Beloved Children

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

August 11, 2024

 

            I am a sucker for a home improvement show. I mean it. Property Brothers, Fixer Upper, Curb Appeal, if it is on, I will probably watch it. I’ve discovered a designer named Sarah Richardson who is based in Toronto, and I will watch her shows for hours. Last summer, I discovered that the only two seasons of the show, Curb Appeal: The Block, were streaming, and ... well you know what’s coming. I got into the show, and I got Brent into it too. We watched every episode. A few of the episodes I’ve watched more than once. The show isn’t even airing anymore, but we still watched it and, I will say, got some really good ideas from it. Like I said, I am a sucker for these shows.

            I think what I love the most about these home improvement shows is the transformation, the before and after, the big reveal. On all these shows, you see the original room or the original home, and then you hear and see the ideas that the designers have for renovation, updating, and improvement. As the designer is talking about what they envision for a room or a house, you’ll see the computer sketches that they would show a client as animation on a screen. For example, if Joanna Gaines is describing a change she wants to make in a room, she’ll narrate that while the sketch of the new room takes shape. So, we’re going to rip out the wall between the old kitchen and dining room, and add an island, new cabinets, reorient the appliances, etc. etc. And you see the drawing on the screen. Then in 30 minutes to an hour, you see the transformation from demolition day to reveal.

            Most of the time, the transformation is stunning, even when the design taste doesn’t match our own. Just to see the difference that can be made is amazing. Sometimes you can’t believe you’re looking at the same house or the same room or the same front yard. It’s incredible and so satisfying. But if you have ever lived through a renovation, you know that it’s not so easy. And it certainly doesn’t happen without a lot of mess in the middle.

            Last winter, we had two small, dated, yucky, slowly deteriorating bathrooms renovated into one large bathroom. If you’re ever interested I can show you before and after pictures. The transformation from what was to now is amazing. But it was the mess in the middle that wore me down. On these home improvement shows that I love to watch, you don’t see the extent of the gigantic amount of dust that happens in a renovation. I would come home every day and just start wiping down furniture and counters so we could survive. And the next day, I would have to do it all over again. On a show you don’t fully appreciate the mess, or the noise of the equipment being used, especially at the beginning. It was overwhelming. Forget those days when we might work from home. I was trying to finish my dissertation through all of this, so I spent quite a few hours in Starbucks with my laptop and a pile of books in front of me, just hoping the employees wouldn’t get tired of seeing me there. And as materials for the project came in, they either took over our front porch or were stacked in the house. We shared living room space with the new vanity for about a month.

            Of course, this is just from my perspective as the homeowner. The work itself is incredibly hard! It must be exhausting, and certainly it takes a physical toll on the people doing it. Our contractors worked hours and hours five days a week to make the project happen. I can’t even imagine trying to do that much work on our own. We know that at some point we’re going to have to do some necessary reno on our kitchen, but right now I just can’t even go there in my imagination, much less in reality.

            What does all this renovation and transformation talk have to do with the point that Paul is trying to make in this part of the letter to the Ephesians? Even though Paul does not use the word transformation in our verses today, throughout the whole letter he is speaking to the change that comes when we live into Christ. In the verses immediately preceding ours, he writes,

            “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” That speaks to transformation.

            Then we move into the verses before us today. In my study Bible, this part of the chapter has the heading, “Rules for the New Life.” And then we read what those rules are. Putting away falsehood. Speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry, but don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on our anger. If members of the community steal, then they need to stop stealing and work honestly. What we make should be shared with the needy because that helps the whole community. We can’t let evil, slanderous, gossiping talk leave our mouths, because that tears down the community rather than builds it up. We need to put away bitterness and slander and wrangling and malice. We must be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving of one another as we have been forgiven. We must be imitators of God, because we are all God’s beloved children.

            At first glance, Paul makes it seem that if you just follow these simple rules, you will be transformed, You will be imitators of God, Paul makes it sound easy, just as those home renovation shows make the transformation from the old to the new look easy and quick. But just as a home renovation is hard and long and messy, living into this new life to which are called is much harder and more difficult than it looks. There is a whole lot of mess in the middle.

            Much of that mess comes from doing what Paul instructs us not to do. One commentator I read pointed out that we are never told to “Be happy but do not sin.” Or “be joyful but do not sin.” No, we are charged with be angry but do not sin. There is something about anger that tempts us into sin, isn’t there? Anger has its place. There is such a thing as righteous anger. Anger can motivate us to work harder, do better. As protestants we descend from a long line of people who used their anger for the good of all. We descend from people who protested, hence the name protestant, against sacred and secular abuses that harmed and exploited people in the name of God. Protest, righteous anger, is in our DNA.

            But anger can also cause great damage. How many times have I let my anger get the best of me? How many times have I said or thought things in anger that I don’t mean, that I regret with all my heart? Too many times. Way too many times. And even when I’ve tried to sweep my anger under the proverbial rug and forget about it, it has come back to haunt me. Anger can lead to bitterness and wrangling and slander. Anger that stays with us past the sun setting makes it very difficult to be tenderhearted, kind, and forgiving.

            But it’s not just anger. Do we speak the truth in love to one another? Let’s face it, y’all, we are in a contentious election season. And it is only going to get harder. Truth is not something we can count on right now. However, misinformation and disinformation from all sides is.

            And then there are these words about stealing. We may think that since we don’t actively steal to make a living that these words do not apply to us. But where was the blouse I’m wearing this morning made? What country? Who made it? How old or how young were the hands that sewed it? How much were they paid in comparison to how much I spent. That’s not theft per se, but it does remind me that the way I spend my money here affects people in other parts of the world in ways that I cannot fathom.

            So, trying to put on this new self and take off the old is much harder than it looks. This transformation that Paul calls us to engage in is not easily done. There’s a whole lot of mess in the middle. There’s a lot of dust and noise. It’s not easy and it takes more time than we imagine. It really takes a lifetime. It seems to me that what Paul is trying to help the Ephesians and us understand is that to be imitators of God as God’s beloved children, to be transformed, to live into Christ is to live into our baptisms. We are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. We are baptized into the grace of God that works in our lives whether we know it or not. We are baptized into the larger story of God and God’s people. We are baptized into the Holy Spirit, that blows where it will and that sends us in directions we would not choose and empowers us to do that which we think we cannot.

            In just a few minutes we will baptize Anna Margaret. We are not baptizing her because we are afraid of God or God’s wrath. We aren’t baptizing her because she is a sinner with no redeeming qualities outside of baptism. We baptize Anna Margaret to bring her into this larger story of God’s love and grace and joy and redemption. We baptize her and make promises to her and to her family to help them in this lifelong work of transformation, of imitating God. We make promises to her and help her just as others have made promises to us, just as others help us. We baptize Anna Margaret because she is a beloved child of God, just as we all are. We baptize her into God’s grace and love and joy and hope and redemption and resurrection.

