May 23, 2016

“Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— he left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” John 4:1-15

I was sitting in a coffee shop that I frequent when I heard a barista call out a drink: “Red Eye on the Bar”. I had never heard of a Red Eye coffee drink – and that got me wondering what it might be. So, being the shy person I am, I walked up to the coffee shop employee the next time I stopped and ask “What is a Red Eye?” They were much too excited to tell me that a Red Eye is a cup of regular coffee (iced or hot) with a single shot of espresso added in. Now, I also looked up on the menu hanging behind the coffee bar to try to find the drink called a “Red Eye” and it was not there. I also ran across a website that was devoted to telling you about the “secret” menu that exists for this local favorite coffee watering hole. Secret Menu? Yes, apparently there is a secret menu – more coffee drinks so that people will never go thirsty or lack a diversity of coffee beverages.

Jesus was tired, and was suffering from some “Red Eye” – meaning he was tired and needed to sit for a while. And in taking a break, he is able to meet with someone who needed a whole lot of Grace in her life. And even though he is “red eyed” by his journey, he takes the time to teach her about the Grace of G-d. Even his exhaustion did not keep him from ministering to someone in need.

How often have we said we are too tired to go to church, or to go to bible study or some other obligation with the church? Even when we are tired there are going to be people who are looking for some Grace in their lives. And yes, we need to take a break when we are too tired – because even the genesis of this story is Jesus stopping to take a break. It just reminds us that even when we are least expecting, someone who needs to hear about the love and grace of Jesus may sit down beside us – just as exhausted – but just as thirsting for grace.

Pastor Dave

May 22, 2016

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” John 16:12-15

So, how do you explain the unexplainable? That is the pastor’s problem with the Holy Trinity. It has been a quandary for 1700 years. I say for 1700 years because for the first three to four hundred years of the church, the persecution of the faithful took away time to argue about how G-d expresses G-d’s self. Then, once Constantine declared Christianity legal, the religious leaders could begin to make some sense of G-d’s expression to the world. Constantine’s decision to cease the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was a turning point for Early Christianity, sometimes referred to as the Peace of the Church. In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan decriminalizing Christian worship. The Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and the second council called the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE worked and reworked the Nicene Creed also called the “Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed”. In this creed is developed the three expressions of G-d which we call Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

To try to give examples of how G-d expresses G-d’s self like I did in the previous devotion fail to hit the mark because, no matter what examples you may try to use, they often become a form of “Modalism”. You see, in trying to explain G-d as a single entity who, throughout Biblical history, has revealed G-d’s self in three modes or forms, we could look for common examples to make the case. For example, we could use an apple as an example. The apple is one thing that has three separate parts: a skin, a fruit and a core. But the skin in not the apple, the core is not the apple, and the fruit is not the apple. And although that helps, it still fails in explaining the mystery of the Trinity because not one of those parts can function without the other two. The true nature of G-d as the Trinity is G-d understood in three eternal “Co-existent persons”: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But there are not three G-ds, only One Eternal G-d.

Here is just one snippet from the Athanasian Creed, a Creed often read on Trinity Sunday, and a creed that helps us understand the true nature of G-d:

Eternal is the Father; eternal is the Son; eternal is the Spirit: And yet there are not three eternal beings, but one who is eternal; as there are not three uncreated and unlimited beings, but one who is uncreated and unlimited. Almighty is the Father; almighty is the Son; almighty is the Spirit: And yet there are not three almighty beings, but one who is almighty. Thus the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God: And yet there are not three gods, but one God.

So, today we give praise to the Trinity – and though it goes beyond explanation, we still seek a relationship to this One G-d known to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Pastor Dave