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A Child of God - The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for Trinity Sunday.
Today's readings are:
Isaiah 6:1-8
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
Psalm 29
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Trinity Sunday, Year B.
Transcript
A Child of God
Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2021
[Introductory music]
[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel] Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Gracious God, we give you thanks that we are born from above in our baptism and that your Holy Spirit continues to move in us and through us leading us into new life. May your holy wind blow us where it will, and may we be, by your grace, receptive to your movements within us. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.
Please be seated.
"Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me."
I find Saint Patrick's Breastplate, these lines in particular, to be one of the most comforting hymns for me. I find in them the heartfelt center of Trinity Sunday, and a reminder that doctrines like the Trinity are faithful guides to where the healing and the love is. This is why we insist on them, because our souls need guides to find our source, to find our salvation and to find our strength.
When I sing those lines, "Christ be with me, Christ within me," it's almost impossible for me to refrain from crying. So if you've been around me for a while, you know I sing them as loudly as I possibly can, some may say obnoxiously so. Yet this is just my grateful heart coming out, because I am and you are embraced, surrounded, saturated, adopted and possessed by God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The overwhelming Good News of the Trinity is that we are children of God, adopted heirs of the eternal, loving inner life shared by the triune God. Saint Paul writes in the eighth chapter of Romans, we heard it earlier, it's worth hearing again, "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, for you did not receive a spirit of enslavement to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry "Abba, father!" it is that very spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.
My first observation is the obvious one: we are adopted children of God. We know who we, are more importantly, we know who we belong to, and what we will inherit from our divine parent. We are invited to cry out to God, and to use the most intimate terms, the term that Jesus used himself. "Abba, daddy!"
Daddy, an intimate word, a vulnerable word, one we might feel childish and silly to use, but it's offered here in the Aramaic, and not in Greek, because the author wanted to preserve a word that belonged to Jesus to signify that we are invited into the same relationship that Jesus has with God, who Jesus calls Abba, daddy.
When I think of "daddy" I think of all the times I skinned my knee or fell off my bike or had a nightmare late at night and yelled for my daddy. That's how deep our cry to God is, and it's an invitation to ask what is crying out in you, what is afraid, what feels small and threatened or vulnerable, what is neglected or beaten down or walled off by shame or embarrassment. Listen closely, and let that part of you cry out, and let that crying out be your prayer, and let that crying out find the loving parent, the source, the savior, our strength, the strength of our souls, the creating father, the saving son, the emboldening Holy Spirit that adopts and possesses our souls, and understand and see how all of that comes in three. The trinity is the grammar of our Christian faith, it's how we know we are speaking the language of Christ. We speak in the grammar of the Trinity. We are children of God.
In Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman relates how his grandmother taught him this great truth, that he was a child of God. She told the story of listening when she was a child to an enslaved preacher preaching to an enslaved congregation. He recounts his experience of listening to his grandmother like this. He says how "Everything in me quivered with the pulsing tremor of raw energy, when in her secret recital, she would come to the triumphant climax of the minister." Quoting the minister, he continues, "You, you my congregation, are not the horrible slurs the master slings at you. You are not slaves. You are God's children."
This, Thurman writes, established for them the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction that threatened to consume them. And Thurman goes on in this wonderful book, Jesus and the Disinherited, about how the psychological effect on the individual of the conviction that he or she is a child of God, stabilizes the ego and gives a note of integrity to whatever he does. Indeed, Thurman finds in this notion of being a child of God everything we need to resist everything that would overwhelm us.
My second observation is more challenging than the first, but intimately related, not only are we adopted, we are possessed. This is very difficult for the modern mind to accept. We do not possess God. God possesses us. God is in us, not as our possession, but as a beachhead in a relationship that swirls us up into the Trinity like Dorothy and Toto into the tornado.