            But in saying “we” I don’t want to mislead you. Ultimately our transformation is not a DIY project. Our transformation from the old to the new is not something we do ourselves only. We do make these changes in community, leaning on one another for help. But our community is surrounded and embraced and upheld and empowered by God, by the Holy Spirit, by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. It is ultimately God who transforms us, God who helps us in our anger and in our joy. It is the power of the Holy Spirit who moves and challenges us. It is Jesus calling us to live as he lived, and to be willing to die as he died that is our call as well.

            We are all beloved children of God. We are all part of this larger story of God and creation and life and love. And God is transforming us. And God never leaves us even when we forget these new rules, when we sin, when we fall short and fall away, even when we are covered in the dust and mess of transformation. We are God’s beloved children. We are all God’s beloved children. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s beloved children say, “Alleluia!”

Amen.

Our Hope -- Sermon Series on Faith and A.I.

Isaiah 40:28-31

Revelation 21:1-15

 

            One of the requirements of my fifth-grade elementary education was 4H. At least once a month our normal afternoon class would pause, and we would have an afternoon of 4H learning and working. For those who may not know what 4H stands for, and I never did, even when I was participating in it, is Head, Heart, Hands, and Health. Its original goal, when it was started in the early 1900’s was to tie public education to rural life. It was designed to be a hands-on program where youth would learn by doing. In this country, it has been connected to and long associated with agriculture and farming. My sister-in-law used to talk lovingly about her days in 4H and how she bottle-raised a calf and showed it at the county fair.

            As I understand it 4H has grown and evolved to be much bigger than a program for farming kids. It has clubs in at least 50 countries around the world and does a lot of good for a lot of people. But when I was in fifth grade I understood 4H to be about farming, yet I lived in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, and I had no interest in farming. So, I wasn’t thrilled about being forced to participate in 4H. But I had to, so I did. That year we had to give a presentation as part of our 4H requirement. The presentation was supposed to be a “how-to” as in here is how to … fill-in-the-blank.

            I decided to do my presentation on dog care and grooming. I felt that it was a practical and necessary skill to have for anyone with a dog. I did my research, which at that time was going to the library and finding books on the chosen subject. I gathered the necessary tools, such as a dog brush and comb. I wrote my presentation. I created posters to go with it. I practiced, and I practiced some more. Then I presented at school. For some unknown reason, my teacher was impressed with my work and entered me in the city-wide contest. My parents took me. I did the presentation there, and I think I came in second or third. Whatever rank I had, I didn’t do well enough to go onto the next level of contest. I received an encouraging letter from the judges who told me to keep trying, keep working, etc. My parents were proud of what I’d done even if I didn’t go any further in the competition. And almost until the day she died, my mother would say that she thought I would have won had it not been for one problem – I didn’t own a dog. I think I demonstrated my presentation on dog care on my Snoopy stuffed animal, which a friend gave me when I had my tonsils out. But there was no real dog in my life at that time.

            My older brother had a dog when I was much younger. But we were a dogless family by the time of that presentation, and I wanted a dog of my own. What better way to show that I could handle the responsibility of dog ownership than to create a 4H project based on that premise?! I had great hope in my ability to win my parents over with my obvious sense of responsibility. That’s why I share this story. To me it is a story about hope, youthful hope to be sure, but it was hope, nonetheless. Instead of “if you build it they will come,” my hope was, “If I groom it, I will get a dog.”

            I realize that this seems about as far from Artificial Intelligence as possible, and I guess that it is. But I think this story also represents where we get confused about hope and A.I. and about what it can and cannot do for us. I certainly think we get confused about hope when it comes to our faith. I put my hope for getting a dog into what I could do, what I could prove, what I could accomplish. And I think that’s where we humans miss the mark on what we hope for and on what we think hope actually is. We believe that our hope is something we do, that it rests in our hands, our ingenuity, our creativity, our imaginations, and our ability to problem solve. We put our hope in our ourselves.

            The  cover article of this coming month’s issue of The Christian Century is “Transcendence Through Tech?” In the article the author, A. Trevor Sutton, asks the question, “Can we build our own future?” The author writes about inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk and philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Musk started his first tech company in 1995. The sale of that company a few years later gave Musk enough capital to start SpaceX. Through SpaceX Musk is working on making humans, as the author writes, “an interplanetary species.” But what Musk has another company called Neuralink. This company is working on “turning the human brain into a supercomputer.”

As the article details, and I quote, “the company has recently implanted its first human subject with a microchip that enables direct brain-computer interface by gathering signals from neurons and sending the data to a computer that processes it in real time. The subject, a 29-year-old quadriplegic, can move the cursor on a computer screen using only his brain.” The company is not the first to try this, but it is the first to work on reversing the process, which means that the computer would also be able to transmit data to the human subject’s brain. As the author writes, “according to Musk, Neuralink’s implants will allow for human symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” Human symbiosis with artificial intelligence.

            The author points out that in the same year that Musk started his first company, 1995, the classic comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” premiered. If you remember that comic, Calvin – named after our spiritual ancestor, John Calvin, was a little boy with a vivid imagination to say the least. His best friend was Hobbes, who also happened to be a stuffed tiger. When it was just Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes would come to life, and would temper Calvin’s wild ideas with some practical pessimism. Hobbes was named after the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. And the author’s point in this Christian Century article, as I understand it, is that Thomas Hobbes would be a good counterbalance to Musk.

There are differences between the two men born in two different centuries, but they both fear and feared what humanity might do to itself. Hobbes believed that a social contract and a sovereign was necessary for people to live with each other, otherwise life would be “nasty, brutish, and short.” And while Musk has spoken of artificial intelligence as being something that could make humanity extinct, he also thinks that if used correctly it has the potential to make the future even brighter for all people, artificial intelligence and human beings together have the capability of unlocking humanity’s full potential.

            The author makes an important point, and it is the one that I want to highlight today. Both Musk and Hobbes assume and assumed that humans have autonomy, and therefore our hope lies within us and us only. For Hobbes, who was pessimistic about humans at best, we needed ways to live with each other and we needed sovereigns, rulers, who would keep us from killing one another. But history from Hobbes’ time and more recent history has taught us that has taught us that sovereigns are not immune from causing massive destruction of others and are capable of destroying themselves in the process. Musk, who is far more optimistic, realizes that humans can do great harm, but if properly linked with A.I. can do great and wonderful things

            But there is another way, and that is the way of hope that we read in our passages today. It isn’t hope found in what humans can or cannot do, will or will not do. It is hope found in God, our God, our amazing, awesome, God of love, righteousness, and justice. The prophet Isaiah proclaims God as the everlasting God. Our God does not faint. Our God does not get tired. Our God understands more than we can possibly fathom. And not only does our God not get tired, and not faint from exhaustion, but our God gives strength and energy to all those who wait for him. We all get tired. We all get weary, regardless of our age or place in life. But if we wait on God, our strength will be renewed, and we will rise up like an eagle rises with wings outstretched into the wind. And even if our weariness is bone deep and soul deep, God will lift us up to run with renewed energy and spirit. We will walk and not fall away.

