God has created us in the divine image, and that’s the truth about God we really want to focus on and know and live on this feast of the Holy Trinity.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Holy Trinity, year C
Texts: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

What if the Triune God is not at all interested in our concept of the Trinity?

That is to say, when we celebrate the Holy Trinity we’d do better to focus on what the Triune God actually cares about: who and what we are, not who and what God is.

Our Hebrew forebears tell us that in the midst of creation, God said, “let us make humanity in our image, in our likeness.” And Scripture from there forward is the story of God calling humanity into that divine image. There’s very little about how God is put together. God’s personality and God’s love, desire, and concern for humanity and the creation are clear, but not God’s make-up.

And the Triune God’s concern throughout Scripture is how we live and love with each other. In short, how we live as that image of God.

Which brings us to Lady Wisdom.

We like to try and figure out who she is. Today she’s called Wisdom and Understanding, which reminds us of Isaiah’s declaration that the Spirit of God is, in part, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding.” So maybe Lady Wisdom is the Holy Spirit. Many have noticed here her participation in the creation and think of John chapter 1, and conclude Lady Wisdom is actually Christ. Both are beautiful possibilities.

But what Wisdom actually cares about and calls out is that we seek her, ask for divine wisdom in our lives, that we abandon foolishness and all the things that lead us to harm each other and the creation. Her voice speaks as God to us. But what she offers is what we want to seek.

And so Wisdom’s gift molds us into God’s image.

Which was God’s intent from the beginning. Instead of trying to figure out the divine math of a Triune God far beyond our comprehension, this day is better spent seeking divine wisdom. Asking that she shape us into a new way of understanding in the world. More than increased knowledge, we seek a way of God that grows in understanding the world and each other.

Today Jesus promises that as we’re ready, the Spirit will tell us more. The joy of that is that if we don’t understand some things now, one day we might. Humanity can grow more and more ready to hear more and more from Lady Wisdom.

Because the more we see her as God, the more we learn God’s patience and foresight, God’s ability to hold more than one thought or idea in tension, God’s grace in seeing good even where we can’t imagine finding any.

And today we hear other aspects of the image of God that are offered as gift to us.

Paul says God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. All the talk of love we hear from Jesus, all the focus on love of God and love of neighbor, all the attributes of divine love – self-giving, vulnerable, sacrificial – all this is the center of the image of God. So when someone purporting to have a Christian agenda does these horrifying things among us, we know they are not of Christ. These evil killings are not God’s will, are not God’s love.

The love that holds the Trinity together, the love that went to a cross and broke the power of evil and death, the love that still is willing to lose everything to draw you and all people into God’s heart, that’s the image of God God desperately needs you and me to live in the world.

And, like wisdom, love is a gift of God, poured into your heart and mine. You don’t have to strain to produce it. If you’re lacking in divine love, ask for it. Pray for it. And expect to have the Spirit fill you up and re-shape you into the love of God.

Today Paul says we have access to God’s grace through Christ, too.

So we can be grace people in the world, living as God’s image in our forgiveness, our willingness to look for good in others, our mercy for those who may not deserve it but get it because they, too, are beloved of God.

Paul also says we have peace with God through Christ’s love for us. When we become peacemakers, we embody God’s image in the world. As people who don’t return hate for hate or violence for violence. Sometimes offering a strong resistant peace that stands calmly, lovingly in the face of hatred, refusing to participate. Sometimes being a quiet peace with others that perhaps leads them to consider whether that’s a way they might want to walk.

In the wake of the devastating violence of the assassinations and attempted assassinations in our city this weekend, on top of this week’s escalation of war in the Middle East, and the abuse of military power in Los Angeles and the disgusting spectacle of a Soviet-style military parade in Washington, our living into this image of God’s peace is more important than ever. And it’s the only thing that can turn this world away from the hatred and violence that are now threatening to consume us.

Our worship today re-focuses us from thinking about God to doing as God.

So on this Holy Trinity Sunday, let’s spend our energy and time seeking God’s Wisdom, that she make us wise; asking for the Holy Spirit to re-shape our hearts into God’s love; seeking from Christ the peace and grace that will make us God’s agents of healing and change in this world.

Maybe we’ll understand the full truth about the Trinity in the life to come. Maybe we won’t. But right now, right here, we know the image of that Triune God and we can be shaped by God to live in it, God’s most fervent wish.

Let that be our focus and hope and prayer today. That as God’s image spreads through this world, God’s grace and healing and love go with it and it brings hope for a new day of peace and wholeness.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

The Holy Spirit is out of our control, and that’s the best news ever, because that means God’s love could actually bring about healing and hope for all.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Day of Pentecost, year C
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This was a day of chaos.

The sound of rushing wind – think tornado noise – filled the air, something that looked like flames danced on a hundred and twenty heads, and a hundred and twenty voices spoke in multiple languages about what God is doing. Think of the confusing sound of just seven or eight languages saying the same thing at once that we just heard in our Acts reading, and multiply that by fifteen, and you get a sense of it.

