Introduction to the Theme: Trinity Sunday & Holy Habit of Making More Disciples
Churches throughout the world today are celebrating Trinity Sunday. Each year, starting seven weeks after Easter, our liturgical calendar has a series of three Sundays where we pay attention to different aspects of our Christian understanding of God. It starts with Ascension Day, when we remember that Jesus departed from the company of his disciples and told them to do as he had done, and make more disciples in every nation. The following Sunday, we celebrate Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came with a mighty force and empowered the disciples to share the Gospel of healing, hope, and resurrection life with the whole world. And finally, before we enter into the Season we call “Common” or “Ordinary Time”, we celebrate Trinity Sunday – when we acknowledge the unique Christian understanding of God as being Triune: Three-in-One.
Today, we’re wrapping up our look at the Holy Habit of Making More Disciples. Just as Jesus’ first disciples were drawn to him by the power of God, by the Holy Spirit he incarnated, none of us is a disciple of Jesus in the absence of God, of the Holy Spirit. And, when on Ascension Day (which we marked two Sundays ago), Jesus told his disciples to go and make more disciples, he promised them (and us) that the Holy Spirit would empower them to do that disciple-making, that Good News sharing, in all nations—and the coming of that Holy Spirit is what we marked last Sunday, Pentecost.
Our Gospel reading today alludes to the Triune nature of God when Jesus refers to the Father and the Spirit in relation to himself and to all of us, his disciples, and his reminder that we’re meant to make more disciples by bearing fruit—by demonstrating to the world what joy and peace and meaning and fullness there is in the spiritual life of one who endeavors to live as Christ Jesus himself did.
Our second reading, from Paul’s letter to the Romans, puts a challenging question to his readers—especially to anyone who doesn’t feel a responsibility to share the goodness of the Gospel as they understand it. How will others know if we don’t tell them? If we don’t show them by the ways we live differently, how will others know the Way, the Truth, and the life Christ Jesus offers us, if we’re unwilling to talk about it, to live it, to share it?
Listen, friends, for our Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer’s fruitful word to us today.
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“How Will They Know?”
Rev’d. Tanya N. Stormo Rasmussen
The Congregational Church of Hollis, U.C.C.
Trinity Sunday, 30 May, 2021
Final Sermon in the Holy Habit of Making More Disciples Series
John 15:1-17
Romans 10:11-15
First, a disclaimer: I am not a gardener, and my knowledge of gardening is about is deep and broad as my knowledge of anything technological. Which is to say, not very. Thank God, I’m married to an impressive gardener. A couple years ago, Joel planted some rambling roses to cover an arbor at the entrance to our backyard. Several days ago, I noticed new shoots everywhere—hundreds and hundreds of buds, so I commented with wonder to Joel, “The arbor roses are growing like crazy!” And he responded, “That’s because I pruned them back hard a month or so ago.” I didn’t know! Or at least, I didn’t remember. But because of what Joel said, I learned (or re-learned) the counter-intuitive truth that, in order to induce growth, sometimes the best thing you can do is cut the plant back with some energy and conviction.
Along with the Psalmist and other biblical storytellers, Jesus loved agricultural metaphors, one of the finest and most beloved of which was this morning’s gospel reading. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” Jesus said. “Those who abide in me and I in them, bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”[1] Before that, he said, “[M]y Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”[2]
Not that the idea of being pruned is entirely pleasant or painless, but Jesus’ words are reassuring: When, at times, a paring-back in the church or in our personal life seems to be happening, it can be a healthy experience that in fact will ultimately produce even more growth, more abundant fruit. But that fruit can only come from those of us who remain closely connected to the source of our spiritual life. And we are called to share that fruit with others so that they, too, will develop a deeper connection with the Source of life, and hope, and joy.
According to John’s gospel, Jesus made his horticultural analogy just after he had promised his disciples that, though he was departing from their physical presence, he would continue to be with them. In fact, Jesus promised, the same powerful Love and Life he personally embodied, the same Holy Spirit would abide in them (in us!), and they would abide in that Spirit. It was a radically new concept or way of seeing reality, hard to wrap one’s mind around. So, the illustration of the vine and the branches was another way of describing the divine phenomenon.
“Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me,”[3] Jesus said. When we fail to stay connected to the source of our joy, our hope, our life, then spiritually, we wither. Our joy wanes, we start to wonder about our purpose, our direction falters, we feel less and less fulfilled despite the various activities and things we’ll find to preoccupy ourselves.
But, Jesus continued, “If you keep my commandments” – love God, and love your neighbor as yourself – “if you keep these, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”[4] God the vinegrower will be pruning and weeding as we practice keeping these commandments of love – but the pruning activities are necessary for us to flourish, to be able to produce more fruit.
For those of you in search of joy in life, Jesus says this is how you find it: by keeping his commandments; by abiding in his love; by loving others as he’s shown us how to do. “I have said these things to you,” said Jesus, “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”[5]
One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is joy. Paul lists them his letter to the Galatians, where he draws distinctions between the life of the “flesh” – by which he means an ego-driven, self-centered, materially-focused existence – and the life of the Spirit. In Galatians Chapter 5 we read, “Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh… the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. … By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”[6]
The fruit we produce in the world is going to bear witness to the vine, or life-source, we’re tapped into.
One of the things Jesus helped his disciples to do – one of the things his Spirit helps us to do, as we work to Make More Disciples – is to reveal connections between faith (our sacred relationship with God and the rest of creation) and our daily life experiences.
