Sermon for August 16th, 2020

Readings

Isaiah 56:1,6-8 Psalm 67 Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Sermon begins at 10:23

 

 

There is a difference between a deep and sincere faith in God’s love and mercy and presumption.

 

There is a difference between believing that God does do something, and believing that God MUST do something.

 

I can have a sincere belief in God’s power and willingness to forgive wrongs that I have committed, but that is a very different thing than believing that God MUST forgive them. If we allow ourselves to think that God’s mercy and forgiveness are in any sense owed to us, that God is bound to show them, then we immediately turn God’s grace into something else. We turn God’s grace into a wage. Wages are owed, gifts are freely given. So, is God’s mercy and grace meant to be a gift or a wage? Do we think inclusion in God’s kingdom is something that we are owed or is it something that we know in our hearts we have no right to?

 

There is a huge difference between these two ways of thinking and acting, but the problem is, on the surface they can look very much alike. The line between them, although it is definite, can be quite fine. We really have to take a close look sometimes to see if someone’s actions, even our own actions, are a product of sincere faith or of presumption.

 

Are we approaching the Lord in sincere humility and trusting in his goodness, or do we think that God owes us something?

 

Today’s gospel passage is a difficult one for many, because Jesus doesn’t appear to be quite the pushover that we sometimes want him to be. I’ve heard plenty of creatively terrible interpretations of this passage, but what I think is on vivid display here in the actions of this Canaanite woman is the distinction between faith and presumption.

 

Jesus, spent most of his life and career preaching and teaching in the northern part of the Holy Land, in the region surrounding the sea of Galilee. Before the Babylonian captivity, when there were still two kingdoms, this region was known as the Kingdom of Israel. And before the Babylonians invaded and destroyed Jerusalem, the Assyrians invaded and destroyed the Northern kingdom of Israel, and the inhabitants of that kingdom were scattered and dispersed, most never to be heard from again. It was on the northern coast of this region, near the towns of Tyre and Sidon that Jesus is preaching in in today’s gospel.

 

And while Jesus is there, a Canaanite woman, comes up to him and begs for mercy for her daughter. Now the Canaanites were the ancient enemies of the Hebrew people. They were a different religion, a different race, and they had pretty much always been at war with the Hebrew tribes. This woman from the enemy camp comes up to Jesus, and calls him Lord and Son of David, and she asks for mercy. And Jesus says nothing at first. He doesn’t respond right away.

 

Now if Jesus’s disciples had their way, they would have just dismissed this woman and sent her packing. That’s what they want Jesus to do: just send her away. She’s annoying. She’s not one of us. She doesn’t belong here. But Jesus doesn’t do that either.

 

Jesus lets her speak. And when Jesus does respond, what he says to the woman, although it seems difficult to us, would have come as no surprise to either her or anyone else there: Jesus was a Hebrew. He was a law-abiding, observant Jew. His life was spent primarily preaching and teaching and healing and arguing with other Jews. What business does he have with this Canaanite woman? Is Jesus bound to listen to her and grant her requests? Is it fair for a Hebrew prophet to be showering God’s grace on people that are the historic enemies of the Hebrews? Does God owe this woman something? That is the real question here: does Jesus owe this woman anything?

 

And the answer is: NO. Jesus doesn’t owe this woman anything. That may make us a bit uncomfortable, because we don’t like it when Jesus doesn’t say yes to everything we ask, but it doesn’t seem to bother this woman too much. She doesn’t turn against Jesus or accuse him of being racist or unkind or unfair. This woman knows that Jesus doesn’t owe her anything. This woman knows that there is no reason why the Hebrew God should take any interest in her. She knows it isn’t fair for the Hebrew God to show mercy to the enemies of his chosen people, but she isn’t looking for fairness. She is looking for mercy. She is looking for something that she has absolutely no right to, but she believes inn her heart that this man Jesus will give it to her nonetheless. She trusts in Jesus’s love more than she trusts in the rightness of her own cause. That is faith in God’s love and mercy: knowing that you don’t deserve something, have no right to it, haven’t earned it, and believing that God will give it to you anyways. That is faith.

