\u201cYou have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, \u201cAbba! Father!\u201d it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How well do you know your father? Today is Father\u2019s Day, and when we think of our earthly father, how well did we or do we know him? We may know our father in many different roles\u2013Dad as gardener, businessman, fisherman, drunk, kind advisor, holy terror, disciplinarian, sage\u2013but at some point we come to the realization that we never knew him as confidante or bridge partner or co-worker or boss or husband. We really can\u2019t know our fathers completely, just as we can\u2019t know any other person in their totality. All our personal knowledge of another is just that\u2013personal, from our own personal and limited viewpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today is also Trinity Sunday. The lesson from the Letter to the Romans has just reminded us of the understanding we have of God\u2013our adoptive Father. So it seems appropriate that we take a closer look both at fathers and at the language we use for God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: The Three-in-One God of official Christian doctrine. We affirm our faith each Sunday in the words of the Nicene Creed: \u201cI believe in God, the Father Almighty\u00e2\u0080\u00a6I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord\u00e2\u0080\u00a6I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.\u201d We baptize in the name of our triune God. We invoke blessing in the same three persons of our one God every time we make the sign of the cross. But the doctrine of the Trinity never appears in the Bible per se. All the persons of the Trinity are alluded to in both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. But it is only in the last words of Matthew\u2019s Gospel that we hear \u201cFather, Son, and Holy Spirit\u201d used together in a sort of unity. These words are found in in Jesus\u2019 resounding call to mission and evangelism, the Great Commission. It is here, too, that we can find the promise that has given and grown hope in the hearts of the most nearly hopeless believers for two millennia: \u201cLo, I am with you always, even to the end of time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of our language for God is absolute and determinative of precisely and totally who God is. Please know this. Our best attempts to describe, name, quantify, or qualify God are just that: our best attempts. If we can\u2019t know our earthly parents in their totality because of our limited viewpoint as their offspring, how much less completely can we know God?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know the Son, Jesus, as human as we are and yet as divine as the Father. We live in his stories, his parables, and his miracles. We know the Spirit, the indwelling presence of God in each of the baptized, bringer of comfort and peace, power and fire, our great Advocate for all time. But for some, Father language is difficult when we are speaking of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Jon Winuker\u2019s book, Fathers, he looks at celebrities and their dads. For example, he quotes broadcast magnate Ted Turner: \u201cOne summer I made $50 a week,\u201d says Turner, \u201cand my father charged me $25 a week rent. I asked him if that wasn\u2019t a little high. He said that if I could do better than that for food and lodging seven days a week I could move out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Winokur also quotes sometime presidential candidate Pat Buchanan: \u201cTo impress upon us what the loss of the soul through mortal sin meant,\u201d says Buchanan, \u201cmy father would light a match, grab our hands and hold them briefly over the flame, saying, \u2018See how that feels? Now imagine that for all eternity.’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t these stories explain a good bit about Turner and Buchanan and who they are today? He tells another story from golfer Juan \u201cChi Chi\u201d Rodriguez: \u201cOne night,\u201d says Rodriguez, \u201cat about two o\u2019clock in the morning my father caught a man stealing bananas from our back yard. He went over to the man with his machete, took the bananas, cut the branch in half and said, \u2018Here, you can have it.\u2019 And then he said, \u2018From now on, if you need anything from the back of our house, come to the front.’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can you see how our own knowledge, our own experience of our fathers can color how we see God, if we take the language we use for the first Person of the Trinity as an absolute? For one whose earthly father was a loving, kind, generous, unselfish man, like Mr. Rodriguez, the image of God as Father is powerful and reassuring. But what about those people whose fathers were withholding and conditional in their love? Might they not perceive a God whose love and care depended on following all the rules and satisfying all the necessary requirements\u2013an impossible task? And what about a person whose father was abusive psychologically, physically\u2013or even incestuously? What happens to that person\u2019s image of God?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This distortion doesn\u2019t have to be the case, however. William Zittle, a Colorado Episcopalian and postulant for Holy Orders who died of cancer, was heard to say in a discussion about inclusive language: \u201cPlease don\u2019t ever take away my heavenly Father from The Book of Common Prayer. He\u2019s the only Father I\u2019ve ever had who really loved me.\u201d As an abused child, healing came to Zittle through the very language that is difficult for others with similar \u201cfather-experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All the language we use about our amazing God is risky, even the most \u201ctried and true\u201d words. When the images they conjure for us are anything less than images of abiding love, faithfulness, mercy, justice, strength, care, limitless Being, then we need to ask our God to show us how we are to perceive the Divine in our own lives. As King Oehmig points out, however, \u201cThe good news is that we Christians are not justified by believing that, but by believing in. We are not saved by \u2018right belief\u2019 or \u2018doctrinal perfection,\u2019 but by the grace of God. Therefore, we can take ourselves a little less seriously, be more willing to trust Mystery rather than be caught up in cognitive Mastery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How we speak of God is much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. The unique yet united parts\u2013Father, Son, and Holy Spirit\u2013are joined together in eternal relationship and community which we come to grasp through snippets in Holy Scripture and more snippets from our own corporate and individual experiences of God. We can\u2019t say or know all of God, and that\u2019s okay. But we, like Nicodemus, know that we are spirit with the One Spirit, and we know that we have not only been born anew in this Spirit but adopted as children and heirs of the eternal Father, brothers and sisters of the eternal Son. What a gift we\u2019ve been given! Don\u2019t you look forward to the next time somehow asks you, \u201cTell me about your family\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sermon was written by Katherine Merrell Glenn<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cYou have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, \u201cAbba! Father!\u201d it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.\u201d \u201cNo one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":201212,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43,52,33,1953],"tags":[377],"class_list":["post-511525","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons","category-sermons-that-work","category-the-season-after-pentecost","category-worship-and-prayer-menu","tag-trinity-sunday-b"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":43,"label":"Sermons"},{"value":52,"label":"Sermons That Work"},{"value":33,"label":"The Season After Pentecost"},{"value":1953,"label":"worship_and_prayer_menu"}],"post_tag":[{"value":377,"label":"Trinity Sunday B"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermon"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3478401,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511525\/revisions\/3478401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}