Info

Your Faith Journey

All of us are on a journey of faith in our lives. At Faith Lutheran in Okemos, Michigan we bring people one a journey of faith each week and share that journey with the world.
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
Your Faith Journey
2024
March
February
January


2023
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2022
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2021
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2020
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2019
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February


Categories

All Episodes
Archives
Categories
Now displaying: June, 2019
Jun 23, 2019

Today we had an update from Dave Sacco from Engineers without Borders on the water project that we have been supporting as a congregation.

Jun 23, 2019

This is a special musical performance by Bob Nelson of My Savior and My God at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan 

Jun 20, 2019

When I was on internship in Richland Hills, Texas, and area clergy gathered to discuss the scripture readings for the Sundays of Pentecost and Holy Trinity, everyone seemed quite excited about preaching on Pentecost Sunday, but hardly anyone looked forward to preaching on Trinity Sunday.  In fact, my internship supervisor, Pastor Phil, joked the Intern is always given Trinity Sunday as a day for preaching.  He said, “This is a test to see if the Intern is heretical or not!”  You see, the doctrine of the Trinity is one many clergy would often rather avoid.  So, the task of proclamation on Trinity Sunday was mine that year.  However, I was glad I was assigned the task because I believe we need a better understanding of the three persons of the Trinity.  You see, each person of the Trinity gives us language to better understand God.  And, the relationship of mutual love between the three persons of the Trinity helps us better understand how deeply we are loved and how we are to love others.

Talking about the Trinity is not easy!  Have you ever tried to explain the Trinity?  God is one and yet we’ve got these three, what?  Persons?  Spirits?  Beings?  Things?  So, what is God?  Who is God?  A triangle, maybe a prism, whole, but with three sides?  We say we believe in One God, and then we sing, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”  Just how do we make sense of this and what does it all mean?

          Jesus didn’t really talk about the Trinity; neither did Paul.  There are places in scripture where they mention the Father, Son and Spirit, but not in the way we now think of the Trinity.  It wasn’t until the fourth century, 300 years after Jesus, that Christian leaders formalized the whole concept of the Trinity.  This happened at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.  The result?  The Nicene Creed.  Then, many years later in the fifth century, Christian leaders wrote another creed as they tried once again to clarify people’s understanding of the Trinity, particularly the Jesus part.  That Council resulted in the Apostles’ Creed. 

Over the years, there has been a lot of bitter arguing over the concept of the Trinity.   And, at one point, the Eastern church split with the Western church because of division and controversy surrounding this doctrine.  Quite honestly, the idea of the Trinity is hard to understand and nearly impossible to explain.  So, I am not going to try to explain the Trinity, because it is a mystery.  However, I am going to attempt to take you deeper into the mystery and the wonder of this One in Three, this Three in One we call God. 

Last week, we were in Raleigh, NC for our son’s wedding.  The reception was so much fun.  Everyone was dancing.  I love to dance, and I love to watch people dance.  It was especially fun to watch our grandchildren let themselves be so free and open while interacting with others, dancing with sheer abandon.  It was so much fun to see Collin and Vivian taking the music into their beings, feeling the beat and moving to pulsating rhythms.  As I watched them, I thought about the way dance is made up of many different entities.  Motion, emotion, resonance, rhythm, beat; all of these relate to each other and come together when we see people dance.  They come together to create the whole.  As I watched the kids, I again thought about how dance is a perfect metaphor for the nature of the Trinity, of God.

When we look at the idea of the Holy Trinity, we stand on the edge of mystery.  The Trinity is a model of interactive and open relationship.  God’s nature can be thought of as a three-way dance, a dance of relationship and incomprehensible love.  Through the metaphor of dance, we see three distinct movements of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but movements that exchange life-giving energy and create unity, perfect unity and oneness.  This dance is one of mutual devotion and shared love, a love that is expansive and generous, a love that cannot be self contained.  It overflows from Parent to Child to Spirit and back again. The love of God, the love that IS God is like a divine Dance, a dynamic, graceful and deeply intimate movement.  In this movement, the God who is "I AM" is not alone, never alone, because the very nature of God is relationship. In the Trinity we see a love that is always selfless and pointing to the other.  In the Trinity we see a oneness that is a matter of shared egolessness, a oneness where the three are one in mission.   When we consider the Trinity, we see a God who is all about relationship, community, and unconditional love.

In this interactive dance of the divine three in one, we see a coming together of power and majesty, love and tenderness, presence and movement – AND the raw and everyday reality of life.  In this coming together, God gives life.   In this coming together, God enters into our very lives, lives among us, and invites us to participate in the dance. And, what is so mysterious and remarkable is that while God, who in this Dance needs no other, God chose to create and redeem creation.  God chose to create and redeem you, me, each and every individual we encounter – so that we might join in this Dance. The invitations have been sent. There are to be no mere spectators on the dance floor. No outcasts, no outsiders. We are called by God to see ourselves as God sees each of us and thus discover ourselves to be, like the Persons of the Trinity, truly beloved.  

