Trinity plus one (2024)

This weekend is Trinity two and as I said last week, filled with the HS we, the church, are to go and do likewise. That is, to model the love Christ has shown us in the way we love the world with his message of reconciliation.

Our Gospel reading focuses on what is at stake when someone is in rejection to God, that is the eternal reality of hell. The Rich Man and Lazarus is such a dramatic narrative it might be easy to overlook the other reading and their importance in the curing of our souls.

I admit I often avoid texts that are overly focused on the love of God, not because I reject the Love of God, it was just so overused as a tool of evangelism in my old life I almost felt it lost its rhetorical power. I found more and more people wanted their minds engaged as more and more art appealed to their hearts and emotions.

Well I cannot avoid the Love of God today, first off because God is love…let that sink in, but Saint John in his letter is going to appeal to our minds and talk about Love, not with saccharine emotion, but of its roll and efficacy. And who knows maybe I will be cured and more ready to talk about the Love of God…

Main Point:****

Usually when preaching a text I am looking for that thematic thread we can pull and give the rest of the text meaning…this lets us get through a larger text by focusing on a pivotal section and using it to translate the rest of the text…this is not like that…ever single line of this text is dense with meaning…yes love is the through line, but we see all this capability of Love. Let me see if you see it the way I do.

[7] Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.

As children of God we model God’s character. If GOd is love then that modeling is to love. It is an outward sign that we are in fact born of God and know him. By the way, If God was not a trinity but a unity, who did he love before he created…no one. IF Love is essential to his nature, the community is essential. And God has always loved in perfect community father son and HS. It is the second weekend in Trinity and trust me that the Trinity is the background on which the rest of this is painted. God is love and if we are of GOd, it should show…

[8] Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This makes the opposite true, to try and be a harsh and unloving Christian, telling people you are passionate about truth top the exclusion of love is going to be impossible to the Christian walk.

[9] In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

This verse looks a lot like John 3:16. The giving of God into the World, so that life is finally accessible to us.

[10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

The loving characteristic is that Jesus absorbs our wrath (PROPITIATION: COMFORTABLE WORDS) Under Attack.

God love us by taking our rebelliousness onto himself that we could have his obedience.

[11] Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

So the triune God lives in perfect community in the Trinity. He extends that love by offering it to rebellious creatures who refuse to do the one thing he created them to do.

IN light of that we have to also look to extend the love of communal Christian life to others…even if it costs, like it cost the son. It is the only way to model the love that God gave us first.

[12] No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

God is invisible until he shows up in the person of Christ who now sits at the right hand of God in heaven. Invisible once again…until visible in us. How do we make him visible, it is how we love. That is set aside out good for the good of another, even an enemy.

[13] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

There is an assurance that this has taken place in us. We can be certain that we are part of God’s loving family because he has given us his Holy Spirit…

Andrew…how do I know for sure that I have the Holy Spirit? What is my assurance of abiding in Christ?

For us it is Baptism… It is the sure application of the HS to the people of God.

We have a 1 year lectionary, and this Chapter is just to dense on the power of God’s love to exhaust today. We will come back and visit this text again I assure you.

Let us then explore our own little community of faith how then do we live out this portion of the NT.

The first thing we must do is be absolutely clear about the experience of God’s love in our sacraments…and actually, I want to finish here today so pin this for me.

Propitiation is the message of God’s love. Its falling out of style to witness by telling people that Jesus dies for their sins… Look at me…Jesus died for your sins. He absorbed the rebellion of your life apart from God. He did so in agony on the cross, so that you would have his true life in God’s presence. Tell everyone…God loves you, he loved you by sending Jesus to die for your sins.

We need to evaluate where we fail to love…our enemy our neighbor eachother. Our congregational life and outreach must be motivated by love…why do we want this church to grow…because we love people and want them to experience the goodness of God. Why open the building for our regular outreach events. We love those we attempt to reach. Any other motivation is not of God.

You are the visible of the Invisible God. To be clear Jesus is the fullest revelation of the invisible God, as he is God. But as the body of Christ you are the way people see the Love of God at work.

I promise that we will talk sacraments in a second. But I feel obliged to say a thing or two about the time in which we live and the twisting of love.

Love in the Bible is a sacrificial thing done in order to bring someone else's good. Love in the world we live in has become intimate feelings for another that bring about my best good. We want to affirm all intimate cravings as a valid prerequisite for love.

I am attracted to this person, even though pursuing romantic relationships violate long held norms…love is love.

I am not just talking about the blessing of same-sex attraction as love. I am also referring to blessing the dissolution of marriages. Open marriages.

Love is love. And love is defined in the scripture and when Our Lord when to show the ultimate love he did so not by indulging his cravings, but by setting aside his will, and dying for our good.

Love is love…but we have to define it, lest it be coopted and used to justify sin.

Well I said I would finish by talking about our sacramental life. Verse 13 today says “[13] By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” How do we know we have accessed the spirit in order to abid in Christ? For us the having of the Spirit is made assure through the waters of baptism. The spirit which descends onto our bread and wine and we take it into us. The HS guides us in the hearing and understanding of God’s word. In that way Anglicans are Charismatics. We see the Holy Spirit in action every Sunday in the hearing fo the word and in the Eucharist, and hopefully many Sunday’s alongside in witnessing baptism.

Brothers and sisters all baptized Christians are invited today to participate in the Love of God, to abide in the spirit, and to eat at his table.