It is not always easy to trust God with the future.  I will admit that there have been times in my life when I had less security in some ways than I do now, but found it easier to trust that God would work everything out.  My life now seems more complex and my commitments are quite varied.  There are things that I have learned over the years that cause me to not simply accept what I am told at face value anymore.  Maybe I have grown a bit cynical, but I have definitely grown more cautious.  I no longer blindly trust that everything will work out as others promise me they will.

Last week I paid more to fill up my gas tank than I ever have before.  I had allowed the tank to get very low, and needed almost an entire tank.  I filled up at a discount station, but I was still surprised by the total.  Not only is gasoline more expensive these days, but the cost of food seems to rise every time I go to the grocery store. Shopping is not one of my favorite things to do.  All my life I have tried to go to one store per week in order to get what we need.  These days I find myself going to two discount stores for some items and then the regular grocery store for things they didn’t carry.  The price of basic commodities has grown dramatically and CNN reports that there may be a world food shortage.  I’m stressed, and I live in one of the richest and most affluent nations on earth.  I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for people in other parts of the world.

Part of the reason I find it harder to relax about the future has nothing to do with my trust for God, but my trust for humanity and society instead.  When I was young I believed that everyone was treated equally in society.  I’ve come to learn that isn’t true.  As a child I didn’t know we were poor because I didn’t have any other frame of reference.  While traveling a couple of weeks ago, I was amazed to see the number of homeless people sleeping on the street in some of America’s greatest cities. 

Our Scripture lessons for the second Sunday after Pentecost May 25, 2008 remind us to have confidence in God, and not worry about the future.  Matthew’s Gospel quotes Jesus asking us to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.  The lilies are truly remarkable and I’ve learned much about the great wonders of ornithology as I’ve taken up studying birds as a hobby in recent years.  The sparrows are truly amazing.  They are indeed wonderful examples of how nature takes care of life on planet earth following God’s design.

The problem is we are not sparrows or lilies.  Human beings are very different from flowers and birds.  Our lives are more complicated and needs are very different.  I’m not sure if a sparrow ever asks itself if it is a successful sparrow.  I don’t think a lily wonders how to be a self-actualized lily.  As far as I can understand they don’t have the ability to think of themselves as separate from other creatures.  Human beings are unique in that we have needs beyond physical needs that include a comprehensive sense of self.

Today’s lectionary readings remind us of some important truths that may help us lessen our anxiety and increase our ability to trust God.  The first is a reminder from Isaiah that God is not just our Father in heaven.  God is also our Mother.  God is the nurturing mother who would never abandon the child she is nursing.  She is the God who will not refuse to give compassion.  We can trust the love and compassion of Mother God who wants only what is best for us. 

The Apostle Paul provides us with a second way we can improve our ability to trust in God and lessen anxiety.  Paul declared that it is God who is our judge.   He boldly states that he doesn’t believe he has any offense that he can be charged with currently in his life and claims that a human court cannot judge him, but only God’s court.  Human life would be so much easier if we were able to somehow be satisfied that God knows our hearts and does not judge us falsely.  I dare say God’s judgment is far more reliable than that of human beings.  We do not need to worry about what every other person on the planet thinks of us.  That isn’t to say we have an excuse to be disrespectful, but we should ultimately look to God for our sense of value and judgment rather than the opinions of those around us.  God looks at our motives, human beings can only see others through the dark glasses of their own perceptions.

The third source of strength to trust God and decrease anxiety is found in today’s Gospel lesson.  Jesus reminds us to remember today and not worry about tomorrow.  We need to live our lives conscious of the moment, right now, not the past or the future.  Our quality of life is diminished if we spend so much time remembering some mistake of the past, or some potential problem of the future that we do not enjoy the moment we have.  In reality, the past is gone; the future may not come, so all we have is right now.  We waste what we have if we do not live in the present and fully appreciate the moment.

Our Mother God loves us and cares for us.  She will never allow us to be uncared for.  We do not rely on the judgments of humanity, but on the judgment of God who knows and understands our hearts and our struggles.  We can live life in the now.  The past has already happened and the future will take care of itself.  Of course we can be good managers of what God has given us, but we must not be so concerned about material things that we fail to enjoy the most wonderful things of life.  Would that we can find a way to let go and allow Mother God to nurture and comfort us, encourage us in the face of our enemies, and give us the courage to appreciate right now, the moment I have.  May this perspective encourage us so that our anxiety will be lessened and our trust and faith increased!

