Today is Trinity Sunday. In church speak, this is the day when we remember the “unfathomable mystery” of God’s being as the Holy Trinity.
What does that mean? Well, it’s a way of remembering that we worship a God who is personal, who came to be with us as one of us, yet who is also beyond all our understanding. Our finite brains can’t totally understand how God is three in one, how God is the Father, who is the creator of all, how God is Jesus, who is God as a human, and God as the Holy Spirit, who helps us understand God’s love for us and the world, and who helps us have faith.
It’s why we end most of our prayers in worship with “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” It’s also why we baptize anyone in the name of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Our passage this morning comes from the end of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus commissions the disciples to go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The great commission recalls Jesus’s own baptism. It’s a full-circle moment, as Jesus asks the disciples to baptize others the way he himself was baptized. When Jesus was baptized, he heard God’s voice say: “This is my son with whom I am well pleased.” What is powerful about this is that before Jesus began his official ministry, he himself had to hear that he was God’s beloved.
When I was discerning my call to ministry, there was a point when I was deciding whether or not to go to seminary right away or do something else to save money. A mentor I had at the time brought this very passage to my attention. He said, “Like Jesus, we all need to know we are God’s beloved before anything else. There’s nothing wrong with taking a year before seminary to reflect on this and live into it.” I always think of that wise advice whenever I read about Jesus’ baptism.
When I was ready to go to seminary and live into my calling as a pastor, I had a spiritual director, someone who helps you figure out how to best connect with God, who told me plainly: “You are about to go into ministry. A world that is made to shred you.” My response was: “Wow. You’re really making this whole ministry gig look real attractive.”
What my spiritual director meant was that ministry is a vocation where, if you don’t make space to take care of yourself spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically, you will surely burn out. For the most part, I’ve been blessed to serve at churches that understood this danger and supported pastors taking the necessary time to recharge.
It’s very difficult to separate ourselves from what we do. Our careers are where we receive affirmation for our gifts. We feel like we are contributing to something worthwhile, whether it’s full-time ministry, teaching, medicine, law, or business etc. So much of our identity is in our work. Our careers and callings define us. Which is why I found Tim Keller’s words impactful:
If our identity is in our work, rather than Christ, success will go to our heads, and failure will go to our hearts.–Tim Keller
When we put our self worth in our work, then when things go wrong at work, whether a project didn’t go as plan or we are fired or laid off, we feel like complete failures.
When our work becomes our full identity, then when we fail at work, we define ourselves as failures, period. But we are more than our work. God doesn’t see us and define us by our careers and vocation. Instead, God sees each of us as his “beloved child” with whom God is well pleased. And as we are reminded in the prayer of confession every Sunday, God always forgives us and still loves us in spite of our failures.
In the bible study that our Presbyterian Women (PW) circles did this past year, one of the activities suggested was to turn to the person next to you and say: “You are a beloved child of God.” We were then asked: “When was the last time someone said that to you?” And it struck me that none of us could remember when that was said to us.
So we’re going to do that now. I know this might be awkward, but let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us get past it for a minute. I’d like you to turn to the person next to you or in front of you, ask them for their name if you don’t know it, and look them in the eye and tell them: “You are a beloved child of God.” So like this: “Troy, you are a beloved child of God.”
Your turn!
I hope that was both great and awkward.
So I am headed out on sabbatical on Monday. I’m grateful to our session and to you all for encouraging and allowing your pastors time to recharge. Because we pastors, need to hear we are beloved children of God too. You can get a really big head as a pastor. So many people tell you how awesome you are. Not going to lie..I love it. But I’ve found that it’s harder and harder to base my entire self-worth on your encouraging words and how effective I can be as a pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Grand Haven. As grateful as I am that you love me, and I love you, it’s God’s love above all else that defines me. Or at least should define me. When I don’t let God’s love define me, I’m no longer a faithful pastor. A faithful pastor recognizes they can’t do this on their own. They do it out of the strength that the Holy Spirit provides. As pastors, we are to help you all know God’s love for you. If we pastors don’t know God’s love for ourselves, then how can we help you understand God’s love for you?
So I’m taking this summer to reflect on God’s love. God’s love for me, for you all, for our community, and the world. One of my favorite verses is 1 John 4:19: “This is love. Not that we loved God first, but that God loved us first.” When we know God’s love, we are better able to love God, others, and ourselves. But it all begins with God’s love for us.
So that’s the goal of the sabbatical this summer. To be reacquainted with God’s love. This requires me to have space from here, as a pastor. Not to say that if you see me at Meijer, you run the other way. Please do say “hello,” but we just can’t talk about anything happening at First Pres.
I invite you all to pick a devotion to do daily and a book to read. All of which will help us be reacquainted with the love Jesus has for all of us.
Here are some of my favorite devotions:
Lection 365 App: This app is free and leads you through Lectio Divina, an ancient practice of reading Scripture. We’re actually doing to do that together in a bit.
With God Daily with Skye Jethani. It’s branded as:
‘Devotions for people who hate devotions.” A lot of devotions tend to play into our emotions about God, but Jethani manages to combine the importance of intellectually reflecting on God’s love too. It can be found at www.withgoddaily.com. There is a suggested donation to have this 10 minute devotion arrive in your inbox, but you can pay as much or as little as you can. Skye Jethani is a pastor, author, podcaster, and thoughtful communicator. This is currently my devotion of choice. It involves a theme, scripture, and a prayer from well-known pastors and theologians throughout history.
For Such a Time as This by Hanna Reichel. Reichel is a professor at my alma mater, Princeton Seminary. If you’re concerned about the direction of our country, this is a great devotional that packs in history and theology in a few pages, using accessible language.
Suggested Books
Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. Martin Luther King Jr used to carry around this book. Thurman was a pastor, a theologian, and a mystic, who eloquently puts into words why Jesus is for those others view as less than.
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. Peterson is a PC(USA) pastor who is also a prolific author. This particular book is his short commentary about the Psalms of ascent, the psalms that Israel would sing on their way to Jerusalem.
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. I actually haven’t read this book, but I’ve had so many people recommend it to me. Ironically, I’ve been too busy to read it. But perhaps we could read it together and talk about whether it was great or trash. I really think it’s going to be the former rather than the latter.
And now I’d like to walk through Lectio Divina with you. So flip this hand out over and let’s go over this Psalm together using the simple steps of Lectio Divina.
Instructions for Lection Divina For Psalm 8:1-9
- Read or listen to the passage 3 times
- After the first reading, just let the words sit with you.
- After the second reading, circle or underline words or phrases that stuck out to you.
- After the third reading, reflect upon what God might be asking you to do.
In closing, I hope you will join me this summer in being intentional about spending time with God through these various resources. It’s so easy to just go through the motions of faith, and in anything, really. But when we are committed to making time and space to be with God, we will have a better understanding of what it means that each one of us is God’s beloved in Jesus Christ.