313 To Keep It Holy

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “To Keep It Holy” originally shared on May 29, 2024. It was the 313^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What the people of God should and shouldn’t do on the sabbath can’t be more relevant to revitalizing the Church in our time. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   This coming Sunday, churches all over the world will be hearing two stories about Jesus’ teaching about what the religious Law says about sabbath behavior, the day of rest, the day that Christians call Sunday.

   Do you ever think about that? Probably not. Or not much.

   But it is central to the revitalization of the Church, and it begins with the Law.

   The 10 Commandments are the core of the religious Law.

   The first three are about our relationship with God, and the final seven are about our relationship with one another. Our relationship with one another springs from our relationship with God.

   The third commandment is first seen in Genesis 20:8-11,

8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

   The sabbath day is holy because God consecrated it. That is, God made it holy.

   The Early Christians made Sunday, instead of Saturday, our sabbath to make it clear that they were different from Jews, to demonstrate freedom from the Law, and because it was the day on which Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week. But they didn’t change the concept of the sabbath as a holy day.

   Is our Sunday a holy day today? How is it made holy? How do we keep it holy?

   In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees, a group of laymen (only men could be Pharisees) were experts on the religious Law. They defined the sabbath on the basis of rest, not on making it holy. It had been defined by some of them down to how many steps a person could take and not be considered to be working.

   But they were missing the point of the Law. One of the primary purposes of the Law is to show us that no one keeps it well enough to be saved, that we need a savior.

   Jesus said, in Matthew 5:17-20,

17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

   We can’t be saved by keeping the Law. We need a savior, and we have one in Jesus Christ.

   We can’t be perfect, but we can be perfectly forgiven in Jesus Christ.

   We can’t make the sabbath holy, but we can keep it holy through a living relationship with our Savior Jesus Christ.

   We see that on display in the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, Mark 2:23 – 3:6.

   The first story is about who the sabbath is for, in Mark 2:23-28,

23 One sabbath he was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?” 25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? 26 He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.” 27 Then he said to them, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28 so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

   Jesus is the arbiter over how to keep the sabbath because Jesus is God. A living relationship with Jesus, our Savior, is what makes the sabbath holy.

   The second story is about what the sabbath is for, in Mark 3:1-6,

3 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” 4 Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

   Jesus shows us what the sabbath is for by modeling what God’s intention is for human beings. Living in response to the gift of God in Jesus Christ is what makes the sabbath holy.

   Jesus performs a miracle on the sabbath, the day of rest, and the Pharisees were offended by it. Jesus’ miracles were not suspensions of the laws of nature. They were acts that pointed back to the wholeness of the world that God created, and forward to the new heaven and the new earth that is to come. Jesus points to God, who makes us holy.

   What does the sabbath mean if not that it is holy?

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer defined the Third Commandment in this way:

What is the third Commandment?

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

What does this mean for us?

We are to fear (“fear” means “respect”) and love God so that we do not neglect his Word and the preaching of it, but regard it as holy and gladly hear and learn it.

   Not much about rest there. The focus is on the Word and the preaching of it. Why?

   It’s not surprising to Lutherans, or to Protestants in general.

   When one of my best friends, who was also going to become a Lutheran pastor, was dating (and later married) a devout Roman Catholic young woman, they would alternate going to each other’s churches.

   He said that the first thing he noticed that was different was the way people rationalized being late.

   He said that when Roman Catholics were late, they would say, “Well, I was late. But I got there in time for the Eucharist (Holy Communion).

   And when Lutherans were late, they would say, “Well, I was late. But I got there in time for the sermon!

   But both the word and the sacraments are central to keeping the sabbath day holy because both are from God and are the means by which God is made present for us.

   What does that have to do with revitalizing the Church?

   Some posts on Facebook recently have talked about the reasons for the current decline of the Church. Some of them include the influence of sports (especially youth sports), the indifference of the young, falling birthrates, scandals, calcification of churches that preserve an institution, the rise of self-centeredness, and many more.

   But there were also posts that pointed to churches that are not in decline, especially among young people. Sone of them include Roman Catholic churches that offer the Latin Mass, Eastern Orthodox churches that offer a sense of transcendence, otherworldliness, and authenticity with roots in the ancient Church, churches that expect a lengthy period of catechesis (teaching in discipleship) before full membership, churches that offer more than a social service experience using religious language, churches that focus on virtues like patience, truth, beauty, and morality that are revealed in Jesus Christ, churches that model and point to a genuinely transformational experience and have the infrastructure to help that take place, and churches that recognize differences but stay united by focusing on Jesus.

