416 Did You Give Up Christianity for The Sake of Your Church?

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Did You Give Up Christianity for The Sake of Your Church?”, originally shared on June 5, 2026. It was the 416^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Are you a follower or a leader? You probably think of yourself as a leader, and that could be your problem. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   I read a story a long time ago about a young man who had sent off his college applications and finally got a reply from the registrar at one of the colleges.

   It began, “Dear (applicant). I am pleased to report that you have been accepted to (fill in the blank) university!

   I must say that the committee was not very impressed with your application, except that you indicated that you thought of yourself as more of a follower than a leader.

   And, since all the other applicants described themselves as leaders, the committee felt that this year’s class should have at least one follower. You’re it.”  😊

   When Jesus invites people to “follow me”, he meant it literally.

   An outer circle “follower” might just follow Jesus to see a miracle or to get fed or healed and then go home.

   A disciple, or “learner”, would literally follow their Rabbi, or “teacher”, around wherever the teacher went. 24/7. They learned from their teacher’s teaching, but they also observed and sought to imitate their teacher’s way of life. They were like an apprentice or an intern. Their goal was to become teachers, too.

   Jesus’ inner circle disciples were with him for three years, 24/7. The early Christians required three years of training (36 months) before one could be fully admitted to a church. Seminaries used to require, and some still do, three academic years of specialized training after college or university, plus an academic year of internship (36 months). Confirmation classes for young people used to, and some still do, last for three school years of preparation before full congregational membership. 

   Being a disciple of Jesus required a serious commitment. Today, in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, we will see one disciple, Matthew, being called to follow Jesus as a disciple. We will see what he lost and what he gained, and we will see examples of what the disciples heard Jesus teach and what they saw Jesus do, in Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26.

   Matthew was a tax collector. He was also the Matthew who wrote the first book in the New Testament: the Gospel of Matthew.

   There are four gospels, or proclamations of the good news of Jesus Christ, in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they all tell the same story for different groups of people. They are also known as the four evangelists, because they told the story of the evangel, the Good News.

   They were all inspired by the Holy Spirit. When you read any of those gospels, you aren’t just processing words on a page. You are in the presence of God. God is speaking to you, to your true self, through what you see on the page.

   Matthew tells the story of how he came to be one of the 12 disciples of Jesus Christ in the third person, as an observer, as “he” not “I”. Why? And what does this tell us about what it means for us to be disciples of Jesus Christ?

   Here’s the scoop, in Matthew 9:9,

⁹As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

   That’s it. No details on how he felt, how it changed his life, why he got up and did a complete 180 in his life, or why he did it just-like-that.

   Maybe he didn’t know the answers himself. There was just Jesus, and Matthew followed Him.

   There was certainly a reaction from the Pharisees, members of a religious party among the Jews. They were the good people who everybody else looked up to. They were lay people who had devoted their lives to studying what we would call the Old Testament and living according to its laws. Every Jewish man, and only men could be Pharisees, of Jesus’ generation hoped to be in the financial position to be a Pharisee one day.

   And Jesus was almost always knocking heads with them.

   Why? Because they were devoted to keeping the letter of the religious law, and often looked down on those who didn’t, but they had not recognized the spirit of the law. They were ignoring it.

   It’s like when a mom baked a cake and told her two little boys, “Don’t eat any of the cake. It will spoil your appetite before dinner.

   She leaves the room, and comes back, and finds the boys eating cookies.

   The letter of the law was, “Don’t eat any of the cake.” The spirit of it was, “Don’t spoil your appetite before dinner.”

   Here’s how they responded to Jesus associating with guys like Matthew, in Matthew 9:10-11,

¹⁰And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

   Why was being a tax collector considered to be on a par with being a publicly known sinner at that time?

   The Jews knew that their tax money wasn’t going to go to their representative government, it was going to serve the interests of the occupying Roman Empire and the tax collectors.

   When the Romans occupied Israel, they put out a job notice, looking for literate locals.

   The Romans had divided the country into tax districts, and they invited people with the necessary accounting skills to apply for the job of tax collector in each district.

