of the original Greek word for infant. The original sentence should read “we were infants among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children”.

Paul claims two images for himself that the Thessalonians would never expect.  Paul tries to sell them on this new Christianity and instructs them in how to live their lives, so maybe they expect him to come and lord over them, acting like a king or military commander.  Instead, he packages himself in the helpless image of a baby and the incredibly nurturing image of the nurse.  He is not a threat to the Thessalonians.  He wants to take care of them.  In fact, in the metaphor, he is not a nurse taking care of someone else’s children.  He is a nurse taking care of her own children.  The level of affection and warmth is as high as it can get.

What do these images tell us about our own ministry?  What does it mean for us to strike a balance between being as vulnerable as an infant and as careful as a nurse?

Based on six months of research in my own home, I can tell you that to an infant everything is brand new.  For the first few weeks of Charlie’s life, he did not understand that he had hands.  His flailed around and hit himself.  When he saw his hands he cried because he did not know what they were.  Six months later, I still catch him staring at his hands as if they were the most fascinating object he has ever seen.

And anyone who has spent more than an hour with an infant knows that taking care of a baby requires more than snuggles and coos. The caretaking of an infant is an ongoing wrestling match in which a tiny person manages to dominate an adult over and over again.  A baby’s nurse must be prepared for long bouts of inconsolable screaming, projectile bodily fluids, and insatiable hunger.  And the nurse is expected to deal with all these challenges with warmth and affection.  Sounds like ministry to me!

Paul lived in the tension of these two images.  For Paul and his fellow believers everything about being a Christian was new.  Paul had not attended Christian theology classes.  He took no leadership courses.  He was figuring out what it meant to guide the Christian communities at Thessalonica, Rome, and Philippi as he went along.  He said his prayers and studied the Scriptures, but every day was a brand new day of understanding what Jesus meant to the world.  Paul and all the Christians of their time were infants in understanding of their new faith.

However, at the same time, Paul and fellow leaders in the church were called on to be caretakers of these new Christians.  And Paul loved the members of these communities.  When you read his letters, they are filled with affection, even when he is clearly frustrated with the churches’ antics.  But like a nurse, Paul sets clear boundaries about what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior for the church.  He is kind, yet firm.

This model of ministry has powerful implications for us.  First, what if we viewed the world through the eyes of an infant?  What if every Sunday, the liturgy felt brand new to us?  What if we encountered theological ideas with fresh minds?  What if we really felt the wonder of Advent and the sorrow of Lent this year as if we had never heard the old stories?

What if we approached the world with curiosity, rather than judgment?  What if we were able to marvel at the sound of leaves crunching under our feet and be as trusting of God as infants are of their caretakers?  What if we allowed ourselves to fuss and whine honestly in our prayers, sharing our true heart with God?

The world is filled with wonder.  From the slow moving glaciers of New Zealand, to the improbable structures of Stonehenge, to the majestic national parks of Utah even our rocks are breathtaking.  Think of the millions of different plants and bugs and animals that you’ve never seen.  Think of the all the muscles and neurons that have to fire for you to look to your left.  We live in a miraculous world, but we’ve lost the eyes to see it.   We can regain the wonder by putting on the eyes of an infant.  And that wonder continues on to our understanding of the Gospel.  The Creator God, who created us in the first place, chooses to become the created himself—to come experience the limitations of our rocks and plants and muscles and bones.  He dies so that we can live for eternity. That is an amazing, wonderful gift!

If we combined a sense of wonder with the patience, warmth, and fun of our favorite nanny or babysitter, church would be the most popular place in Princeton!  I have said it before and I will say it again.  We are called to treat one another with kindness and patience.  Even when the Apostle Paul was frustrated with a community, he treated the community with care and respect.  He was patient and loving.  When we are frustrated with each other, let’s just remember that we all used to be infants.  We all deserve to be treated with the care and tenderness we give our youngest members.

Wonder and kindness.  Maybe these are not the first qualities one thinks of when considering the Apostle Paul, but he claims them for himself, and we could do much worse than to embody them ourselves.

Amen.

For more about feminine imagery in Paul’s letters, read Our Mother, Saint Paul by Beverly Gaventa.

Do you remember being a little kid in the middle of a stupid argument over a tea set or a football game?  Do you remember how frustrating it was when your friends would fight over something and ruin your time together?  Do you remember thinking to yourself, I cannot wait to grow up.  When I grow up, my friends will be grown ups and we will act like grown ups.

Then do you remember the crushing disappointment when you realized adults don’t really deal with conflict any better than children do?   Do you remember the first time you witnessed or were involved in a conflict at church?  Church conflicts are the worst!  Church is where you expect to feel safe and welcomed.  You give of your time and energy to serve God and your community and then all of a sudden someone is yelling at you!

When I was a new Christian, I assumed church conflicts would be rooted in theology.  Surely people would argue about  Jesus’ sinlessness or how to discern what the Holy Spirit was doing in a community.  Instead, as it turns out, church conflicts tend to be about flower pots. The first church conflict I ever witnessed was about a flower pot in the entry way of a church office. That flower pot contained a plant.  Someone in the parish decided that plant was not quite decorative enough, and placed some holiday themed decorations in the flower pot next to the plant.  Somehow, this led to an incredibly virulent series of shouting matches, with members of the congregation lining up on one side or the other of the great flower pot decoration debate.

As far as I know, the flower pots of Trinity have not caused any great consternation.   But I bet those of you who have been here awhile or have ever served on a committee can think of several inanimate objects that have provoked outrage. Of course, the objects themselves have done nothing to offend. A table cloth or lamp cannot insult a person.  However, because people invest so much of their soul into church life, when someone else messes with their tablecloth, lamp, or flower pot, a person’s feelings can get hurt pretty quickly.  Those feelings of hurt can lead to lashing out, which hurts the other person’s feelings and a major church conflict is born.

In today’s Letter to the Philippians the Apostle Paul offers the Phillipians an  invitation to help them deal with their own conflict. The Philippians have been through the wringer.  While visiting, the Apostle Paul healed a demon possessed slave whose owners had paraded her around as a fortune teller to make money.  Once she was healed, she was useless to them and they were furious.  The owners had Paul arrested and thrown in jail.  Paul writes the letter to the Philippians from jail.  He implies that the church has had some blowback from the community after the event and he is writing to encourage them.  However, he is also writing to help them work through an inner conflict.  This conflict is not identified in the letter, but in chapter 4, verse 2, Paul does call out two women in the parish.  He writes:  “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.”