            And the writer of Revelation writes about finally seeing a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, created and prepared by God. And the home of God will be among God’s people. There will be no separation of time or space between God and us, us and God. God will be with us, and we will be with our God. And death will be no more. Mourning and grief will be no more. God will wipe every tear from our eyes. God is making all things new.

            These are two passages of scripture that speak profoundly of hope, of what true hope is. It is not hope in ourselves. It is not hope in what we can do and what we can do only. It is hope in God. This hope in God does not let humans off the hook. Nor does it dismiss or deny what we humans have the potential to do – the good that we can do, and the bad. We were given imaginations, and vision, and abilities to create good. We have powerful technology at our fingertips, and there is much good that we can do with it. But we can just as easily go the other way. With all the good we can do, there is so much bad that we can do as well. Hope only in ourselves can lead to dangerous and disastrous results.

            But our real hope does not lie in artificial intelligence or in social contracts or in any other thing that we alone create. Our hope lies in God. It is no coincidence that the two passages read this morning are both read at funerals, at services of witness to the resurrection. Because one thing we all know that is certain and sure, is that none of us gets out of here alive. But in faith we have the hope that death is not the end. We have hope in our call from God to live faithful lives in the here and the now and in the sweet by and by. And we have hope that God is doing a new thing, that God is calling us to live into the future that God is creating – a future where tears are wiped from eyes and mourning and crying will be no more.

            Technology and the power of our imaginations, our creativity, our passion, our dreams are all good. We have been given the ability to do so much. But our hope does not lie in what we can do, but in what God can do. Our hope lies in what God is doing through us and in spite of us. Our hope lies in God who created us because of love and for love and to love. Thanks be to God, the author of our hope, our true and lasting hope. Thanks be to God.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

Love One Another -- Sermon Series on Faith and AI

Matthew 7:1-12 (Romans 13:8-10)

July 21, 2024

 

            In the summer of 1983, a movie hit theatres that was incredible and unlike anything most of us had ever seen before. The movie was War Games. It was amazing, and although the graphics and technology in it look pretty dated now, it still resonates with our experiences today. It’s premise is that a brilliant but underachieving high school boy hacks into the government’s computer system to play their listed war games. He really thinks he is just playing a game called Geothermal Nuclear Warfare, but what he actually does is trigger the computer. WOPR – which stands for War Operations Plan Response – into playing the simulation of that war game. The people in charge have no idea that a game is being run at first and it looks as though the Soviet Union is starting a war with the United States.

            The authorities figure out that the computer was hacked, that it’s only running a simulation before they launch missiles against the USSR. They trace the hack back to David, the young hacker and take him into custody. David realizes that the computer, known to him and its creator as Joshua, thinks that this is real and will eventually start a war. But no one believes him. David escapes the authorities to find help from the computer’s creator and the action and the tension escalate from there.

            The man who designed this computer system, Stephan Falkan, worked on the advancement of machines being able to learn. And one reason he designed Joshua to play war games was so that it could play out the high stakes of nuclear war without annihilating humanity and most of creation. But as he tells our young heroes, the one thing he couldn’t get Joshua to learn was futility, that in a war of that scale there would be only losers, not winners and losers. Even though this is fictional movie, the technology that was being developed, even 41 years ago, was not. For those of us who were the original audience, this was the first time we were introduced to hackers and computers that could fit on a desktop. As I said, we’d never seen anything like it before. As I was reading some background on the movie last week, I learned that when Ronald Reagan, who was the president at the time, watched the movie in the White House,  he was alarmed that someone might actually be able to hack into government and military computers and ordered that security be heightened to prevent that possibility.

            There’s lots of lessons to be learned from this movie, but the one that I really want to focus on happens in the first scene of the movie. Two air force officers arrive on a terrible night of blinding snow to take their shift controlling a nuclear missile silo. Their work is deep underground, and as they’re getting on the elevator they’re just chatting about their weekend, about a woman that the captain knows, etc. They talk with the officers they’re relieving and joke about being late, and on and on. Nothing unusual. Nothing to hint at the enormity of what they do.

            But minutes into their shift they receive official notice that a launch must take place. They have a protocol to follow, confirmation to receive that it’s real and not a test. But as they are preparing to turn the missiles to launch, the captain falters. He hesitates. He realizes what he’s being asked to do. He breaks away from protocol and tries to call someone in charge to find out what’s happening. The other man keeps telling him that this isn’t protocol, that he has to launch. At one point the captain says he wants to make sure, to at least talk to someone in charge,  before he kills 20 million people. Just as this scene ends, the other officer draws a gun on him, which you understand to be part of his job as well. They both must launch, and if one of them won’t he then he must be forced to.

            It turns out that it was a test; a test that approximately 28% of the officers failed. To the powers that be, that’s too large a percentage. So, they take the human out of the equation and link all the silos to the computer, to Joshua. And in the terrifying minutes toward the end of the movie, it’s Joshua who locks all the humans out to fulfill its original command – launch the missiles.

            I know, I know, it’s a movie. It’s a dated movie from the 80’s. But it’s a great movie, and one that is still worth watching now. And while the whole movie is fantastic, it’s that opening scene that keeps coming back to me. The captain as he is trying to make himself do his job and launch the missiles is whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He knows that he holds the lives of millions of people in his hands. And that’s why he falters. That’s why I would falter if it were me. I couldn’t do that to others just as I would hope they would not easily do that to me. It certainly does not abide by what we know as the Golden Rule.

Although there is no mention in the movie of the Golden Rule, which is the last verse from our passage in Matthew’s gospel, there is a sense that it is implied.

            “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you: for this is the law and the prophets.”

            This is not a rule that is unique to Christianity. Versions of it are found in ancient texts from other civilizations. It’s found in other religions. It is not only found in religious circles, but it is the basis for ethical and moral treatises as well. Philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote about the Golden Rule and its inverse, the Silver Rule, in his work on moral philosophy.