   The Romans asked for bids. Whoever submitted the highest amount of money that they said they could extract in taxes from that district got the job.

   The Empire gave the tax collectors coercive power and personal protection by assigning Roman soldiers to them, and anything that the tax collectors “collected” from the populace beyond what they had bid would go into their own pockets.

   So, the tax collectors were hated as traitors to their own people. They got rich by extorting money from them. And they were feared because they were agents of the foreign occupying Roman Empire.

   And here’s how Jesus responds, in Matthew 9:12-13,

¹²But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

  The Pharisees were the very definition of being self-righteous. They were full-time religious law-keepers, so they believed that their need for forgiveness was little to none. They were respected for it!

   Jesus condemned the Pharisees for caring about their image more than their reality, their human traditions over the commandments of God. Of them, he says, quoting Isaiah, in Matthew 15:8-9,

⁸        ‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

⁹        in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ ”

   Could such things be said of us?

   What do we care about?

   Matthew had to feel the hatred of his community. He knew that he had no claim to righteousness in himself. He knew that he was a sinner. When Jesus showed up at his tax booth, perhaps he saw in Jesus the chance for forgiveness that only comes to those who know that they need it. He saw his chance and he took it.

   Maybe that’s why the story of himself that Matthew puts in his gospel about his sudden career change is so short. It’s obvious to him that he needed a Savior.

   And it’s obvious to all those who know that when something is wrong with their life, they need a Savior, even if they can’t put it into words themselves. Perhaps they know that they are separated from God by their rebellion against God, their sin. And perhaps they know that when you come to know that Jesus offers you redemption, a new life, you take it.

   This part of the Gospel of Matthew is a selfie, it’s a picture of himself.

   Matthew’s Gospel is written in the third person, as a description of himself from the outside, because it’s the story of the person he used to be, not the person he is now, the person writing this Gospel.

   Pastor Rick Warren once said that God doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called. And, like Matthew, God has called, equipped, and sent us into the world with a vocation.

   That vocation, or “calling”, like the calling of Matthew, is lived-out as a particular consequence of our relationship with God. It is a natural expression of who we have come to be in the presence of Jesus Christ.  T he invitation Jesus extends to each of us is to follow Him, in the Holy Spirit.

   We are, no matter who we are or what we’ve done, valued by God. God makes of us a new creation. We are born again. We are loved. This is a message that we are privileged to share with those we know who need to hear it most today.

   One of my favorite examples of this comes at the end of an article by John Updike  about the early 20^th century evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in the “The New Yorker Magazine”. Sister Aimee, as she was known, was a pioneering and popular figure in the United States. Her life was filled with success and scandals. She founded Angeles Temple in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles and the international Foursquare Church denomination. She at one time fled the country.

   Charges against her had been dropped in LA and she traveled to New York. She went to Texas Guinan’s popular speakeasy (fun fact Whoopi Goldberg played a character named Guinan who ran the bar on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: Next Generation).

   Sister Aimee entered the club in a yellow suit and furs. A reporter called for her to speak. The proprietress agreed and Sister Aimee calmly walked to the center of the dance floor, smiled, paused, and said, “Behind all these beautiful clothes, behind these good times, in the midst of your lovely buildings and shops and pleasures, there is another life. There is something on the other side. ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ With all your getting and playing and good times, do not forget you have a Lord. Take Him into your hearts.”

   Texas Guinan walked over to Sister Aimee to the applause of the crowd, put her arm around her, and stood there to the ongoing ovation of the club-goers.

   That is the good news we have been given to share with the world.

   We are no longer sinners alone, we are saints and sinners, still not perfect except in the relationship with God in Jesus Christ that was earned for us on the cross.

   We are God’s imperfect but redeemed people, not by our own efforts or successes, but by the recognition of our failures to be the people that God has made us to be, and that we need a Savior. We are weak, but it’s simply God’s call that makes us strong.

   Matthew’s selfie is a picture of God at work. It is powerful in its simplicity.

   It is our selfie, too, the story of God ‘s grace at work in us. We who were lost have been found. We have been given newness of life and we, like Matthew, get up to follow Jesus.

