Link to the audio file and manuscript for my sermon from Sunday, May 30th

Here's the link to the audio file for my sermon from Sunday, May 30th.  This was Trinity Sunday, but also Memorial Dedication Sunday in our congregation, a time when we dedicate our memorial projects for the previous year. 

On this holiday weekend, we were remembering "Family," "God's Family," and celebrating together our interconnectedness. 

If you'd like to listen to the recording from this service, you can click on the link below and download the windows media audio file. 

http://www.box.net/shared/9zov1ismpk


The manuscript I used to preach from follows below: 





Trinity Sunday [Memorial Dedication]; May 30, 2010
Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31 *
Psalm 8 *
Romans 5: 1-5
John 16: 2-15

“The Family of God”

--} Trinity Sunday is all about the “family” that is God. As Presbyterians, we affirm the traditional doctrine that says our God is One God, but in three persons—God the Father, the Creator; God the Son, the redeemer; God the Holy Spirit, the Sustainer. Yet the problem with the Trinity most of the time is that we get woefully confused at having to say, God is one—but yet—God is three! And by the time we have to navigate all of that, people are either confused, or just plain bewildered. Don’t worry—God is still “God.”

The “Trinity” begins to make a little more sense to me, however, if we begin by thinking about God as “community”—or even as “family.” Such is the image the book of Genesis offers to us, where some of the stories we read about Creator God reveal a God who is at least described as “plural.” In Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’.” This still matches our doctrine that declares God is in “three persons.” And then again, in last week’s reading for the Tower of Babel, in Genesis 11:7 we hear God saying, “Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” God again appearing clearly more than “singular.” So I’ve been thinking about God’s revelation to us as human beings in creation.

Remember the divine command that follows creation?

“So God created humankind in [God’s] image, in the image of God [God] created them; male and female [God] created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

By this command God offers us a vision for creation that begins not only with a God who is referred to in the plural, but the reality for human beings that includes “being fruitful and multiplying.” God gifts human beings with relationships—with one another, and with God; and both kinds of relationships can be “fruitful.” While we have lots of different understandings of “family” or “community” in our world—from lots of situations intended and not—no human being is born on his or her own, apart from a father and mother of origin. All of our scientific wonderment and power cannot take that bit of creation from God. And God’s creative intention seems to match the reality of God’s own self. Man, woman, children. It seems strangely reminiscent of a God who is “more” than simply an “old white-haired man with a beard up in heaven.”

When we can think of God as “community” or even “family,” we have an image that almost all of us can relate too. It becomes easier to “see” God in one another. To know God—by the touch of a hand, the sound of a voice, the strange warming of our hearts. Even if our “family” experience isn’t the best, or when other relationships have been broken for one reason or another, our relationship with God can still be bound up in our relationship with other human beings. In fact, this appears to be God’s obvious design.

Listen again to the words of the Psalmist, describing God’s masterful creation, and think about the glory and honor we’ve been crowned with.

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”

And the conclusion of our reading from Proverbs that describes the creation and life of God’s Spirit—concludes with the image of God, the master-worker, who delights in the Spirit, rejoices in God’s “inhabited world,” and who “delights in the human race.” Not only does God “create” human beings, but God seems to “delight” in us as if God were enamored with the image of God’s own self. As the story in Genesis says, God sees us, and calls us “good.”

Brothers and sisters, WE are the delight of God’s eye and the glory of God’s creation. We—and—our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, our cousins, aunts, uncles, relatives and friends. WE, and the communities we form and share—are the reminders of God’s community and God’s creative care. And to the extent that we have “dominion” over the world, and inhabit nearly every corner; because we have built up and torn down, and are responsible for disasters both human-made and otherwise—we not only rely on God’s ongoing creative care, but have become kind of co-creators with God, for good or bad. God’s “delight,” God’s “crowning” of us as human beings makes us special. We are imbued with the promises and possibilities of God, and our lives should declare it!


But today, when most of us are thinking about “family” or “community,” or those who have gone before or will come after—on this day, we should be reminded that God also appears to us as “community” in a similar kind of way. And we know about “community.”
This is a great weekend for “remembering” both “family” and “community,” isn’t it? A holiday weekend where lots of folks get together with family. A holiday, where we “remember” family and friends, good times and bad times and just making it through. We remember those who have worked hard, who have sacrificed for our benefit, who have given of themselves, and shared. We remember those who have gone before us and recognize those who will come after us. And it’s because we know that both “family” and “community” are vital parts of who we have been created to be—as God made us.

God is in community, and human beings are created for community. Which is why fruitfulness and multiplying aren’t insignificant. Which is why loving one another is important. Which is why sharing is important. Which is why trusting God and one another is important. We rely on one another, we are interconnected with one another; we are created for each other and with each other—in God’s mind. So perhaps, one of the gifts of Trinity Sunday is to be REMINDED of the nature of our community and God’s substantial part in it.

And today as we tell the stories of our community and those we’ve loved, surely we can be reminded of God’s community who has loved us and made all things possible. As we gather to worship we not only dedicate our lives but remember the example of those who have gone before us. It’s about “family”—God’s family and our family; God’s community and our “community.” And it’s not just about us, and OUR Church, or OUR lives or what we can accomplish. It’s about God who created us, and delights in us, and who has crowned us with promises and possibilities.

Today we give thanks, because God has been good to us. God has taught us and reminded us of the things and people that are important. And God promises to light our future as well. And as much as we learn to love, and share, and live in community together—we will share in God’s good intentions.

Trinity Sunday might baffle us with tradition and doctrine. It may challenge us to believe what we might otherwise not be willing to accept. But as we look into one another’s eyes, as we share the very image of God and God’s own self in our relationships—with one another and with God. And imbued with God’s promises and possibilities, we continue to share God’s blessings because we’ve been taught that God is with us, in community with us.

So this weekend, as we remember those who have been significant in our lives and in the life of our congregation, we are remembering too how close God is to us. It’s a chance not only to remember and give thanks, but to know that we have been created special, that we are imbued with God’s promises and possibilities—because we are a part of the great family of God.

Brothers and sisters, WE are the delight of God’s eye and the glory of God’s creation. We—and—our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers, our cousins, aunts, uncles, relatives and friends. WE, and the communities we form and share—are the reminders of God’s community and God’s creative care. God’s “delight,” God’s “crowning” of us as human beings makes us special. We are imbued with the promises and possibilities of God, and our lives should declare it!



--+ Friends, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—is calling us out of our old ways of being-ness, to live in new ways as the body of Christ together—where many are one. Trinity, indeed! AMEN.

 
 
 
 
 
As always, thanks for checking it out!