 

Presumption is a bit different. If this woman had been presumptuous this conversation might have taken a different turn. A presumptuous person would have tried to convince Jesus that he was in fact, being unfair. A presumptuous person would have told Jesus that it is unfair for their child to be possessed by a demon and suffering. A presumptuous person would have argued that God is supposed to be merciful all the time to everyone, regardless of their own actions. A presumptuous person would have tried to argue that God, in fact, owed this woman something. A presumptuous person wants to see Jesus’s mercy as a given, something that can be taken for granted, and not as what it truly is: a gift that we have no right to. Presumption is dangerous for all of God’s children, whether you are a Jew or a gentile. We can all fall into presumption. Let us remember that John the Baptist said to the Jews gathered at the Jordan river: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘we have Abraham as our ancestor’: for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” It is possible to trust in God’s mercy without presuming upon it, or taking it for granted, but we must always be vigilant.

 

You know, we live in a world of people that are suffering. We live in a world where people feel hopeless and condemned. We live in a world, where people think that IF God exists, that he doesn’t really care about them or their lives. We need to be able to preach faith to that world. We need to be able to talk about and to witness to the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, but we also need to be careful that what we are preaching and what we are practicing is faith and not presumption. Let us be sure that we aren’t turning God’s free gift into something that is owed or earned. Maybe the best way to know the difference between faith and presumption is examining how we respond when God says “no.” If God doesn’t do things exactly the way we want, when we want; if Jesus doesn’t grant our every wish, if he doesn’t pat us on the back every hour of the day and tell us we are doing a good job, how do we respond? Because if our response to God’s “no” is to turn away from God, then I guess that says something about whose righteousness we actually have more faith in.

 

The fact that people of every race and nation are welcomed by this Hebrew Lord into God’s one kingdom, is a miracle. When God shows us grace and forgiveness and love and healing, it is a miracle. The fact that God doesn’t send us willful and sinful creatures immediately on our way, the fact that God doesn’t immediately dismiss us, but is willing to hear our cries for help, that is a miracle, because you know what, the truth is…God doesn’t owe us anything.

 

Not a thing. God doesn’t owe any of us, anything. That is what makes God’s love and mercy so amazing.

 

The Canaanite woman is not asking Jesus for something she deserves. She knows better than that. That is what makes her faith so amazing. She trusts that this God will bless her with something that she does not deserve. It is a powerful image that should always be in our heads whenever we approach God’s altar and say:

 

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.

 

 

Sermon for Sunday, August 9th, 2020

Readings:

1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

I want to take a moment and talk about the exodus story.

It’s one of the foundational stories of our faith. It is the foundational story of the Jewish faith as well. It has been depicted in film enough that even if you aren’t a person of faith you probably know the story of Moses, Pharaoh, the Hebrew Slaves and the crossing of the Red Sea. So, think about that story for a minute. Specifically, I want you to think about the timeline of that story.

God hears the sufferings of his people. God sees people enslaved. God demonstrates his power through Moses. The people are miraculously freed: the Red Sea parts, there are pillars of cloud and fire, God gives them food, God gives them water. Then they reach Mt. Sinai, where God gives them his Ten Commandments; his rules for living in this world. And finally, after much wandering, the people reach the borders of God’s promised land. All along the way the people kept wanting to turn back. They grumbled, they turned away, they made mistakes, they were unfaithful, but God was faithful.

So, God hears his people. God saves them and sets them free. Then God gives them the law.

The Children of Israel escape from Pharaoh, they cross the Red Sea, they are fed and watered by God in the desert, and then they reach Mt. Sinai where God gives them his rules for daily living.

God hears his people. God saves them. God instructs them. That is the timeline of this story.

I really want you to get the order of events here so I am going to keep saying them:

God hears his people. God saves them. Then God instructs them.

That is the order of events in this story that lies at the heart of our faith.

God hears his people. God saves them. God instructs them.

So why is it then that we are always turning that order of events upside down? We hear this story about God hearing people, God saving them, and then God giving them commandments for how to live, but we live our lives and we live our faith as if it happened in reverse order. And this is not a Jewish and Christian divide. We all, I think, have a tendency to do this.

We think that if I just get the commandments right: if I study relentlessly, if I get all the science right, if I make the right choices and do the right actions, THEN God will save me. And then and only then, after I have made the right choices, and after God has decided that I am worthy of saving, then God will hear me.  We may not come out and say it just like that, but isn’t that what we really think? Isn’t that how we act?