I am dying to know the source of Euodia and Syntyche’s argument—were they fighting over who got to host the next church meeting?  Were they arguing over how to keep the congregation safe?  Were they at odds because they had different ideas about how to fund the work of the church?  Ultimately, not knowing the source of the argument doesn’t matter.  Paul’s response would be the same regardless.

Instead of rebuking them, Paul invites the community to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” and then shares this beautiful hymn about Jesus.  The hymn celebrates the humility of Christ,  “who, though he was in the form of God, did hot regard equality with God as something to be exploited”.  Jesus could have used his power to bring himself fame and fortune.  He could have used his power to have a battle with his Father.  Instead, he emptied himself to become human, and then humbled himself and died on the cross.  In return, his Father lifted him up, exalted him.  Their relationship was one of respect and mutuality.  They celebrated each other rather than competed with each other.

Paul reminds the Philippians that as Christians, they share the mind of Christ.  He invites them to live into that reality.  He invites them to “do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility [to] regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you not look to your own interests, but to the interest of others.”

I extend this same invitation to you. You share the mind of Christ.  Inside you, you have the same ability to humble yourself and exalt the other.  All you have to do is get out of your own way, and let the mind of Christ operate freely.

There is a lot of territory in this church over which we can be possessive.  We have traditions, events, and spaces that all have meaning to us.  What if this year, we behave differently when we see someone encroaching on our territory?  What if this year we gave each other the benefit of the doubt, rather than accusing each other of perceived slights?  What if this year we speak in love to those who have offended us, instead of gossiping about them at the receptionist’s desk?  What if this year we thought first and foremost about how to make others feel loved and welcomed rather than worrying about an event being perfect?

The deck is stacked against us.  Our country is experiencing an incredible amount of national anxiety right now as we worry about money and resources.  Everyone seems to be ducking for cover and trying to protect themselves as best they can, no matter what the consequences for others.  And that kind of anxiety is catching.  All of us are a little on edge, so living into the mind of Christ and treating each other with kindness is going to take work, hard work, for all of us.

Thankfully, we are not in the struggle alone!  Remember, the mind of Christ is in us.  We follow Jesus’ example from the Gospels, but our connection with him is deeper than that of a role model.  Every time we share communion, we become spiritually one with Christ.  Something shifts in the universe and we become united with him.

Our nature leads us to be selfish and defensive, but the Spirit of Christ in us fights against those impulses and gives us the courage to be open and generous.

And if we are able to be open and generous with one another, our community will grow and deepen.  This community already does so much for the world around us.  Just imagine how God could work if we added additional layers of trust and respect in our relationships with each other.

Remember, the Christian life is not only about outcomes.  To paraphrase 1 Corinthians 13,

And if we have the most beautiful grounds and the most majestic music, but do not have love, we are nothing.
If we give away all our possessions to Rummage, and if we raise $30,000 at St. Nick’s and if we have 200 people come to One Table Cafe, but do not have love, we gain nothing.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

We are no longer children on the playground.  We can do better than grabbing our ball and going home.  We can be the adults we wished adults were.  We can be the loving, Christian community that Paul hoped for the Philippians.  We can share the mind of Christ.

May it be so.

Amen.

Today we celebrate All Saints’ Day.  And when we say All Saints’ Day, we mean Allll Saints’ Day.  We don’t just celebrate Mother Theresa and Hildegard, we celebrate all those Christians who have lived and died before us, and who now have—in the words of our Ephesians reading today—received their inheritance and have been redeemed by God.

All Saints Day can be a sad day, as we remember people we dearly loved who have died in the last year.  We read their names and we think of them fondly and wish they were still with us, but that grief is just the beginning of what God has for us on this day.  This day is a celebratory, victorious day that reminds us of who God is and who we are.

The book of Ephesians reminds us that God has adopted us as his children.  Not only has he adopted us as his children, but he also gives us an inheritance.  Now, usually, inheritance is where grief gets really tricky.  Usually the person who has died has set aside some money for the people he or she loves, but in the worst case scenarios, there is a real sense of competition, as if the inheritance was a prize.  People sue each other, even commit murder, all in an attempt to get what they think of as theirs.  More than one family has fallen apart for a time over hurt feelings related to an inheritance.

Well, in New Testament times, inheritance worked a little differently.  Generally only one child was chosen to receive the family inheritance and that child was almost always a son, and usually the elder son.  Other children had to hope their older sibling was generous and would look after them.

So, when early Christians read this passage in Ephesians, they were blown away!  God doesn’t just choose Jesus to receive his inheritance.  In fact, God doesn’t just choose the best or the oldest believers to receive his inheritance.  Nope, God offers all of us his inheritance.

And while a parent may offer us a trust fund or a house or a beloved piece of furniture as an inheritance, God offers us redemption as our inheritance.  We become God’s people, we go from being estranged to being in relationship.  And when we die, we don’t just die, we join other saints and angels and archangels in the very presence of God.

So yes, on All Saints’ Day we mourn those who have gone before us, but we also celebrate that they have moved on to a new stage in their journey, where they are at one with the God who created them and who loves them.

The Saints who have gone on before us were specific individuals who we knew and loved, but they also become symbols for us.  They remind us of the meaning that can be found mixed in with the struggle of life.  They remind us that we share in the same inheritance.  That we, too, are claimed by God.

They also remind us that we don’t have to wait until we die to start behaving like we’re God’s children.  The moment we are baptized we become part of the community of Saints.  We become people who belong to God’s family and God invites us to help make his Kingdom apparent not just in the metaphysical realm, but right here on earth, too.

In the Kingdom of God the poor rule, the meek inherit, the weeping laugh.  We are called to start making the Kingdom a reality as we go about our own lives.  The saints urge us onward as we live lives oriented to the reality that God is real and makes a difference in the world.

The saints offer us hope that when the world seems ugly and corrupt and filled with violence, God is still at work in the midst of the darkness, using members of his Kingdom to bring beauty and justice and peace.

