Sermons

Clearly, the story of Abraham being blessed and being a blessing to all the world was not a story about someone following the rules. That’s the point Paul is making.

And really, it seems like that is the point that Jesus is making too—three times!

But “sensible” is not the primary criteria when you are trying to describe who God is. “Sensible” forces God’s nature into a size and shape our human minds can manage. Rejecting these sensible options in favour of the fundamentally incomprehensible doctrine of the Trinity – One in Three and Three in One – requires us to get over our need to understand, to simplify, to manage the nature of God.

It’s so easy to sympathize with Joshua in this story. When he hears about this, he runs to Moses and says, “My lord, make them stop!” Why should they get the glory and the attention? They wouldn’t cooperate with the group. They wanted to do their own thing. They weren’t following the rules. They weren’t part of the party—by their choice! So, why didn’t God just skip them?

To be blessed is to be with God – to be made part of God’s love for all the world, to be a source of God’s care and attention for others.

All of us who ticked the box that said, “yes, we do love Jesus” are in a bit of a bind. We love Jesus so we follow his commandments? All of them? All the time? But wait, logically (and these formulas depend heavily on logic), does that mean that if we don’t keep Jesus’ commandments that we don’t love him?

Every sign Jesus performs, every declaration Jesus makes in the Gospel according to John needs to be run through that lens of love. “I, the love of God, am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Imagine with me: We were on that road to Emmaus with Cleopas that Easter afternoon. Those things happened to us. Those questions are questions we had, both before and after this encounter. How do we make sense of them? What do we do with them, now?