Sermon:
June 28, 1998

Scripture:
Selections from
1 John: 1
1 John: 2
1 John: 5

I want to dust off some old terminology for you today and hopefully give it some new and fresh meaning and usefulness for you that we might know that the ancient truths are still true. The scripture says, "That which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen, which we have looked upon concerning the word of life, we proclaim unto you that you may have life in Christ's name." John is always great to read because his objectives with us are always very clear. "I want you to have life." Christianity is about giving us life. It's about being able to breathe and live. It's God's spirit blowing into our lives that we may indeed be renewed. So the concept I'd like to dust off for you today is a strange old word, the concept and the notion of the Trinity.

The singer-songwriter, Cat Stevens, wrote a song that was called, "Looking for a Hard-Headed Woman." Does anyone remember it? The words said, "I'm lookin' for a hard-headed woman. One who will make me do my best. And when I find my hard-headed woman, I know the rest of my life will be blessed." It was very popular at one time. It highlighted a young man's search for a woman who would bring meaning and perhaps a little structure to his confused young life. A hard-headed, no-nonsense woman who would help chip away his rough-hewn self into a thing of beauty.

Now we all know, those of us who are married, the importance of a spouse who will help bring out the best, and sometimes the worst, in us. But especially we know the importance of a good woman in a young man's life. It's a very vital choice, and we know that his whole life will be determined by the wisdom of that choice. The song that Cat Stevens wrote goes on to say, "I know a lot of fancy dancers, people who can glide you on a floor, they move so smooth, but have no answers when you ask, 'Why'd you come here for?'" I had a seminary professor friend who went for some counseling for some personal clinical therapy and it happened to be a Buddhist counselor that he went to, and the counselor asked him this question at the very beginning of his first session. He said, "Why did you come this way and what gifts do you bring?"

I've used the text from St. Augustine several times this morning and will again. "It is the mystery of ourselves that we lay upon the altar. It is to what we are, that we are." What way do you want to go and what gifts do you bring?

Religion concerns itself with ultimate meanings and all serious religious systems cope with ultimate questions in one way or another. The ultimate questions are:

Is God benevolently disposed towards us?

What happens to me when I die?

Where does evil come from?

As a civilization we are in a new age, a new time. We have made a huge psychic move from a world of fate, a worldview that looks upon everything as fatalistic to a worldview of choice. Peter Burger outlined this several years ago in his book, "The Heretical Imperative," but what's important is that we've made a fundamental shift in consciousness from the view of our ancestors which was very fate driven to a modern sort of "salad bar" approach to religious preference. You find one that you like and it fits you and then you choose it rather than ultimate meaning and ultimate truth choosing you. Christians struggle with questions and options and the valid claims of how we relate to other religions. We know that there is some truth in Buddhism and Hinduism, we know that there are good things in these other systems of belief. So how do we know who's right and how do we know that we've made the right choice?

Like you, I've participated in the old arguments about the truth of the Christian claim on reality and read the classic apologists and argued in dorm rooms with other people about all of this, but ultimately the Christian faith isn't about something you know in your head, although it is very resourceful in riches that way, but it is about a relationship. Over these long years of arguing these old ideas for a long time, I've come to some resolutions on that matter that I hope might be helpful to share with you and give you some handles for your own dialogue, you as the church, that you have with this culture. I am, after all, the minister of membership and evangelism and so I'm hoping to make you better evangelists, and me with you.

It is not clear yet whether Christianity and western civilization are divorcing or just temporarily separated, but what is clear is that we as a church can no longer afford to be "wordless" about our faith in the face of these many pluralistic options competing for claims of truth.

Truth, that's a funny word. What is truth? Pontius Pilate asked that question of Jesus and Jesus didn't answer it. Interestingly, neither did the early disciples. They didn't argue people into Christianity, and even the fiery Paul in his famous "Men of Athens" speech, his approach could really be reduced to these words, 'Try it, you'll like it." When you're wanting to know how to talk to your seeker friends say, "Try it, you'll like it." Because from the beginning the Judeo-Christian tradition has been about relationship. It has been about what "works" in daily human life. It's about our self-understanding, our identity and our sense of belonging. I think it's a hard-headed faith. Wil Willimon of Duke Chapel wrote recently about the Trinity, the Trinitarian understanding of God, that it's usefulness for us today is that in a world of broken relationships and broken families and broken marriages and broken lives, the Trinity is a model of a relationship that works. The Father loves the Son, the Son gives the gift of the Spirit to the people, the Spirit creates through the Word, the world. It works together. The Trinity is classic Christian theology that describes how God works with us. Now, God is not shaped like a triangle. It would be presumptuous for any of us to claim that we know how to describe God. God is simply too vast for human imagination to comprehend. But God is not a three-headed monster, or a triumverant. The Trinity is a human construct that helps us understand how God acts.

