Sermon
May 26, 2013 –Trinity Sunday
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church,
Delray Beach, FL.
According the Miriam Webster dictionary, the
word endurance means: the ability to
withstand hardship or adversity; especially: the ability to
sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity.
During the circuitous and sometimes tension filled course of my call to
the ministry of the diaconate in the Episcopal Church that began in 1995, the
word endurance held great meaning for
me. Just persevere my friends told me…persevere and trust in the process.
I can assure you that my ability to persevere with trust in the process called
for continual endurance.
At the moment of my ordination as I vowed to “At all times, in my life and teaching show Christ's people that in
serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself,” I knew
that I would need to persevere in living a life characterized by discipline and
faith – a life of endurance in the
face of the world’s continual temptations that encourage us to fall away from
our baptismal vows of faith, repentance, and love.
As I strive to carry out my life
as a servant of God in the world around me, I nurture my endurance by offering up each morning, noon and night the Prayer of Self-Dedication:
Almighty
and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so
guide
our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our
wills,
that we may be wholly thine,
utterly dedicated unto
thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always
to
thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord
and
Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sometimes
I succeed in living a Christ-like existence; many times, not unlike everyone
else in the world – I fail.
A
couple of weeks ago, as President of the South Florida Haiti Project, I chaired
an extremely difficult budget meeting with our partners at St. Marie Madeleine
in Bondeau. My years of practicing the discipline of endurance in the face of
difficult and disheartening challenges gave me a slight edge as all partners,
American and Haitian, attempted to come to a meeting of the minds in facing
mountainous financial challenges.
After
a disturbing and distressing five hour meeting we walked away from the table
with heavy hearts and unresolved budget issues.
The
following day, still deeply troubled by our meeting’s outcome, I called a
colleague of mine who is engaged in a similar budget struggle with his
organization’s Haitian partner, Hopital Ste. Croix. My colleague, Bill, is COO
of the Medical Benevolence Foundation (MBA). MBA is a Presbyterian-based not
for profit that has, over the past 15 years, provided millions of dollars towards
the support of the hospital. Despite all this support from MBA and other
organizations, Hopital Ste. Croix is currently foundering financially. It is on
the brink of closing its doors. Yet, despite this grim picture, MBA is making
every good faith effort to keep it alive and well through continuing offers of
technical assistance and grants to support the hospital’s operating costs.
After
listening to my story of the previous day’s board meeting, Bill said to me, “I
know exactly what you are going through. We are having the exact same struggle
with Hopital Ste Croix.” After a moment of silence, he sighed and said,
“Sometimes the challenge is just overwhelming. It’s a bit like pushing string
up a hill.” – What an analogy – pushing string up a hill!!!
After
another moment of silence he added, “But you know, I have to believe deep in my
heart that despite the challenges, we are doing God’s work for the people of Haiti
by bringing them medical care. We can only have faith that our work is planting
seeds that will make a difference. So, we will continue to endure the
struggles.”
How
well put – we must have faith and we will endure – however challenging; however
painful. One must have faith and endurance in order to truly do God’s work in
the world.
If
we learn nothing else from Scripture we learn that in order to live a
God-centered life; a life that puts us in right relationship with God, we must
live through faith and with endurance. Those of us who profess a life as
Christ’s disciple, must also profess a creed of faith and endurance lived out
in every way; every day – regardless of the pain and suffering.
Paul
in his Letter to the Romans says, “…we
also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint
us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
that has been given to us.” (Romans
5:3-5)
Paul
is Christ’s apostle, charged with bringing the obedience of faith to all
nations, including his Roman audience. Those who have been baptized into Christ
must no longer let sin have dominion over them. They must no longer live as
those do who do not know God.
Paul’s
Letter to the Romans is a sustained appeal for holy living through faith and
endurance.
Jesus
forewarns us of this need for faith and endurance many times throughout his
ministry. Just one example is his Parable of the Sower. Jesus makes the case
for faith and endurance when he says, “But
as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word,
hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient
endurance.” (Luke 8:15)
The author of Hebrews in addressing both Jews
and Gentiles encourages his readers who are enduring hardship and persecution to
have ongoing confidence and faith. He writes, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let
us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the
pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at
the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
There is no getting around it – as Christians
seeking God’s eternal kingdom, we are expected – called – to live lives
grounded in faith and based on principals that compel us to endure the cross,
disregarding its shame.
To use my friend Bill’s analogy – a bit more
secular – we are expected to push string uphill!!
Today is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit- is
fundamental to Christian dogma. We proclaim the Trinity each Sunday as we
recite the Nicene Creed, yet the Trinity remains a mystery - a religious truth
that one cannot fully understand.
The essential principle of the Trinity is that
we worship “One God in Trinity,
and the Trinity in Unity.” The catechism in our Book of Common Prayer states,
“The Trinity is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” - All else in our worship and in our lives flows
from that orientation – a Trinitarian belief system.
However mystifying, it is important to talk
about the Trinity because it is through this Trinitarian belief system that we
have a glimpse of who God is. As we see
the Trinity “through a glass darkly,” we begin to understand the centrality of this concept in our lives if we
are to have endurance – to have the
courage and strength to live a life in Christ that strives to bring the Good
News to all nations.
Only through understanding the power and the
depth of God’s love poured into our lives and our hearts through the gift of
His Son, Jesus Christ, and our Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will we have the
ability to endure.
So let’s talk about God. First off – God is
Love. God created the world out of love, and God has continued to love the
world he created. Even when we rejected God’s love and spoiled God’s world with
evil, God went on loving us and did all he could to rescue us from evil. That’s
the Old Testament story of God’s involvement with the people of Israel. It’s
the story that comes to a climax with Jesus, when God in his love sent his Son
to be one of us – to be among us – to live a human life with us and to die for
us. It’s the story that continues with God’s loving presence in the gift of the
Holy Spirit, a continual presence in the church and in our lives. The story of
God’s love for the world is vast and we are part of it.
God is love means that God gives himself –
for us and to us. God the Father, who cares for us as a parent for his
children; God the Son, who loves us by coming alongside us as Jesus – by
becoming one of us and being among us; God the Holy Spirit, who comes into our
very being, who loves us, as it were, from the inside – the Advocate who “will
guide us into all the truth; who will speak whatever he hears to us; who will
declare to us all things that are to come.” (John 16:12-15)
I do not believe that God has given us these
gifts – His gift of grace and love, His Son’s death upon a cross, the blessing
of the Holy Spirit - because he wants us to feel good and have a nice day.
I believe that God has given us these gifts
so that we will have the endurance to push string uphill. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to
bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim
the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
I believe that God has given us these gifts
so that we may endure. This is the great paradox of Christian faith. It heals
us. It makes us whole. But the healing doesn’t happen as long as we, as
individuals, focus on ourselves. It doesn’t happen when we as a group, as a
congregation or even a diocese, focus on ourselves.
Healing happens, wholeness manifests, life
gels when we engage in the mission to heal our broken world: When we push
string uphill in faith, and with the love of Christ in
our hearts. AMEN