   How well have we responded? We could do better.

   The most that many of our churches today can muster is to be an attractional church. We offer programs, gimmicks that degrade our message, potlucks, social services, concerts, food give-a-ways, a “friendly family”, worship that offers little and expects less, political and social policies that conform to our neighborhood’s values. We have become community advocacy groups using religious language and aesthetics. We are a tradition, not a living Christian community, because we believe in our programs and not in our people, the people of God.

   Not that people don’t find Christ through programs. It can happen. But it often doesn’t happen because we don’t ask ourselves what my hero in church development, Lyle Schaller, said was the most important question to ask when planning a program: “What if it works?” 😊

   Do we have a plan for helping someone who wants to follow Jesus into mature discipleship?

   Do we offer any process, any series of classes, mentorship, or modeling that leads to life transformation in a living relationship with God now and forever?

   Evangelism is sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Most people can’t fathom it because they’ve never heard the bad news. They don’t know that they, like Matthew, are sinners who are cut off from God, but who have been given a Savior, a Reconciler and Redeemer in Jesus Christ. But we’ve made a bargain with our culture not to rock the boat, because we don’t want anyone to accuse us of being intolerant.

   I remember Penn Jillette, of the Penn and Teller magic act, who are also hosts of the “Fool Us” TV show, telling about a young man who approached Penn after a live show in Las Vegas one night. Penn is an atheist.

   This young man, who Penn described as “polite, honest, and sane”, gave him a pocket-sized Bible, with a personalized note inside and his contact information. He wanted to share his faith.

   Penn said, later, that he respected that this young man really cared enough that he didn’t want to see him go to hell.

   He said that it was like seeing a truck bearing down on a blind person. If you cared about that person, you’d push them out of danger.

   How well does that describe the kind of ministry that our churches actually provide?

   The alternative to the attractional ministry model is the model given by Jesus to those who followed him and is described in this week’s Gospel reading.

   It’s to be a missional congregation.

   You may have heard it said that “The church isn’t a museum for saints, it’s a hospital for sinners.” I used to say that. And that’s as far as some churches get. Their attitude, if not their expressed policy, is “our doors are open. Let people come, if they want to.”

   But I once heard an alternative model that went, “The church isn’t a hospital for sinners. It’s more like the paramedics. We go where the sick and broken people are.

   That’s what we see in the rest of this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, Matthew 9:18-26,

¹⁸ While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” ¹⁹ And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. ²⁰ Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, ²¹ for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” ²² Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. ²³ When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, ²⁴ he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. ²⁵ But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. ²⁶ And the report of this spread throughout that district.

   Is God indifferent to our fallenness, to our frail bodies, to our brokenness, to our death? No.

   God has power over all those things that we bring into the world by our sinfulness. Jesus has won the victory over all those things. They have no ultimate control over us, and one day all things will be made whole in Jesus.

   Meanwhile, we are called to follow Him, and to do what we have been called, equipped, and sent to do to make this world more like the world that it was created to be and, one day, will be again.

   We used to do more church planting, building new churches, and it was found to be more effective at bringing new people to a living faith in Jesus Christ than revitalizing a shrinking congregation because, as it was said, “It’s easier to have a baby than to raise the dead.” 😊

   But, in today’s text, Jesus is showing us that God is interested in both, and more!

   Jesus gives Matthew new life in His call to follow Him.

   He restores the woman whose flow of blood would have made her ritually unclean and restores her to her community by healing her.

   Jesus raises a little girl, the daughter of a leader of the synagogue, from the dead!

   That is the power of God that we proclaim!

   We aren’t Jesus, but we can tell people about Jesus.

   We aren’t the light, but we can be reflectors of the Light.

   We aren’t leaders in our lives, we’re followers of our Savior. And that means everything!

   Are we so desperate for survival to preserve our name and legacy, to have our funerals, and to maintain a culture, that we will downplay our faith to get people to join our heritage club, to maintain our dying museum?

   Did you give up Christianity for the sake of your church and are finding neither?