            We were probably all taught this when we were growing up. It’s a worthwhile aphorism to live by. But let’s look at the context that we read it in Matthew. The Golden Rule was not meant to stand on its own. It comes at almost the end of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We tend to think of the Sermon on the Mount as being only the Beatitudes. But that sermon goes from chapter 5 to chapter 7. So, Jesus is preaching these words in verse 12 not as something nice to consider, but as a way of living that rests on both the law and the prophets. And the law and the prophets were about living justly, living righteously, living as God calls us to live in relationship with God and in relationship with each other. The prophets repeatedly condemn those who live at the expense of others, whose lifestyle and ethics – or lack thereof – come through the exploitation of others, of the least of these. The prophets spoke truth to power. So, when Jesus says these familiar words, he also says, “for this is the law and the prophets.”

            You see, one of the problems of taking the Golden Rule out of this context, of seeing it only as a nice platitude, is that it too easily becomes egotistical. I’m not saying it’s not a good rule. It is, and it’s one that I was taught and that I taught my children. But without the context that Jesus gives it, it can too quickly become about only what I want. I’ll treat others this way because that’s what I want. I’m only thinking about me and my needs, my desires. And that misses the point of the law and the prophets. At best it dilutes the call of God to love others without thought about what that love means for us. We are to love others, even if that love is reciprocated, and this is not love based only on emotions, but love that is lived, love that lived in action and deed even more than in word.  

            In that opening scene of War Games the human at the controls falters because he knows that mass destruction and death is about to rain down on people who are living in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s nothing Golden Rule about that. There’s nothing loving in that. In current war zones right now, there are AI programs that are designed to discern who a leader of the enemy is and target that leader. While that may sound like basic war strategy, the leaders are targeted in homes, homes where families live, where children live. And the AI program does not discern who should be destroyed in that home and who shouldn’t. All are destroyed. But what parameters does this AI program use to discern who the enemy leaders are? How is it programmed to make these kinds of decisions? It seems to me that the human equation with our biases and our prejudices and our hatred is kept in this AI program, but the human equation that understands loving one another, loving our neighbor, is removed.

            So, what does this have to do with us? What does this use of AI and a movie and all of it have to do with us and our faith? I think it has everything to do with us. As people of faith, we are called not only to take seriously the Golden Rule that Jesus preaches, but to live it, to weave it into the very fabric of our lives. We are called to take seriously how this rule is not just something nice to do but is fulfilling the law and the prophets. We are called to hold those who create technology accountable for how it is used for humanity and against humanity. Because we are called to love one another, we are called to consider over and over again exactly who is our neighbor. And we’re called not only to consider who is our neighbor, but how we are to treat our neighbor.

            Paul writes in our passage from Romans, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

            Paul puts this discussion of love into the language of owing, of indebtedness. At first this seems contradictory when we look at it in the larger context of this chapter. Paul is encouraging the Roman church to be good citizens, to be subject to the Roman authorities. As I understand it, Paul posits that being a good citizen is participating in the will of God. So be law abiding citizens. Pay what you owe in taxes, in revenue, etc.

            But one point was made clear by commentators on this passage, Paul was not writing about any kind of financial debt in these words on love. He was talking about allegiance. Listen, pay your taxes, abide by the laws of the state, but when it comes to your allegiance, your loyalty, your fidelity, that goes to God and to God alone.

            And what we owe God is not money. We owe God love. We owe God love. And the way we repay our debt of love to God is to love others. When we love others, any other, all others, than we have fulfilled our obligation to the Law, not the law of Rome, but the Law of Moses. And what Jesus conveyed in his teaching was that the way to fulfill the Law of Moses and the prophets was to love others.

            If the use of technology helps us to love others, and I think that it can, then let’s keep going. But when technology, when AI, is used against others, even others that we think of as enemies, then we are failing our call to love. We are reneging on our debt. Because in the law of love, even our enemies are our neighbors.

            What do we owe God? What do we owe one another? Love. May we pursue this love with all that we have and all that we are. May it be our daily prayer. May our love bless friends and enemies alike. May it bind us one to another with bands that cannot be broken. What we owe God is to love one another. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

The Word: Knowledge, Wisdom, and A.I. -- Sermon Series 2024

John 1:1-5

July 7, 2024

 

            When Brent and I decided to make our big trip to Greece and Portugal, we also started doing our research – mainly on Portugal. In Greece, we have a local connection with my sister. But Lisbon was much less known to us. So, we watched travel videos about it, and I did Pinterest searches, and we googled all the recommendations for the things you must do in Lisbon. One of the sights that is a must see is the Monument to the Discoveries in Belem, which is the neighborhood that borders one end of the city. And Belem is the port at the Tagus River where the great Portuguese explorers like Vasco de Gama departed from on their voyages of discovery.

            The discoveries are a huge part of Portuguese history. The scale of this monument to them reflects that. It is a large stone sculpture of a Caravel, the ship that allowed the Portuguese mariners to cross the Atlantic Ocean. There are stone depictions of historical figures on either side of the Caravel, all leading up to the main one, Prince Henry the Navigator. Others like de Gama and Magellan are represented, as well as others who were vital to the discoveries.

            Now, as I understand it, for many generations Portuguese sailors were only able to sail along the coastline because they didn’t have the ships or the navigational abilities that could handle the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean was the great unknown. Who knew how far it went or how deep were its waters? Who knew the dangers that awaited in that great unknown? To say that it was a great risk to sail out into its depths was an understatement. We learned that in trying to find the right ship that could take on the Atlantic, at least 70 ships and their large crews were sent out and never heard from again. To lose that many ships, maybe many more, was a tremendous cost in lives, in materials, and in hope.

            However, with the advent of ships like the Caravel and innovations in navigational technology like the astrolabe, that helped sailors chart their path by following the stars, the Portuguese were able to cross the Atlantic. They were able to sail further and longer and map new trade routes, and they cornered the market on spices and other riches from distant lands. It made Portugal rich, and they were a mighty empire in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Of course there is a fallout to this. Because on the other side of those leading these discoveries were peoples, cultures, and civilizations, who didn’t know they needed to be discovered. They had been in existence for thousands of years too, so why did they need to be discovered? They were already there. The reality is that the discoveries opened the door for slavery, colonization, exploitation of indigenous peoples and their lands. I read once that our technology is always farther along than our wisdom to know how to use it. I’m pretty sure this was in reference to the technology of this century and the last, but it seems to me that it rings true for every human innovation since figuring out how to start fire and realizing that a circle that rolls moves things faster. And it would be true of the discoveries as well.