When you teach a child about God, when you participate in a Done in a Day project, or help with Rummage, or give glory to God by singing in the choir, you help build the Kingdom of God.  When you serve God by loving your coworkers, being kind to outsiders, welcoming newcomers, you help build the Kingdom of God.  When you support Housing Initiatives of Princeton, and Trenton After School Program and the Crisis Ministry, you help build the Kingdom of God.

The Saints who have gone before us were not superheroes.  When you look at the list in our bulletin today, none of our parish family that died this year ever miraculously healed someone or raised anyone from the dead.  But they were people of faith, and many of them showed us what it means to live the quiet life of a saint through their dedication to God, love for their families and communities, generosity of spirit and dignity and determination through adversity and illness.

Today we give thanks for them, and we honor their memory by trying to walk in their shoes.  Amen.

Today should be called rhetoric Sunday!  In all three of our readings this morning, we have preachers at the top of their game.  It is impossible to read these three snippets of scripture without imagining them preached in booming voices.  Our reading from Hebrews today has a particularly pleasing cadence.  The author is describing the exploits of the heroes of the Hebrew Scriptures and he writes they “through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight”.  Yes!  It makes my day seem very pale in comparison.  “I woke up on time!  Ate some toasted oatmeal!  And dressed myself in matching clothes!”

The writing in the letter to the Hebrews can seem overwrought, but the author’s tone makes sense when we understand his intention.  The author, as far as we can tell from the little information the letter gives us, is writing to a group of second generation Christians.  They love Jesus, but they are running out of energy to be Christians.  They have expected Jesus to come back for years and he has never showed up.  The novelty of this new religion is wearing off and the reality of day to day living has set in.  To top it all off, the authorities are beginning to crack down on Christianity and they are frightened.  The author of the Hebrews is exhorting them to hold on, to keep the faith!  He is their coach and their cheerleader.

The Letter to the Hebrews develops all sorts of theological ideas, but the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is all about faith.  This faith is robust!  This faith has legs!  This faith has teeth!  This is the faith of Gideon, Samson, Rahab—heroes of the faith.  The metaphor the author uses is that of a race.  Like a race, faith takes training and an enormous amount of effort.

Now, you all know that our wonderful rector is an accomplished runner.  He runs several times a week and has run several marathons at respectable paces.  Well you may not know that your assistant rector was a runner, too.  More specifically, she was a runner from the fall of 2005 until the spring of 2006.  My brief endeavor as a runner came about because of my next door neighbor and close friend, also named Sarah.  Sarah was the kind of person who did whatever she set her mind to.  Sarah was going to train for the Charlottesville 10 mile race and somehow she talked me into training, too.

Let me tell you, training for a race is no fun.  We ran several times a week, in increasingly large distances.  On Saturdays we woke up when the sun did and met trainers in downtown Charlottesville.  They would yell things like, “Now, run at your fastest pace!  Now, slow down and run at a comfortable pace!  Now, back at the fast pace again!”  The problem was, I only had one pace.  Eleven and half miles a minute.  That was my fast speed and that was my slow speed.  If I did not know Sarah was waiting for me those Saturday mornings, there was no way I would  have gotten out of bed for that torture!

We ran a 10K a few months into our training to get used to a race environment.  Sarah took pity on me and ran at my pace.  We were really slow.  We were so slow that eventually we were the last two runners.  We were so slow that they started pulling up the cones marking the outline of the course before we got to them.  We were so slow that eventually the police car trailing the race pulled alongside of us and said, “Ladies, you can run in the middle of the street if you’d like.  We’ll follow you.”

Humiliating.

But we did not quit.  Thanks to Sarah’s constant encouragement and occasional bullying, I kept training.  I did not get any faster.  My form did not get any more elegant.  My knees and shoulders did not get any less sore. But on April the 1^st, 2006, I ran that ten mile race.  The crowds lined up on sidewalks cheered us on and helped me to go that much further. With Sarah’s coaching and the crowd’s encouragement, I hobbled to the finish line.

The metaphor of a race for our faith is apt.  Faith takes a lot of work.  Faith takes encouragement.  Faith takes discipline.  But like training for a race, we are not alone.

In the race metaphor, Jesus is our coach.  Jesus has run the race ahead of us, knows what to expect, and runs by our side telling us when to speed up or slow down.  Jesus encourages us when we are frustrated and gives us a boost when we are ready to give up.   Hebrews says that Jesus is the pioneer and perfector of our faith.  He shows us how to follow God—even if it leads to a cross.  Jesus shows us what it means to be faithful, what it means to have an intimate relationship with God.  When we lose our way, we can read the Bible and be reminded of Jesus’ faithfulness, which will help us to be faithful.  And when we can’t live up to the kind of faith we want to have, Jesus’ grace covers us, helping us to cross the finish line.

The crowd that cheers on the racers is the cloud of witnesses.  The cloud of witnesses are the Saints that surround us—David, Samuel, the Prophets—and the millions of ordinary people of faith who have and who are running the race before and with us.  When we read a biography of Augustine, or Dr. King’s letters, or read the notes in the bibles of our own faithful grandmothers, we are encouraged that people have been living in our complicated world for millennia and have been able to follow God no matter what the circumstances.

We in the church are part of this cloud of witnesses, too.  We are each other’s cheerleaders.  When one of us cannot pray, we pray for her.  When one of us needs to talk through a theological issue, we listen.  When someone is discouraged in his study of the bible, we encourage him.  We need each other to live lives faithful to God.

Where the race metaphor breaks down is that in a physical race, the goal is to win, to beat everyone else, to be first.  The wonderful thing about God, is that even if we are the very last person in the race of faith, hobbling along after everyone else, we still get to cross the finish line and get welcomed into the Kingdom of God.  Faith looks a lot more like a race in the Special Olympics, where participants have no problem stopping to help a runner who has fallen, or linking arms so runners can cross the finish line together.  Faith is a race, but it is not a competition.