God hears his people. God saves them. God instructs them.

That is how the story goes, but we are so inclined to turn that story upside down, that every now and then we need someone to come around and turn it right side up again. We need someone to come along and say: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” In other words, God isn’t waiting for you to get it right before he hears you or before he saves you. Did God save the Children of Israel because they were obedient to the Law? NO, he had’t even given them the law yet. God saves them, because God loves them. God saves them, because that is what God does. This is a saving God. That is what we are called first and foremost to have faith in: the fact that God can and does hear us and save us, as we are, enslaved to whatever we are enslaved to in this world, before we have ever figured out how to live according to his commandments. God saves us first, then God teaches us. God is faithful to us, before we even have the capacity to be faithful to him.

As he began to sink into the water, Peter cried out, “Lord save me.” And Jesus Immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Jesus has a lesson for Peter here, but you might notice that the lesson came after he pulled him out of the water. When Peter cried for help Jesus responded immediately. There is a time for teaching your children life’s lessons, but not when their lives are in danger. Jesus wants to talk to Peter about why he was doubting and about why he turned away from him, but he pulls him out of the water first.

God hears his people. God saves them. Then, God instructs them.

Of course, the instructions are important; of course, the commandments are important. Of course, Jesus wants us to listen to him about how we are to live in this world, and live in relationship with God and each other, but the Good News is that the commandments are meant to be our response to God’s salvation, they are not meant to be a condition of our salvation. Jesus did not quiz Peter on the Baptismal Covenant or on the Ten Commandments before he decided whether to pull him out of the water. Thankfully, that’s not how our God works. Our God is faithful, even when we are not. When we turn away from God, when we start focusing more on ourselves and on the work of our own hands, when we stop focusing on Jesus and start staring at our own feet, when we start to think we can do it on our own, and when we inevitably sink into the water, God is right there to grab us and pick us back up again. We just have to call on him.

Now to be sure, Jesus may have some words for us when we are back in the boat or on dry land. God’s commandments are important, Jesus’s teachings are vital, and we would be wise to pay close attention to them and heed them, but let’s always remember how the sotry goes and not get things out of order.

God hears us. God saves us. THEN God instructs us.

Sermon for July 12th, 2020

Readings:

Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

Video of sermon

 

Sometimes when Jesus speaks in the scriptures he gives us direct commands: do this or don’t do this.

 

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

Forgive as you have been forgiven.

Heal the sick.

Feed the poor.

Follow me.

Take up your cross.

Make disciples of all nations.

Baptize, proclaim, pray, beware,

Do and do not.

 

This is action Jesus. And regardless of whether or not we actually heed Jesus’s commands and do what he says, I think we really like action Jesus because he gives us something to do. And we really like having things to do; that gives us power and control. When Jesus says to do something or to not do something, I get to decide how I am going to respond. I can do it or I can not do it, but in either case I am in control and I like being in control. So even if action Jesus is telling me to do something I don’t really want to do, I like listening to action Jesus because I still have power and choice and agency in how I respond to what he says.

 

But action Jesus is not the only Jesus we find in the scriptures. Sometimes, many times actually, the Jesus we meet in scripture is not action Jesus, but truth Jesus. Sometimes when Jesus speaks in the scriptures he isn’t giving us a direct command, but is instead sharing with us an important truth. Jesus wants to tell us something about God, about the Kingdom of God, or even about ourselves and we can choose to either accept that truth or reject it, but we can’t actually do anything to change it. I think we really struggle with truth Jesus, because truth Jesus doesn’t give us the same level of power and control that action Jesus gives us. Action Jesus calls us to respond, but truth Jesus calls us to understand, and let’s face it, sometimes responding is easier than understanding or listening. But time and time again, Jesus says “let anyone with ears to hear, listen,” “hear then the parable,” “let the listener understand.” Yes, a lot of times Jesus calls us to action in this world, but there all also many, many times when Jesus gets our attention to share with us a truth. It may be a truth we have no control over. It may be a truth that is good news, or it may be a truth that is very hard for us to hear, but either way, Jesus thinks we need to hear it. Sometimes the only response that we can have to the words of Jesus is just to hear what he is saying and to receive it as truth.