            So, here we are at, maybe not the dawn of new technology, but certainly in the early days of this technology known as artificial intelligence. Before I go any further, I need to make a full discloser. In trying to decide how I would structure a sermon series about faith and artificial intelligence – from now on known as AI – I used AI to get started. You may not realize this, but if you have Microsoft you have access to AI. Microsoft has Copilot, your everyday AI companion. All you have to do is pull up Copilot, type in a question or key words, and it will generate an answer. I ran my questions about this sermon series several different times using different keywords. Copilot gave me some possible outlines, which got me thinking, and then I put the outline together that I wanted to work with. I sat and read through a variety of scripture passages, played around with themes for each Sunday, etc. etc. My point in telling you this is that while AI gave me a creative nudge, I did the preparation and the theological legwork myself.

            I emphasize this, because one of the ethical landmines of AI is that it does the work that people are supposed to do. I have a good friend who teaches at Belmont, and she told me that they not only have to check students’ work for plagiarism, but teachers also must check to see that it wasn’t written by AI. And now, she told me recently, they have to check to see that a student’s parent has not tried to “help them” by taking the student’s work and using AI to clean it up.

AI is everywhere, more than most of us realize. So, what is it exactly? Here is one definition of AI that I found from Techopedia.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the development, deployment, and maintenance of computational systems that can replicate certain types of human intelligence. Currently, this aspect of computer science is focused on creating algorithms and programming machine learning (ML) models that can analyze vast amounts of data to gain insights and make data-driven decisions autonomously.

            And then there is also generative AI, which according to Merriam Webster “is a computer tool that can create text that sounds like it was written by a human, based on a given starting point.”

            This is all heady stuff, but what does it mean for us? What does it mean for the church? What does it mean for our faith? Is the advancement of AI really that big of a deal when it comes to our faith, except that we want to make sure Pastor Amy isn’t using AI to write her sermons for her? Which, on my honor, I did not. I mean technology is with us to stay. We learned very quickly at the onset of the pandemic that keeping going as a church meant using technology – whether it was the weekly church emails to keep everyone informed about protocols to zoom meetings for session and for bible studies to broadcasting our services on Facebook and YouTube, a practice that will continue. And most of the time it’s great to have powerful computers in the palm of our hands. When you’re in a foreign city and you’re trying to navigate from one site to the next, it's reassuring to have a GPS program literally at your fingertips that can help you do just that.

            But I keep going back to that statement I referenced earlier. Our technology is always more advanced than our wisdom to use it. This was true for the technology that powered the discoveries and it’s true for the technology of AI. It may be helpful to have technology that can simulate human intelligence, but do we have the wisdom to know how to use it?

            It seems to me that one reality of human existence is that we are not necessarily born with humility. That’s something that we have to learn, most often in the hardest of ways. One of the overarching themes of scripture is that the people of God kept thinking they knew better than God. It got them kicked out of the garden, it got them stuck wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, it got them sent into exile. It’s not just that humans have a hard time listening and trusting God, it’s that we think we know better. We may not consciously think that, but our actions speak volumes. And it’s not that I think God created us to be mindless drones, just following along blindly. We were created with minds that think and given the gift of reason and free will. God created us with the ability to choose. But God also created us for relationship, with God and with one another. God created out of love. And all that we do, say, and learn should be to build up that love, that relationship.

            That is the knowledge that comes from God, and I think that is the Word that John’s gospel is referring to. In the beginning was the Word, the logos of God. The logos of God is the knowledge of God, the wisdom of God, the creative spark of God, the love of God, the breath of God. The Word of God was at the beginning of creation. This is John’s version of the creation story. I don’t believe he was trying to rewrite Genesis, but I do suspect that he was trying to add to the depth of what creation was and is. In the beginning was the Word – it was the fullness of God’s wisdom and love for all creation, including us humans, despite our lack of humility, our lack of trust, our lack of understanding. God loves us in spite of ourselves, so God the Word, wisdom and knowledge, put on flesh and came to live among us, for our salvation and to show us what it means to be fully human, truly human.

            As I said earlier, one aspect of being human is that we’re not necessarily born understanding that knowledge requires humility. I’m all for intellectual pursuits, I love learning, and increasing our knowledge. And I’m not opposed to technology. It can help human life in so many ways. But I have to go back to the knowledge that I possess – or think that I possess – versus the knowledge of God. I have to return to the God that knows me and, I think, longs to be known by me. I don’t think God wants us to not use our minds, our brains, our intellects. But I also think God wants us to understand that with all we know, we’ll never know all. I think God wants us to approach knowledge with humility. When Paul wrote about knowledge puffing up, he was talking specifically about food sacrificed for idols, but his point about thinking that we know better than others, especially that we know better than God, can be extended to many subjects – including AI.

            We can know a lot. Our knowledge can be extensive, but if it isn’t used for the purpose of building up others, of helping others, of creating a better life for others, than we’re just puffed up and puffing up. We are not building up. We are not extending the love of God. We are not sharing the love of Christ.

            So, where does this leave us? As a preaching professor of mine used to ask, what does this mean for us on Tuesday? I’m not sure I have an answer to that yet. That’s what we’ll be grappling with over the next few Sundays. But I know that AI is with us to stay, and it is probably going to be present in more and more aspects of our lives, including church. So, I hope that I will practice what I preach … that I will approach this subject with humility and the recognition that with all that I know and all that I may learn, there is more out there in God’s universe than I can ever possibly understand. And that’s okay. May we all grow in wisdom and love, and may we more fully know the God who loves us and longs to be known by us. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

           

A House Divided

I Samuel 8:4-20/Mark 3:20-35

June 9, 2024

 

            Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

            That’s a phrase I didn’t understand as a child. Why would I ever want to be careful what I wish for? Why would I ever not want to get what I wish for? But then I read books like Freaky Friday, do you remember that one? It’s where a mother and a daughter switch bodies but stay themselves on the inside. The daughter wishes she had her mom’s life, because her mom is an adult and has no problems and everything is so much easier when you’re grown up, while her life as a young teenager is completely untenable.

On one fateful and freaky Friday, the daughter wakes up as herself but in her mother’s body, and the mother does the same. The whole premise of the book is the daughter trying to navigate the world as her mom and realizing that being an adult with responsibilities is not as easy as it looks. Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. 

Like I said, as a child I didn’t understand this phrase … until I did. Until some of the things I wished for happened, and while getting what I wished for wasn’t bad per se, getting what I wished for also didn’t make my life perfect or easier or magically change the way things were.

It seems to me that the underlying theme in our passages today is “be careful what you wish for”. The elders of Israel go to Samuel and ask him, demand him really, to appoint a king. As one commentator wrote, Samuel was a wise and good prophet, a wise and good leader … until he wasn’t. And the wasn’t is described in the first sentences of chapter 8. Sentences that the lectionary left out. These first three sentences set the scene by telling the reader that when Samuel was old, he appointed his two sons as judges over Israel. But Samuel’s sons are not like Samuel. They are not wise. They are not good leaders. They are not good judges for or of the people.