Our culture treats religion and spirituality as if they are private, personal, individual activities.  But in the Bible, faith is always a community activity.  God appears to individuals, but only in their roles as representatives of their communities.  One cannot truly be Christian if one is not in Christian community of some kind.  But our community is not limited to the people with whom we attend church.  We are in community with Christians all over the world, and with those who have gone before us.  Every Sunday in the Eucharistic prayer we say, “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven.”  That company of heaven is all the believers that have gone before us, who have already run the race and have achieved their prize.  When we gather to receive communion, they gather with us.

And it is this image that helped those early Christians hold on.  Those early Christians held on to the faith, they finished the race, even when threatened with imprisonment and death.  And now they are part of that cloud of witnesses that urges us to hold on, to have faith, no matter how difficult that may seem.

Amen.

We are not quite there in our society yet, but there is a lot of money made every year on products trying to make life a little less painful.  We make luxury cars with surround sound satellite radio so commuting is comfortable.  We make diet pills and elaborate exercise machines so we can lose weight without making too many sacrifices.  We make lightweight electronic books, so we don’t have to schlep around ten pounds of novels when we’re on vacation.

We are incredibly lucky to live in a society where we can protect ourselves from an enormous amount of suffering—we have running water and indoor toilets; our doctors are trained in hygiene and anesthesia; our police, fire brigades and EMTS protect us without bribes.

And yet, even with all of our advances we can never protect ourselves fully from suffering.  Our hearts will still be broken.  Our loved ones will still die, some years before they should. Our bodies will still betray us.  Suffering is a fundamental part of what it means to be human.

Now, if I were marketing a religion, I would make sure that part of the package would be a promise of relief from suffering.  I would tell my followers that if they just followed my God, they would receive an easy life, filled with pleasure.  Paul, however (and that’s St. Paul, not our rector), does not seem to be working with a PR consultant.

In the letter to the Romans, Paul acknowledges what all of us know.  Suffering is part of life and a part of faith.  None of us can escape suffering, no matter how much we try to pad our life with luxuries.  Paul captures this beautifully in the 8^th chapter of Romans, writing:

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

This image of all of us, along with all of Creation, leaning forward, groaning, waiting for God really captures the human experience.  When something awful happens:  a child’s death, long term unemployment, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil about to destroy miles of coastline, there is nothing we can do, but groan our prayers and hope for redemption.

But, Paul’s view of suffering is not entirely negative.

Whenever my sister and I grumbled about doing something that annoyed us, my father would tell us, “You’ll build character!”  At first Paul’s stair step argument in Romans 5 can feel a little bit like a parent telling us to grin and bear our suffering.

Paul writes that we can boast in our suffering and that our suffering will lead to endurance, which will lead to character, which will end in hope.

We all know that suffering does not necessarily produce that outcome.  We all know people for whom suffering has done nothing but embitter them.  So, when we read this text, we may read it cautiously.  We may hold it at arms’ length and think to ourselves, “Oh yeah, Paul?  Prove it.”

We are helped when we understand the context in which Paul is writing.  Paul has been telling the Romans how no one is righteous.  No one can keep the law.  No one can earn righteousness before God.  Paul goes on to explain that through Jesus ‘ willing sacrifice, we are granted righteousness before God.  That righteousness is given to us as pure gift.

In our passage today, Paul is explaining what that gift gives us.  The gift reconciles us to God, giving us peace with our Creator.  We use this passage on Trinity Sunday, because Paul goes on to say that the Holy Spirit pours God’s love in our hearts.  So, the Father sends the Son, who sacrifices himself so we can be at peace with God.  He in turn sends the Holy Spirit, who fills us with God’s love.

So, transformation of suffering into hope is part of this gift, too.  Paul is probably talking about eschatalogical suffering here—suffering having to do with the end of times—since Paul thought Jesus’ return was immanent.  But really, we are all moving toward the Kingdom of God, and we all experience suffering on the way, so I think it is fair to say that our suffering can be included in this conversation.

What’s important to note here is that this transformation of suffering into hope is not something that the sufferer does.  Paul’s whole point is that that God’s gift to us is pure gift—and is not something we can earn.  We can place ourselves before God and pray that our suffering might be transformed into endurance, character and hope.  But we should never use this passage as a weapon against ourselves or anyone else who might be stuck in grief or pain or suffering of any kind.  This passage should never be used to nag or berate.  Instead, this passage offers us a beacon of hope.

Paul’s words offer us hope that our tears and pain may deepen and broaden our compassion, rather than harden our hearts.  His words offer us hope that our crises may make us into more mature, thoughtful people.  His words offer us hope that we might yet be transformed into people of hope—people who so in touch with God’s presence, that our hearts feel deep peace.

We don’t need to be like the characters in Wall-E, completely protected from pain.

Paul’s words give us courage to face the world honestly.  They give us courage to step out of our padded luxury cars, put down our laptops, turn off our televisions.  Paul’s words give us courage to face our broken hearts and bodies head on, knowing that God can transform our suffering into something that betters us.

In my last parish, I had a friend who was in her 80s.  She had a series of health scares, including an episode of congestive heart failure that was completely terrifying to her.  She called me in the midst of all of her struggles and asked if I could come see her.  When I went to visit her, I expected to hear about her pain, her fears, maybe her loneliness.  Instead, she told me, “Sarah, I want to talk with you, because my pain has made me think about all the people in pain around the world.  I want to use this as an opportunity to pray for those people.”

That moment has been one of the most profound of my entire life, because she exemplified what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Romans.  God gave her the grace to experience her suffering as a broadening, deepening experience.  Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she found a way to reach out to the world and care for them through her prayers.  The love of God flowed through her and out to those for whom she prayed.

And whether we are people who feel that kind of hope, or not, Paul is right when he says that God’s hope will not disappoint us.  Because the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice, the gift of God’s love poured out by the Holy Spirit, is our gift, even in our deepest suffering.  Even at our terrified, grief stricken, self-absorbed worst.  Even when we feel not one iota of character or endurance or hope, God’s love pours out for us.  And that love will not disappoint us.

Amen.

Our Epistle and Gospel readings are having a strange conversation today, aren’t they?

On one hand, we have the Apostle Paul telling the Philippians to relax, rejoice, not to worry! On the other hand, we have John the Baptist screaming “You brood of vipers!” at the crowds of ordinary people following him around. Nothing says Christmas Spirit like a bearded man in a hair shirt screaming insults at you!

