June 12, 2022
Trinity Sunday – George Yandell
Preaching on Trinity Sunday makes me feel like the heart attack victim that called for a priest. The priest arrived and moved the gathering crowd aside. He knelt beside her and saw she was too weak to handle confession and absolution, so he asked, “Do you believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?” With great effort, the stricken woman raised herself onto her elbows in the bed and addressed those surrounding her, “Here I lie dying, and the Father is asking me riddles!” (Adapted from a sermon by Lane Denson on Trinity Sunday, 2010.)
Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday each year whose content is theology and doctrine. It was first celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost in the Church of England by Thomas a Becket in the late 12th century. Many of us become dazed and confused when correct belief about the Trinity is overblown in importance to many of our fellow Christians. ‘Correct belief’ is no longer relevant to many Christians. I believe they’re right. Believing pales in contrast to doing- doing what Jesus did- being transformed more and more into God’s self.
The Holy Trinity only appears once fully formulated in the NT- in the next-to-last verse of Matthew, called the Great Commission: “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.” In Hebrew usage, in the name of means ‘in the possession and protection of’.
June 5, 2022
Pentecost C – George Yandell
With a rush of a mighty heavenly wind and with holy flames dancing on their heads, the disciples received the gift of God’s own Spirit. On the 50th day after Easter, God was preparing the tiny band of Jesus’ disciples to go public- to broadcast the incredible news of Jesus’ teaching, his death and resurrection, and ascension. Their witness would be so personal, so profound, that today, Christians are found in every nation, in every culture. What does the news of Jesus mean to diverse people today? And how do we proclaim or stifle His proclamation?
From the collect for Pentecost: “Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your holy spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth.”
Reaching to the ends of the earth- that’s always been God’s desire for the world. In the first account of creation in Genesis 1, God tells the humans God created in God’s own image: “Be fruitful and increase, and fill the whole earth.” After God flooded the world and delivered Noah and his family safe and sound, God again said, “Be fruitful, people the whole earth.” Yet God’s people resisted God’s command to fill the earth. God found instead that Adam’s descendants wanted to live apart from others. They kept clumping up together,
May 29, 2022
Easter 7 C – George Yandell
In the passage from Acts, Paul and his companions continued their stay in the Roman colony of Philippi. As they were going to a place of prayer, they met a slave girl who had a “spirit of divination” (16:16) and whose owners profited from her fortune-telling skills. For several days, the girl followed them about shouting “These men are the slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation”. Like the other demonic spirits in the Gospels, this one recognized the saving power of God as proclaimed by Paul and Silas. Paul finally became so annoyed with her constant presence that he exorcized the spirit from the girl in the name of Jesus. Her owners were enraged, because now that the demonic spirit was gone, so were their profits. Thus they dragged Paul and his companion Silas before the magistrates, where they were charged with disturbing the city and advocating unlawful customs. As the crowd joined in the attack, Paul and Silas were flogged and thrown into jail with their feet tethered in stocks.
In the middle of the night, as Paul and Silas were praying and singing, a violent earthquake shook the foundations of the prison. All the locked doors were opened and the prisoners’ chains unfastened. When the jailer in charge awoke and saw this, he was ready to kill himself, as he would be held liable if the prisoners escaped. When Paul assured him that all the prisoners were still there,
May 22, 2022
Easter 6 C – George Yandell
Xenophobia. X-e-n-o-phobia. “Fear of the strange, the foreign, the different.” Xenophobia rises naturally in humans, it seems. It creates the need for humans to overcome their fears of the differences between them, if they want to co-exist and cooperate with one another. Xenophobia drives the need for “the healing of the nations” in the Revelation to John. Human tendencies to xenophobia drive Jesus to promise in the gospel, “Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”
I have read science fiction novels by C.J. Cherryh for some time. (The genera now called ‘Speculative Fiction’ by some.) In one 5-book series called “The Chanur Saga”, the characters in far off galaxies are all afraid of one another and they distrust particularly the dark, large, long-snouted, rat-like, tough-skinned beings called “the Kiff”. Brrr. The Kiff smell like ammonia, they are ruthless fighters, and seem always to make off with the prize when either wars or treaties are made. The problem is that every species’ trade routes are being upset by another species- (spider-like methane-breathing creatures- ugh!). The only progress they can make is when they overcome their differences and unite with a common front. But they all have this fear, an incredible fear, of those different from themselves. Even the Kiff fear those they themselves consider less formidable, less threatening. Where their fear comes from I don’t know. They seem to have no reason to fear anyone.