   If so, Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit, has Good News for you today! It is the blessing that comes with following Jesus.  

   Today we see the brokenness of our fallen world, and we see the ultimate wholeness won for us and all who believe and are baptized by Jesus, at the cross.

   Let us live and call everyone we know to stop being the leaders of their present lives, and to follow Jesus forward into God’s perfect restoration of what was and what will be forever. 

415 What to Do When You Doubt

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “What to Do When You Doubt”, originally shared on May 28, 2026. It was the 415^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   The doctrine of the Holy Trinity just seems like a mystery floating in space. It is just the opposite. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The possibility of a toxic chemical leak, or a violent explosion of its containment tank, now thought to be caused by a failed cooling system, resulted in the evacuation of around 50,000 people in and around Garden Grove last weekend. The experts didn’t know what was going to happen. For days!

   The risk of a major explosion is now thought to be gone, and those people have been allowed to leave the emergency facilities set up for them and go home. But what will happen next is still uncertain. Will people experience a blast, or a leak?

   It kind of makes you wonder how solid the ground we are standing on is, doesn’t it? 😊

   It’s kind of appropriate, though. Because, this coming Sunday, the vast majority of churches in the world will be marking the Sunday of The Holy Trinity in the Christian Calendar. It’s held every year on the first Sunday after the Day of Pentecost.

   It’s a good day to be reminded that, if we said that we had figured out anything about God’s nature ourselves, it would be a good argument that we didn’t understand anything at all.

   We are God’s creation. God is the potter and we are the clay. All we can know about God is what God has revealed to us.

   Sally and I saw a young attorney being interviewed on TV last Saturday who confirmed that his company had put $8,000.00 on credit cards so that they could assist those who had been displaced by the toxic threat to their homes.

   He said that, obviously, they didn’t have that kind of money in their budget. But, he said, when he saw the confused anguish on the faces of those who were coming for help, especially the children, (and he started to weep) he said that he knew that his firm (he wept again and regained control) needed to do whatever they could.

   He was a credit to his profession.

   But where does that desire come from? There are many, maybe most, countries in the world where volunteering is all but unheard of. People might give money to the poor out of obligation or to be “worthy” of “heaven”. But, why would someone work with no expectation of any return?

   Simply because it is who we are?

   I think that that value comes from God, the Father who created us for a living relationship with him, the Son, who gave his life for us and then took it back again so that we can be with Him now and forever, and the Holy Spirit, the active presence of God for good in the world. The Trinity.

   Volunteerism and service to others is the most common in countries where there is at least a Christian cultural influence still at work.

   All the good we do comes from what God has made us to be.

   And God has revealed himself to us in three persons. How do we understand how three can be One, or One three? We need some tools.

   It’s been said that we really 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 elegant 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 lawn 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 Holy Trinity Sunday. It’s the only Sunday in the Church year whose theme is not an idea or 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.

   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 in Matthew 3:13-17. Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove and rested on him, 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, all fully present.

   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 just described and sometimes just one person is present, but all three are present in that one.

   <sigh!> It’s a mystery, but not in the sense that it can be solved by us, but in the sense that it can only be revealed to us by God.

   All three persons of the Trinity are in play when this happens in the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, in Matthew 28:16-20,

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   Jesus says that his disciples should, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   How many Gods do we believe in? One. And Jesus lists three with one name. His disciples are to   in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Trinity. One God.

   If someone were to ask what our true self was, we might say it is our spirit, or our soul, or our heart, or our personality, but in the time that the Bible was written it was in a name.

   God does not have a name because human beings knowing God’s name would be to know God’s true self. And that is just inconceivable.

   Baptizing in the “name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” means to do so in the true reality, the true self of God.

   So, does this make who the Trinity is any clearer? No.

   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 a bit endangered yet?

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

   But would God be the one true God if God were easily understood by human beings? No.

   Our Bible reading from Matthew 28 for today describes one of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances to his disciples. It says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” (?!)

   First of all, how could they doubt him? They had seen him do miracles! They had seen him die. They had seen him dead. They had seen his side pierced with a spear and the water from the by-then separated plasma flow out. They had seen his burial, and he had appeared to them on the evening of the third day.

