Volcano!

+ In the Love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Please take out your lectionary insert and look at the Collect.

 

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

That has to be the clunkiest Collect in Christendom! Just to take one example: what on earth does it mean to “worship the Unity?” Worship God, yes. Worship Jesus, yes. Worship the Holy Spirit, yes. Worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yes. But worship the Unity? Worship a concept? How does a prayer like this get written?

 

Think of a volcano, like the one that recently erupted in Iceland. There’s lots of fire and ash and then lava starts flowing down the side of the volcano. Then, as the lava flow gets further away from the fire at the top, it begins to cool, and then solidify, and then finally it’s just cold rock.

 

When Jesus erupted from the tomb on Easter and the fire of the Holy Spirit fell on his disciples on Pentecost, the Church was like that Icelandic volcano! The Church was on fire! It was such an exciting time!

 

When people have that kind of powerful experience three things happen. First, they want to understand it; second, they want to celebrate it; and third, they want to live it.

 

So the first thing Jesus’ disciples wanted to do was understand their experience, but this was difficult for them because they were Jews, and as Jews they believed there is only one God, and that made them a peculiar people because everyone else in the world believed that there were lots of different gods.

 

When Jesus called God “Abba” or “Daddy,” that wasn’t a problem, because “Daddy” was just Jesus’ breathtakingly intimate way of praying to and talking about the one God whom the Jews had always worshiped. But when his disciples looked back on Jesus’ life, and death, and resurrection, they realized that the reason Jesus called God his “Father” was because Jesus was, somehow, God’s Son. And then, when the disciples experienced the wind and fire of the Holy Spirit, they realized that this Spirit of God, this Spirit of Jesus, was also God.

 

This volcanic experience of God is reflected throughout the New Testament, including in this morning’s readings:

 

In Romans we read, “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ . . . because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. . . .”

 

And in John’s Gospel we read, “When the Spirit of truth comes . . . He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine.”

 

So these volcanic Jews, who believed in one God, had to figure out how God could be the transcendent Father who created us; and the Incarnate God who walked among us, and the power of God within us; in other words, how the one God could be God above us, God with us, and God in us.

 

Eventually, the Church decided that this volcanic experience of God could only be understood by a made-up word, Trinity, a word which combines the word for three― Father, Son, and Holy Spirit― and the word for Unity― one God.

 

But when experiences are turned into words, the lava is already beginning to cool, and when the words become prayers like this morning’s Collect, the lava is cold indeed!

 

Not only do we want to understand our experiences, we want to celebrate them, too. Jesus himself told us how to celebrate his life, death, and resurrection. So we take the bread and wine and thank the Father for it, and then we ask the Holy Spirit to sanctify it so that the bread becomes Jesus’ Body and the wine becomes Jesus’ Blood.

 

And when we want to celebrate because the Church has new disciples, we baptize them “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

 

But after a while the volcanic celebrations may cool, and get cold, and solidify, and then our worship becomes lifeless, and boring. . . .

 

And finally, not only do we want to understand and celebrate our experiences; we also want to live them. Those first volcanic disciples wanted to live like Jesus lived, and love like Jesus loved, and heal like Jesus healed, and feed people like Jesus fed people, and forgive like Jesus forgave. But sometimes the lava becomes cool, and then cold, and we’re not living very much like Jesus anymore, and we’re not loving very much like Jesus anymore, and we’re not healing many people, or feeding many people, or forgiving many people anymore.

 

And suddenly, like a spent volcano, we become dormant. And the question is, “how can we get active and volcanic again?” One answer is by following the same 5 Steps Jesus gave us in last week’s Gospel― Believe Jesus, Work for Jesus, Love Jesus, Receive the Holy Spirit, and Receive Jesus’ Peace.

 

Believing Jesus and Working for Jesus go hand in hand, in the same way that you can’t learn how to ride a bike or swim without first believing your teachers, and then actually getting on the bike or into the water! Loving Jesus, Receiving the Holy Spirit, and Receiving his Peace also go hand in hand, and it all comes together in this morning’s reading from Romans:

 

“Since we are justified”― put right with God― “by faith”― by believing―, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”

 

“Sharing the glory of God”― there’s a volcanic motivator!

 

Paul continues: “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings. . . .”

 

The sufferings Paul is talking about are the sufferings that happen when we work for Jesus. Just as Jesus suffered when people were threatened by the kinds of people he was healing, and the kinds of people he was feeding, and the kinds of people he was forgiving, and just as Paul suffered when he preached Christ crucified, so we too may suffer when we work for Jesus.

 

But even so, we too can “boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” And God’s love is the most volcanic power on earth!

 

The final key to being a volcanic disciple is being open to the new things that God wants to do in our lives. That’s what Jesus means in this morning’s Gospel when he tells his disciples― and us― “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. . . .”

 

Thanks be to God!