Trinity Sunday Sunday May 30,2021
Welcome, it’s “Trinity Sunday”. In our morning service we remembered those who have given their lives so that we can be free in celebration of “Memorial Day”.
Today I would also like us to celebrate the lives of those who gave their lives, so that we can know the grace of God , in a message I’ve titled;
“Ordinary time”.
Please open your bibles and read our scriptures this week from; Isaiah 6:1-8, John 3:1-17, and Paul’s final greeting in the letter to the Corinthian’s in, 2 Corinthians 13:11-14.
Isaiah 6:1-8
Isaiah’s Commission
(1) In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. (2) Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. (3) And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (4) At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. (5)”Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
(6) Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. (7) With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
(8) Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
John 3:1-17
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus
(1) Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. (2) He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
(3) In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
(4)”How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”
(5) Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. (6) Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. (7) You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ (8) The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
(9) “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. (10) “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? (11) I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still, you people do not accept our testimony. (12) I have spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? (13) No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven–the Son of Man. (14) Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, (15) that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
(16) “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (17) For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
2 Corinthians 13:11-14
Final Greetings
(11) Finally, brothers, good-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.
(12) Greet one another with a holy kiss. (13) All the saints send their greetings.
(14) May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
This is the word of God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
There was a man in a certain church who was only seen in church one Sunday a year. No, it wasn’t Easter. It was Trinity Sunday. One leading lay person had restrained his curiosity year after year. Until he couldn’t contain it anymore. He approached the man and said, “I’ve noticed that you have selected this particular time for your only visit to church, why is that?” “Oh, that’s easy to explain,” the man said. “I like to come on this day so I can hear the preacher get all tangled up trying to explain the Trinity!”
Trinity Sunday begins the second half of the church year. The first half of the church year beginning with Advent and ending with Pentecost focused on the life of Christ. We call this second half “ordinary time” but there is nothing ordinary about it. It is an extraordinary time of the year when we focus on the church’s life and mission.
Some have called Trinity Sunday the “great hinge” of the church year. Others have called it the “great pain”! Why, might you ask? Because as the only Sunday of the church year that focuses on doctrine, which is “a set of beliefs held and taught by the church”, instead of a historical event or person, it often seems so theological, theoretical, complicated, and downright boring.
So, in light of that statement, it’s Trinity Sunday: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Enough said?
(PAUSE)
Your still here! I promise you; I won’t deliver a lecture expounding on what belongs only in the classroom for theologians. But I do want us to take a moment and look a little deeper into our scriptures for today.
In our reading from Isaiah, Isaiah received his commission in a very scary vision from God. In verse 5 Isaiah said, “Woe to me! “and then cries out in fear. (Because anyone who saw God expected to die immediately.)
“I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Then in verses 6 and 7, Isaiah receives forgiveness for his sin and God enters him as the Holy Spirit, as represented by the coals taken from the altar.
Then in verse 8 Isaiah hears the voice of God through the Holy Spirit, asking him to prophesy about the salvation to come. The time When God will come into this world in “ordinary time” as Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. Isaiah then excepts his commission saying: “Here am I. Send me!”
If you were to read the verses following our reading this morning in Isaiah 6:1-8, verse 9 reads: “He said”, meaning God said,” Go and tell this people:”
Hard times are coming, bad things are going to happen and most of you will not understand why. They will; “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.” Doesn’t that have a familiar ring to it?
In our scripture reading from John, Nicodemus is struggling with his understanding of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God. He’s having a hard time understanding the Trinity, in his, “ordinary time”.
Wouldn’t you think that Nicodemus, the Pharisee, “a member of the Jewish ruling counsel”, brought up in the temple would’ve known what was to come? Wouldn’t he have understood the Trinity? He’d spent most of his life learning “doctrine”. Yet he was: “ever hearing, but never understanding; “ever seeing, but never perceiving”.
He was probably like, the only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. The man prayed for God to rescue him, and every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none came. The man was exhausted, but he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood for protection and a place to store his provisions. But one day, after scavenging for food, he arrived at his temporary home to find it in flames, the smoke rolling up to the sky. The worst had happened. Everything was lost. He was stunned with grief and anger. “How could God do this to me?” he cried. Early the next day, however, he was awakened by the sound of a ship that was approaching the island. It had come to rescue him. When they arrived, he asked, “How did you know that I was here?” “We saw your smoke signal,” they replied. (from Homiletics, February 2008)
Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it wills.” Or, in other words, God acts on our behalf in ways that are beyond our comprehension and imagination. We like to believe that we are in control of our lives but obviously we are not.
One thing I have learned in ministry is that few people are directly changed because of me. In fact, most people seem to go on living their lives as if nothing has happened. I have come to accept the fact that being born again means I cannot change others. They have to be open to God’s Spirit just as I have to be open to the Spirit. To live in God’s light is a matter of letting the “wind blow where it will.”