   Second, some doubted, yet they worshiped him. How could that be, and what does it tell us about sharing the gospel in an increasingly secular age?

   Here are four things to do when you doubt:

1.   Be consistent.

   I encourage people to be consistent in their doubting and to question their doubts as well. To doubt their doubts.

2.   Look at the evidence.

   Look to the historical record, the thousands of manuscripts, the testimony of eyewitnesses, the primary sources within and outside of the Bible, written and checked by people at the time. Look at the witness of Christians for 2,000 years!

   Look mostly to God, one God in three persons. Father who made you and from whom you know when you are estranged, Son who you know is missing when fear and guilt define your small partial life without Him, and the Holy Spirit, who makes you a part of the Christian Community, the Body of Christ.

3.   Look to your Christian community.

   Pastor Will Willimon is a Methodist pastor who tells the story of a young woman who was a member of a congregation that he served who made an appointment to see him during the week. She came by his office and said that she had been struggling with her faith and that she was leaving the church.

   And the next Sunday she was back at worship. And the Sunday after that. And the Sunday after that.

   Finally, Pastor Willimon asked if she could stop by his office again, and she agreed. Pastor Willimon said, “Aren’t you the same person who came by and said that she no longer had faith and wouldn’t be coming to worship anymore?” She smiled and said, “Yes.” “Well then, I’m happy to see you, but could you tell me what happened?”

   “Well,” she answered, “It came to me that sometimes, if you can’t believe for yourself, you have to be with people who will believe for you.”

   That’s the nature of Christian community. No one can believe for us literally, but a community can support our faith and confidence with theirs when we are weak.

4.   Act.

   This week’s Gospel passage seems to just brush off the doubt of some of the  disciples and ends with a commission. In fact, the whole Gospel of Matthew ends with what Bible interpreters have long called, “The Great Commission”, and it starts with “Go…”

   God tells all of us to “Go…”, and most of us won’t have to go far.

   Each of us has a story of how we became a Christian or why we remain a Christian and it is most meaningful to the children, the friends, and the family who are the closest to us. How does the doctrine of the Trinity help us be more effective evangelists to them for new life in Jesus?

   The doctrine of the Holy Trinity can only come from the outside of us, revealed to us by God. It is a powerhouse that bursts into our sinful life, cut off from God, with the Good News, and it projects us out into the world in response.

   We are like the men in an ice-fishing shack fishing downstream.

   I grew up in Wisconsin and the sports caster on the TV channel from Green Bay, I think it was WFRV (for Fox River Valley) used to close his Friday night broadcasts with a funny story sent in by one of his viewers.

   One Friday, he told about a group of guys who had gone out ice-fishing.

   For the uninitiated, ice fishing means going out onto a frozen river or lake, chopping a hole in the ice, and dropping a fishing line in there. Or, if you are a little more affluent, and you have confidence in the thickness of the ice, and you have a truck and some time on your hands, you haul a shack out there and bore a hole with your auger, drop an automatic fish-bite notification system in the water, and then drink and play cards with your buddies all day.

   The guy who sent in the story had all the equipment, but he was actually there to fish, and he brought his black labrador retriever along for company.

   At some point, the ice fisherman got a bite. And it was a big one! He fought that fish, and he finally pulled it through the hole in the ice and into the shack. As he was removing the hook, though, the fish flopped around and fell down through the hole and back into the water.

   The dog, though, being a retriever, saw the prey escape and dove into the water after it.

   The owner was shocked and waited for the dog to come back, and waited and waited, but the dog didn’t come back.

   Meanwhile, there were a bunch of guys who had been drinking and playing cards all day in their ice-fishing shack downstream. They had gotten themselves pretty hammered when, all of a sudden, “Woosh!”, the black lab saw a little open water above him, and came flying up through the hole and into the shack, shaking the water off of his back!

   The sportscaster said that those guys sobered up pretty quick!

   That’s the way the Trinity works. The Trinity, like that black lab, bursts into our sinful world from the outside, wakes us up in faith, baptizes us, and compels action!