Isaiah 49:8-16a
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

Like many people, I can often get caught up in the plot of a good mystery novel.  There are times when I stay awake at night; later than I should, turning the pages of a story to see what happens next.  A good mystery has to have an interesting setting that offers very specific details and provides new things for the reader to visualize.  The plot must be exciting and fast paced enough to keep our interest, but not more than we can process so the story becomes confusing.  A mystery has to have good character development.  The writer has to show varied personalities and have multiple people, with both positive and negative attributes with which the reader can identify.  Of course, the best part of a mystery is guessing the answer to the problem ahead of time, and then finding out at the end of the book what the answer truly is.

This week our lectionary readings delve into perhaps the greatest mystery of all.  It is the mystery of the nature of God.  The setting is awesome in this mystery, since it begins with all of creation as our reading in Genesis indicates.  The plot is very hard to rival since it includes all of the history of the world as we know it.  The characters are very intriguing; they are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The answer, of course, is the most challenging of all.  How can humanity understand the nature of God?

There are many different systems that human beings have developed to understand deity.  One idea is Pantheism.  This is the idea that God is not separate from creation, but everything is God.  Most of us in western culture find this a very strange idea since we are taught from a very young age to think of God as separate from the world and ourselves.  Another system of understanding God is polytheism, or the worship of many gods.  Often these gods have been given specific characteristics or responsibilities.  For example, a god of war may be called upon when a people need to go to war, but a god of love would be called upon when people are joining together in primary relationships.

The system of understanding God that most westerners are the most familiar with is known as monotheism; the idea that there is only one God.  The one God created the world, keeps us functioning, and has promise of a future of happiness rather than extinction.  Major religions of the world that are monotheist trace their roots to the patriarch Abraham.  Abraham’s father was a polytheist who earned his living making idols for others to worship.  The Scripture records that Abraham heard the one true God call him to give up any other gods and go to a new land, to start a new people who would worship only one God.  Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have their roots in the Abrahamic covenant. 

I think it is important with any discussion of the nature of God that we remember that it is a mystery.  God is a sacred mystery that we may try to describe or explain, and it is exciting to come up with some educated guesses about the answer, but the genuine nature of God remains elusive.  Many eastern traditions hold to an idea that may be described as soft-polytheism.  They worship many gods, but believe that all of the gods are actually different aspects or manifestations of one God.

This is Trinity Sunday.  As our lessons describe, it is the day Christians set aside to remember and reflect on the Christian belief that God has a triune nature.  God exists in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  While Christianity claims to be an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, those of other faiths might criticize this claim by saying that Christianity has three gods.  I was once told that Christians simply do not want to admit that we worship three gods.  This was from an Islamist who thought of Christianity as worshipping the Father, Mary, and Jesus; all as gods.  Obviously, at least in this case, the idea of the Holy Spirit had not been communicated very well.

Can it be true that Christianity worships three Gods?  The church council at Nicaea and later at Constantinople clearly addressed this issue.  The resounding message of the council was that we worship one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Christianity proclaims God as triune because that is the way God is experienced for Christians.   It is the way God has been revealed to us.  This has its roots all the way back in Genesis where the Hebrew word for God is in plural form Elohim rather than El.  It is found in the plural pronouns where God said, “Let us make man (humanity) in our image.” 

The trinity expressed the unity and oneness of God, as well as God expressed in three persons.  The trinity brings the diversity of God and the unity of God together as mutually positive dimensions. There is an equality of function which does not reflect three incompatible natures, but three complimentary persons of the trinity.  It could be that Christians have something comparable to a soft-polytheist view of God.  We believe in one God, but we believe that God has chosen to reveal divinity in three distinct persons.  When we worship the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, we are still worshipping the one God of all time and space.

The trinity remains however, a sacred mystery.  It is something that we cannot completely define.  God is infinite and we are finite.  It is a mystery, and while it is fun and exciting to guess the answer while we are still in the middle, we will never know for sure until we get to the end of the story.  Once we pass from this life into the next we are promised that; although we do not fully know God now, we only see him as a reflection in a dirty mirror, we are promised to fully know God in the life to come.  In the mean time, let’s not argue about who is right or wrong, let’s enjoy the wonderful mystery of God and trust that divinity is a mystery that must truly have a wonderful answer that we will be able to fully appreciate when we are in communion with God in eternity.

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

The first church I attended was Pentecostal.  My mother’s family has deep roots in a Pentecostal denomination that started around the turn of the twentieth century.  I have to admit, they scared me a bit.  The music was loud and had a fast rhythm.  The preaching was usually loud and included condemnations of many of the things in life I have since learned are quite fun.  After the sermon, there was a prolonged period of time spent at the altar, which was a kneeling bench across the front of the church.

