06112017 - Trinity Sunday - “God's ways are unfathomable, but to Him be the Glory forever. AMEN (Rom. 11:33, 36)”

June 11, 2017
“God's ways are unfathomable, but to Him be the Glory forever. AMEN (Rom. 11:33, 36)”

Audio

Humankind has been looking to the skies and viewing the heavenly bodies of the sun, moon and stars since man was created.  From solar eclipses like the one that will come on August 21, 2017, to the biblical account of the sun standing still in the sky for Joshua.  Only in the last 200 years has our understanding of the micro and macro universe grown and allowed us to understand that the universe that surrounds us is greater than what we can see with the naked eye.    Even today scientists continue delving into the mysteries of the micro and macro universe, here on earth, in the Space Station and even via telescopes whether ground based or even in the heavens like the Hubble or other probes that visit planets inside and now outside our known universe.  What we tend to forget is not only is our universe unfathomable, but also a clear biblical truth revealed to us about God and our understanding Him.

In 1^st John 4, John the ‘elder’ and evangelist wrote, “If anyone says, “I love God.” And hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen”.  Truly even John with foresight given by God understood the challenges of our technological world that we face not only of being able to believe in something we cannot see, but also how we can love one another, and trust not only each another, but even of God.  Yet for us today, we still struggle with the simple age old question of the existence of God and having a tangible truth and proof of His existence.

There is the story told of a philosophy teacher who while teaching his students questions God’s existence.  Ultimately it fell to a Marine to not only stand and defend the teacher’s right to question if God existed, but also for the Marine to respond that God is to busy and God sent him to prove that God existed.

Yet, Paul from our reading this morning, not only answers our age old dilemma of God’s existence, but tells us exactly what we Christians are to do in both the worst and best of times.  Paul says, “God’s ways are unfathomable, but to Him be the Glory forever.  AMEN!”  Paul the father of most of the New Testament gives us what should be our response and points us in a direction that humanity is at times not comfortable to go or even believe.  Simply God is infinite and even beyond our understanding.

We as humans are created finite in our existence.  We are born on a certain date and we will die on a certain date.  God, our Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier is different from us.  God will never die, but God the Father willingly out of His love for us as we heard in the Gospel this morning that we all know and can probably quote, sent His Son to take on our humanity in order that we will no longer be limited by our finite.  For God demonstrating His love for us by sending His Son, Jesus Christ and is graciously giving us the infinite when we in faith believe in the unfathomable vastness of God and the gift of eternal life given to us through His Son Jesus Christ.  With our baptism into Jesus Christ life, death and resurrection, we no longer are limited by our earthly vessels, but we are set free.  As Pixar’s Buzz Lightyear would say, we are set free “To infinity and beyond” and we will not be limited in our death when we enter the veil of heaven.  And this is the gift we receive from God through His Son, Jesus Christ out of God’s great love for us.

And today on this Trinity Sunday, we celebrate this gift of grace, mercy and love, as we do every year with our use of the Athanasian Creed.  As the third Creed of Christendom, we not only Confess and connect together in our Confession, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but we truly claim and acclaim that “God’s ways are unfathomable, but [continue to declare] to Him be the Glory forever.  AMEN!”  Though we only use this Creed once a year, our remembering it as one of our Confessions of Faith, our use of it today is the exclamation point that this Creed makes.  With our Confessing our Faith in God, we make it very clear that God clearly receives from us not only our adoration, but we give “to Him” “the Glory forever”!  This is why we seek to give God Glory in how we live our lives, how we love one another and even how we are called by God’s Word to ‘put the best construction’ on all things in our daily lives no matter what people may do, even those who claim they are Christian, but clearly don’t show their love for their brothers or sisters in Christ.

For in our as Christians loving God and one another we show our adoration of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but also clearly express our belief that God has our best interests in mind no matter our own personal circumstances or the headlines in our world.  We clearly not only invoke today, but lay claim to the blessings of God of eternal life from Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Athanasian Creed.  And today with our confession we firmly, faithfully and fully confess and believe the following.  That “God’s ways are unfathomable, but [we can lovingly give] to Him [our adoration as His baptized children so we can firmly believe and give to Him] the Glory forever.  AMEN!”

