"Dear Trinity" Letters (all five)
First in a series of "Dear Trinity" letters
Second in a series of "Dear Trinity" letters
A Letter to Trinity:
Dear Beloved Trinity, Your very name--Trinity--rings with love--an inner affection and attention given and received by Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. But this same love that is shared within, has been poured out "For God so loved the world he gave," and "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (John 3.16 and Romans 5.5).
There is an inner love of God that is ever pouring outward. This is your namesake. You also are to experience an inner love from God and for one another that can't help but pour outward. I have noticed your outward love is evident. Expressed all over 7th Street School and in the collecting, reporting, sorting, and delivering of daily bread to many in need through the Pantry Ministry. Your generous love extends to from A to Z, from Albania to Zimbabwe, Thailand to Tanzania to Turkey. Many, if not most, of you express it in your vocations and neighborhoods. Your love outpours for others.
Do you still love one another? It has been more difficult lately. Our differences have been magnified and then leveraged against each other. We have been tempted to be more fundamentally marked by an identity other than the one carved in our forehead and on our heart at our baptism. "You are marked with the cross of Christ forever." Now politics has graffitied over that more fundamental mark. The cross has been turned into an "R" or a "D." Differences over cultural issues has threatened to make the primary mark secondary.
Those other marks are the shape power takes. The shape that a demand for "our rights" "what we want" "what we deserve" takes. The cross is the shape love takes. Does the following sound more like the shape of politics or pundits or the propaganda that we are constantly listening to? Or, does this sound like the shape of the cross--the way of Jesus?
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."
The spirit of the anti-Christ is convincing many that the way of love, the way of Jesus, is no longer effective or in effect. An influential leader even recently told a group of evangelicals, "Turning the other cheek has gotten us nothing."
God's word and ways have not changed. The way of the cross, the way of love has never seemed like it would work. From the beginning, it looked like failure and stupidity and weakness. But, to we who are being saved, it is the power of God. This is the sign that marks you, the banner you bear, the mercy that embraces you, and the message and means you are called to be and deliver in this loveless world. You are loved. Love.
Third in a series of "Dear Trinity" letters
Dear Trinity,
You have renewal...in your rear view mirror. In a way, every Christian--every church does. For Christ Jesus died, was buried, was raised, and appeared or SHOWED UP in the story of every believer stretching back to Mary, Peter, and John.
Look back in your own life--your own story. You will find life.
Trinity, as a congregation, this is true for you too. Seasons of contraction gave way to exciting expansion. Seasons of dryness were flooded with seasons of fresh rain. Old liturgy and catechesis were ignited yet were not consumed or destroyed, but burned with light and fresh energy like perpetual fuel.
"We've always done it this way" gave way to "more Lord" and "Welcome, Holy Spirit." This is your heritage. This is an abundant blessing for you, unless a new passivity settles in your soul that sounds more like, "Been there, done that" or "lets just hold on and wait for heaven."
Two important experiences are drawing our attention to the rear view mirror: our birthday and our buildings. We get to celebrate our past, and to celebrate our past is to remember seasons of resurrection and renewal. And our buildings bear finger prints. The blood, sweat, and prayerful tears of our ancestors. And their memory is blessed. Yet, even they were not spending much time looking back--they had less to look back on. They were looking ahead. They saw life ahead. They saw you and me, and a busy God Rocks Choir and lively catechism program and prayer groups and pantries and Thetas and VBSs. They might not have know all those names, but they looked ahead and saw life!
Trinity, let our experience with the rear view mirror be more grateful glance than settled stare. There is life in our past. There is life ahead! Jesus has died, been buried, and raised, and appeared. We will die, be buried, be raised, and appear before him in glory. There is life ahead in every way.
This truth will reform our compromised Christianity. This will rekindle our first love. This will be our unity and shared passion.
There is a resurrection truth that you can't add to, subtract from, make more or less real. It is happening to you. A glorious passive voice verb: "You are being saved!" (1 Corinthians 15.2).
Now here is the resurrection action that you can do: receive it, stand in it, hold fast to it, believe it. (1 Corinthians 15.1-2).
Amen.
Fourth in a series of "Dear Trinity" letters
Dear Trinity,
We are in a tug-o-war. Bad new: we are the rope. On one side is the old world were were born into, where we learned to walk and talk. It has a strong pull. That world makes a lot of sense. If someone hits you, you hit them. Maybe they will learn to not do that again. If people don't listen to you, say it LOUDER. The old world feels like the most natural reality, because it is what we are used to. Guilty people should get what is coming to them. Lay in the bed you made. Do the crime, pay the time.
Maybe the core reality of the old world is: you die. Everyone dies. Are you poor? You die. Rich? You die. Healthy people die and so do sick people. The only questions are "How will you die?" and "When will you die?" To return to the tug-o-war image, you could say the old world has a death grip on us.