It was not unusual to find some people laughing, others crying, and still others in some kind of trance-like state.  The preacher would often place his hands on people quite suddenly and pray for them, usually loud enough for not only God to hear, but half the people down the block as well.   Many times people would begin to tremble and shake.  I’ve seen people jump up and down, wiggle in some sort of snake like dance, and run back and forth up the aisles.  Still others would begin to speak syllables that did not fit together into any kind of recognizable human language.  It may have been repetitions of the same sound, but often long strings of sounds were placed together in what sounded like sentences and statements.  All of these things were attributed to the Holy Spirit.

I asked a woman once why she fell backwards onto the floor when the minister prayed for her.  She said she was slain in the Spirit.  She appeared to be unconscious, so I asked if she knew what was going on around her, she reported that she did, but she didn’t care.  I questioned a minister who boasted to me that everyone she touched was slain in the spirit and fell to the ground and asked whether it did them any good.  She was quite insulted by the question, but I intended no disrespect.  I simply wanted to know if the Spirit had helped these individuals in any way by this demonstration.  I never received an answer, except that I had to experience it for myself.

At her next revival meeting, which was held in the ballroom of a downtown Chicago hotel, she asked me to come forward for prayer.  I did.  When she prayed for me her husband stood behind me.  She pushed on my head; he pulled on my shoulders and led me to the floor.  I stayed there for a moment and then returned to my seat.  Afterward, she was elated that I had received this gift of the Spirit.  I reminded her that she and her husband pushed me down.  She insisted that it was the Holy Spirit and not her.  When I disagreed, she asked me why I didn’t resist.  I told her that I didn’t want to embarrass her or interfere with other people’s worship, so I didn’t make a scene.  

For the vast majority of Christians, these ideas seem bizarre and out-of-place in worship, but there are millions of believers who worship in this way quite frequently.  I have come to think that most of the Pentecostal and charismatic forms of worship that I have seen are human responses to the presence of the Holy Spirit that are subject to the environment in which one has learned to worship.  I mean no disrespect, but would rather allow everyone to worship as they see fit as long as no one is hurt in the process. 

Our Scripture lessons for this Pentecost Sunday describe the Holy Spirit filling the followers of Christ on the feast of Pentecost following Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.   The Jewish feast was connected with the first early harvest in the agrarian society of Israel.  Pentecost simply means fifty.  It is fifty days after the Sabbath of Passover, and is a celebration of God providing the first fruit of the year’s crops.  It was a time to be thankful and to appreciate the growth of nature that begins with the spring crops.

Pentecost is also considered the first fruit, or birth of the church.  Since then God lives with humanity in a new way.  No longer is God thought of as living in a physical temple in Jerusalem, or anywhere else.  God does not simply abide in heaven removed from creation.  God is not in an institution with property, a bank account and hierarchical leaders.  Instead, God lives in each and every one of us.  The power of God gives life to each of us and brings us many gifts.

I tend to try to accept and respect the religious practices of others, and have been known to worship in some rather unique ways myself.  My hesitancy with dramatic displays of the Spirit has nothing to do with the Spirit, but with the people who claim to be doing the Spirit’s business.  Those who have hurt me the most in life have been people who spoke in tongues and prophesied.  They were the ones who were the loudest of the “shouters” in church and were so excited in church that they would dance apparently uncontrollably.  Yet, these same people spoke words of hate and condemnation when they were not speaking in unknown tongues. They were often the ones who thought themselves so holy they could freely condemn others.

It is interesting that the largest of the Pentecostal denominations have one thing in common.  They believe the test of whether a person is filled with the Spirit is if they have spoken in tongues.  These folks believe that other Christians haven’t quite achieved the same level of spirituality that they have.  It is quite a stretch to find this supported in Scripture.  The Bible doesn’t say that the fruit of the Spirit is speaking in tongues.  The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. 

Someone once asked evangelist Dwight L Moody, why he spoke so much about being filled with the spirit.  He responded, “Because I have a lot of leaks.”   It is not always the easiest thing to do to stay filled with spirit.  So many other, more human things, crowd the Holy Spirit out of our lives. 

I have been so frustrated with church that I have decided to give up more times than I can count, and that frustration hasn’t only come from Pentecostals.  Yet, somehow, the Holy Spirit sends some loving, accepting, and supportive person, who is genuinely filled with the Spirit, to invite me back.  Every decade or so, I have run into someone who is so filled with the Spirit in one way or another that they truly reflect the love of Christ.  Let us ask God to continue to fill us with the Holy Spirit so that no one will be left out of the wonderful, loving domain of our God.