If you remember the beginnings of Samuel’s story, he was called by God as a young boy when he was serving the priest, Eli. Eli also had two sons, who did not follow in their father’s footsteps when it came to leading and serving God and God’s people. They were corrupt and inept. The first word from the Lord that Samuel received was to tell Eli that he would bear the consequences of his sons’ bad judgment. Now it seems that Samuel is experiencing the same dilemma. Samuel is a human being after all, and appointing his sons to be judges reveals that as a human he can make mistakes just like all humans do. And the Israelites, humans as well are about to make a big mistake.

They want a king. They don’t want Samuel’s sons to lead. Instead they want a king. They want a monarch, forgetting, it would seem, that the monarchy passes on from father to son as well. But the people have spoken. Samuel prays to God about it, and God responds by telling Samuel that the people are not rejecting Samuel. They are rejecting God. They don’t trust God, not really. They did this when God led them through the wilderness. Life got hard and they wanted to go back to Egypt. Why did God lead them away from the devastation of slavery only to let them starve in the wilderness? They didn’t trust God then. They don’t trust God now. They were not rejecting Samuel by asking for a king, they were rejecting God.

God instructs Samuel to warn the people about what life under the rule of a king will really be like. And Samuel tries.

“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers.”

            He will take, and he will take, and he will take. The list Samel gives them goes on and on. It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? The consequences of having a king sound much worse than not having one, but the people don’t care. They want to be like other nations. They’re like children who want what the other kids have. All the other nations have kings, why can’t we?! They want a king to fight their battles for them. They want a king to solve their problems for them. And in the end, God gives them what they wish for. God gives them a king. Saul becomes their first king, and it does not end well. Some might say that it’s an unmitigated disaster. But that’s a story for another sermon.

            Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

            The monarchy eventually leads to exile. And when exile ends, occupation by Rome begins. The people turned their hope toward one greater than a king – a Messiah. But just like their desire for a king, they don’t know what they wish for. And many do not recognize the messiah when he stands right in front of them.

            Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus has gone home. Just before he returns home, he has called all twelve of his disciples. Not only has he called them to proclaim the good news of God, the message that the kingdom of God is now in their midst, he has also given them authority to cast out demons. Exorcising demons is a big deal in Mark’s gospel, so the disciples being given this authority is also a big deal. And now he returns to his hometown. If Jesus expected his homecoming to be warm and welcoming, he was wrong.

            The growing crowd of people following Jesus does not dissipate when he goes home. They show up there too. That must have been unsettling for the people who knew Jesus when. It’s one thing to have this carpenter’s son come back home with twelve of his friends. But to have hordes of people following him? That’s too much. And this crowd of folks seems to think that Jesus can actually heal people! They think he can cast out demons! What?!

            Obviously this hometown boy has gone off the rails. His family heard about this, and they go to Jesus and try to stop him. The text says they try to restrain him. I don’t know if Mark means they used a literal restraint or a verbal one, but either way, his family wants him to stop doing and saying what he’s doing and saying.

            The scribes from Jerusalem have also followed Jesus, but not because they’re fans. They stir up the opposition to this hometown boy even more, saying that he has Beelzebul, and that he casts out demons through the power of the ruler of the demons.

            But Jesus turns this claim completely on its head and shows it to be ridiculous.

            “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”

            I must admit to you all that I was an adult before I realized that Abraham Lincoln was quoting scripture when he spoke these words. But he was and this is the scripture. A house divided against itself cannot stand. If I am Satan, why would I cast out Satan? If the ruler of the demons had power over me, then I wouldn’t be casting out demons. You refuse to see what is right in front of you. You cannot recognize what is holy in your midst. And blaspheming against what is holy is going to land you in an eternal world of hurt.

            It is at this moment that Jesus’ family comes back into the narrative. Jesus is surrounded by the crowd, the crowd of believers, the crowd of those who are hungry for the Word of God, the crowd of people who may be outsiders in every other context, in every other part of their lives. And as Jesus is surrounded by these people, someone tells him that his mother and brothers and sisters are outside. They want to talk to him. I suspect that they want to stop him from getting into any more trouble, from bringing anymore attention to himself – and to them. I suspect they don’t want to be known as the family of this man that the scribes believe to be ruled by the ruler of demons.

            But Jesus does not bow to their desires. Instead he says words that sound harsh, that are harsh.

            “Who are my mother and my brothers?” “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.”

            Yes, these words are harsh, and there is a part of me that wants Jesus to soften them, to at least go out and hug his mother, acknowledge his family. But maybe this is also a matter of being careful what you wish for. You wished and prayed and hoped for the messiah. You wished and prayed and hoped for God to hear you, to come to you. But when God comes, everything gets turned upside down. What is outside becomes inside, what is inside becomes out. Boundaries are redrawn. Even familial boundaries are changed. And none of it is easy. But it comes back to trust, doesn’t it? The people trusted their inclinations for a king far more than they trusted God. They thought a worldly leader would save them, but no leader of this world can. And the people who thought they knew best, who believed they understood God and the Law and their place in the world did not trust that God was bigger than the box they put him in, that the messiah would be not the one they constructed. They could not trust what their eyes saw, and their hearts knew; this Jesus was more than they could know or comprehend.

            What exactly are we wishing for, praying for, hoping for in our church, in our community, in our country? Even more than that, who is that we trust? Do we trust God? Do we really trust God? Or is our trust misplaced and misdirected?

            I think the good news of these stories probably doesn’t feel like good news at first. I think that the good news is that sometimes God gives us exactly what we wish for, not so that we can fail or fall, but so that we can understand a little better that being faithful requires that we trust in God more. Being faithful requires that we trust in God more. Trust. In. God. More. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

           

           

 

Good Sabbath

Mark 2:23-3:6

June 2, 2024

 

            I had a seminary professor who told our class that when she was growing up her family took the sabbath seriously, really, really seriously. There was no doing homework on the sabbath. If you hadn’t gotten your homework finished by Sunday, it was not getting finished. If the weather was warm and sunny and your friends were going to go swimming, you weren’t. I don’t remember if she shared with us how her family handled meals on the sabbath. I suspect they ate leftovers, so meal preparation would not have to be done on Sunday. But the point is, her family took sabbath seriously. I’m not sure this professor was quite as strict with her own children about the Sabbath as her parents were, but this strict observation of the sabbath stuck with my professor her entire life.