The old world's strength is in it's rigor-mortis, it's inflexibility. it is a stiff grip.
The good news is, you are a root that is in contention. Because you are held by strong hands. Living hands. Raised from the dead, muscle, sinew, bone, tendon, oxygenated from a strong and devoted heart, receiving covenantal impulses from the head which are communicating the following through the nervous system:
"I'm not going to let go."
"Ever."
"I'm not just alive--I am resurrected from the dead."
"Death, sin, the old world full of fate, and luck, and karma, and bootstraps, vacillating wildly between optimism and pessimism, between conservative and progressing, that old world killed me. But God raised me from the the dead. And, I'm the first fruits--the archetype of the world to come. In fact my resurrection from that old world of death and decay, my resurrection is the inauguration of the kingdom, the new creation, the re-genesis."
The key question for you Trinity, is "do you perceive it?" Or is the death grip so strong, that Adam and Eve rebellion and death so practiced, the crowd's and Barabbas' insurrection so persuasive that you have lost hope, lost faith in the resurrection?
The old country can only imagine death solutions to life's problems.
The new country can only imagine life solutions to death's problems.
The old death country has solutions for eradicating birth defects, the sick, the undesirable, the guilty, the unplanned, the lonely.
The new country also has solutions: Life! Love! Compassion! Tender care! Acceptance! Redemption! Forgiveness! Transformation! Redemption!
Do you feel the cold stiff hand of the old country?
Do you feel the warm supple hands of the resurrected Lord, contending for you now?
That soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose. I will not, I will not desert to it's foes. That soul though all hell should endeavor to take. I'l never, no never, no never forsake!
Final in a series of "Dear Trinity" letters
Dear Trinity,
Are you curious what happens to us in the new Genesis, when we, along with the rest of the groaning creation is all made new? I'm curious about that. Paul called the Corinthians, "foolish" for asking questions like these. Honestly that seems a bit of an over reaction on the good Apostle's part. Why are they foolish for not knowing? Maybe I'm a little sensitive because I feel like he must be calling me "foolish" too.
Maybe the Corinthians were thinking about it all wrong? And maybe we are too? Paul told them that their same body would rise, but that it wouldn't be like the body they buried.
The body (σῶμα ψυχικόν) they buried was fussy. Always needing make up and deodorant and exercise and new clothes and constantly reminding us of how hungry it is and how thirsty it is.
Jesus was a little more couth when he addressed the same foolishness in the sermon on the mount. "Don't be anxious about what your soul will eat or drink or how you body will be clothed. Your soul is more than food and your body more than clothing (Matthew 6).
Whether it is Paul calling us foolish or Jesus is naming our anxiety, both are putting their finger on something important. The gospel is all about forgiveness for sins, freedom for chains, belonging for shame, and life from death.
This makes our devoted commitment to our current comforts, our upward mobility, our curation of our image, our banking everything on our success at work, at home, on the field, on the road, on how our kids turn out, on our trophies, no matter what they are--foolish. Solomon would say, ultimately meaningless. Jesus would gently, but directly say, anxiety inducing.
We are living as if this is our best life. Unless you are going to hell, your best life is NOT now. Jesus has been raised from the dead. One day you will rise. Imperishable. No need for make up or deodorant to battle decay. You will rise in glory and power. God himself will breath his Pneuma-Ruach-Breath-Spirit in to your soma-body (σῶμα πνευματικόν). Imagine it. Life! Resurrection awaits you.
So, instead of hoarding and investing all your resources in making this old world feel as much like heaven for yourself--Give it away! All the hope you are pinning on particular outcomes here--Release them! Hope in God and his promises. It really would be anxious foolishness to put your hope in the stock market, or your exercise and vitamin regimen, in politics, in a certain outcome for a relationship. The stock market won't, can't forgive you. God can and does. Your exercise regimen will let you down. God won't. Human relationships will fail you. God won't. Politics can't love you. God can. In fact, God can't not love you.
Therefore my beloved sisters and brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15.58).
Trinity, you are a community of life, a colony of the Kingdom in San Pedro. The city might experience revitalization or even gentrification. they can replace Godmother's Saloon with a bougie avocado toast bar, but what does San Pedro really need?
A church that is alive in faith in what God has done. Alive in hope in what God will do. Alive in love in Jesus' name.
Church, you are not an add on to a bustling city, another agency with products--spiritual or religious.
Church, you are the body of the resurrected Lord. If you don't speak and breathe life and hope in this old town, who will? If you are swept up in a cancel culture, who will say, "Welcome HOME!" to all the cancelled poor and powerless and prodigals? If you conversations are marked by grievance and outrage and finger pointing, who will point to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?
Does it hit different if we concretized and localized the truth: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of San Pedro. The Lamb who takes away your sin.
Let our voices ring out:
Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Alleluia, You will rise. We will rise indeed, Alleluia!
And now may the peace of the risen Lord keep you until that day.
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