   That is, churches that focus on the Holy, including on keeping the sabbath day holy.

   Some congregations both on the Right and on the Left, grow because some people don’t want to think too much. The world is too complicated. They just want to be told by some authority figure.

   I’m not sure that that’s anything more than growth in numbers. But I’ll not judge them or what God can do through them.

   What counts is not numbers, but people engaged in a living relationship with the one, true, living, Holy God. That is the focus of our worship and about how we spend our sabbath, how we are encountered by the Holy.

   The sabbath is for us. So now what will we do with it?

   Soren Kirkegaard, the Lutheran philosopher and theologian once said that many people attend worship services, but they don’t worship. They treat worship as if they have gone to a play and then they evaluate it as entertainment.

   Worship, instead, is prayer, praise and thanksgiving, all directed toward God.

   Kierkegaard said that the question to ask after a worship service is not, “What did I get out of that?” but “How did I do?” Not to please ourselves, but to worship in response to what God has already done for us.

   Were the disciples happy that they could feed themselves on the sabbath. Sure, but there have been many followers of Jesus who have been hungry.

   Was the man with a withered hand happy that Jesus healed him on the sabbath. Sure, but there have been many followers of Jesus who have not been healed.

   Follows of Jesus are the servants of God and of humanity who seek to feed others and who work for the healing of the world and of others because of Jesus.

   And what do we offer? Not a social club, not a building that needs maintenance, not someone’s personal legacy to be propped-up. We point to Jesus and a better life, an eternal one.

   Jesus is our Savior! He has come to set us free from sin, death, and from all the forces that defy God. And he did it on the cross.

   What do we actually have to offer the world that the world can’t get elsewhere and better?

   Except Jesus?

   Does our worship offer majesty and transcendence? Are we serious about what happens at worship, and throughout the day, and in response to the living God that we encounter there?

   I saw a story this week about a Roman Catholic advocacy group that set up an Artificial Intelligence generated image of a “priest” to answer common questions. “Father Justin” who claimed to be based in Assisi, Italy, still needs from fine-tuning, apparently, as it overstepped on several issues, including one where he advised that it was perfectly OK to baptize a child with Gatorade. He was soon downgraded, pending some improvements.

   Now, baptizing someone with Gatorade in an emergency with no water available is perfectly acceptable.

   It’s the trivialization of Baptism that’s the problem, and our world jumps at every opportunity to trivialize.

   The sabbath is God’s gift to us. It is holy. And everything in it is to be kept holy for our benefit. It is given so that we can rejoice in life with the joy that comes only from God and can therefore never be taken away from us.

   Do you know somebody who is experiencing anything but holiness today, who perhaps thinks that they are unworthy of holiness, who is sick of sin, even if they aren’t using those words? This week, I invite you to talk with them about healing. Invite them to open their hearts, their lives, their true selves to Jesus in the fulness of His holiness.

   For in Him is the power to be made new. To be made worthy. To become, by God’s work and by God’s grace, a fit place for the one true holy God to live.

   In Jesus is the transformational power to be made whole and to be made happy forever.

   The life of the Church and its revitalization comes from God.

   Our common relationship with Jesus is what makes and what keeps the sabbath holy.

312 Three = One, Twice

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Three = One, Twice” originally shared on May 22, 2024. It was the 312^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   As if contemplating the Holy Trinity isn’t enough to make us question our sanity, we heard news last week that made us question what it means to be human, and it wasn’t A.I. Today, we’re going to find out what it means.

   This coming Sunday will be the Sunday of the Holy Trinity in the vast majority of churches throughout the world.

   Get a good night’s sleep the night before and have a good breakfast because you’re going to need everything you’ve got to describe the indescribable and to fathom the unfathomable. 😊      

   In fact, today, we’re going to consider that three = one, twice!

   But we are going to need some tools.

   It’s been said that we only need two tools.

   If it moves and it shouldn’t: duct tape.

   If it doesn’t move and it should: WD40. Or, if you’re old school and you want it to move, or you want it to move faster, and you don’t need those fancy aerosol cans: 3-In-One oil.

   Before we had those fancy gasoline powered lawn mowers or the eco-friendlier electric ones, we used our muscle-powered manual mowers, and they moved efficiently with 3-in-one oil!  

   When we wanted our bicycles to fly like rockets: 3-in-1 oil. When things got rusty and wouldn’t move: 3-In-One oil. Hedge clippers, bolts, pruners, bicycle chains, locks, adjustable wrenches, almost anything that turned and could rust was made more efficient by 3-in-1 oil.