            When she told us about her family’s observance of the sabbath, it reminded me of the book Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember reading it for the first time as a little girl and being struck with how Laura and her family observed the sabbath, and how much Laura hated it. Laura and her sisters had to sit still and quietly all day long. They could hold their dolls and look at them, but they couldn’t play with them. Pa would play his fiddle, but his sabbath music wasn’t lively. He played hymns, slowly and somberly. Ma would have prepared food for the day beforehand. There was no having fun, no running and playing. The sabbath was about keeping quiet and being somber, and Laura hated it! She hated sitting still. She hated not being able to jump and shout and run. And one Sunday, she couldn’t stand it anymore and she began to play. She got in trouble, but then after a while Pa told her a story about her grandfather and how much stricter sabbath rules were for him.

            My family’s observance of the sabbath was not as strict as my professor’s and certainly not as strict as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s. We went to Sunday school and church. My mother started the Sunday meal before we left for church in the morning. We always had a nice Sunday dinner after church – something my kids did not get to experience growing up. It was a quieter day, but I wasn’t forbidden from playing outside. And we could watch tv and read the funnies in the Sunday newspaper. If for some reason we didn’t go back to church on Sunday night, we got to watch Wonderful World of Disney and that was huge! But looking back I realize that for my parents it was a day of rest. They weren’t working around the house. They weren’t running errands. It was their day of rest before the work week relentlessly began again the next morning.

            The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath.

            This is the summary statement that Jesus tells the Pharisees who criticize his disciples for plucking grain on the sabbath day. Jesus and the disciples were walking through grainfields on the sabbath, and the disciples begin to glean from the heads of grain. The Pharisees question Jesus about this because what the disciples were doing was not lawful on the sabbath. Gleaning any other day of the week was acceptable, but not on the Sabbath.

            In response Jesus reminds them of the story of David and his companions. They were hungry. They needed food and sustenance. They entered the house of God and ate the food that had been blessed. According to the Law only the priests were allowed to eat that. But David and his companions were hungry and so they ate. The sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the sabbath.

            This response surely did not sit well with the Pharisees. But if they responded in any way other than appalled silence, the text doesn’t share that. Instead Mark moves us forward. Jesus enters the synagogue and there was a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees are watching Jesus closely, wondering – hoping – that Jesus would heal the man with the bad hand so they could accuse Jesus of breaking the Law. Jesus tells the man to “come forward.” He looks at the Pharisees, clearly aware that they are watching him and for what purpose, and says to them,

            “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”

            The Pharisees keep their mouths shut, and their stubborn silence angers Jesus. He grieves at their hardness of heart and tells the man to stretch out his hand. He does this and the man’s hand is healed. The Pharisees don’t say anything else to Jesus, but they leave and immediately find the Herodians to coordinate their efforts to stop this troublemaker.

            I’m going to say something controversial here, but according to the Law the Pharisees were right. The disciples were breaking the law by gleaning on the sabbath. The Law allowed for someone’s life to be saved on the sabbath, but there’s no indication from the text that the man with the withered hand was in great peril. His healing could have waited until the sabbath was over. According to the Law the Pharisees were right. Jesus and the disciples were wrong. And to add to the controversy, the Pharisees were not necessarily the villains they are made out to be. They were religious folks who were trying to do what they believed the Law and their faith instructed them to do. I often compare the Pharisees to the ministers of today, to myself and to my colleagues, but they were also the lay leadership of the day. They were me and they were the session, trying to live out their faith and abide by the Book of Order.

            But Jesus upends their understanding of the Law and of the sabbath. He doesn’t throw the Law out, nor does he claim that it has no value. It seems to me that Jesus wants the Pharisees to understand that both the sabbath and the Law were gifts. The Law was a gift from God to help God’s people be in relationship with God and with each other. And the sabbath was a gift, not only to humankind, but to all of creation. It was the gift of rest. It was the gift of restoration. It seems to me that Jesus wanted them to understand that showing compassion on the sabbath, whether it was through gleaning for food or healing a man with a non-life threatening illness, was the heart of the sabbath. Compassion was at the heart of the gift that God had given them. And again, I’m not convinced that the Pharisees were without compassion. But where they went wrong was that they made the sabbath the object when it was intended to be the means. The sabbath was made for humankind, not the other way around. The sabbath is not the object. The sabbath is the means – to restoration, to rest, to wholeness. God gave humans and all creation the gift of sabbath. The sabbath was the means not the object.

            I think the Pharisees’ struggle to understand Jesus, his words, and his actions, is the same struggle we have today. The Pharisees were trying to uphold the rules. Rules are not a bad thing. We need them. We need their limits. We need their constraints. Rules allow us to live with one another. But the rules are not the object, they are the means. And when we get so caught up in the rules that we make them the object, I think we can miss the point.

            I think that’s what angered and grieved Jesus about the Pharisees. They were missing the point. They were missing the point that compassion was the beating heart of the Law. Love was the heart of the Law. God created the Law out of love. God gave the gift of sabbath out of love. A good sabbath was a sabbath that both remembered and honored that gift.

            It’s easy to say this, but it’s much harder to do. I struggle with balancing my need for the rules and my call to be, to live, compassion. And I don’t like it when others break the rules that I think are important, no matter what their reason. No matter how much I hate to admit it, I can easily slip into the shoes of the Pharisees in stories like this, and I find it much harder to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. I doubt that I’m alone in this. I suspect that if we’re all honest with ourselves, that this is true for you as well as for me. As much as I think of myself as a compassionate person, the truth is, living according to the dictates of compassion is a tricky, tricky balancing act and more often than not it’s just plain hard.

            Living according to the Law of compassion means that I must be willing to forego my judgment of others. Living according to the Law of compassion means that I must see the Law as a means of restoration and wholeness, of life and of love. It doesn’t mean that I can always achieve that, but it does mean that should be my guiding principle.

            Miss Erlene and I must make decisions every day about who the church can help and who it can’t. It’s hard, harder than you can imagine because I want to help everybody. I want to help every poor soul who walks into this church needing assistance, and there are many poor souls out there who need help. But we can’t help everyone. We can’t help with every need, no matter how hard we try and want to. We do have rules we have to follow and guidelines that must be met. But compassion requires us to remember that the rules and guidelines are not the object, they are the means.

            The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath. The sabbath was never meant to be the object. It was meant to be the means, a gift, a way to restoration and wholeness and life. Jesus practiced this good sabbath. Jesus lived this good sabbath. He understood that it was never the object, but the means. He meant it when he said that it was created for humankind and not the other way around. When we remember that, when we live that, we live and practice a good sabbath too; a good sabbath that is the means to restoration, wholeness, and life. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”

            Amen.