Once again, in Romans 8, Saint Paul writes, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit." We groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Here we hear it. God and God's creation groan in us. The Holy Spirit intercedes within us with sighs too deep for words the Holy Spirit is the mind and the will of God moving through us, moving us and returning us to God. We are permeable to God's inner life, God's inner life poured out in us and through us, which is just another way of saying "possessed." The modern mind shuts the door on God because we deify autonomy and seek our salvation in solipsism, unremitting focus on ourself as if our salvation is something to figure out, while we abhor at the same time interdependence and mutuality as a result. We modern people are desperately lonely behind the tightly locked doors of identity, afraid that connection might change us, move us, convict us, convert us, and indeed it will. We are accurately afraid the Holy Spirit will move us, will convict us, will convert us, will change us. That's what the Holy Spirit does as it loops us into the inner loving life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and leads us into our salvation. And, my friends, although we avoid this word here at Saint Martin's, we do need some saving.
Read the world around us. Suicide, despair, premature death, chronic anxiety, apathy, emptiness, addiction, authoritarianism, are the modern soul crying out, groaning, sighing for a source of life and love beyond self. What we long for is soul, that place in us where God has bound God's life to us forever and made us children of God.
Now, in conclusion, I want you to close your eyes and rest easy in your pew, and say to yourself God's message to you: "I am a child of God. I am a child of God." Now in your imagination, as you keep your eyes closed and sit securely, say to someone you love in your imagination "you, you are a child of God. You are a child of God." You have given them the greatest gift.
Now trust me on this, but I learned it at the feet of the Reverend Doctor Otis Moss Jr. I'm going to invite you to turn to someone near you and say, "you are a beloved child of God." And here's the example, here I go, "Barbara, you are a beloved child of God."
[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] "Thank you, Jarrett. You are a beloved child of God."
Your turn, turn to someone. You might know them or not. "You are a beloved child of God. Well done, oh I love you guys so much, thank you for trusting and going with that. What a good group we have. Oh I love this church!
Well this might be a tradition that we keep here at Saint Martins, this is good. And when the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss does it, he says "my neighbor, my neighbor you are a child of God." Well, that's next time. You have given each other the greatest gift of grace. You are a child of God, we are adopted children of God in God's cherished possession
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsThe Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for Trinity Sunday.
Today's readings are:
Isaiah 6:1-8
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
Psalm 29
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net for Trinity Sunday, Year B.
Transcript
A Child of God
Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2021
[Introductory music]
[The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel] Please join me in a spirit of prayer.
Gracious God, we give you thanks that we are born from above in our baptism and that your Holy Spirit continues to move in us and through us leading us into new life. May your holy wind blow us where it will, and may we be, by your grace, receptive to your movements within us. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.
Please be seated.
"Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me."
I find Saint Patrick's Breastplate, these lines in particular, to be one of the most comforting hymns for me. I find in them the heartfelt center of Trinity Sunday, and a reminder that doctrines like the Trinity are faithful guides to where the healing and the love is. This is why we insist on them, because our souls need guides to find our source, to find our salvation and to find our strength.
When I sing those lines, "Christ be with me, Christ within me," it's almost impossible for me to refrain from crying. So if you've been around me for a while, you know I sing them as loudly as I possibly can, some may say obnoxiously so. Yet this is just my grateful heart coming out, because I am and you are embraced, surrounded, saturated, adopted and possessed by God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The overwhelming Good News of the Trinity is that we are children of God, adopted heirs of the eternal, loving inner life shared by the triune God. Saint Paul writes in the eighth chapter of Romans, we heard it earlier, it's worth hearing again, "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, for you did not receive a spirit of enslavement to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry "Abba, father!" it is that very spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.
My first observation is the obvious one: we are adopted children of God. We know who we, are more importantly, we know who we belong to, and what we will inherit from our divine parent. We are invited to cry out to God, and to use the most intimate terms, the term that Jesus used himself. "Abba, daddy!"
Daddy, an intimate word, a vulnerable word, one we might feel childish and silly to use, but it's offered here in the Aramaic, and not in Greek, because the author wanted to preserve a word that belonged to Jesus to signify that we are invited into the same relationship that Jesus has with God, who Jesus calls Abba, daddy.