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Speak Your Mind

05312015 Trinity Sunday - To God be the Glory

Gospel Audio
Sermon Audio

May 31, 2015

To God be the Glory

 As I entered the room, the people gathered around the bed had tears running down their cheeks.  The bed wasn’t like what I get into at night, it was metal, functional and looked uncomfortable.  The wires that were draped over the sides running to the machines were clear sentry’s with an unmistakable purpose, to signal when the battle was over.  The faces of the people that were huddled around the room and especially the bed were drawn and showed signs of the weariness that words could not heal nor take away the pain they were feeling inside.  But this wasn’t just a sterile hospital room, this wasn’t just a place that would witness the final hours, minutes and seconds of relationship between husband and wife, father and daughters, brothers and sisters.  This humble room was where God’s Glory would be fully revealed and the promises of God would be clearly and unmistakably fulfilled.  This was where God meets man and this is holy ground.

The people gathered around the bed are not unknown to me.  I have played games with all of them, I have eaten meals around the table with each of them.  I have worshiped God both in their church and mine.  This is my family gathered together, huddled, holding each other and helping each other because of the reality that confronts us now, death is about to intimately touch and visit us.  Laying in the bed is someone I am more like than I can truly comprehend or understood.  Laying in the bed, dying from four types of cancer is my Uncle Don.

Though we grew up in different times, had different experiences as well as parents, what my Uncle taught me in death has stayed with me for the last twenty two years.  Simply it is what Paul concluded our epistle with today.  Paul wrote, “To Him [that is To God] be the glory forever. Amen.”

Paul in his epistle clearly understood how death does separate loved ones.  Even when Paul finally encountered and understood on the road to Emmaus the Person Jesus Christ when he saw Him face to face, that place of his encounter with Jesus for Paul was holy ground.  Jesus Christ had died outside Jerusalem and right in front of Paul’s eyes Jesus stood and spoke to him.  From that moment on, Paul’s very existence changed from being destructive of human life and Christianity, to a life epitomized in what he wrote in Romans.  “To Him be the glory forever.  AMEN”

Some of us have not had this ‘mountain top experience’ of clear personal encounter with the divine while here on earth.  But we have encountered death in our lives, whether of children we never met, spouses that we built lives and experienced love with, parents that carried us and nurtured our very nature and even siblings or friends that died at a young age or even after a long life.  Death has touched each of our lives.  But for Christians, death is not an enemy, but a doorway to walk through in our lives and an opportunity for us to look beyond death and not just repeat Paul’s words, but know the connection we have with Paul and all the saints of all time and place.  Paul understood this and hence why he stated clearly for God’s glory to be forever.

But how can we have ‘God’s Glory forever’ here at Emmanuel?  I do not have the answer.  Let me state that again, so everyone can clearly hear my personal confession.  I, Darian Hybl, Pastor of Emmanuel Lutheran in Goodland, Kansas, do not have all the answers.  I cannot by my own reason or effort explain what or why.  I cannot foresee what will happen in the next month, year, three years or five years.

This is a very humbling and hard pill to swallow.  What I have to do is like Paul, die to self.  I have to die to my knowledge, my ego and my ability, because with them, all I have done, and will do is drive people away from God and the church.  Like Paul, who captured Christians and dragged them to the authorities and to have them executed, all I am personally capable of in and of myself is the destruction of the church.

Hence, why Paul’s statement is so profound for me and for us today.  On this day that we celebrate the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit with the confession of the Athanasian Creed, I need to stand with Paul and say clearly and emphatically, “To God be the Glory”!

You see, in order to stand with Paul and make this confession that we all will do in a few minutes, I have to do something I learned from my Uncle Don, who died of cancer.  My Uncle Don loved to fish, and he was good at it.  He could horse fish out of the side of a stream bank that had been fished hard on opening day of trout season.  He could walk up to a part of the stream and tell exactly where every fish was and if there were multiple fish.  In less than 100 feet of stream he could catch his limit of 7 fish and easily go back for more, because he was that good.

While visiting him eight years before he lay in the hospital bed, I went out fishing with him to learn some of his tricks and tips, because I wanted to learn how to be a better fly fisherman.  We came to a stream that flowed out of the bottom of a lake not far from his house.  For those of you who don’t know, the coldest water is at the bottom of any body of water and the water flowing from this lake out of the bottom into the stream was about 35-38 degrees.  As I had learned from my father, get close to the stream and make a good presentation of the fly.  With clear determination I got as close as I could without getting wet and cast the fly.  It landed perfectly.  My uncle stood back and watched.  I held my breath and waited.  The fly floated closer and closer and finally went down stream past me, so I did as any fisherman does, I tried again and again, and again.  But I couldn’t get any fish to rise.

