CELC The Holy Trinity

The Holy Trinity – May 22, 2005

You do know how fortunate you are, don’t you? Living in the Shenandoah Valley we have some of the most beautiful views you can ever see. If you don’t believe me, go for a hike on the Blue Ridge. The views will take your breath away.

It isn’t hard to believe that God is a God of majesty when you see the beauty of what God has created. Perhaps the difficult part of faith is the mystery. The difficult part of faith is trying to figure out why God works the way God does.

Speaking of how things work, Bill was always a “take-it-apart” kind of child. If it made a noise, lit up with lights or somehow got his attention, Bill took it apart. When he was very small few things got put back together again.

Then he grew up and there were several old Model “A” Fords he restored. Now he was putting things back together and they were beautiful. Bill went off to college, studied engineering and with a PhD in hand taught at a university for a couple of decades.

It was there Bill discovered his curiosity for wind energy. He designed and built wind mills that are in use today all over the world. The tinkering child had become the designer of the unusual. Who would have thought?

There is a little bit of “Bill” in all of us, isn’t there? Don’t we all want to know how it works? Well, even if we don’t want to know how to design a wind mill several stories tall, we do want to know “who-done-it” as we read a novel or watch a movie.

This need to know is also a part of our faith life with God. I cannot answer for you, but one of my enduring questions is how Christ is present in the means of bread and wine as we celebrate Holy Communion. Yes, I can give you the “book” answer, the one we pastors have to learn to graduate from seminary. But, it does not seem complete.

At its most significant depth of meaning, Holy Communion is a mystery. Why does Christ choose to be with us in these meager means of ordinary bread and wine? How is it that you know Christ is present and forgiving your sin, but you just can’t explain it in twenty-five words or less?

Holy Communion remains a mystery. Yes, it is a joyful gift, a precious and gracious moment with our Savior. It remains, though, a mystery.

There are times then, we would like to tame the mystery of God. Like Bill who took apart everything to see how it worked, we want to have God reveal to us the “why” and “how” of many things we have questions about.

For example, your brother awakens one morning shortly after celebrating his thirty-first birthday. He seems to be the picture of health. Within the hour he has a massive stroke and dies. That kind of moment makes you want to ask God, “why?” When you do there is great silence. God does not reveal everything. We live by faith, not by certainty, and mystery remains.

We live by faith because God chooses to do things we cannot fathom. For example, the greatest mystery of all seems to be the cross. Why did God choose the cross as the means of our salvation? Why select the Roman instrument of capital punishment? On the cross Jesus looks so weak and he dies there between two thieves. It is so embarrassing. Why does God do this?

If Hollywood was making a motion picture of a great savior they would get it right, wouldn’t they? It would be a person like Superman or Batman with a bit of mix of Wonder Woman thrown in for good measure. No embarrassment here. It would be clear as the hero entered the scene with super-human powers that the savior is someone you can be proud of. Yes, that is how Hollywood would do it. It is a mystery as to why God chose such an unusual means as the cross.

It is precisely in the cross, though, that God acts to transform us. God, who created all and nurtures us in the Spirit each day, chooses in the cross to die that we may live. The Holy Spirit gives faith to you and you are never the same. Fully forgiven in the cross we know the promise of new life in Christ, a gift of grace that is yet another mystery for us.

Our mysterious God does take apart our “neat” world. God works in ways we never expect and is at work making a new creation in Jesus, our Lord.

David shared his story with me this week of a mystery for him as he spoke of a recent trip he made: “I still don't understand how it's quicker to fly north, then south, to get west. Do you? We went from Los Angeles to Alaska to get to Taiwan -- amazing!”

Now Bruce Shull or Bob Lock might be able to unravel the mystery of flying north, then south, to go west. Most of us don’t care. David continues: “Most of us will sit for 14 hours in a 747 to cross the Pacific Ocean…without understanding how that monstrous airplane the size of a city block could actually get off the ground, much less fly six miles high and land like a ten-ounce bird on solid concrete five thousand miles away. Now that's faith! I'm just glad I didn't have to explain it before I rode in it. For me it was enough that somebody else before me made the trip safely and loved it, and that somebody else explained how it would work before they flew it, and that somebody else was trained in how to operate it before they took my money so I could go somewhere. I really did give them my life!”

So it is with our faith in the Triune God. We give our life, knowing that we cannot fully understand the mystery, the cross, but that the witness of the saints and the revelation of God is that God is good for the promise of new life. And living the mystery, we entrust our lives to God. Amen.

Pastor Robert F. Holley

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