"What Are You Searching For?" May 27, 2018

Isaiah 6: 1-8 John 3: 1-17 This is Memorial Day Weekend, which invites us to think about our heritage. This is Trinity Sunday, which directs our worship to the reality believing in 1God 3Persons! But this is also The day the Lord has made, challenging: What are you searching for? It is not enough to want More, or different. What are your dreams? Be careful your dreams, where you insert yourself, because they may come true. During the great Depression, people dreamed of a job, food, a home, survival. During WWII, people dreamed of Victory, ending tyranny & oppression, of surviving as bullets and mortars shot at you. I love the description in 1940’s Movies of getting a Job after the War to be a $15,000/ year Man! In the 1950s and early 60s, Fallout Shelters were built and at school we practiced putting our heads inside our desks seeking survival when an Atomic Bomb went off. A few weeks ago our youngest turned 30, and I recalled that at 30, we were already married 7 years, with two children, two cars, a mortgage, our Graduate and Undergrad Loans repaid, and a Beagle. There was a year in which our Church and I as Pastor, received 5 subpoenas of Law Suits, all I wanted was for people to trust. There were years when family members and loved ones were chronically ill, and our dream was to do our best to help them. What are you searching for? What do you want to accomplish, to volunteer to be a part of with others? BEING TRINITY SUNDAY, THIS MORNING’S SERMON IS IN 3 PARTS: God’s relationship with the Prophet Isaiah is unique! Noah, Abram, Moses each of the Disciples, were “Called”. Most, like Moses, responded to God saying “Not me, I stutter,” “I am not worthy,” “Get my brother instead!” Isaiah is the only prophet to volunteer, saying “Here am I, send me!” The boy Samuel, said words like those, but only because he was told to say them by Eli! Like an overanxious student, Isaiah raises his hand shouting “Ooooh, Oooh, Ooo, Here I am, Call me!” In all the Bible, the only other One to Volunteer, is God. In Isaiah 65 God says “I was ready to be sought out by those who seek God! I said “Here I Am, Here I AM!” to a nation and people that did not Call.” I have always identified with Isaiah, an Ordained priest, son of High Priests, wanting to be a prophet leading the Community to God! There are some of us HARD-WIRED to Speak, others to Listen. I readily admit to being an Extrovert. Some of us listen, to avoid being wrong. We listen, waiting for when and how to offer a suggestion, no matter how interminable the pregnant pause, considering with what inflection, so as to not be misunderstood. When I was in Doctoral Study, it became a game among the other students “How many times can Lindsey be told he is wrong?” Because in the classroom, misunderstandings are only clarified by trial and error. We learn by trying, by testing out possibilities, and if they are wrong: they are wrong and we try again, and again, until better answers are found among all the alternatives. The only wrong answers are to keep trying the way we always have done, because you already know what will happen; or to change only for the sake of change. Stopping at Verse 8, it appears as though Isaiah is a Success story: God Calls and Isaiah answers! But After verse 8, God reports that the one Sent is to go to people who refuse to listen, the changing of people’s hearts, is not possible. But for Isaiah and to God, that immediate outcome is not what matters. Our great heroes are not remembered because they succeeded, but they tried and refused to give up trying. SECOND, Would that those appointing Scriptures stopped the reading from John at verse 15! John 3 would be a passage about Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night, searching for truth, searching for God, searching for understanding, a leader of Israel seeking the Messiah and struggling to reconcile what he knows // with the incarnation of Jesus. Struggling, not only because the Old Testament World and Gospel collide, but because Jesus does not give a logical argument, but mystical spiritual description that life is not about our accomplishments, but about relationship with God. This search for meaning/ understanding is overwhelmed by Jesus’ announcement, that “God so loved the world that God gave God’s only begotten Son”. That statement undercuts and re-orients everything. Our lives are not about our accomplishments, the point is not to be Right, or to Win! Instead of victory, winning, instead of survival // the spiritual quest, “the meaning of Life is to be in relationship with God!” NO OTHER WORDS have been so twisted by preachers as these. Jesus does NOT say the Only way to GOD is my way; but the only way to the FATHER is through me. Christianity is unique in emphasizing “Seeking relationships of faith”. And the most wonderful part is that before we chose God, God already loved us, loved us so much as to try to change our reality. Different from Isaiah, where a person attempts to convince others to change, to listen; here The Prime-mover, the Artist of Creation, enters into Creation itself, and does so not from a desire to win, not to change the world, but simply purely because God cares, God loves the world so much. THIRD, This is Trinity Sunday, appointed as a corrective for the Church, because many of us have come to believe in Jesus and only Jesus, as if we could extract Jesus out of the Bible; or as a Dualistic faith with God and Jesus only; when since the Day of Pentecost, since the adoption of the Nicene Creed, the Church has claimed A Trinity. This is not an argument from logic but from faith. Throughout the entire Bible, God extended Covenant Relationship with individuals, with families, with Nations, with the world. Covenant-Relationship, not a contract, not a Law, but a straight-forward Relationship of Trust: Follow wherever God leads, and God will be God, and we will be God’s people. YET everyone broke the Covenant. We tried to make ourselves God, or to find meaning in National Pride, in Accomplishment, in Success. For thousands and thousands of years across races, tribes, empires, people sought their own desires; instead of trusting God. The point of the Covenant is, simply being faithful, trusting no matter what, loving with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Having loved the world so much as become mortal, Jesus never broke Covenant with God and the world. The Spirit continues to Call us to dream and to work at Trust. Christian faith is unique, even counter-cultural because our faith is based on a relationship, call it faith, hope, love. You cannot be part of Creation alone.