Our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community can't understand how Christians divide God into three when their one core doctrine is, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." But we do not see God as divided. We see God acting uniquely in three relationships as Creator/Father, Redeemer/Son and Sustainer/Spirit. Like a person who can be a wife and mother and daughter, like an apple that is both skin, fruit and seed, like a light bulb that is filament, glass and light.

Several years ago Bishop Swing of the North California Diocese of the Episcopal Church preached a sermon at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, at the ordination of my good friend, Rebecca Lyman. Some of your know her father, Howard, who was a pastor at Central Methodist Church where I grew up. On the subject of Christianity and other world religions Bishop Swing said, "There are only two things that we cannot compromise on. First, that the world is fundamentally love driven and, two, that God has uniquely entered the world in the person of Jesus Christ. After that, all is negotiable."

On the surface I thought, 'Well that sounds very California liberal and "new agey" to me. Kind of loose theology.' But after I pondered it a long time, and I did think about it a long time, I realized that in those two claims came the great difference between the Christian worldview and the salad bar or other religious options. Do you remember the story of the old Vermont farmer who was stopped in his plowing by a lost New Yorker who was trying to get back to the city? When he asked for directions, the Vermont farmer says to him, "Well, you can't get there from here."

You've been involved in conversations that ask, "Why aren't the Hindus and Buddhists saved? The question is, "Where do you want to get to?" After all, they're God's children too, right? And we as Christians don't want to be someone who excludes anyone. We are a generous people. And we don't want anyone to fall into isolation from the saving grace of Jesus Christ. This is the great impulse that drove the 19^th century missionary movement that either set out to convert people, or in more recent years, we've back-pedaled our claims to salvation with, "Well, we really don't think we're the only ones saved."

But what is salvation and where do you want to get to from here? The position misses the obvious point. The aim of Buddhism is not salvation of the soul. It is enlightenment. The aim of Hinduism is not the claim of a loving creator, or a love-driven world, but a dualistic universe where God brings both good and evil, one that Christianity rejects categorically. Those religious systems don't attempt to save a person. They don't attempt to save sin and they don't promise eternal life. They aren't concerned with those questions. That's all right for them. New age religions, further, don't want God at all unless God is defined as a projection of what validates our good feeling choices, the things of this world. New age religion assumes one can save oneself, that we are our own gods. "Little children keep your self from idols" (1 John). Keep yourself from people who can glide you on the floor. You can't get here from there. They move so smooth but have no answers. When you ask, What did you come here for? What is it that you want out of this relationship? And, What gifts do you bring? "It is to what you are, that you are." (Augustine)

To my mind, Christianity is a hard-headed faith. It's one that thinks through the complexity of the ultimate questions of meaning as well as the trying complexities of everyday lived experience, the one that touches our emotional life as well as our intellectual life. It's hard headed through the no-nonsense claim of the love-driven quality of God's creative activity with us in making us and God's unique entrance into the human experience in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the abiding love of God's presence with us through God's holy spirit. It's a hard-headed faith. Like a love affair it deals with us. It helps us to do our best, to be our truest and most authentic selves. It provides and makes a place in us for life to be sustained. "We declare unto you what we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands concerning the word of life we declare unto you. In God is life." (1 John)

There are a lot of fancy dancers out there. Lots of Madison Avenue marketers to sell you, they move so smooth but they don't have any answers. And when you ask, 'What did you come here for,' they come up empty. What gifts do you bring?

Now Cat Stevens, the writer of "Hard-Headed Woman" eventually became a Moslem and he quit singing for fifteen years. I understand that he may be coming to do some recording now again, but I can't help but think if he had chosen the Christian faith, we might have heard more of his music. We might have heard more of his best. And I don't know if he found his hard-headed woman or not.

But what are you looking for? Are you looking for a hard-headed faith that places you in the relationship of the creator of the universe, that places you in proximity to God as a beloved child? Or that answers the failures of the hurts of our lives, that addresses our mortality and our penchant for self-destruction with the hope of redemption in this world and the life of the world to come? Do you want a God that does not leave us alone in the dark but befriends us as a constant companion? Well if that's where you want to go and that's the relationship you want, then the Trinity is the road map that will get you there. Other maps go other places. Don't ask them to take you where they do not promise to go. Go there if you want, but if this is the relationship that you want with God, if this is the understanding that you want to have of yourself in proximity to the creator and redeemer and sustainer, then the Trinity is the only apple stand in town selling it.

Our Christian faith offers resources that nothing else I know of can supply. If you are ambassadors of Christ, and you share these resources of God with your friends and your family, those who your life touches, invite them to know God as a loving parent, as a friend who will bail you from jail, as a lover who cannot leave your side. Say to your seeking friends, "You know, try it. You'll like it." For myself and my life I'm no longer interested in a smooth glide across the floor. It's too late in life for anything that's not real and authentic for me. I'm looking for a hard-headed faith, one that will make me do my best. I found it in the Trinity and I know that in that understanding how God deals with me and I have found that to be a great blessing. I hope you do too and that perhaps the world might even know what we've come here for. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.