 

In today’s gospel lesson we have one of Jesus’s many parables, and perhaps one of his more famous ones. “Listen!” he says. “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”

 

Immediately some of Jesus’s disciples came up to him (and this is the part that gets cut out of the reading this morning) and they ask him: “why are you talking this way? Why are you talking to them in parables?” It’s like they came up to Jesus and said, “Look man, why don’t you just tell people what to DO, that’s what they really want?” And Jesus says to them: “I am trying to help you understand secrets or truths about the kingdom.” And Jesus quotes Isaiah and says that many people’s hearts have grown dull and they have shut their eyes and closed their ears and have no desire to understand or know anymore. Then he makes very clear to them the truth in the parable:

 

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

 

The only thing Jesus tells his disciples to do in this passage is “hear.” Just listen to the truth he is sharing. Some people hear the word of God and just do not get it. It never has the chance to grown within them. Some people seem to get it, they may even been incredibly enthusiastic at first, but quickly their energy fades, they can’t manage to set down roots, and they fade away. There are others that hear the word of God and it takes root, but it is just one plant among many that eventually just gets choked out by the others that just seem to grow more quickly and be more vigorous. Finally, there are those who get it, who receive a word planted in their soul that continues to grow and thrive and to bear fruit their entire life long.

 

All Jesus asks us to do is hear this truth, but it is so tempting to hear this passage and to try and respond to it as if it were action Jesus talking; as if Jesus were telling us to get up and do something. So we start thinking:

 

How do I get those seeds off the path?

How do I help the seeds in the rocky ground set down roots?

How do I weed out the thorns?

How do I grown more fruit?

And how do I sew more of the seeds of God’s word in the world?

 

I want to respond to this passage by trying to think of something to do, but the only thing that Jesus actually asks me to do here is to listen. Hear what he is saying. This is truth Jesus speaking. Jesus wants me to understand something. He wants to share with me a truth about the way things are.

 

I have heard this parable so many times, but the longer I have lived and worked within the church, especially in active ministry, the more I appreciate the truth of it. The picture that Jesus paints in this little story is absolutely true in its depiction of how people respond to God, to faith, to the bible or to church in their lives. I can’t even count the times anymore that I have seen every one of these scenarios play out. Some people just don’t or won’t get it. Some people convert enthusiastically and then immediately disappear. Other people get distracted, or busy, or simply fall out of the habit and allow other things in their lives to take precedence. And then finally there are the people that just grow and grow from season to season, bearing good fruit, some more than others, and quite often surprising you with just how deep their roots are. That is church. That is faith.

 

And if what Jesus is saying here is actually true. If this is the way it is, then I can expect that this is going to continue to keep happening. I can expect some people to continue to have no interest in God. I can expect people to show early enthusiasm and quickly fall away. I can expect people to drift away from church, overcome or distracted by other cares and concerns. I can expect all those things, and even though I might not like it one bit, I don’t need to beat my head against that reality trying to change it, nor do any of us need to beat ourselves up trying to figure out what we are doing wrong when every seed that is planted doesn’t become the fruit bearing tree we envisioned. This is the way that God’s kingdom is breaking into this world and quite a lot of it is simply outside our control.

 

I think that we can fully expect that many people, not just in our parish, but throughout the church, will simply not return once the coronavirus crisis passes. I’m not talking about people that are exercising due caution for their health but are otherwise prayerful and active in worship in whatever ways they can be. If you are taking the time to watch this service online, then I imagine you still have an active desire for your faith to grow and bear fruit in your life. But for some people the closure of our churches, the social distancing precautions and all that is going on in our world and in everyone’s individual lives, will prove too much. Their faith may simply not be deeply enough rooted in their lives to withstand this. Some people simply will not be back.

 

Some seeds just won’t grow, but some will. It’s a shame, but we can’t let the fact that people fall away or walk away from God, faith and the church, get us down, make us despair or quit ourselves. We can’t be overwhelmed and discouraged by the seeds that don’t grow. Jesus told us it would be this way. Some seeds won’t grow, but some will. Not every life we touch is going to be transformed, but some will. This is a truth we need to understand. Jesus told us that it would be this way and I think he told us, I think he shared this truth, this secret of the kingdom with us so that we wouldn’t despair every time we see it happen. We don’t have time to despair about the seeds that don’t grow. Jesus has real work for us to do. There is action Jesus who calls on us to labor in God’s vineyard. But if we want to have the strength or the stamina or the perseverance or the determination to do what action Jesus tells us to do, then we need to be willing to listen when truth Jesus tells us to listen.