Do you remember words spoken to Jesus when he was baptized?  The Father, Son and Spirit danced as the Father spoke saying, “You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  Those pulsating, life-giving, creating words danced through creation as a message of divine love.  That creative Word danced through life, healing the sick, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, breaking the chains of slavery, and transforming chaos into wholeness.  When we consider the Trinity, we see a God who entered into the deepest darkness of our lives and walks with us in the places where we think God is most absent.  We see a God who is with us at those times of deepest suffering when we ask, “Why?” and there simply are no answers.  For that God, that three in one, danced to the very hill of Calvary, the deepest place of darkness, of extreme loneliness, and of excruciating pain.  And then, the life-giving, creative Dance of love burst forth from a sealed tomb because it could not be contained!

This is the love that invites us to participate in the Dance.  God speaks to each of us saying, “You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.   You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, join in the Dance!”   You see, the Divine Dance continues in us and through us.  We dance with our God and with the world in partnership with God.  What does the Trinity dance look like in our lives?  We dance with our God when we care for the sick, feed the hungry and offer water to the thirsty.  We dance with our God when we march in solidarity with our LBGTQ friends in the Pride Parade.  We dance with our God when we partner with Samaritas to love and care for our refugee friends.  We dance with our God when we walk with those who are mourning and grieving.  We dance with our God when we, ourselves, are grieving.  We dance with our God when we provide food for the ArrowTree Food Pantry.  We dance with our God when we give to ELCA World Hunger, to Water for Tanzania and to ELCA Disaster Response.  We dance with our God when we gather to worship.  And, we participate in this Divine Dance daily as we live into the reign of God.  We were created to live in relationship, moving to the beat of divine, incomprehensible love, dancing with God’s very self and with each other.  So, come, dance on the edge of mystery, live into the kingdom of God and join the dance of Trinity!

Jun 20, 2019

This is a special musical performance of The Lord's Prayer by Ryan Thompson at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan. 

Jun 11, 2019

This is a special musical performance of Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song by Bob Nelson at Faith Lutheran Church in Okemos, Michigan.

Jun 11, 2019

This is a sermon based on John 14:8-17 

Jun 6, 2019

We live in a time when American citizenship and patriotism are too often wedded to Christian discipleship, or at least confused with discipleship.  So, when I read theologian, Willie James Jennings, commentary on today’s reading from Acts, I found it very helpful.  He writes:

The church has always been tempted to confuse citizenship with discipleship.  The citizen who is a disciple can no longer be a citizen in the abstract, no longer a citizen in theory but only in the concrete practice of a disciple.  The disciple is a citizen who has had their citizenship tightly bound to the body of Jesus and ordered by the Spirit of God toward one purpose – to expose the concealed architecture of oppression and violence and to set the captives free.  A citizen may do other things to promote the well-being of the republic.  Yet the disciple must never forget the site from which they are obligated to think citizenship: the prison and the places of the oppressed.

 

Throughout history, disciples of Jesus have worked to expose oppression and violence while concretely attempting to set the captives free through subversive actions and activities like advocacy, walking with the oppressed, working for justice and peace, prayer, worship and, yes, the singing of hymns.  You see, praying and singing are acts of joining that weave our voices and words with the desperate of this world who cry out to God day and night.  We see this subversive action as we read about the history of slaves in this country who sang spirituals while seeking freedom.  We saw this during the Civil Rights Movement as people sang, and still sing, songs like We Shall Overcome.  Each time we gather in the name of Jesus and lift our voices, this point of reference should shape our reverence and drive us to see and learn and know and change the situations of those who suffer from injustice.  Actions and activities like advocacy, walking with the oppressed, working for justice and peace, prayer, worship and, yes, the singing of hymns are subversive actions, uniting us with the oppressed.  They are concrete practices of discipleship as we work to bring about change within the established order by exposing the concealed architecture of oppression and violence.  These actions nourish and compel us to work for justice.  They enable God to work through us as God continues to set people free.  And, quite honestly, these actions will almost always bring forth some form of repercussion because they disturb the status quo of orders and systems that are in place. 

Much like the prophets who came before him, Jesus’ entire ministry was one that subverted the established order – not only the civil order of the day, but also the religious order as he set people free from oppression.  Quite frankly, sharing and living the good news of Jesus has always been a subversive form of living because Jesus brings change.   The gospel good news always turns our reality and thinking inside out and upside down.  And, today we find Paul and Silas living into this aspect of a life of faith as we hear more about their adventures while spreading the good news of Jesus.

