Can anyone really understand the Holy Trinity? Many people have fought and wrestled and argued over how to understand God through the many different ways that God is revealed in the Scriptures.
We approach this topic from two angles this week. First is the Gospel reading from John 3:1-17. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night to try and figure out what Jesus is all about. Jesus doesn’t give a direct answer. Instead, he talks about the Holy Spirit, and God’s only Son given for the love of the world.
A Long Struggle to Articulate the Nature of God Faithfully
From there, the church through time has extended and developed its understanding of the nature of God through prayerful study in community. You may have noticed that the word trinity doesn’t actually appear in this reading, nor indeed anywhere in the Bible. Jesus just talks about God, the Son, and the Spirit, but he doesn’t say anything about how they all relate. Are they the same? Are they different? That was left for the following generations to wrestle with.
So, we must turn to how Christians have articulated the one God as three ‘persons’ in the centuries that followed. This is the reason we celebrate Trinity Sunday, the great feast of the church that takes place this week.
Knowing God More Through Understanding the Holy Trinity
Don’t make the mistake of assuming this is just a dry, dusty intellectual exercise! Indeed, the doctrine of the Trinity is the best way the Christian faith has found to capture the heart of a God who is both perfectly united and relationship-driven, willing to dive into the messiness of human existence. Paradoxically, the mystery of the Holy Trinity gives us the clearest possible picture of who God is, and who we are in relationship to God.
Please join us around the virtual table this week for this celebration of God as unity and trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In this week’s podcast, we are looking at the feast of the Ascension. Ascension Day is one of the more underrated of the feasts of the church marking events in the life of Jesus. Two passages tell the story: Luke 24:44-53 and Acts 1:1-11.
Christians celebrate Ascension Day every year exactly 40 days after Easter, to echo the 40 days that Jesus stayed with his disciples after the Resurrection. During this time, he met with them, taught them, and opened their hearts to understand the Scriptures. Finally, the disciples witness him lifted up out of their sight as he returns to God.
Even though this feast doesn’t get as much attention as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, it is crucial to how we understand Jesus’ ministry of salvation. It is also the catalyst for the arrival of the Holy Spirit ten days later.
The Ascension marks the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, launching the church to take up the Jesus movement. Join us around the virtual table as we explore the joy-filled Ascension Day.
In today’s podcast, we are celebrating the defining mystery of our Christian faith: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our reading from John 20 captures everything of this profound moment in history.
When we join this story, Jesus has been crucified at the hands of the authorities. His followers have taken his body and buried it in a cave-like tomb and rolled a large stone over the opening to seal it. A day passes as they sink into grief and bewilderment. How could the one they believed to be the messiah have died so horribly?
The next day, in the early morning while it is still dark, one of Jesus’ disciples, Mary Magdalene, comes to the tomb. She is horrified to find that the stone has been rolled away. Her first thought is that someone has actually desecrated the grave by taking the body of Jesus.
As Mary waits, sobbing, outside the tomb, she sees a person she thinks is the gardener and begs him to show her where Jesus is. Then this mysterious figure speaks her name simply: Mary. With this, she recognizes that he is Jesus, very much alive.
The moment Jesus rose is the hinge on which everything else turns. It is the reason for our hope, and the source of our joy. Please join us around the virtual table as we reflect on the Easter story and the meaning of resurrection. Alleluia, Christ is risen!
We have now come to the end of our Lenten observance. This weekend, we are crossing the threshold into the short but intense season of Holy Week, so called because it brings us closest to the great mystery of God’s love.
Holy Week leads us into Easter by leading us to the cross. Four important church services give shape to the Holy Week pilgrimage. Palm Sunday recalls Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. On Thursday, we remember the last supper and Jesus’ betrayal at the garden of Gethsemane. Good Friday marks crucifixion and death of Jesus. There is no service during the day on Saturday to observe the reality of Jesus lying in the tomb.
What do you find meaningful in Holy Week? How is Holy Week speaking to you in 2021? Feel free to join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments below.
Join us this week for a conversation about the Transfiguration of Jesus, as recorded in Mark’s Gospel. If this story sounds familiar, you may remember that we talked about it from a different angle back in August. The Transfiguration is worth revisiting, though, because it is one of the key stories in the life of Jesus and his disciples. It reveals something about God through Jesus. It also gives us insight into our own lives as part of the wider human family.
How do you discern a greater reality and the glory of God behind the everyday? Add your own thoughts in the comments below.
This week, we pick up the story of Moses in Exodus 33:12-23. After the people have turned from God to worship a golden calf, Moses and God talk about how to move forward, and how intimacy with God will look as they settle in the Promised Land.