At first glance, these readings may appear to have nothing to say to one another.  But, when we dig a little deeper, we can see that they are really dealing with the tensions and the hopes of living in a world in which the Kingdom of God is not fully manifested.

Our culture tells us the season leading up to Christmas is a fun, happy, kitchy time of the year to decorate wildly, eat foods we wouldn’t otherwise allow ourselves, and shop for gifts to demonstrate our love for others.  But we all know that Christmas is more complicated than that.  Christmas can also be filled with longing, regret, and grief.  Even the first Christmas story, THE Christmas story, had its own ambiguities.

The birth of Christ came out of great pain, pain that goes well beyond any discomfort Mary might have experienced, or the humiliation of being born in a stable.  Christ came into the world in God’s radical attempt to save humanity from the pain of its own brokenness.  People had longed to be saved from the war and heartbreak and frailty of the human condition as long as they had a concept for God.  Without that pain and alienation, there would have been no need for the birth of Christ in the first place.

The crowds that followed John around hungered for connection to God.  They longed to be liberated from cycles of brokenness in their lives.  Why else would they follow this strange locust-eating man around the wilderness? But that kind of liberation, that kind of connection to God, has a cost.

Prophets throughout the Scriptures have had the job of shaking humanity by the scruff of the neck and John the Baptist is no different. Inertia is a powerful force in the lives of human beings, and John’s job is to disrupt the lives of his followers so they can break free of that inertia and prepare themselves to receive the incredibly good news of God’s incarnation.

John the Baptist’s first words are harsh.  He calls the crowd vipers and tells them they cannot rely on their identity as descendents of Abraham to be saved.  He’s alerting the crowd that they will not be able to encounter God without experiencing some kind of change.  His words are so strong that his crowd is left very worried about what advice might follow.

Will John the Baptist ask them to sacrifice everything in their lives to encounter God?  Will they have to live extremely ascetic existences?  Will they have to join John as he wanders through the wilderness eating honey-dipped locusts?

John’s audience is alert, holding their collective breath, ready to hear John’s advice.

John’s advice is comically simple.   John tells a tax collector not to steal money.  He tells a soldier not to extort money.  He tells others in the crowd to share their cloaks if they meet someone who is cold.

John the Baptist doesn’t tell the soldier that he needs to leave the military.  He doesn’t tell the tax collector he needs to resign from his post.  He does not demand that these employees of the Roman state abandon their professional lives and their ties to the Roman government.  John the Baptist makes it clear that Jesus is coming for all people, wherever they are.  The members of the crowd surrounding John the Baptist are challenged to get their ethical houses in order, but they aren’t asked to abandon their lives.

So, although John the Baptist probably smelled funny and was definitely rude, he brought good news about the Kingdom of God to his followers.  Jesus’ coming into the world was not just for priests and rabbis and scribes.  Jesus’ coming was for all humanity-tax collectors and soldiers and every day people.  This news is joyful.  And this is where our Gospel and Epistle readings intersect.

When the Apostle Paul tells the community of Philippi to rejoice, he’s not chirping empty-headed platitudes.  Paul has been through hell.  He has been traveling for years, been ship wrecked, and now is arrested and in prison.  The people of Philippi are on edge because Christians at the time were a persecuted people.  They are afraid because their faith puts them in danger. Paul is speaking of a joy, and gratitude, and a sense of peace that is not bound by circumstances.  Paul is speaking of joy, and gratitude, and peace that come hand in hand with the kind of challenges and pain life brings us.

The joy of Advent is not an empty-headed happiness because we get to eat more sugar cookies than usual.  The joy of Advent is a joy that acknowledges the pain of our broken world while still rejoicing in the wonder of Christ coming into the world for even the most humble person.

The joy of Advent invites us to believe God will show up in our lives even when we are at our worst or experiencing our deepest pain.

In my last parish, the adult son of a parishioner died unexpectedly and suddenly. The funeral was very sad and very beautiful.  The family chose a Celtic service and hundreds of white candles illuminated the sanctuary.  After the funeral, several people came up to me and mentioned how moved they were by the hope in the mother’s eyes as she went to communion.  She was not happy, she was hopeful.  She grieved the death of her son, but she had confidence that somehow God was still with her and still with her son.  Even though her world had shattered, she had the expectation that one day she and her son would be reunited in the Kingdom of God, one day she would feel Christ’s peace.

Life is full of pain and disappointment, even in the happiest lives.  Christ reaches out to us, even in the midst of that pain.  Even when we’ve been betrayed or lost our jobs or have a child we cannot reach, Christ extends himself to us, just as he did 2000 years ago.

You do not have to leave your job or your marriage or this town to experience the joy of the incarnation.  You don’t have to go on pilgrimage or pray for a week straight or fast for a month for Jesus to find you.  Jesus calls each of us, wherever we are.  He calls us to prepare ourselves, but always in ways that are accessible to us.  As counterintuitive as it may seem, the God who created the entire Universe wants to be in relationship with us.  God wants to be in relationship with the brood of vipers right here in this room.

And because God reached through time and space to bring Christ to us, and because Christ continually reaches out to us, inviting us into relationship with his Father and our Creator, we join the Apostle Paul and we rejoice in the Lord, we pray with thanksgiving, and we welcome the Peace of Christ into our hearts.

Amen.

At the time, this did not seem that remarkable to me.  But now, looking back, I am impressed with my mother’s willingness to uproot an entire family’s dietary lifestyle for the health of one member of the family.  If my dad’s eating habits had to change, all of our eating habits had to change.  It would not be fair to him if he was eating a piece of fish while the rest of us chomped down on hamburgers.

Our passage from 1 Corinthians today is also about dietary choices that are good for a community, but the situation Paul is responding to is not as simple as one member of the Corinthian community having high cholesterol!

Corinth was a Greek town with a predominantly Hellenistic culture.  Part of that culture was idol worship.  Small statues would be placed on altars and these “gods” would be given gifts of food.  The food would later be eaten by people in social gatherings.  The religious and social life was entwined together.

This created a huge problem for Corinthian Christians.  After all, they certainly did not believe in worshiping idols or that these small “gods” even existed.  To them, there was only one God.