   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. And the Holy Spirit? I don’t get that at all!”

   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.

   The Trinity 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. God is One, One in three persons, each fully God. We know this because it has been revealed to us through God’s Word. Is that clear? No.

   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.

   Firefighters and numerous public agencies have been trying to prevent a toxic disaster in Garden Grove and the surrounding area since last week.

   Our world has been in a toxic rebellion against God since the beginning of time, and we human beings made it that way. God came to put us right, and one day he will return to put all things right forever. Meanwhile, God is at work for good among us. God is the revelation of God to God’s creation.

   One God in three persons. The Holy Trinity. 

414 The God You Hate

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The God You Hate”, originally shared on May 21, 2026. It was the 414^th  video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

    Of all the gods that people worship in the world, how do Christians know that the God they worship is the true one? Today, we’re going to find out.

    The vast majority of the churches in the world will be celebrating the Day of Pentecost this coming Sunday, the birthday of the Christian Church that happened approximately 1,993 years ago.

   When someone says that he’s going to die and then rise from the dead to live forever, and he says that no will take his life but that he will give it and then take it back again, and then that happens, you’d think that nothing in this weird world could ever approach that for weirdness.

   Fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, the most important day in human history, he changed the world. Again. It was the Day of Pentecost.

   Last Sunday was my birthday. I turned 78. Birthdays are a big deal to some, though I find that they mean less to me as I grow older and that time seems to be speeding up.

   My hero in church development, Lyle Schaller, once said that when you are talking with a congregation about long-range planning, you have to remember that a year means different things to people in different demographics.

   For example, a 7-year-old is convinced that there are at least 750 days between birthdays, while a 70-year-old knows that there are no more than 125.

   The Day of Pentecost is the last Sunday in the Easter season.

   The word “Pentecost” comes from the Greek word for “fiftieth”. The Day of Pentecost described in the Bible was on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, held on the fiftieth day from the first day of Passover. Then, it celebrated the offering of the first fruits of the winter wheat harvest at the Temple in Jerusalem.

   This was Herod’s Temple and the massive Temple complex covered 35 acres. People from all over the world came for this celebration and also to see the building, a wonder of the world at that time. The crowds were massive, with some estimating crowds of 250,000 people!

   The disciples were hiding in a house in Jerusalem, and then this happened in Acts 2:1-4,

2 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

   It’s interesting to note that in both the Hebrew language in which what we call the Old Testament was written and the Koine Greek language in which the New Testament was written, there are two words, “ruach” in Hebrew and “pneuma” (from which we get our words “pneumonia” and “pneumatic”) in Greek, that have the same three meanings for both words: wind, breath, and spirit.

   On the first Day of Pentecost, the sound of the wind came and the breath of God that brought life from clay to make human beings was present, and the Holy Spirit, “filled the entire house where they were sitting.”

   Tongues of fire rested on each of the disciples.

   Why didn’t their hair catch on fire?

   I remember when one of the member families in a church I served lived in a house on the edge of open country and a wildfire came to their neighborhood one howling windy night. The fire department arrived to fight the fire and recommended that everyone on their cul-de-sac leave. This family decided to stay and fight the fire with their garden hoses for as long as they could.

   Some were on the roof, and some were on the ground, watching for embers and extinguishing them with their garden hoses.

   At some point, the fire ran up the side of a palm tree, and when it reached the dry top, the tree exploded! Embers blew everywhere around the area and one of them landed on the head of a neighbor who was also on the roof of his house.

   He apparently used a significant amount of hair spray and had a lot of blown-dried hair on the top of his head because when his hair started burning, he didn’t feel it right away.

   So, our member and his sons yelled at him, “Your hair is on fire!” but it was so windy he couldn’t hear them. So, they continued yelling, “Your hair’s on fire!” and he didn’t hear them. But a firefighter standing on the ground heard them, saw the guy with his hair on fire, turned his fire hose on the guy and knocked him off the roof!

   Why weren’t the disciples running around in a panic when they saw tongues of fire on each other?

   Because it was holy fire. God was present in that holy fire.