 

Sermon for Trinity Sunday 2020

Readings

• Genesis 1:1-2:4a
• 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
• Matthew 28:16-20
• Psalm 8

“And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

You know, you don’t have to read very far into this book to come across one of the most challenging ideas in the history of the world. In the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, there is a proclamation, a revelation of a divine mystery that is so profound we have never been able to fully comprehend it. It has always challenged us. Now, it is not the story of God creating the heavens and the earth and the beasts of the earth out of nothing, that is not all that challenging. I don’t find the belief in a divine creator of the universe to be all that hard to understand, and throughout the history off the world most people haven’t had a hard time believing that either. It might take some faith to believe that, but it doesn’t take a whole lot.

No, I think one of the most challenging statements in this entire book, which is full of many challenging statements, comes at Genesis chapter 1 verse 27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” I can’t think of many other verses in the Bible that are harder to comprehend than that. Now it may sound easy at first. We may be able to say it over and over again like we understand it. That verse may roll off our tongues very easily; we may give it limp service, but have we ever really comprehended it? Have we every really understood what it means? Well I think history has proven that we haven’t.

Think about this: what this verse is saying is that this force that created the entire world out of nothing; this all powerful being that is at the center of the universe and that is the source of all life and all that is good in the world, that God has gifted human beings with his image.

Every human being walking the earth today, every human being that has ever walked the earth, has within them a reflection of this divine creator. No doubt God loves all his creatures, but this one, this human creature is special. God has given this creature a part of his divine image or being. And Christians believe that God loves this one creature so much that when they had fallen away from him that he was born as one of them, and was willing to die as one of them, just to bring them back. That is how much he loves them. And Christians also believe that God is continually pouring a part of himself into them in ways that are just unfathomable. Sure, God loves all of his creation, but this one is special. This one bears God’s image. Now don’t hate me dog lovers, I’m a dog lover too. Animals can reveal God’s love to us in unique and surprising ways. You can see God reflected in all of creation, but why is it that the one place that God has told us that he has placed his image is so often the last place we go looking for it?

We are willing to treat other human beings in ways that we would never treat a dog.

God has told us that human beings bear his image. We christians believe that that same God was willing to die as one of these human beings to save them. And we believe that our bodies are, as Paul says, temples of the Holy Spirit, but somehow we manage to find reasons and excuses to talk about and treat other human beings as if they were less than animals.

So I think I can confidently say that Genesis chapter 1 verse 27 is one of the hardest verses is all of scripture, because we have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we just don’t get it. We want other human beings to be just another part of creation that we have dominion over. We don’t want other humans to be equal to us, and we sure don’t want to have to recognize that the God we profess to worship is also present in them too, but from the beginning that is the challenge that God gives us.

What makes it so challenging is that people are not simple, people are complex. Nobody you have ever met in your life is just one thing. Nobody is just black or just white. Nobody is just a cop or just a criminal. Nobody is just a Democrat or just a Republican. Nobody is just a man or just a woman. Nobody is just gay or just straight. And with the exception of our Lord Jesus, in whom there is no darkness, nobody is just good or just evil. We are all a swirl of sometimes very contradictory things. People just do not fit into neat categories. People are a mystery. It is when we start trying to look at other human beings as anything less than a mystery that we really get into trouble.

I grew up quite literally at my grandfather’s knee. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a child, and I was close to both of them, but I was particularly close as a young boy to my grandfather. We would drive around town, sometimes we would go fishing or exploring, sometimes I would help him in the garden, but most of the time we would just sit in the corner of his little den, he would smoke his pipe and either read his paper or watch wrestling on the television and tell stories. I loved his stories about the war and about growing up as a dirt poor farmer in Georgia. Sometimes the stories were heroic adventures like crossing the Atlantic on a transport ship bound for the war in Europe. Sometimes his stories were a bit darker though. He had an alcoholic and abusive father that left him and his mother and siblings for a while when he was young. To survive my grandfather and his brother would sort through the town dump looking for food for the family. Or they would try and raise money anyway they could, which sometimes their father would “borrow” from them and never give back.