When I think of "daddy" I think of all the times I skinned my knee or fell off my bike or had a nightmare late at night and yelled for my daddy. That's how deep our cry to God is, and it's an invitation to ask what is crying out in you, what is afraid, what feels small and threatened or vulnerable, what is neglected or beaten down or walled off by shame or embarrassment. Listen closely, and let that part of you cry out, and let that crying out be your prayer, and let that crying out find the loving parent, the source, the savior, our strength, the strength of our souls, the creating father, the saving son, the emboldening Holy Spirit that adopts and possesses our souls, and understand and see how all of that comes in three. The trinity is the grammar of our Christian faith, it's how we know we are speaking the language of Christ. We speak in the grammar of the Trinity. We are children of God.
In Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman relates how his grandmother taught him this great truth, that he was a child of God. She told the story of listening when she was a child to an enslaved preacher preaching to an enslaved congregation. He recounts his experience of listening to his grandmother like this. He says how "Everything in me quivered with the pulsing tremor of raw energy, when in her secret recital, she would come to the triumphant climax of the minister." Quoting the minister, he continues, "You, you my congregation, are not the horrible slurs the master slings at you. You are not slaves. You are God's children."
This, Thurman writes, established for them the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction that threatened to consume them. And Thurman goes on in this wonderful book, Jesus and the Disinherited, about how the psychological effect on the individual of the conviction that he or she is a child of God, stabilizes the ego and gives a note of integrity to whatever he does. Indeed, Thurman finds in this notion of being a child of God everything we need to resist everything that would overwhelm us.
My second observation is more challenging than the first, but intimately related, not only are we adopted, we are possessed. This is very difficult for the modern mind to accept. We do not possess God. God possesses us. God is in us, not as our possession, but as a beachhead in a relationship that swirls us up into the Trinity like Dorothy and Toto into the tornado.
Once again, in Romans 8, Saint Paul writes, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit." We groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Here we hear it. God and God's creation groan in us. The Holy Spirit intercedes within us with sighs too deep for words the Holy Spirit is the mind and the will of God moving through us, moving us and returning us to God. We are permeable to God's inner life, God's inner life poured out in us and through us, which is just another way of saying "possessed." The modern mind shuts the door on God because we deify autonomy and seek our salvation in solipsism, unremitting focus on ourself as if our salvation is something to figure out, while we abhor at the same time interdependence and mutuality as a result. We modern people are desperately lonely behind the tightly locked doors of identity, afraid that connection might change us, move us, convict us, convert us, and indeed it will. We are accurately afraid the Holy Spirit will move us, will convict us, will convert us, will change us. That's what the Holy Spirit does as it loops us into the inner loving life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and leads us into our salvation. And, my friends, although we avoid this word here at Saint Martin's, we do need some saving.
Read the world around us. Suicide, despair, premature death, chronic anxiety, apathy, emptiness, addiction, authoritarianism, are the modern soul crying out, groaning, sighing for a source of life and love beyond self. What we long for is soul, that place in us where God has bound God's life to us forever and made us children of God.
Now, in conclusion, I want you to close your eyes and rest easy in your pew, and say to yourself God's message to you: "I am a child of God. I am a child of God." Now in your imagination, as you keep your eyes closed and sit securely, say to someone you love in your imagination "you, you are a child of God. You are a child of God." You have given them the greatest gift.
Now trust me on this, but I learned it at the feet of the Reverend Doctor Otis Moss Jr. I'm going to invite you to turn to someone near you and say, "you are a beloved child of God." And here's the example, here I go, "Barbara, you are a beloved child of God."
[The Rev. Barbara Ballenger] "Thank you, Jarrett. You are a beloved child of God."
Your turn, turn to someone. You might know them or not. "You are a beloved child of God. Well done, oh I love you guys so much, thank you for trusting and going with that. What a good group we have. Oh I love this church!
Well this might be a tradition that we keep here at Saint Martins, this is good. And when the Reverend Dr. Otis Moss does it, he says "my neighbor, my neighbor you are a child of God." Well, that's next time. You have given each other the greatest gift of grace. You are a child of God, we are adopted children of God in God's cherished possession
Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org