   Remember when Moses encountered the burning bush in the wilderness, in Exodus 3:2-6?

2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

   The tongues of fire that didn’t consume the disciples’ hair was the presence of God. And what happened next” We saw in the 4^th verse of today’s Gospel reading, “4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”

   They left their refuge and went out to where the people were. They began to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. They began their ministries with nothing but the Holy Spirit because it was all they needed.

   So, what had just happened?

   Remember the Tower of Babel?

   After the Flood, people began to repopulate the earth, but they didn’t spread out. The all had the same language, and they were all concentrated in one place. This homogeneity and concentration led them to be full of themselves. The same hubris that does we human beings in again and again.

   They decided that, since they knew how to make strong bricks and mortar, they could build a tower tall enough to let people walk into heaven without God. And how did that work out? We see in Genesis 11:8-9,

 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

   So, what does that have to do with the Day of Pentecost? That Pentecost story continues in Acts 2:5-8,

5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?

   The consequence of the attempted building of the Tower of Babel is reversed! This isn’t speaking in tongues. People from all over the world came together and heard the same Gospel message being proclaimed in their own human languages.

   This is more like the Star Trek simultaneous translator, where creatures could communicate with every other creature in the universe in their own language in real time.

   On the Day of Pentecost the disciples spoke in their language, but the Holy Spirit made it so that every other person present from all over the world heard the same Gospel message of Jesus Christ in their own language at the same time.

   We see, on the week of this last Sunday in the Easter season, yet another example of oneness under God’s grace and by God’s doing, in the Holy Spirit!

   I would guess that there are many languages spoken among the members of our churches. English? Spanish? Swedish, German, Chinese? Tagalog? Vietnamese? Korean? Armenian? Persian? Norwegian?

   And yet, we all understand one another at the deepest level through our common relationship with the one true living God in the Holy Spirit.

   I’ve been trying to learn Mandarin after serving a Chinese and Taiwanese church in Monterey Park for several years. And I want to help build bridges at a time of global tensions and to help support the growing numbers of Christians who speak Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world. But it’s hard for me to not just speak but to think in Mandarin, because it’s not my native language.

   My grandmother told me that after her family immigrated from Norway, they lived in a part of Wisconsin where there were many Norwegian people, and her family spoke Norwegian at home. Eventually, she remembered, they decided that they would switch to English because they were in America now.

   But she told me, her mother, my great grandmother, always prayed in Norwegian because she wasn’t sure that God understood the new language as well as he knew Norwegian! 😊

   We speak many languages today because we come from other languages, or we have learned other languages. And, like the first disciples, we want to reach the world with the one language that unites everybody: the unifying presence of God in the language of the Holy Spirit, because we have been given good news to share!

   But good news can’t be good, unless we first know the bad news, and that’s where we fail and why our message doesn’t connect with the world today.

   I watched a video online recently that reflected on a familiar “gotcha” question, one formatted to make Christians look ridiculous merely by asking it.

   It came from a page called “Wdysia”.

   It began, “I have a question for Christians. Of all the thousands of Gods in the world, which one is the real God?”

   The answer was immediate: “The one you hate.”

   “I’m sorry, what?” replied the questioner.

   The answerer replied, “The one with actual power and influence in the world. The one whose word testifies against the world that it’s evil. The one that you simultaneously shake your fist at as you deny his existence.

   You know which God is the one true God. It’s the one you desperately hate.”

   The questioner then replies, “OK, so why would I hate God?”

   The one being asked replies, “Because you’re evil.”

   That’s the uncomfortable truth. We are born separated from God. That’s what it means when we say that we are born in sin.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th Century Church reformer, is credited with restoring the Good News, the Gospel, to the Christian Church, because the Roman Catholic Church of his day had given the people only the bad news: that you were facing eternal punishment unless you did enough good to make up for the bad that you had done in your life. Luther knew that he couldn’t humanly do that. He thought for sure that he was going to hell. So, as one of his mentors pointed out, he hated God.