The Corinthian Christians had broken into two camps.  The first was a group who approached the situation intellectually.  They were secure in their faith, they knew no other gods existed.  Since no other gods existed, then food offered to those gods was no different from any other food.  For this group of Christians, joining in the social eating of food offered to idols was not a problem at all.

The second group of Corinthian Christians were not so sure.  At one point in their lives they, too, had offered up food to idols, and that time was recently enough that eating food to those same idols now made them nervous.  To these Christians, eating the food offered to idols was acknowledging the gods they represented and was just plain wrong.

And this is where Paul comes in.  Paul has been asked to adjudicate this dispute.  He acknowledges that the first group, the intellectuals, are right from a philosophical viewpoint.  He states,

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” and that “there is no God but one.” Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth– as in fact there are many gods and many lords– yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

He agrees with their argument that since there is only one God for the Christians-even if another culture thinks there are many gods-then idols don’t exist so food offered to them is food offered to nothing.

However, just as that group is feeling pretty proud of themselves for being right, Paul turns the argument.

But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.

In other words, just because the intellectual argument was correct, does not mean that eating the meat offered to idols was right.  By eating the meat, the first group was threatening the faith of the second group.  Members of the second group may know that there is only one God in their head, but that deep knowledge may not have penetrated their heart yet.  Worshiping many gods may still be a temptation for them.  Because of this Paul is saying that he, for one, would choose not to eat the meat sacrificed to idols in front of Corinthian Christians.  Eating the meat did not matter one way or the other to God, but wounding another Christian was absolutely not acceptable.

Paul is telling the Corinthian Christians that they are in this journey together.  They need each other.  If eating meat sacrificed to idols threatens the faith of some of the community, than the entire community should abstain from eating the meat.

In the modern church we do not have a direct comparison to this problem.  As far as I know none of you were part of an idol worshiping religion before you came to Emmanuel!

However, I think we can learn about sticking together from this passage. Paul sums it up well when he says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

The desire to be right, the desire to win an argument can blind us to the needs of others.  Whether we are on our high horse about our political beliefs or whose turn it is to take out the trash, our single mindedness can be deadly to our relationships.  I find it helpful to step back from an argument and think about what I really want.  Do I really want to prove that I cleaned exactly 61% of the house or am I just looking for some affirmation and gratitude for the work that I did?  Ultimately what we want, I think is to feel heard and loved in our lives.  When we don’t feel that, being “right” is the next best thing.  But what we really want, is love.

The foundation of any good relationship is love.  We want love ourselves, but we are also asked to give love.  Part of love is seeking the good of the other, even if it means some sacrifice for yourself.  Paul asked the intellectual group of Corinthians to be generous to their brothers and sisters.  We are called to be generous, too.  For instance, if you live with an alcoholic, the generous response is to not keep alcohol in the house.  If you are friends with someone who is pinching pennies, the generous response is to plan a walk through a park together, rather than a shopping trip.  If your father has just had a heart attack, the generous response is to not bring him over those bacon wrapped twinkies you just deep fried.  While none of us can control the behavior of another person we can help to make life a little easier.  We can refrain from being “stumbling blocks” to those around us.

We are a community that worships one God.  And that God reminds us over and over again to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We are bound together by our faith in God, but those binds can enrich us as much as they limit us.  By rooting our identities in a community rather than in our individual lives, we become kinder, more open minded, flexible and loving.  Seeing the world through the different lenses of members of our community helps us to be creative and to learn.  Our community makes us stronger.  Our community makes us better Christians.

Japanese owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacfic, four days out of Manila.  Am in lifeboat.  Pi Patel is my name.  Have some food, some water, but Bengal Tiger is serious problem. Please advise family in Winnipeg, Canada.  Any help is very much appreciated.  Thank you. (p. 238)

Ah yes, those Bengal Tigers will get you every time.

Being stranded in a boat is a powerful image because endless water is one of the most primal, beautiful, but fearful images in the human psyche.  Water, though it sustains us, can also completely subsume us.  Water symbolizes that which we both need, but that threatens to destroy us if not controlled.

Water courses throughout our readings today.  We begin in Genesis with the wild waters of creation that simmer in the chaos, not yet controlled by land.  These images continue in descriptions of thunder, storms, and flooding that threaten the Psalmist.  Water is presented here as something extremely powerful and dangerous.

If water represents unknown, uncontrollable forces, then it certainly is a metaphor for our times, isn’t it!  In my three and a half years here I have never received as many calls and visits for financial assistance as I have the last three months.  People are getting hours cut back and fired because businesses just can’t sustain activity in the current economy.  Being a worker right now feels a bit like being afloat in a boat on the wild seas.

And in such unsteady times, if any additional part of your life begins to fall apart, it can feel like there is a Bengal tiger right in your boat with you!

For better or worse, we are not the only group of people who has ever felt this kind of anxiety.  In fact, most of our readings today were written to respond to anxiety.  When everything is going well, and you sense the presence of God very clearly, you don’t need to be reminded about who God is.  However, when things in your life are rocky, you need all the reminders of God’s goodness you can get.  When you are an Israelite who has been exiled from Jerusalem, you might need to hear about the God that controlled chaos and created plants, animals and people with loving care.  If you are an early Christian who fears being persecuted, you might want to be reminded that Jesus really was the son of God, and that the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus like a dove.

Telling our stories is a powerful antidote to anxiety. We tell stories from the Bible every week in church because they remind us of who God is.  We need those reminders on a regular basis to stay rooted in our identity as God’s children.

The stories we tell in this week’s lectionary readings remind us both who God is and also who we are in relation to God.

Our first reading is the very first passage from Genesis.  When the creation story starts, the world is nothing but a formless void.  The world is dark and filled with water.  We don’t get the whole creation story, but we get the very beginning images: a wind from God sweeping over those vast waters and then out of the darkness, comes light.  God makes something out of nothing.  God sheds light where there was only darkness.  God takes something chaotic and scary and makes something beautiful and life-filled. Although water can be overwhelming and uncontrollable, in this passage, God is fully in control and able to shape and guide the powerful element. This passage reminds us of God’s control and the way God brings light into difficult situations.