With the wisdom of many years, my Uncle Don, looked at me and said, ‘you have good technique, but you are in the wrong place’.  Being right next to the stream I looked at him with great pessimism and in a teenage tone said, where should I be, in the middle of the stream?  And he said simply ‘yes’.  You see I had to die to all the knowledge I had up to that point and be humble and in one sense get out of my comfort zone, on the side of the stream and get right in the middle of the stream.  I had to get wet.  As I inched into the water my ankles began to lose all feeling.  Not only were my shoes wet, my pants were drenched and I was getting cold.  For the next ten minutes I stood in the middle of the stream with cold water streaming between my legs and faithfully casting my fly to every part of the stream that I could reach in search of the illusive trout that was supposed to be in the water.

Each time I would cast and follow the fly, my teeth would chatter because I was thigh deep in the coldest water I had ever experienced.  My Uncle Don watched every move and would on occasion give me little nuggets of direction and advice to catch the illusive trout.  Then it finally occurred.  I was concentrating on my casting technique, and just happened to look down.  Lo and behold right behind me swimming right up between my cold legs was none other than a….mink.  At that moment, I was supposed to be fly fishing by picking up my fly for another cast up stream, but I froze.  Right underneath me was one of the most elusive creatures in the wilderness world.  And because I had been so concentrated on ‘fly fishing’, I was now blessed to have one of God’s creatures swim up behind me and between my legs like I was a part of nature that he called his world.

In utter disbelief I stood there trying not to breathe to hard, trying not to move, chatter my teeth or shake my legs and scare the mink.  And as quick as the mink swam up and between my legs he swam up stream in search for his next meal. What I experienced in that short window of time was nothing other than exhilarating.  My Uncle Don watched the whole experience from the shore and was in utter disbelief of how close I came to such a wild animal.  As I stood there in the stream I stood on nothing other than holy ground. 

The reason I tell you this story is because I didn’t deserve the experience that even my Uncle Don had never had in all his years of fishing, hunting and trapping.  The place where I stood in the middle of the stream of extremely cold water was holy ground.  In that one moment, being as close to the wild mink as I was I saw and experienced the greatest nature experience I have ever had.  Clearly at that time, I felt closest to God and nature all at the same time.  What it also did was cement an experience between me and my Uncle Don.  For me it epitomizes what Holy Ground was for Paul and what and why he meant for people like us to join together and confess our faith.  Where we stand or sit today when we confess our faith is holy ground.

Years later as I entered his hospital room, I stepped again onto holy ground.  In that place, where my Uncle met face to face with His Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ and was taken home, Paul’s acclamation of “To God be the glory forever and ever.  AMEN.” was surely felt though probably not spoken.  But God’s presence was palpable and tangible for everyone gathered around the hospital bed and in the room on holy ground.  Even for us today God’s glory surrounds us daily and this is a fulfillment of His promise to and for each of us gathered here this morning.  God’s glory is a constant and what we need to do is be active in what we are supposed to be doing and God will show up when we least expect it, like the mink that swam through my legs.

For when God shows up His plan and purpose is simply for His glory to be revealed.  Whether standing at the bedside of a loved one close to death, in the middle of a stream with a wild animal swimming between your legs or even here at Emmanuel as we work on the kitchen remodel or confess our faith in the Athanasian Creed.  God clearly shows up and we can celebrate the certainty of His presence with and for us today.  For God comes not only to gather us up into His Kingdom, but to clearly unite us in the faith we confess.  For this faith points to what God has done for each and every one of us on the Cross of Calvary.  May we today be emboldened to confess with Paul and all the saints of all time and place in the words of the Athanasian Creed what God offers each and every one of us through His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ, eternal life.  AMEN.

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06152014 Holy Trinity Sunday

Sermon Audio

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.  AMEN.