   Luther studied the whole history of salvation in the Bible and recovered the really Good News of what every page pointed to: the cross, including this passage from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, in Romans 5:8,

⁸ But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

   Jesus, fully God and fully human being, gave his life for us on the cross. He took his life back again and rose from the dead in his Resurrection, for us! He had created us for a living relationship with God in which every human being has the stamp of right and wrong on their heart and knows when God is missing. We are saved by God’s grace through God’s gift of faith. All that is good news.

   The reason, I think, that this great Good News doesn’t connect with people today is because they don’t ever hear the really bad news. They don’t know why the Good News is good news.

   And they don’t want to. Positive personal self-esteem is what we strive for, it is the highest value in our culture. People don’t know that they are naturally lost and condemned sinners. People, including many Christians, go to church just to be entertained, to be pleased, and to be told that the Good News, the Gospel, is that God made you just the way you are and loves you just the way you are. The cross is offensive to many in our culture. It always has been to many.

   No one knows when Jesus will return in judgment and, even though we long for it to finally come and usher in a new heaven and a new earth, the lead-up is not going to be pleasant. So, I’m not terribly comfortable when I am reminded of Paul’s words in his second letter to a young pastor, in 2 Timothy 4:3,

³ For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires,

   The Bible tells us that we are sinners, that there’s no good news without knowing the bad news. Martin Luther said that only way to heaven was through the Savior, but that people needed to first internalize the bad news before the good news could mean anything to them.

   That’s why he said that both the religious Law, by which we see our condemnation, and the Gospel, by which we see our salvation by faith through grace, are needed to see the whole meaning of the scripture at the cross.

   But, if we don’t know the Good News, if no one has told us, we may only see God as a vengeful judge, and we hate him for making us feel guilty and for justly condemning us in our sin.

   It’s like saying that 42 is the answer. It’s meaningless unless we first know the question.

   Our response, the message of the Day of Pentecost, is that, in our broken world, filled with uncertainty, the war in Ukraine, the war in the Iran, threats of world war, rising homelessness, fear of crime, environmental calamities, gun violence, and a teetering economy, all signs of human sinfulness, God’s answer is the gift of Jesus.

   In a culture that is fragmented, even pulverized, where we often find it impossible to speak about how to resolve these issues without soon shouting at each other, all signs of human sinfulness, God’s answer is the gift of Jesus.

    We are separated from one another, even from our true selves, because we are separated from Jesus. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another, until we are all one in Jesus.

   How does the Day of Pentecost story end? Peter speaks to the gathered crowd and shares the good news of Jesus. And then this happens in Acts 2:37-42,

37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” 38 Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” 40 And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 41 So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

   The Day of Pentecost, the Birthday of the Christian Church through the coming of the Holy Spirit, that we will celebrate this coming Sunday, comes on the fiftieth day after Easter in the Christian Church.

   But, in God, all time is the present. The Holy Spirit continues to call, gather, and enlighten the whole Christian Church, the Body of Christ, on earth. We are equipped and sent into the world with everything we need to be the church.

   I saw a story online some time ago about a professor who said that he wanted to create a nice cozy atmosphere in his classroom with a fireplace video, so he hooked it up. But when the video appeared on the five large video screens on the walls, he said that it looked like he was teaching in hell! 😊

   That’s the destructive kind of fire.

   The fire of the Holy Spirit is the fire that does not consume but instead gives life.

   Human beings had rejected God and brought evil into the world. We broke the relationship with God that we had been given by God at Creation. We lived in sin, and many still do.

   Jesus paid the price on the cross to restore that relationship for all who repent and believe and are baptized. The resurrection showed that Jesus is God and that he could reconcile human beings to God by his death. And his resurrection means that we too will rise. Our eternal life began in our baptism through the faith that came as God’s gift. That’s Good News!

   Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! And because he is risen, we too shall rise to newness of life now and to life everlasting!

   May this coming Sunday, the Day of Pentecost, be a celebration of the Holy Spirit and a recommittal of your Christian Community to the sharing of the good news of Jesus Christ.

   Be formed and be guided and be defined by it every day.

   And may God, through us, turn the hate of those who feel far from God into love.