The author of Psalm 29 calls out to this Creator God as he faces a terrible storm, and reminds himself that the Lord God is incredibly powerful and reigns even over the floods and cracking trees and thunder that the storm brings.  The Psalmist gives us a model of how to pray in the midst of crisis.  He is able to celebrate God, even while being nervous about his own safety.

Our stories from the New Testament today address water and God’s relationship to water in a different way.  Both stories are about baptism.  In the Gospel we have Jesus’ baptism and in the epistle we have the baptism of Apollos.  While these images may seem completely unrelated to the images of wild and dangerous water from the Old Testament readings, danger is actually a part of baptism.

Baptism symbolizes cleansing, but it also symbolizes death.  Like Jesus’ baptism, early baptisms were all fully immersion baptisms.  People who wanted to be baptized were pushed under the water and then hauled out again three times.  Being pushed under, symbolized drowning, reminding the baptized of the power of water and of death.  When you were pulled back out, it symbolized your new life in Christ. And like God shows up in the Old Testament when waters become dangerous, God shows up at baptism, too.  Both Jesus and Apollos experience the Holy Spirit after their baptisms.  In the book of Acts, Jesus explains that the Holy Spirit gets sent at baptism to be our Comforter and guide.

We need to be reminded of the Holy Spirit.  We need to be reminded that even amidst the roiling waters God sends us a comforter and guide to help us through difficult times.  We need to be reminded that God is with us, even as we face off our own Bengal tigers in our tiny boats.

And so, we tell our stories.  We tell stories of God’s faithfulness in the Bible, but we can also tell stories of God’s faithfulness in our own histories.  I think of all the stories I know about how God has shown up in my life and your lives just in the nick of time.  These stories calm me.  They remind me that God is with me.

You might remember times when you thought you would be adrift forever, but then God rescued you in unexpected ways.  Better yet, you might remember a time when you were lost on the seas, but suddenly God helped you to see that you were not lost after all-you were just on a little character building adventure.

This remembering is what puts legs on our faith.  Telling our stories gives us the courage we need to take risks, to be brave in unfortunate circumstance, to be kind when we are feeling threatened. Telling our stories helps us to be true to our baptismal promises on the days when they seem silly or outdated.

Telling our stories helps us to remember that God holds us up amidst the waters, even if there is a tiger in our boat.

Now, when I hear the words “the Law”, the first images I think of are American ones.  I think of dusty sheriffs patrolling the western frontier.  I think of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.  I think of lawbreakers like Johnny Cash, singing the “Folsom Prison Blues”. I think of Billy the Kid and Jesse James.  America has always held the law and law-breaking in an exciting tension.  After all, we began as a nation by breaking the law and rebelling against England.  Outlaws have been our heroes as much as the lawmen that chased them down.

When we think about grace, we think about big sweeping outlaw stories, too.  American Christianity, particularly of the conservative sort, loves a huge conversion story.  There is nothing better than when a hopeless outlaw has an experience with Jesus that transforms his life. The first of these that comes to my mind is Charles Colson, who found Jesus while in prison after the Watergate scandal and has spent his life since working in prison ministry.  I think of Anne Lamott’s story, too.  She was addicted to drugs until a series of experiences in which she had a very clear supernatural sense of Jesus’ presence that motivated her to seek healing and a church community.

These dramatic conversion stories are exciting and a give a clear picture of the power of Christ in the life of believers. A new understanding of Christ’s love can motivate people to completely change their lives, making for a remarkable witness to the power of God.  But, what about the rest of us?  What does grace look like for those of us who aren’t outlaws?

As you can imagine, I have at MOST about 2% outlaw in me.  I have been a rule-follower since I was a little kid.  I like order and most laws make sense to me, so I see no need to break them.  I pay my taxes, stop at red lights, and have never done drugs.  I am, as a four year old I know likes to say, “Boooooooowing.”  Matt likes to mess with me in grocery stores by putting an item out of place. He knows I just can’t stand it if a can of beans ends up with the pasta.  He knows I will be unable to resist picking up those beans and putting the can back where it belongs.  I am a rule bound woman.

And yet, the grace of God that comes through Jesus incarnation is still profound to me.

Why is that?  What does the incarnation of Christ and the grace of God offer for us boring rule-bound types?

Well for one thing, in terms of obedience, the law of the Hebrew Scriptures is a lot more complicated than American civil law.  It’s easy to stop at red lights.  It’s not always easy to follow the hundreds of specific household and dietary laws of Leviticus.  It’s really not easy to avoid breaking the laws-such as coveting-which are as much about an emotional response than a behavioral one.  Being obedient to all the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures is nearly impossible.  They are so detailed, following them might be like having an entire lifetime of just putting cans back into the right slots.  While putting cans back in their proper places brings me a moment of satisfaction, it certainly does not offer me a lifetime of joy!

Christ’s incarnation and life changes our relationship to the law.  He follows the law perfectly on our behalf.

But more importantly than changing our relationship to the law, Christ’s incarnation fundamentally transforms the way we relate to God-whether we are outlaws or chronically obedient.

In our reading from Galatians today, Paul writes,

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

When we were under the law, we related to God as his servants.  We were the vassals to his Lord, the peasant to his King.  Our relationship was based on obedience and loyalty.  We were rewarded when we worshiped him properly and punished when we slipped and worshiped Ba’al instead.

When Jesus is born into Mary and Joseph’s human family, we are invited to join God’s family.  Suddenly, our status has changed.  We are no longer slaves, but children of God.  God sees us as his children and we are invited to call him Father.

Now just think for a minute, if you were here last Sunday, about how you felt about our children as they performed and watched the Christmas pageant.  I saw the tears in your eyes and heard the sighs and laughter.  Our children are beloved here-as they should be.  Now imagine that God feels the same way about you!

This is a big transition to make.  If you’re off being an outlaw, you’re used to railing against authority figures.  If you’re a rule follower, you’re used to trying to please authority figures through your perfect obedience.  Neither of these ways of being really prepares you for the challenge of simply being loved.

We don’t have to prove anything.  We don’t have to earn anything.  We are loved simply because God has chosen to love us.  He has decided to adopt us into his family without any manipulation or trickery on our part.  He loves us.  He wants to be around us.  He wants a deep relationship with us. The relational dynamic has changed.  Now pleasing God means developing an intimate relationship with him, rather than simply obeying his laws.