Join us around the virtual table as we reflect on the Glory of God and how it informs our relationship with God. Please join the conversation! Add your insights in the comments below.
The hardest part about prayer is probably when prayer goes unanswered. Sometimes when God doesn’t answer my prayer, I can brush it off, like when I fail to get a good parking spot at the mall. But most often, it involves something deep and painful. For our family, it was the loss of Stephanie’s mother in 2010. She was a faithful Christian. She was active and otherwise healthy. We were shocked when she was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. It did not seem real at first. Honestly, it doesn’t seem real even a decade later.
She belonged to a strong church with lots of people committed to prayer. They came out in force. They prayed for her healing. We prayed for her healing. There was laying on of hands and special communion services weekly in her home. In the end, she died just nine months after her diagnosis. Her funeral service was the hardest one I have ever been to. She had been so welcoming of me in her family, and she and Stephanie were so close. We still miss her. Why didn’t God answer our prayers? I honestly don’t know, and I am still a little frustrated at God for this one. I also confess I take no comfort in Garth Brooks’ line that some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. This was no gift. This was a great sadness.
So, what do we do with unanswered prayers? I want to offer a few thoughts that have helped me over the years.
1) We don’t know why God doesn’t always answer our prayer
To say that I don’t know why God didn’t answer my prayer is not a cop-out or surrender; it is an important and honest admission. The fact is, there is so much about the universe that we don’t even begin to comprehend. There are mysteries about God and life and death that are beyond our understanding.
What I mean by all of this is that we have no idea why or why not my mother-in-law wasn’t healed of cancer. There is a bigger picture and much more going on that I am completely unaware of. I am reluctant to try to find the ‘reason’ or ‘meaning’ to it. I don’t think there is the kind of ‘reason’ that will make it all better, even if I understood it. It is not about God needing another angel, or that it was her time, or that it was God’s greatest gift. We say it is a mystery for a reason. I think we need to leave it there.
2) Hold onto God’s love
The great difficulty with pain and grief is that it is easy to believe that it means that God is not loving. After the death of his wife, C. S. Lewis wrote that he wasn’t in danger of ceasing to believe in God, but he was in danger of losing his belief in the goodness of God.
This is why we need to turn to the cross of Christ. There, we see more than anywhere else the love of God meeting the pain and suffering of the world. God himself knew that pain. The cross is the unlikely fount of the healing of our world. In Jesus, we see that even if we don’t understand these mysteries of why and why not, we can trust that through it all God is nothing but love and mercy. In Jesus we see that God is not in the business of hurting people and standing back to see what happens. God is genuinely working for healing and wholeness, even when all the evidence in our lives seems to be pointing in the other direction.
We don’t know all the reasons why, but the cross shows us that the path of healing the world passes through suffering. Part of our faith is knowing that in the end, in eternity, God is going to make this right. He is going to overthrow sin and death. “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” God will make this right for Pat. By faith, we have to hold so tightly to the truth of God’s love. We cannot let this go. God is love.
3) Be honest
The biblical word for being really honest with God is Lament. We lament when we tell God how angry we are, how sad we are, and how frustrated we are. When God doesn’t seem to answer our prayer, we need to get it out; it can’t stay in our hearts. If you are surprised that we should come to God in this way, consider that almost two thirds of the Psalms are laments. Lament holds a central place in the story of the Bible. Like many of our ancestors in faith, we can be honest with God.
4) Give it to God
The theological name for this is the Prayer of Relinquishment. It is the prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asked God to take away the suffering, then prayed, ‘but not my will, but yours be done.’ We don’t know what God’s will means here exactly, but the prayer gives it over to him. It says, I don’t know everything, but I know I trust you and that you are love. Please get me through this.
My mother-in-law taught me this more than anyone else. Before she died, she wrote a beautiful reflection, which was read at her church on Good Friday that year. I have included an excerpt below.
“Lord, not my will but thine be done.” Yes, I’m dying, but I’m not afraid any more. If anything in this time of weakness gives glory to God, then I’ve served the biggest purpose for which I was created. I’m looking forward to the end of pain and sorrow and to seeing the face of the One who gave me life. The beautiful images of the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation become brighter and more vivid as time goes on:
Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 17:13-17)
– P. Crane
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This week, we’re looking at Exodus 3:1-15, when God calls Moses from a bush that is burning but not being consumed. This is a foundational incident in the unfolding story of God’s work of redemption. Thanks to our special guest this week, Tim Chesterton.
Episode 19: Moses and the Burning Bush
Join the conversation! Please leave your thoughts and reflections in the comments.