I was thinking about my grandfather this week, because after he married and had kids, he eventually moved his family to Florida, where he got a GED and eventually a job at the Space center. Not a high powered or glamorous job at all, but still he was a part of something amazing. He went from looking for food for his family in the town dump to looking for rocket parts to send men to the moon.

I have also been thinking a lot about my grandfather this week, because in many ways he was something of a mystery too: he could be loving or he could be harsh, he struggled mightily will some really ugly personal demons like alcoholism and depression and he was also a practical joker with a great sense of humor. He could be the best neighbor you ever had, unless of course you were black.

You see, my grandfather was incredibly racist. A man who was very much a swirl of contradictions himself, wanted other people to be either this or that.

I don’t know if he ever committed any acts of violence against a person of color, he certainly never told me if he did, but I do know that for him black people, which is not the world he used, they were all just one thing.

Now my parents were very clear with my and my sister, that this was not OK. We needed to learn to respect everyone and to treat people equally. I could see my grandfather’s prejudice and recognize it as evil, but still I loved him very much.

I learned from an early age what it means to love someone, really love someone, that is deeply flawed, that did and said things that I thought were wrong. I learned that people are complicated; that people have pain and hurt in their lives that you probably know nothing about. Not only was my grandfather in many ways a mystery, I think that his response to the mystery within himself was to try and simplify everyone else. Mystery can make us uncomfortable. Certainty and precision feels better. I’m sure there are plenty of people that would like to see my grandfather as simply one thing or another, but I loved him enough to know that its just not that simple. I wish I could say that he taught me to be color-blind, but that’s just not true. What can can say though is that inadvertently at least, he taught me that people are complicated.

People are complicated and it is hard to live in a world with complicated people, so we create categories to make everything easier to understand. We find ways to lump people together and make them just another creature that we have dominion over instead of a little divine mystery. We find ways to make sure that people stay in these categories. But the problem is real human beings don’t fit into neat little categories, they weren’t meant to. That isn’t how God created us. God created us to be little, individual bearers of his image. But of all the things the scriptures tell us, that is surely one of the hardest things to believe, because most of the time that’s not how we treat other people. We keep trying to make people simple, when they just aren’t.

And maybe that right there is proof that we really do bear the image of God. You see Christians believe in the Holy Trinity. There is one God with three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is what we celebrate today, Trinity Sunday. At the heart of our faith is the idea that God is a mystery that is beyond our understanding. God has revealed himself to us in certain ways, but ultimately God is beyond our understanding. God is not simple. God is not just one thing. Every heresy over the past two thousand years has usually come when someone has tried to make God or Jesus too simple. Too much one thing or another. But God will not be put into a neat little box like that and neither will those that bear God’s image. You cannot understand or comprehend the Holy Trinity, but you can live in relationship with it and you can love it. And that is how we are called to live with everyone that bears that image in their soul: living in relationship with them and loving them. Part of the doctrine of the trinity is that a loving relationship is part of the very essence of the creator of the universe. It is part of the image that we have all been marked with. And if that is true then we will not fix the world by trying to simplify it and everyone within it.

This dumpster fire of a world we’re living in didn’t just happen over night. We have come to this point because we have never been able to grasp, since the beginning, Genesis chapter 1 verse 27. We have never been able to fully appreciate the divine image in our fellow human beings. We have either used power and influence to try and force people into simple categories that we can neatly classify and have dominion over like fish and cattle, or we have had people try and force us to be one thing or another. But people aren’t fish or cattle. People aren’t simple. I don’t fit neatly into categories and I’m guessing most of you don’t either. We are each and every one of us, a little mystery.

Now if it were up to me, I probably would have given up on the world and humanity long ago as “not worth saving.” It would be such an easy classification to dump the whole world in and just start over, but fortunately for us, God’s not that simple. God sees in every human being a little mystery, a reflection of himself, a life that is worth saving.

Maybe someday when it is all over and we stand before the throne we will be able to see each other the way that God sees us, but still I can’t help but hope that we don’t have to start living in the Book of Revelation, before we start to appreciate what God created in the Book of Genesis.