          As Paul and Silas wander the streets of Philippi, they begin engaging people with the gospel and engaging the culture in significant ways.  Last week we heard about their first encounter with Lydia who owned a thriving business in expensive purple cloth.  Today we find Paul and Silas having an encounter with another business, one that is fueled by a woman’s brokenness and captivity.  They encounter a slave girl who is possessed by a spirit not of God, but a spirit that could tell people’s fortunes.  This girl’s supposed “gift” meant she was owned and used as a commodity, providing her owners with a small, profitable business.  Finding herself drawn to Paul and Silas, she names who they are and what they are doing.  Much like a broken record, she repeatedly shouts her message saying, “These men are slaves of the Most-High God, and they are telling you the way to be saved.”  Well, Paul finally has enough and becomes annoyed.  In frustration he turns around and performs an exorcism right there and then.  And, as he releases this girl, freeing her from oppression, economics and religious convictions collide.  The owners of the slave girl and this “Psychics-R-Us” business become furious because their lucrative income stream is now cut off.  The economic system they had in place depended on her not being well.  So, when she becomes well, the system goes into panic mode.  Her owners gather the civic leaders to make sure they all understand the economic impact the actions of Paul and Silas are having on their lives.  They complain to the authorities that Paul and Silas are political subversives, undermining Roman order.   

The authorities agree that they are subversives.  They then have Paul, who happened to be a Roman citizen as well as a Jew, and Silas arrested and beaten with rods for setting someone free, someone who had been captive to evil.  They are shackled and thrown into prison. And what do they do?  Of course, they have a hymn sing!  This scene of their worshiping God is startling and surreal.  Yet there is an organic connection between Jesus praying in the garden before his torture and Paul and Silas praying in the prison after their torture.  This is prayer revealed at the site of suffering and rejection.  This is prayer connected to the very body of Jesus.  Shackled and imprisoned, Paul and Silas are living their faith and subversively praying and singing hymns.  And, guess what?  That is the character of those who are truly free.  Paul and Silas are so centered in God and God’s dream for this world they are able to sing regardless of their circumstances.  Their singing continues into the deepest darkness of midnight when, all of a sudden, the earth beneath them quakes so powerfully that their shackles fall off. 

Paul and Silas truly experience the shaking of the very foundations on which they are sitting.  And, as the earth quakes, the jailer awakes.  He awakes to find the doors of the prison wide open.  Terrified of what would happen to him when his superiors discover he has lost the prisoners; the jailer decides to kill himself.  Paul stops him just in time, calling out to the jailer with words that stop him short saying, “Do not harm yourself; we are all here.”  The jailer then asks one of Scripture’s most profound questions, “What must I do to be saved?” 

Now, this jailer’s question is key to this whole narrative.  Theologian Ronald Cole-Turner suggests, “Whenever the jailer’s question is asked, the obvious counter-question is, ‘Saved from what?’ Sword in hand, the jailer was probably thinking about how to be saved from the wrath of the authorities.  However, his question has come to mean much more, depending on who is asking it… ‘What must I do to be saved from my particular bondage, the oppression of my addiction, my emptiness, or my boredom?’”  What must we as a people do to be saved from the bondage and oppression of economic systems, the seduction of authoritarian power and the espoused hatred, bigotry, xenophobia and racism that spew forth in our present culture?  How much of our economic system, our political system, our judicial system, our local governmental systems, and even our family systems are dependent upon so many of us not being well? The reality is that any system that operates without compassion and commitment for the good of all is not only broken, it puts people in bondage. 

Paul’s answer to the jailer is deceptively simple as he takes the action to yet another level.  His answer, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ,” is an invitation to the jailer and each one of us to tune in to the level of God’s action in this world.  As we tune in to God’s redeeming action and God’s storyline, we are grasped and taken into the gospel story of transformation and redemption.  And, quite frankly, this tuning into God is also a subversive act, because to tune into Christ as the one with dominion in our life is to subvert whatever earthly powers claim the same dominion over our lives.  To tune into Christ means letting the Spirit orient us toward one purpose – exposing the powers that oppress us and others, becoming free in Christ and living to set others free. To be a Christian is to be subversive.  “The disciple of Jesus is a citizen who has had their citizenship tightly bound to the body of Jesus and ordered by the Spirit of God toward one purpose – to expose the concealed architecture of oppression and violence and to set the captives free.” 

During the days of the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.  It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.”  So, centered in God, in God’s dream for this world and, living in the reality of the living Christ, we subversively tune into God’s story of grace and redeeming love.  And, like Paul and Silas, we subversively sing regardless of the circumstances, living into the discipleship to which we are called.

1