There’s an old adage that warns, “bad things always come in threes.” Have you found this true in your own experience? That bad things (and good things) like to happen, in bunches? You say: we invent this connection by suddenly realizing that we got a flat tire on the same day that our computer crashed, shortly after our last contact lens just slid down the drain. I say: there seems to be something significant about the power of three.
Today the church celebrates the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—on this “Trinity Sunday.” We recognize God as power (the Father), God as person (the Son), and God as presence (the Holy Spirit).
Paul’s final benediction to the Corinthians switches this order a bit to better express each person’s unique experience of the divine.
For Paul, Jesus Christ comes first, for it is through the grace of his life, death and resurrection that humans may be reconciled to God. Only grace enables us to experience “the love of God.” As we stand renewed and redeemed before this loving God, another gift is made available, “the communion of the Holy Spirit.”
The person, the power, and the presence of God come to us in a threefold design-package.
So, in his final letter, in his “ordinary time” , in his final benediction, to a contentious Corinthian community, Paul offered a positive, powerful, alternative Trinity to this struggling church. Paul’s closing command lays out a new kind of three-fold pattern, a pattern that will lead to wholeness and holy living.
In 2 Corinthians 13:11, he starts by saying; “Aim for perfection,”.
After last Sunday’s service, Kaylee,(a precocious 13-year-old girl) told me she was going to sing the song, “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands“, for special music, but it wasn’t quite ready yet. She said: “I think I need a little more practice to make it perfect.” I think she was “Aiming for perfection“. How do we, ”Aim for perfection”?
Here’s a story that might help us in that pursuit.
One rainy Sunday afternoon, a little boy was bored, and his father was sleepy. The father decided to create an activity to keep the kid busy. So, he found in the morning newspaper a large map of the world. He took scissors and cut it into a good many irregular shapes like a jigsaw puzzle. Then he said to his son, “See if you can put this puzzle together. And don’t disturb me until you’re finished.” He turned over on the couch, thinking this would occupy the boy for at least an hour. To his amazement, the boy was tapping his shoulder ten minutes later telling him that the job was done. The father saw that every piece of the map had been fitted together perfectly. “How did you do that?” he asked. “It was easy, Dad. There was a picture of a man on the other side. When I got him together right, the world was right.”
A person’s world can never be right until the person is right with God. If we are to ,“Aim for perfection” in this, “ordinary time”, that requires the miracle of new birth. As Jesus told Nicodemus:” no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Don’t you dare stop asking God for the experience of new birth until you can shout from the housetops, “Through Jesus Christ, God has fundamentally changed my life!”
As Paul continues in verse 11 he said: “listen to my appeal, be of one mind”. In other words, he’s telling us that our doctrine, should teach, during these “ordinary times’” to, “be of one mind”. Just as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirt are of one mind. Do we ,“Aim for perfection”, “be of one mind” when we proclaim together, The Apostles Creed? And believe it?
If we do, then our doctrine should teach, as Paul puts it: “live in peace”. Put our faith in action, during these “ordinary times”. Isn’t that what those we honored today in our Memorial Day tribute, fought and died for. So that we might “live in peace”.
Paul concludes by telling us that if we follow these doctrines during our “ordinary time”: “the God of love and peace will be with you.”
So, as we leave today, Aim for Perfection, Be of One Mind and Live in Peace, knowing, The God of Love and Peace is with you always.
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
In His Service, Pastor Joe.
Listen to Audio: Service 05302021
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Pastor Joe will be available at the church on Thursday afternoon from 2 to 4. If you need to speak to him, contact Pastor Joe at 570-267-4570 (cell) or Email: joe.s.travis@gmail.com
Pastor Joe will be on 4 weeks of vacation beginning June 11 returning to the pulpit July 11th resuming office hours July 15th.
Loose change goes to Trehab Local Food Bank
Sunday School starts at 8:30am with a study of the book of Galatians. A good time to join us.
PW is gathering recipes for a church/community cookbook. If you have a favorite recipe you would like to share, it can be emailed to Bonne, or give it to her handwritten.
Newsletter Deadline – Tuesday June 1, 2021. Please give a list of your graduates to Carolyn White to be included in the Newsletter.
Social Hour will return next Sunday with cake and coffee
Pastor Marilyn will be in the pulpit June 13, 20 and 27
PW will meet Thursday June 10 at 11:00 AM
Men’s Breakfast will be Wed. June 16 at 8:00 A.M.
Session meets June 22 at 9:00 A.M.
EMAIL address for the church has been changed to: fhpc400@att.net
Please tune your radio to 89.5 FM to hear the church service.
PARKING LOT TRANSMISSION WILL END JULY 11TH.
