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Is it time for the United States to get an amicable divorce?  Are there irreconcilable differences between the Red States and the Blue States?  As a blue-stater, I’m sick & tired of the carping about the President, Affordable Health Care, and regulations which make our life together safer and more equitable.  Culturally, I believe that the Common Good exceeds individual liberties.  Religiously, I believe that salvation demands justice and righteousness as a result of personal faith.  And so I think that the United States should give the dissenters opportunity to refuse federal regulations about education, relief for the poor, accessibility for the disabled and other human services.  In return, if such states wish smaller government, let them build their own roads and bridges, airports and medical outlets.  The following has little to do with this rant — or does it??

Many of us on Sunday will hear Jeremiah bemoaning God’s call:  “I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me…for the word of the Lord has become  for me a reproach and derision all day long.” (20:7-8)  Those who attempt to speak God’s word against idols often feel as though they’re from Mars:  they just don’t fit in.  Yet if the ones whom God has called do NOT speak up, “then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones;  I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (v.9)   Those who recognize a disconnect between God’s Righteousness and life as it is cannot hold it in, despite being considered an alien.

Don’t shun the Letter to the Romans because it’s deep and often dark.  Though wordy and seemingly twisted, Paul documents the wrestling of the Divine with the Human — even admitting his own conundrums about living the Holy Life.  Here in the 6th chapter, he says that “we have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death(!), so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life….So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”  (verses 4 and 11)  We’re to read “sin” as a state of brokenness or separation from God, more than our cherished portfolio of  individual evils.  This New Life gives us a heightened awareness of the imperfections all around.  Dare we name them??

“Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.”  (Jesus, according to Matthew 10:26)  This can be pretty rough:  “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (v.34)  Thus there will be a Great Divide:  “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (v.39)  Pretty direct, huh?

This is surely the Sunday to sing “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”!   Luther’s poetry can be our pep-song:  “And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us….Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; the body they may kill; God’s truth abideth still; his kingdom is forever.”

God Bless Us, Every One                             Horace Brown King

St. Patrick, ’tis said, took a stalk of shamrock to explain the Trinity.  Though of one stem, three leafs present themselves.  (This’ll work with a clover, too.)  Maybe that’s as close as we can get to understand the three persons of God.  Anyway, this Sunday will be Trinity Sunday, the annual observance of this mystery by the Church.  Trinity Sunday doesn’t ask us to DO something; it invites us to be aware of an all-encompassing God who has left no stone unturned in Divine care for our daily well-being.

Readings begin with a brief passage from Genesis, vv.1,2 &4:  “…the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, [yet] a wind from God swept over the face of the waters…”  When there was nothing, there was God.  When our days seem formless and void, even then a wind from God is blowing.

From the Beginnings to the Endings:  we read also from the final words of Paul to the Corinthian congregations.  “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”  (II Corinthians 13:13)  Here are all the blessings!  Grace, introduced by Christ, is that understanding that we’re loved despite our feet of clay, and that we no longer have to cower in the shadows from a vengeful God.  Love is that steadfast care so well described in an earlier Corinthian passage which is somewhat diminished by its use in weddings (letter I, chapter 13).  Communion with the Holy Spirit, sometimes written as “fellowship”, is a mystic wholeness with Creator and Creation in which we become fully absorbed by holiness.  In the big picture, we need nothing more….

The Gospel reading is a reprise from last week’s Pentecost experience:  Matthew remembers Jesus’ last directions which affirm the Three-in-One.  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (28:19)   Get them involved in Wholeness, let them know and feel all there is.  Our baptism announces what God is already doing within us.

Another Saint, Augustine of Hippo, used a hard-boiled egg to illustrate Trinity.  The shell, the white, and then inside, the yolk —  all comprise an egg, and the egg wouldn’t be an egg without all three.  On this special day, I’m very glad for being included in this enfolding affirmation of an enduring Providence!

God Bless Us, Every One                           Horace Brown King

This Sunday is Pentecost–50 days past Easter/Passover–when the Church celebrates the Holy Spirit.  Some traditions will emphasize Luke’s dramatic account (chapter 2 of Acts), others will remember John’s post-resurrection account of Jesus “breathing” on the Disciples (“ruach”, holy breath, in John 20:22).  The Hebrew Scriptures introduce this Spirit of God immediately in Genesis 1, as it moved across the face of the deep water.  Face it, the Holy Spirit is hard to contain!  But when he/she blows that mighty wind, we’re in for some kind of ride…..!

Let’s begin with Numbers 11:24-30.  Moses had taken seventy elders to meet with The Lord, and the Spirit went out to each of them and “they prophesied.”  Not only that, but two men who had been left back at camp ALSO prophesied!   Some were jealous of them, but Moses said, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” (v.29)   To “prophesy” meant to speak for God, and others would add, “in order to combat idolatry (belief in other gods)”.   So Moses’ rebuke is relevant through the centuries and especially today.  Will the Lord’s people speak up against human exploitation, financial elitism, and winning at all cost?

The second chapter of Acts has about a thousand sermons in it:  it recounts the dramatic coming of God’s Spirit in wind, fire and universal understanding.  The verse that sprung out at me is number 17, “and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young [people] shall see visions, and your old [people] shall dream dreams.”   This Spirit is one which arouses our passions and empowers us to BE God’s People.  Not content to be merely a metaphysical experience, God’s Spirit becomes a freight train of righteous activity and a whirlwind of justice!

Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, a Jewish expression of hope for “a time when God’s life-giving presence would flow out in rivers from the temple, like water from the rock in the wilderness.” (Meda A. A. Stamper)   Part of the ritual included carrying a golden pitcher filled from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple each day.  What a perfect scene for Jesus to shout out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As the scripture has said, “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’.” (John 7:37-38)   Here the Spirit is likened to an abundant stream which re-awakens our dried-up souls into blossom once again…

“To be human is to be thirsty for something more than we have, thirsty to be someone more than who we are now.” (Thomas G. Long)   The daily introduction of the Holy Spirit into our specific time and place is God’s way of refreshing our journey through this arid land.  Somehow it’s comforting to me to realize that this Creative person of God has folded her wings over even me, and that we the Church are yet included in the visions and dreams of an engaged and loving God.

God Bless Us, Every One                                    Horace Brown King