All of us love stories.  Simple stories that uplift us, tell of an action that has had a lasting effect upon us or just give us ‘warm fuzzies’ in our heart, soul and spirit.  There is an organization, “One Spark Foundation” that lives and thrives upon these stories for sharing with others.  Ironically, the stories are not told to ‘hold people up’ or ‘put them on a pedestal’, but they have a different purpose.  The main reason these stories are published and passed around is that people want to have an impact upon others and Facebook and email provide the means to sharing how we can and do impact one another in a really positive and loving way.  There was a movie about this called, “Pay it Forward”.  The premise of the movie, just like the “One Spark Foundation” was that everyone has the opportunity to have an impact, in a positive way upon others they meet.  And this will have a lasting effect upon countless other people for years to come.  Whether the one action turned someone’s life around from a life of crime to a life of passion, to enabling a person to leave the ‘old person’ they were behind and be the person God had created, or a much clearer impact of saving someone’s life because they were in the right place at the right time.  This is the idea that we the church here at Emmanuel can have and share with one another and our community.  One of the ways the generations of church members here at Emmanuel that have gone before us share with us like this ‘One Spark’ is by our use of the Athanasian Creed.

Today we the church here in Goodland, Kansas and throughout the world remember the importance of the Trinity shared with us by our ancestors.  Unlike most Sundays where the Creed that is confessed is either the Apostle’s in remembrance of our baptism, or the Nicene in our common confession of faith around the altar in our receipt of the Lord’s Supper, today we confess the Athanasian Creed.  Yes this is the longer of the three creeds, but this is the one time during the year when we can sit as we confess our faith.  This Creed has as its main emphasis the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Since today is Holy Trinity Sunday, the phrase, Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is the mantra of the day.

The faith of the people of God of those who have gone before us, like Lee, Russell, Edna and Etta, is something that is not only shared, but expressed clearly whether by painters and artists like Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel, or even by farmers who daily do their chores and make their land the best for yielding crops.  Faith is something that is an action of both the individual and the collective.  For those who were in the military you remember having to keep the barracks clean and tidy, for kids in school who always had to pick up your toys after having play time.  We the people of God with our using the Athanasian Creed clearly and with joy confess our faith, not only as individuals, but also and especially as a church, believing in the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

When we confess our faith, we stand with Luther, who boldly stated, “Here I Stand, I can do no other”.  We stand with the Apostles’ and Martyrs of the church who even with their death, to the very end confessed their faith in Jesus Christ.  And we stand with our forefather’s who built this very church, educational wing and insured the spread of the Gospel.  We remember this, not only because it is our history, but because we are the fruit of their labor, we not only remember the stories, but we tell the stories of their sacrifice for each of us.  We are the result of the “One Spark” that can and should be told of their effort.

As we sit today in the pew and confess the Athanasian Creed, we not only confess Jesus Christ and what He did on Calvary that sets us free, but we also stand shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm and heart to heart confessing the faith which frees us.  We use this tool, the Athanasian Creed as our confession.  It is not just a conviction, but today here in this church we are filled with the Holy Spirit given on Pentecost that we celebrated last week that this banner reminds us of and we are enabled to be the people of God here in Goodland, Kansas.  To be the “One Spark” that can ‘Pay It Forward’ and we can be known not as individuals, but as God’s children from Emmanuel for Goodland and the entire world.

Recently, I was reading through the history of Emmanuel and ran across a letter that was written by Rev. Clifton Osborn in celebration of the Educational Wing Completion and Dedication.  He wrote the following about the educational wing, “These classrooms and offices are the tools—tools in the hands of men who are in the hands of God—the tools of instruction and faith.”  Clearly Rev. Osborn not only believed in the power of you the people of God, but he believed the faith being shared was the most important aspect of our sharing our faith and being the “One Spark”.  Last week we emulated this with our Ice Cream Social put on by the ladies of the congregation.  Yesterday we lived this out with serving as we always do the funeral dinner for Lee Tubbs family.  A week from today our church will be prepared for a week of Vacation Bible School with the counselors from Sky Ranch of the spread of the Gospel message.  Today we celebrate Fathers and their role in each of our lives.  These are the “Sparks” that we have here at Emmanuel that are a result of God working through each of us.

And today we use one of the tools of the church to confess our faith and allow it to be a match or a “Spark” in and for each of us.  This is not just a confession, but it is a tool for our use like the classrooms and offices of the Educational wing for the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We can as we confess our faith, use the tools given to us by our ancestors and impact Goodland and the world.  We are their fruit.  We now can plant our seeds, our stories and our ‘Sparks’ and see the harvest of God’s watering and caring for us.  May we today as we confess our faith not only listen to the words, believe in the Father, the Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, but also be the church that our forefathers believed in by giving us the tool, not only of the Athanasian Creed, but also and especially the Educational Wing for the spread of the Gospel.  For the Gospel is for all of mankind, but especially including all of us saints gathered here for this Trinity Sunday.  AMEN.

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