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
Acts 2:1-21
John 20:19-23

We all have the need to feel accepted and to belong.  Few things encourage these kinds of feelings like when someone defends us to others.  Some time ago a student tried to take a drink from a drinking fountain on campus, became dizzy and lost consciousness.  He awoke to the obscene odor of smelling salts as he was being revived by emergency technicians.  His symptoms were abdominal pain, nausea, and he was perspiring profusely.  As soon as he was awake the technician asked, “What kind of drugs have you taken?”

It was assumed he was in withdrawal from abusing drugs.  In spite of responding in the negative, the emergency technicians continued to ask the question.  “The sooner you admit what you’ve taken, the quicker we will be able to help you” they explained.  The school administrator intervened and defended the young man by saying, “If he says he hasn’t taken drugs; he hasn’t taken drugs.”  The young man gained a sense of acceptance because his integrity was being defended by someone in authority.  Once checked at the hospital he was rushed into surgery because his appendix had burst and was spreading toxins through his body.

This seventh Sunday of the Easter season is also the Sunday following the feast of the Ascension of Christ into heaven.  Forty days after the resurrection the Scriptures record that Jesus ascended to “sit at the right hand of the father.”  Like many other situations, we have given human attributes to God in order to attempt to understand a very unique situation.  I don’t think we should think of God literally sitting on a throne, with Jesus at God’s right side on another throne.  The idea is that they have been reunited in spiritual reality.

Our lesson from Acts provides more details of the ascension than any of the Gospels.  Luke writes that Jesus took his followers out to the Mount of Olives, promised them spiritual power and ascended into heaven before their eyes.  Artistic renditions of this event usually show Christ rising up into the air, since that is where medieval artists thought heaven was.  Instead the idea is that he disappeared from their view and was received into the heavenly spiritual realm. 

The ascension of Christ can be a troubling concept.  Wouldn’t it have been better for Jesus to stay on earth?  Some might think that if he had we would have proof of the Christian message.  If the living Jesus remained incarnate in an immortal body the world would have an easier time accepting his message.  Perhaps if he had not ascended the church would not have made such a mess of his teachings and commit such horrid acts of intolerance in his name. He would still be around to prevent any misunderstanding.

I doubt however that having Christ among us in physical form would have made much difference.  Human nature tends to mess things up more often than not.  It doesn’t matter how much proof one has of a certain fact, people tend to believe what they want to believe, and each of us interprets life through the lens of our own experience.  Besides, would it be true faith if it were provable?  A wonderful thing about faith is that it has an element of mystery and extraordinary characteristics.  If there is no mystery, there is no faith.

Instead, Christ ascended into heaven and is described as sitting at the right hand of the Father.  Christians believe that it is for our advantage that Christ ascended.  Traditionally the thought is that there are three benefits to the ascension: First, that Christ ascended so that the Holy Spirit could descend.  Second, that because Christ ascended, we now have the hope of ascension as well.  Third, that Christ, as our advocate, defends us continually before God.  I think in many of these ideas we are once again giving human and physical attributes to God simply because we do not have a better way to describe what is indescribable. 

Perhaps another way of viewing the ascension is that we now have the opportunity to see Christ in those around us. Those things that we do for the benefit of humanity we do as if it were unto Christ.  When we feed the hungry, clothe the cold, shelter those in need, and do all the various acts of charity and kindness that we are called to do, we do so as worship to Christ.  If he had not ascended, surely pilgrims would want to come and worship him.  Humanity would spend her time traveling to wherever Christ is to worship, praise, and perhaps seek favor from God.  Most likely we would have spent too much time and energy trying to get to Christ and would have forsaken other important parts of our lives.

Since Christ is ascended, we are called to spend our time and energy promoting the welfare of the world, humanity and those in need.  Every time we give to a beggar on the street we are giving to Christ.  Every time we help to promote justice, we are celebrating and honoring Christ in others.  When we are good stewards of the resources God has blessed us with, it gives glory to Christ. When we honor the dignity of every human being we honor Christ.

We all have the need to feel accepted and to belong.  Nothing proves acceptance and belongingness more than when we support one another as if we were supporting Christ himself.  When we defend another, give good counsel, comfort those who suffer loss, and speak peace to the world, we are proving that Christ is indeed alive.  He has already provided us with the grace and mercy of God.  Let us now be the means of bringing grace and mercy into the world by seeing Christ in those around us, and putting that vision into action. Christ lives and advocates for the world through us.

Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53