   It’s been made since 1894 and you can still buy it. It’s one of the, if not the most, masculine smells I know. If you could make a cologne out of it, I think that you’d have something.

   The container says that it “Frees Rusted Parts”, “Prevents Rust”, and “Lubricates.” And yet it comes from one 4-oz. container. It’s just one oil: “3-In-One!” Get it? So, does that make it a good way to describe the Holy Trinity? Well, sort of. But “No.”

   This coming Sunday is the only Sunday in the Church year whose theme is not an event, but a doctrine. That might sound pretty dry except for the blood spilled, the churches divided, and the arguments that have consumed people’s lives trying to define what “the Holy Trinity” means. So if that still sounds dry, maybe we need a little spiritual 3-In-One oil.

   Martin Luther, the 16th century Church reformer, once said, “To try to deny the Trinity is to endanger your salvation. To try to comprehend the Trinity is to endanger your sanity.”

   Is your sanity feeling endangered yet? Fortunately, we are not alone. The Holy Spirit guides us.

   And, we have been given tools. We encounter God in the Word and the Sacraments.

   There’s nowhere in the Bible that says, “there is a Trinity”, and yet the evidence is found from its beginning to its end.

   Sometimes all three persons are manifest at the same place and time, as in Jesus’ baptism, for example. Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and rested on him, and a voice spoke from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” There is the doctrine of the Trinity: one God in three persons each of which is fully God.

   So, how many Gods do we believe in? One: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

   Wait, that’s three. How can one be three? Or is it, “how can three be one?”

   Sometimes they are all described and sometimes just one person is present, but all are present in that one. Three is One. One is Three.

   Is your sanity feeling a bit endangered?

   All three persons in the Trinity are in play in this coming Sunday’s reading from the gospels, in John 3:1-17.

   We looked at a part of this text, the visit of Nicodemus to Jesus at night (yes, Nic at Night 😊), last March on the fourth Sunday in Lent.

   Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, an important and respected person among the Jewish leadership, about the nature of what is happening in Jesus, and about the need to be born again. Then, Jesus says, in verses 5-8,

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

   How do we enter the Kingdom of God? We can’t. We are reborn children of God by water and the Spirit in baptism. It is God’s gift. Unearned. We enter by God’s grace. We are changed, and we live now as the people of God.

   We can’t control the wind and we can’t see the wind. We can only see its effects on things. We can’t control God and we can’t see God. We can only see God’s effects on us and on others, which others can see as well. This is the work of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. God.

   Jesus then speaks of coming from heaven, and he obliquely describes the way that he will die.

   Then he says these familiar words, and some that are not so familiar, in verses 16-17,

16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

   God, the Father, sends the Son for a purpose. And all, with the Holy Spirit, are one God.

   Is your sanity feeling endangered yet?

   Then, let’s look a little closer to home for the second way that 3 is 1.

   Do people who receive organ transplants take on some of the personality of their donors?

   I saw a news story on TV recently about a study at Colorado University released last January, and then read a few articles online, that suggests that they do.  Weird, huh?

   Studies so far have been statistically insignificant, and more are being called for, but there have been reports, since the first transplants were done, that people who have received a transplant sometimes take on some characteristics of the donor.

   They include changes in tastes in foods, attitudes, religious beliefs, even memories. Weird, huh?

   The study included mostly heart transplant recipients, but it also included other transplant recipients and it found similar results for all transplant recipients.

   If this is true, it would fit with who we are.

   For example, what makes a human being? Historically, we have said that we have a body, a mind, and a spirit. The body is obvious. The mind is different from the brain as it may include our self-consciousness. The soul may be our true humanity, it may also be said to include our self-consciousness and our spirit may be what connects to God.

   These three all interact and affect one another. We have seen that there is a link between our attitude and our health, between our health and our attitude, between our rational mind and our spirit, and so on.

   But the Judeo/Christian Biblical view, as a whole, goes a bit further. That is to say that humans beings are a whole, integrated personality with no part inseparable from the other.

   We don’t have three parts. We are three parts. Three parts in our one person, inseparable. A whole person. Trinitarian, but not the Trinity.

   The thing about the Trinity is that it illustrates our complete inability to know God, except as God has revealed God’s self to us. And even that is indescribable. It’s unfathomable.

   Does our body die and our soul or spirit live forever? No. That’s one reason why we say in our creeds, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.”

