“Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews.²He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” ³Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?”¹⁰Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? ¹¹“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. ¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” John 3:1-17

“According to Paul, we are not only God’s children, but also heirs, and not just heirs, but co-heirs with Christ. Now, stop here for just a moment and think about what Paul is really saying. That God considers us co-heirs – that is, equal inheritors of all God has to give – with Christ, God’s only begotten Son. Not only that, but Paul goes on to describe the difference it makes. Rather than being afraid – of the future, of what people may think of us, of our status, of our standing with God – Paul invites us instead to imagine a life of courage, the courage of those who have been adopted by God and invited into the full measure of God’s blessings and riches. Jesus says much the same to Nicodemus, inviting him to image that we have the opportunity through our life in the Spirit to be born anew, born from above as God’s children, those so precious God was willing to give his only Son as testament to how much God loves all of us. All of which brings me to the Trinity. (Betcha didn’t see that one coming.)

 Look, here’s the thing: I don’t for a moment pretend to understand the Trinity, and quite frankly I don’t frankly trust those who say they do. (Goodness, but even Augustine said it was beyond him.) But I do know this: at the heart of our understanding of God as somehow three-in-one is the notion that you can’t fully or finally understand God without talking about relationship. That God is so full of love that there has to be some way of talking about that loved shared in and through profound relationships. Some say that’s why God created the cosmos and humanity in the first place, to have more people to love. But the Trinity goes even further, saying that from the very beginning of time the dynamic power of love that is at the heart of God’s identity and character can only be captured – and that dimly! – by thinking of the love that is shared. (Perhaps it’s simply impossible to think about love that isn’t shared.) And so God’s essential and core being has always been a giving and receiving and sharing of love that finally spills out into the whole of the universe and invites all of us into it.” (davidlose.net, Three-In-One Plus One, May 25, 2015, David Lose)

Today, we celebrate Trinity Sunday, a confusing and perplexing religious concept. As a pastor, I just hope you remember today just a little of what the Trinity means to us. The Trinity is the three-person nature of G-d. Through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we see the individuality and the communal nature of a G-d who pours out G-d’s own love in creation, redemption, and sanctification.  This Triune G-d is revealed to us in the sacraments: through the meal, in the waters of baptism, and in the word, all shared in community throughout the ages. Yes, it would be easier if we had a G-d who was easier to understand, but thank goodness that is not the case. If we knew everything about G-d, if we understood G-d completely, how quickly would we move onto other things because G-d would become too ordinary. Instead, we have a Triune G-d who is impossible to explain, yet reveals G-d’s self through common things – bread, wine, water, and word and people – all of the things we associate with religion.

It is because people have cheapened religion, and have reduced worship to nothing more sacred than a concert in the park that Trinity Sunday remains so important to us, as Lutheran Christians.  The Trinity not only informs our faith, it bookends our worship – we begin and end each worship service “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  And it is so important that it bookends our Christian lives – we are baptized in the name of the Trinity, and when we are buried the pastor speaks these words: “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, in sure and certain hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection,  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.”     

The G-d who created the heavens and earth is the G-d who loves you infinitely more than any earthly father or mother. You don’t come to such conclusions by your reason, intellect or brain. You discover those conclusions through the revelation in Scripture. Similarly, that G-d loves you so much that he was willing to suffer and die for you on the cross, you don’t find that truth by your reason or intellect but you find it in the revelation in the Scriptures. That this G-d is fully present in your heart and my heart and is with us this day, such truth is not discovered in one’s own brain but is revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures. We find the truth about G-d and the truth about the Trinity, not through reason, but through revelation – G-d incarnate, Jesus Christ, who with the Father imparted unto the world the gift of the Holy Spirit – revealed to us in Word, Water, Bread and Wine.

Pastor Dave

The Lost Scriptures – Wisdom Literature and Poetry

The Odes of Solomon

Ode 1

The Lord is on my head like a crown, and I shall never be without Him.

Plaited for me is the crown of truth, and it caused Your branches to blossom in me.

For it is not like a parched crown that blossoms not;

For You live upon my head, and have blossomed upon me.

Your fruits are full and complete; they are full of Your salvation….

Ode 3

… I am putting on the love of the Lord.

And His members are with Him, and I am dependent on them; and He loves me.

For I should not have known how to love the Lord, if He had not continuously loved me.

Who is able to distinguish love, except him who is loved?

I love the Beloved and I myself love Him, and where His rest is, there also am I.

And I shall be no stranger, because there is no jealousy with the Lord Most High and Merciful.

I have been united to Him, because the lover has found the Beloved, because I love Him that is the Son, I shall become a son.

Indeed he who is joined to Him who is immortal, truly shall be immortal.

And he who delights in the Life will become living.

This is the Spirit of the Lord, which is not false, which teaches the sons of men to know His ways.

Be wise and understanding and awakened.
Hallelujah.

Singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving has deep roots in Judaism, and the early Christian church. As people of faith, they also followed a familiar pattern in preparing and even adapting various songs of the faith for worship in the Christian community. One of the oldest surviving collections of sacred hymns sung in the early churches that exist outside of the New Testament is the late first or second century collection known as the Odes of Solomon. There were originally forty-two hymns in this collection, but Ode 2 and part of Ode 3 in the collection are now lost. The rest of the Odes have been recovered from the various manuscripts that have survived antiquity. The Odes survive in fragmentary condition in Greek and Syriac and may have originated in Syria or even Palestine.

The authorship attributed to Solomon is not explained anywhere and may have been attributed to him because he was well known for wisdom teachings. Because there are clear references to Christian beliefs in the Odes, the author obviously wanted to reflect Christian views of Jesus (his birth, death, resurrection, humanity, and others), as well as his praise of G-d. There is still much that we do not know about these spiritual songs such as the identity of the author and their specific provenance, but there is a broad consensus today that they are Christian hymns reflecting the faith of early Jewish Christians at the end of the first century or early second century of the Common Era.

What is an ode, and how does it differ from a Psalm? That is my question. An Ode is “a lyric poem in the form of an address to a particular subject, often elevated in style or manner and written in varied or irregular meter” according to our friend Google. It is a poem that is meant to be sung. A Psalm is a sacred song or hymn. There are five kinds of Psalms in the Bible:

Hymns, Communal Laments, Individual Laments, Royal Psalms, and Thanksgiving Psalms.

The Psalms we have in the Bible were meant to be sung – they were words for worship put to music. The Odes of Solomon  were also meant to be sung, in worship. Singing was a part of worship way before Christianity found its voice. We can thank Martin Luther for reconnecting with this most important part of worship for Lutherans.

Pastor Dave