How Can These Things Be? -- Trinity Sunday

John 3:1-17 (Isaiah 6:1-8)

May 26, 2024

 

            Some people use the phrase, “sounds like Greek to me,” to show that they don’t understand something that is being said. But I don’t say that for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’ve studied ancient Greek and a little bit of modern Greek, and while it is a challenging language, there is a logic to it so it kind of makes sense – sort-of. And two, because if I’m going to use an expression that indicates that something makes absolutely no sense to me, I’m going to say, “that sounds like math.” If I say that something sounds like math, that means that I have no clue whatsoever. I don’t understand what’s being talked about or explained to me because it’s all over my head. That sounds like math.

            Math makes me anxious; really, really anxious. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone to a teacher for help with math, understood it – or thought I did – while I was one-on-one with the teacher, studied on my own, then got to the test and fell apart. It happened with long division. It happened with algebra. As far as geometry, no amount of extra help made that stuff make sense. I even had a tutor for a while. I got through math because I had to, but when something makes absolutely no sense, I say to myself, “that sounds like math.” Then I close my eyes, take deep breaths to release my anxiety, and hope that my head doesn’t explode.

            The reason I share this with you is because when I read this story about Nicodemus, a learned Pharisee and leader of his people, I feel for him. We generally spend a lot of time focusing on Jesus in this story. And we always zoom into verse 16 because it’s so well-known and so beloved. But what about Nicodemus?

            As I said, I feel for him because I suspect he was as lost and confused about what Jesus was trying to tell him as I am when someone tells me something that seems like math.

            Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, probably afraid that his visit to this radical rabbi would put him into hot water with his fellow pharisees. So, he uses darkness as a shield to cover him, and goes to Jesus with questions. Clearly, something about Jesus compels Nicodemus, calls to Nicodemus. He tells 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.”

            Nicodemus makes it clear that he understands that Jesus is from God. Whether he believes that he is the Messiah or God himself, we don’t know. But he recognizes the divine in Jesus and wants to know more.

            But Jesus does not seem to give him a straight answer. He doesn’t say, “Yes, you are correct, Nicodemus. I am from God.” Jesus instead replies,

            “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”

            And this is where the real confusion for Nicodemus and controversy for generations of believers to come begins. Nicodemus must have been stunned by Jesus’ words, and clearly confounded by them. You must be born from above?! What are you talking about, Jesus? Can a person return to his or her mother’s womb and be born all over again? This makes no sense! Then Jesus goes on to tell him that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.

            “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

            Again, Jesus is giving Nicodemus metaphorical and layered meaning answers to his questions. But Nicodemus is trying to understand Jesus’ answers literally. And this is where I say the controversy over this passage comes from. Our evangelical brothers and sisters speak of being “born again,” and it comes from these verses. You must be born from above. You must be born of the Spirit. And this more literal interpretation of Jesus’ words has translated over the generations to requiring an experience, a date and a time, when you have been born again, accepted Jesus into your heart, and allowed your life to be transformed.

            Now I am not trying in this sermon to refute that claim or dismiss that claim. It is not the claim I make about this passage, but if our siblings in Christ believe it this way, that’s their choice.  

            However, the way that I falteringly interpret this passage is that Jesus is trying to tell Nicodemus that the kingdom of God is more than just geography and that entering that kingdom is a spiritual enterprise. And he tells Nicodemus that the leaders don’t understand what he is saying when he talks about physical things, earthly things, so why should they understand when he is talking about heavenly and spiritual things?

            But none of this seems to alleviate Nicodemus’ confusion. Because he asks Jesus, “How can these things be?”

            How can these things be? Today is Trinity Sunday, the day when emphasize God the Three in One, God in relationship, God in community. But I guarantee you that any explanation I could offer about the Trinity would probably leave us all more confused, and asking the same question that Nicodemus asked, “How can these things be?”

            I suspect that this passage from John’s gospel was chosen for this day because Jesus talks about the Spirit, about how it blows where it will. You cannot see the Spirit, but you can hear it. You do not know where it comes from or where it goes, but you can recognize the transformation it leaves in its wake. The Spirit that Jesus speaks of is the Spirit of God that blew creation into existence. The Spirit that Jesus speaks of is the Spirit of Pentecost that we celebrated last Sunday. It is the Spirit that transforms and renews and creates.

            But the Spirit is part of the Trinity. It is not separate from God the Father and Jesus the Son. It is not on a lower level in some divine hierarchy. The Spirit is the presence of God, just as Jesus was the incarnation of God. And God is God.

            That sounds like math to me. The Trinity that we celebrate and put our faith in is a difficult concept to say the least. When I try to contemplate the Trinity, I feel like Nicodemus, trying to wrap around something so big and mysterious and using my literal brain to do so. It doesn’t work. Even though my Church History professor told us not to explain the Trinity to people by saying, “It’s a mystery,” the truth is that is exactly what it is.

            In our passage from Isaiah, we read about a God who is big that just the hem of his robe fills the temple where Isaiah stood. We read about a God who is so other that his attendants are seraphs. The literal translation of the word seraph, according to Working Preacher, is “the burning ones.” And seraphs were not like the little cherubs that we might imagine. They were snakes. With wings. They were burning, fiery, snakes with wings. And when we read that they were calling to one another, this was no serene, “Hey neighbor! What’s up?”

            They were screaming and screeching,

            “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!”

            These were the attendants of God the Father. This God is so big that we cannot see more than the hem of his robe. And that hem fills every space around us, every space that is visible.

            And yet, and yet, God draws near. This big, enormous, mighty, unseeable God draws near to us. God draws near to us by becoming us in Jesus. Jesus, who was God incarnate. Jesus, who was human just like us, fully human, not just divine cloaked in a human shell. And when Jesus, God incarnate, died on the cross, the Spirit descended to keep God near because God draws near.

            That should sound like math to me, because it is confusing and confounding and more than my small brain can take in. We do not have the language to understand or describe it. But for some reason, as confusing as all this is, it does not cause me the anxiety that math does. Like Nicodemus, my ongoing question is, “How can these things be?” And I don’t have the answer. I cannot unravel this mystery, for you or for myself.

            But I do know that at the heart of this mystery of our God, Three in One, is love. That’s what is being said in verse 16 of the third chapter of John’s gospel. It’s about love. It was through love that God called the universe into being. It was because of love that God called the universe into being, and breathed life into creation. It was love that was incarnate when Jesus was born and lived and died and rose again. It was love that blew in with the Spirit to open minds and hearts, to reach beyond our narrow boundaries of who is in and who is out. It is about love.

            And because it is about love. Because it is about God drawing near in these different ways, through these different aspects, that I can embrace this mystery. I don’t have to understand it all. I don’t have to know how these things can be. It is enough to know that God draws near, and to live within the love that God gives and is and do all that I can to respond in kind, to share that love with others. Maybe “how can these things be” is not a question but a statement. These things are because God draws near in love and calls us to love in response. Thanks be to God.

            Let all God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

Amen.