This is a busy week, as historical events and commemorations go. It’s worth reflecting on where the fruits of the Spirit are and have been on display, or absent, as we memorialize and honor each child of God whose life was laid down, surrendered, whether willingly or against their will.
Today, May 30, is the day the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922. As many of you know, the structure was modeled on the Parthenon in Greece. According to the architect, Henry Bacon, a defender of democracy (Abraham Lincoln) should be remembered with an homage to the birthplace of democracy. What’s more, the marble and granite were deliberately sourced from Massachusetts, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Indiana, and Alabama, to symbolize a divided nation reconciling in order to build something new together. And yet, divisions persisted — then, and now. A crowd of more than 50,000 attended the Lincoln Memorial’s dedication ceremony that day. But though Lincoln was known as the Great Emancipator, the audience remained segregated still in 1922, and the keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Moton – president of the Tuskegee Institute and an African-American, wasn’t permitted to sit on the speakers’ platform.
Sometimes, whether by stubbornness or the will of the flesh eclipsing the will of the Spirit, we do not recognize the ways our behaviors are disconnected from our espoused values and ideals, and we can’t see it unless it’s pointed out to us. (And sometimes even then, we still won’t see it.) This is the human condition.
41 years later, on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech from the Lincoln Memorial steps.[7] Like prophets before and after him, Dr. King did his best to speak the Gospel truth with love so that still others could know the truth that might set them free.
Tomorrow we will celebrate Memorial Day, a day honoring all who have died in service to our country. Originally, it was dubbed “Decoration Day” and in 1868, General John A. Logan declared the day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” First observed at Arlington National Cemetery, the idea was to set aside a day to remember and heal from the wounds and heavy costs of war. Because, whereas our commemorations today tend to recall first and foremost lives lost in foreign wars, the earliest decades recalled the brutal toll of our own Civil War, where more than 622,000 lives from both North and South were lost in a battle that had at its heart, the issues of race, social place, and conceptions of full humanity. The nation needed to heal from the divisions and demonization not of those on distant soil, but here at home – and too often, among their own kindred.
Tomorrow (May 31st) and June 1st also mark the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, in which in which a thriving Black community in this country was utterly destroyed in acts of racist hatred, fear, and wickedness. It is a curious thing that many of us never learned as children about that horrific event, so that we as a nation might learn from it. And yet, unless those with the power and agency make it a holy habit to tell difficult stories with courage and conviction, many others will never know the truth that can liberate them and all of us from the realities that still enslave us.
The same impulses that gave rise to the outrage of the Tulsa Massacre a century ago are alive and well today, and we need the power of God’s love and wisdom to grasp the challenge with a mighty faith, hope, and love. I say this because, as we mark the 100th anniversary of that atrocity, and as we close in on the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln Memorial dedication, and the 200th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and as we prepare to mark the 153rdMemorial Day, it is sobering and humbling to note that five days ago, we marked the first anniversary of the death of George Floyd. The hard truths his murder revealed about the entrenched racism stitched into the very power systems and structures of our society, the partisan acrimony, the widespread lack of empathy toward those who think or understand the world differently than we do, have been difficult for many of us to face, much less to know how to talk about.
But as Jesus knew, avoidance of the issues that wound and grieve us does not heal us.
On this Trinity Sunday, we glorify God Almighty – the Father/Mother/ Creator of all that is, for the Incarnate gift of God the Son, and for the sustaining gift of God’s Holy Spirit. In and as the Son, Christ Jesus embodied the divine response to our human inability to interpret or comprehend divine love, the essence of which is this: there is simply nothing that can separate us from God’s love for us. Despite the fact that we continue to undermine our own joy by our obstinate refusal to live according to God’s design for us; despite the fact that we continue to turn away from the divine love our souls most deeply desire in our pursuit of lesser things; despite our penchant for self-importance and our tendency to fear and diminish those who do not conform to our preferences – despite all these ways we insist on “gratifying the desires of the flesh” instead of living by the Spirit – God will simply not give up on us. Not on any of us! As long as we continue to abide in the Spirit, the Spirit of God will abide in us.
And that is Good News, gospel truth for all of us regardless of our race, or nationality, our gender or sexual identity, our age or social status, or any of the other countless categories we’re prone to use as human beings to sort ourselves into “us” and “them”. To God, we are all “beloved children” and each one of us bears the divine image, whether we recognize it in ourselves, or the other, or not.
But, as Paul notes in his letter to the Romans, God – who doesn’t assign our value according to our national or tribal identity (“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him”[8]) – has entrusted those who have experienced and know the truth of God’s amazing grace and unflagging devotion, God has entrusted us with this joyous message.
In a world, in a society, in a community, in households drained and disillusioned by the prevalence of the “us” vs. “them” ways of the flesh, we are called to Make More Disciples in the way of Jesus Christ, of Love Incarnate seeking a more excellent way. As fruit-bearing branches of Christ Jesus the True Vine, we have nourishment to offer a famished world by the power of the Holy Spirit abiding in us, and in whom we abide – in whom we live, and move, and have our being. And if we don’t share the Good News that restores our own souls, how will the others know? Amen.
[1] John 15:5
[2] John 15:1-2
[3] John 15:4b
[4] John 15:10
[5] John 15:11
[6] Galatians 5:16-17, 19-21a, 22-23a
[7] https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2021/5/25/theologians-almanac-for-week-of-may-30-2021
[8] Romans 10:12