   When Jesus says, “Peace be with you”, he is saying “Shalom”, a common, even casual greeting. It can mean “peace”, but it can also mean “wholeness”, wholeness of our selves, wholeness in the relationship with God for which we were created, which we broke, and which was restored for all who believe and are baptized in the name (which means the true nature) of God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

   That’s the Trinity. We know who we, the people of God, are because we know whose we are, children of the one true living God, given in a living relationship with God, and with one another in God.

   But, how can we know God? Only by what God has revealed to us in the Trinity.

   How can we describe it?

   I’d say it’s pretty much impossible to describe the Holy Trinity in detail without slipping into heresy.

   Now, the whole idea of heresy brings to mind the bad old days of torture, war, and hypocrisy, right? Yet it also points to a time when the truth mattered, when it was literally a matter of life and death, not just for this world, but for eternity.

   The Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed that are central to the Christian faith, that ended much of the Church’s fighting over doctrine by setting down the central things that the Bible teaches, are both based on the structure of the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed, a third creed, is very long and is rarely used in public worship, but it has some of the best language focused on the meaning of the Holy Trinity.

   Remember St. Nicholas, the guy called Santa Claus in many cultures. He wears a red robe because St. Nicholas was a bishop when the Nicene Creed was being written. The essence of the Christian faith was being decided and things got so heated that good old Santa Clause, St. Nicholas, is alleged to have smacked another bishop, Arius, over his heretical beliefs regarding the Trinity.

   Muslim evangelists in Christian areas sometimes accuse Christians of believing in three gods, not one. How do we answer?

   How do we describe the Trinity? A shamrock, a triangle, ice-water in a glass, one man who is a Father/Husband/Son or one Woman, who is a Mother/Wife/Daughter? They are all things that I’ve used to point to the Trinity. And here are three that I haven’t: an egg (shell, white, and yolk), the Sun (star, heat, and light), and the three layers of an apple.

   Every one of them is inadequate, some border on heresy, and some cross that border.

   I saw a meme that showed a triangle that connected its three corners named Liquid, Pitcher, and Ice to each other and to a circle in the middle. It said that connecting the liquid, the pitcher and the ice doesn’t describe the Trinity. It describes The Kool-Aid Man. (Oh, yeaaaah!) 😊

   The Holy Trinity, One God in Three Persons, is present. It’s active. But it’s not that obvious. It takes a special way of seeing that only comes from God.

   Seeing God’s presence is itself the work of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

   Is your sanity feeling endangered yet?

   Why is the Holy Trinity important? Well, I think that we would agree that it’s important both to understand what we believe and to know that the things we believe are true.

   And, practically speaking, what we believe about the Trinity in the abstract has a major effect on how we actually relate to God.

   For example, sometimes, you’ll hear people say “I love Jesus. He’s so accepting and forgiving, so non-judgmental. But I have hard time with the God of the Old Testament. He seems so judgmental, so intolerant, and so punishing.”

   The thing about the Trinity is that they are exactly the same. God the Son is God the Father is God the Holy Spirit is God the Son, and ‘round and ‘round. We believe in one God who is three persons, and each is fully God. How can God be one and three at the same time?

   Is your sanity feeling a bit endangered yet?

   God is like 3-In-One oil. When our hearts are hard against God, God will penetrate our resistance and set us free. When the rust of sin has kept us from being what we were created to be, God has given God’s self on the cross so that we have what we were created to have in a living relationship with the one, true living God and receive the forgiveness that only God can give. When we need protection from the corrosion of sin, death, and the power of the devil, and we repent and open our heart to receive God, God abides with us and nothing will take us away from God.

   But God isn’t three oils making one oil, or three purposes accomplished in the same thing, or three solutions to similar problems, or three parts of one thing. God is One. God is One in three persons, each fully God. We know this because it has been revealed to us all through God’s Word and we encounter this one God in the Sacraments, Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

   If we could understand the reality of God, it wouldn’t be God. All we can know is what God has revealed to us, and God has revealed God in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

   Perhaps the best way to encounter the Holy Trinity is to live in the name, that is the living reality, of God as Jesus instructed his followers. To pray, to read your Bible, to worship, to serve others, to be ready to defend the hope that is within you and sometimes to go on offense. It is to go, make disciples, teach, baptize, and remember (from Matthew 28:19-20). To go from being an attractional church to being a missional church, to go from providing programs to asking people in our community how we can serve them, to go from being a hospital for sinners to being paramedics going out to where the broken people are.

   We see all these things and more in the Holy Trinity.

   Is your sanity feeling a bit endangered? The best way to understand the Trinity is to live in it.

   The good news is that of all the options open to us, God gives us the sanest way to live, in the name of the one true living God, and it is revealed by God’s grace in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.