We did not hear a doctrine of sanctification this morning. We heard a chaotic, brilliant, probably frightening, awe-inspiring, confusing, exciting scene in the middle of Jerusalem where the Holy Spirit of God was acting.

That’s where we need to stay. With the story. With what happened. And is happening. And this story proclaims the Spirit of the Triune God working in the world cannot be controlled. We aren’t in charge.

But rarely are we willing to let it sit there.

Since this moment in Jerusalem, theologians have formulated doctrines about the Holy Spirit. There’s nothing wrong with thinking about what this means. But when we take Scripture and build doctrines on top, those doctrines become what we try to trust. The more it’s codified, the further you get from God’s actual activity.

Virtually all our theology of the Spirit in the Western church was formulated by white men of European ethnicity. People like me. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad. But when those white European-descent men say that how they understand God’s Spirit is the only way, we’re in trouble. I’ve personally heard a Lutheran theologian say to a student that you can’t bring your own experience or your sense of revelation into theology. As if our accepted theology is revelation handed down without change. That’s just ignorant. All theology is deeply shaped by the experience of the theologian.

Now, if you’re afraid the Spirit could do just anything anywhere, it’s convenient to pretend you’ve got the clean, non-experiential truth about her work. So you can control the message.

But if we see anything at Pentecost, it’s that the Spirit is out of control.

So let’s go back to the story. What actually happened that day?

Apart from the beautiful chaos and noise and preaching, ultimately a lot of people decided they wanted to join the believers that day. Luke says 3,000, which is a lot. But even if you think Luke might exaggerate, if he exaggerated by a full 1,000 percent that still leaves 300. That’s pretty amazing.

But what drew them to want this? Not a doctrine on the nature of the Triune God, or the Holy Spirit. Something in the whole amazing chaos of that day, in what the believers proclaimed about what God is doing, and the joy in their faces, drew them in. As with last week and our jailer, these people saw what the believers had and said, “Can we have that, too?”

And after this, this enlarged community shared everything with each other so no one went without, they worshipped and lived together. And they had the goodwill of everyone, Luke says. They were changed and others noticed. They were transformed by the Spirit of God and made a difference in the world. Stay with that story instead of making a doctrine about it and you’ll see God.

Staying with the story means giving up any hope that we can control the Spirit.

And that can frighten people, as we’ve seen throughout Christian history. What if someone says the Spirit is leading them to something that we don’t like? Like a theology that challenges us or a direction we haven’t thought of? Church history is littered with stories of hatred and ostracism and heresy trials and destruction because some Christians followed the Spirit in a way other Christians didn’t like.

And discerning where the Spirit is working is hard. Even on this Day of Pentecost some saw all of this and decided these one hundred and twenty women and men were drunk. If you can’t tell the difference between inebriation and the coming of the Spirit, shouldn’t someone be controlling this?

But if you want to believe and trust in the living Triune God whose Spirit blows wherever she wills, the answer is no. The Spirit of God is out of our control, according to all these stories.

But it’s not all wide open. We can reliably know if something is of the Spirit.

Look at what Jesus says today, in verses we also heard a couple weeks ago. The Spirit, the Paraclete (Advocate) is called alongside you and me and all God’s people, to remind us of all Jesus said.

That’s how you can discern. Just as you go back to Pentecost to see the truth of the uncontrollable Spirit, Jesus says the Spirit alongside you will send you back to what God’s Son said and did. You can know if something is of the Spirit when it’s consistent with Jesus.

And notice that Jesus didn’t teach a doctrine of justification, either. Jesus, God-with-us, is our justification. Jesus revealed the face of the Triune God for the creation, and it was and is a face of love and benevolence, of grace and forgiveness, of welcome and challenge.

If the Spirit truly works within the boundaries of what Jesus said and did, then if we see love of God and love of neighbor, love of enemies and prayer for persecutors, love for all those struggling and in need, love willing to lose itself for the sake of another, if we see anything of this heart of what Jesus said and did, we can trust that the Spirit is there. Even if we’re challenged or threatened by that movement.

And if someone claims the Spirit’s influence to do evil, to hate, hurt, oppress, to do violence of any kind, we know they’re not of the Spirit. The work and purpose of God is love, Jesus taught and showed, and the Spirit reminds us of that.

It’s good that we’re not in control.

We can’t imagine every way God’s love can change things, heal things, make a difference, and we don’t have to. That’s the Spirit’s job. And we can’t control where the Spirit moves and works because of our limited imagination. We might be standing in the way of God’s love and that we never want to do.

Pentecost shows that God is out of our control but bringing life to the creation, and that’s great news. Because if we really want this world to be healed, if we want all the pain and suffering in our country and world to be eased, all the hatred and destruction from even our highest elected leaders to be stopped, it’s wonderful that God’s got better ideas than we do and can’t control them. But we can get on board.

And do listen for the Spirit in your life, where she’s speaking to you, or calling you to new ways of healing and hope. They might be ways you hadn’t considered. But they will certainly bring life.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen