May 30, 2021 ~ Trinity Sunday ~ Sermon & Zoom Worship Recording

Zoom Recording

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/IPclI3xDsLu_oGEx0fRKQ22Qydu9WY18Q4Fxm8QaVoUUI11ClfXLP-7rw07CpnCz.d1edF0Yr967nB3jP

Trinity Sunday                                                                                    05/30/21—Highland—Meute

“No Spirit of Fear”

Psalm 29; Romans 8: 12-17; John 3: 1-17

Pearl: Pursuing relationship with people and God.

Function: To encourage listeners to pursue relationship with people and God as an antidote to the fear that isolation breeds.

“In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage….” That is a line in our Brief Statement of Faith in the Presbyterian Church Book of Confessions. We affirmed it last Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, in worship.

1. Even for those of us in the United States and for those of us who have so many advantages, it seems that there is much that people fear. Do I need to recite some of the things that justify that statement?
   1. I don’t think so. We could all come up with two, maybe three or more reasons that tend to unnerve our sense of confidence and general comfort at life in these United States.
2. And there are those who try to build upon fear and take advantage of our fears for selfish purposes.
3. The good word for today is that “God did not give us a spirit of fear!” Christ followers are not motivated by fear.
   1. This is the good word. It is the needed word. It is a corrective word.
   1. Even Gospel preachers and teachers have sadly used fear to motivate obedience to the institution and adherence to their particular interpretations.
   1. God is not about fear. God does not seek to relate to you by striking fear into you.
      1. “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
      1. A recurring phrase in the scriptures when the holy presence meets with the human presence are the words, “Fear not.”

Build relationships with people and with God and fear changes into love and a zest for life. Eugene Peterson translated it beautifully in The Message:

“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a child-like ‘What’s next, Papa?’ God’s Spirit touches our spirit and confirms who we really are…Father and children.”

Let’s think about Nicodemus.

1. This man had a good bit to fear. He was part of an establishment of religious authority which wielded considerable power with the people.
   1. They were the teachers and upholders of the law of God.
   1. They were the overseers.
   1. They certainly knew the law, especially the letter of the law.
      1. But Jesus butted heads with them because he tried to reveal the spirit of the law, the deeper truth and reality.
   1. Nicodemus began to risk his position and safety within and among these power brokers when he began to take Jesus seriously.
      1. When he allowed his mind and spirit to consider what Jesus was saying and doing he opened himself up to risk but at the same time very possibly he opened himself up to this “adventurously expectant” life that is the life of the disciple of Jesus Christ.
2. So still fearing, Nicodemus went by cover of night, in secret, to spend some time with Jesus.
   1. This is significant. He did not write letters to Jesus. He did not have someone else talk to Jesus and report back to him. He went to be with Jesus himself.
      1. This is the way in which to best communicate with another person. We have learned this through the COVID pandemic. Our communication is so limited when not in person, and face to face.
      1. The face communicates so much through nuance and inflection as we have learned through talking to each other through masks.
      1. Nicodemus went to Jesus to engage him with questions and listen to responses. He sought to get to know Jesus personally.
   1. Nicodemus “related” with Jesus.
      1. This is very big. You cannot relate to what someone else told you about a person. You have to go to them yourself and get to know them yourself. It is the only honorable manner of relating.
      1. Human beings are made for relationship. It is who we are. We get to know each other through discussion and spending time together and recreating together. It is how God made us to be…in relationship with each other and, in fact, with God.
      1. Nicodemus could have given into fear along with all of his colleagues, accepting as truth all of the ways in which they twisted the things that Jesus said.
         1. But instead, Nicodemus decided he would go to Jesus himself and allow Jesus to reveal himself to him.
         1. Friends, the result of Nicodemus’ visit was that Jesus gained another friend, a friend within the very establishment which so hated him and which ultimately put him to death.

In an age of paranoia and fear, chose God’s antidote. Choose to relate, which is to choose to love.

1. This is an important dimension of love. What is love but the choice to relate to someone? It is the choice to actually get to know someone for yourself.
   1. It is the attempt to get to know what motivates them. To understand where they are coming from. It is to understand their life story. It is to come to know the story they are living. It is to understand that everyone is growing and evolving.
      1. Someone lamented to me one time saying, “You’ve changed.” I sure hope so! I hope that I am not the same person I was five years ago! I hope that I have changed for the better, of course. But I sure do hope that I am changing through learning and through greater wisdom gained from life experience.
2. Choose to reach out to each other and to get to know each other rather than to retreat into isolation from each other which fans the flames of fear and mistrust.
   1. Why am I championing the value of simply relating to each other and to God on this Trinity Sunday? There is a very good reason.
      1. The essence of God that we knew from the beginning of our Christian education is that God is literally relationship!
         1. We are taught from the beginning that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is the magnificent “Holy Three.”
         1. It is a great mystery how this is, and so very worth searching out. But the essence for us to reflect on and to accept is that God is all about relationship!
   1. “God so loved the world” means that God so “relates” to the world of his creation.
   1. Life is about building relationships with each other and with God. Life is all about relationship!
      1. Retreat from relating and you plunge into isolation and fear.
      1. Courageously risk relating with each other and with God and find life!
3. You may like the popular show “The Voice.” Our church Administrative Assistant Lea Ann Mainster told me the other day how much she loves to watch it. I thought of that show when I read Psalm 29. Repeatedly the Psalmist proclaimed all that “the voice” of the Lord accomplishes:
   1. “The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
   1. The voice of the Lord is powerful;
   1. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty;
   1. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
   1. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire;
   1. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness;
   1. The voice of the Lord causes the oaks to whirl, and strips the forest bare….”
      1. What do children do when they are afraid? Especially in the night, what do they do? They call out to a parent or guardian.
         1. “The voice” of that parent or guardian bring instant relief.
         1. What is it that brings relief?
            1. A person. One with whom you relate. A relative.
            1. We comfort each other; we make life worth living by relating with each other.

Build relationships with each other and with God so that fear and isolation changes into love and adventurously expectant living. God did not give us a spirit of fear, as Paul further wrote in II Timothy 1:7; “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

I recently sat with a pastor who is serving a new worshipping community. As we talked about what is involved in building a new church he repeatedly stressed to me that it is about building relationships with the people.

1. It wasn’t about having an awesome building;
2. It wasn’t about having the newest technology;
3. It wasn’t about being the best preacher;
4. Building this new worshipping community is not about having a nice, shiny strategic plan;
   1. It is day in and day out about building trust by getting to know each other.
   1. It is about building up relationships with each other which builds a community.

Build and maintain your relationships with each other and with God and enter into the life which is eternal, the “resurrection life which is adventurously expectant!”