And this is the true meaning of Christmas.  We welcome the baby Jesus into the human family as a reminder that Jesus has invited us to be a member of his family.  We put up lights and exchange presents and generally rejoice because whether we are outlaws, goody-two-shoes or someone in-between, we are loved and wanted by God, and have become part of his family.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

The first story we read was called The Expert on God, by John L’Heureux.  It begins like this,

From the start, faith had been a problem for him, and his recent ordination had changed almost nothing.  His doubts were simply more appropriate to the priesthood now.  That was the only difference.

As a child of ten, he was saying his evening prayers when it suddenly struck him that Catholics believed in three gods, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.  He blushed and covered his face.  What if the kids at school found out?  They were Protestants and therefore wrong, but at least they had only one God.  Instantly it came to him that there were three Persons in one God.  It was a mystery.  He was very embarrassed but very relieved, and he actually looked around to see if anyone had heard his thoughts, and for the rest of his life it remained for him a moment of great shame.

This beautiful short story begins with a young boy’s meditation on the Trinity.  For him, this contemplation is a shameful experience because initially he thinks non-doctrinal thoughts about the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinity has caused a lot of problems for many years.  We in the church like to get our I’s dotted and our T’s crossed.  We don’t like to leave room for error, so we describe abstract theological concepts until we’re blue in the face.  Many churches won’t let you join them until you sign off on their interpretation of doctrine.  The doctrine about the Trinity is tricky, because it is really important to us as Christians that we only worship one God.  But, scripture tells us Jesus was not only God’s son, but was fully God himself.  Scripture also tells us about the Holy Spirit, who pre-existed with the Son and the Father. 

Theologians have been trying to wrap their brains around this for a long time.  The Bible never expressly lays down a theology of the Trinity, so it has been up to the church to develop one.  The Councils of Nicea and Constantinople in 325 and 381, respectively, dealt with the question and developed the creeds we read today.  The consensus was that there was one God, one Divine essence, and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were all made of that essence.  Theologians fought over the words essence, subsistence, substance-words you and I might think mean the same thing!  As I was preparing for this sermon, I was reading some of John Calvin’s work on the Trinity and at one point he starts making fun of other theologians’ descriptions of the trinity.  He calls Augustine’s explanation on the Trinity, “extravagant.”   Those doctrine wars can get downright nasty!

The little boy in our short story grows up and becomes a priest, but continues to have deep doubts about faith.  He has these doubts in a very systematic way and takes turn doubting the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, in order, and never more than one at a time.  He gets so caught up in doctrine that he isolates himself socially and has no personal friends.  His doubts become his life.

As I mentioned before, nowhere in Scripture does the Bible lay out the doctrine of the Trinity for us.  Nowhere does Jesus sit his disciples down and start lecturing about the Divine essence of God and how Jesus is a subsistence of that divine essence.  No, when Jesus talks about the Father or about the Spirit, Jesus talks about relationship.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus describes his close relationship with his father-how Jesus bases every decision on following his Father.  The Father feels pain when Jesus is killed on the cross. Jesus also describes how the Holy Spirit will glorify Jesus and speak truth about him.  Jesus describes how the Father sends forth that Holy Spirit.

All three persons of the Trinity are caught up in this beautiful relationship in which they bring honor to one another, love one another and stay completely attuned to one another.  Theologians call this the immanent Trinity-Think of an image of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in some kind of holy dance “up in heaven,” dwelling in glorious realms on high.

In the last few decades, theologians like Catherine LaCugna have been developing the idea of the economic trinity. Though the idea of the immanent trinity is beautiful, they believe the image of the members of the trinity in deep relationship with each other is incomplete.  The economic trinity is not a trinity that is interested in the stock market.  Here the word economic refers to the idea of exchange, in the sense of how the Trinity interacts with its creation, particularly human beings. 

After all, if there is anything about which the Bible is explicit, it is the members’ of the Trinity relationship with human beings.  God the father creates us and loves us, Jesus offers us grace, the Holy Spirit guides us.  In effect, the members of the trinity are opening their arms and inviting us to participate in the dance of their relationship.

The priest in our short story gets invited into this relationship in a very intense way.  He is driving home after church on an icy Christmas Eve, when he has decides to give up his faith, which for him, is deeply doctrine based.  As soon as he’s made this decision, he notices a car accident.  He pulls over and enters one of the cars, and encounters a dying teenage boy.  Even after renouncing his faith, he pulls his anointing oil out of his pocket and says the last rites.  He holds the boy for a  long time and the story ends when the priest is able to tell the boy.  “I love you.  I love you.  I love you.” 

Though we first think the priest giving up his faith is tragic, soon we realize that in giving up his faith-which was incredibly rule and doctrine bound, he is able to open himself up to true faith in God-relationship.  He is able to be an open vessel that communicates God’s love to a dying boy. 

While this short story is a grim one, it reflects what can happen when we let go of doctrine and open ourselves to relationship with God. 

All of us will doubt elements of our faith at some point or another.  Even I, occasionally, will have a moment in the middle of the Eucharist in which I think to myself.  “Well, this is a strange ritual we have here.”  The important part of faith is not believing all the right things at the right time, but to be in relationship-in relationship to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and in relationship with each other.

There are different kinds of knowing.  In German they are distinguished by the terms “wissen” and “kennen“.  Wissen refers to the knowing of facts-You can “know” John Calvin was born in 1509, or that the Trinity is one essence, but three persons, or that the person of Christ dwells in the Eucharist.  Kennen refer to the knowledge of another person, or something more intimate.  Kennen has connotations of time spent together, face to face.  Kennen invokes the image of something familiar and loved.  We may “know” all about the Trinity, but that does not mean we know the Trinity. 

Spiritual maturity comes with knowing not just the facts, not just the doctrine, but knowing the persons of the Trinity.  We come to know them through study, but also through prayer and reflection.  We nudge open the doors of our hearts and take the risk of letting the Father, Son and Holy spirit in our hearts.  Doctrine is the bowl in which the relationship is help, but the relationship is what is really important.

Today, we celebrate the baptism of little Madison-as she begins her own relationship with the Trinity when we baptize her in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we also celebrate our own relationship with the Trinity.  Thanks be to God.