2322AFC060223 – Dishonor The Giver
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Exodus 34:6 – The Lord (↔ Music Link)
6 The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed,
“The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”
Daniel 3:52 –
52 “Blessed are you, O Lord, God of our ancestors,
and to be praised and highly exalted forever;
And blessed is your glorious, holy name,
and to be highly praised and highly exalted forever.
2 Corinthians 13:11 – 11 And now, my friends, good-bye! Strive for perfection; listen to my appeals; agree with one another; live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. (↕↔ Music Link) Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible. Used with permission
John 3:16-19 – 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Click here for (↔ Music Link)
17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
Aloha nui loa, ʻŌmea! Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. That’s from Galatians 1:3-5. Last week (← Check it out!) we covered the model of honoring God by accepting – and using – his gifts: “Honor the Giver by accepting the Gift.” Today we are led to consider how and why the opposite happens so often to “them,” to “us,” to “me.” This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, a day when we turn our attention to the remarkable mystery of God in Three Persons as One Being. Lots of grand analogies have been written – I even took a shot at it – but today I want to talk about not believing in the Trinity – or in God, or Christ, or the Holy Spirit. I want to think about doubting that any or all of this whole Trinity-thing might be true. My own personal experience tells me that what I have held as Truth in Faith and Faith in Truth must be right. Empirical (observed, pragmatic, realistic, firsthand, and verifiably objective) proof may be hard to come by, some say, but there are enough of us who hang onto this Mystery that the holders-on themselves could be experiential proof. Why should anyone believe in God just because God says he is believable? Why would we ever disrespect the Gifts of God? Why would we ever dishonor the Giver? Who would do such a thing?
Well, of course, all of us know the answer: It’s us. We are sinners, and we keep forgetting about the Love that created and redeemed us. We also know that Faith is a Gift. As with all Gifts from God, we can accept it or refuse it. The passage we have from Exodus today is the beginning of the account of Moses’ second trip up Mount Sinai with the second set of stone 
tablets. We all remember this scene from the movie, Exodus. Do we remember, can we remember what the message was? It sounds familiar compared to something Jesus and John the Baptist said. How about “Repent and believe in God!”? (↔ Music Link) Moses interceded for the Hebrews. It’s important to remember that Moses was offered the covenant like Abraham’s to be his own forebearer of nations, but he refused it. (See Exodus 32:9-14) Moses rejected the Gift and God changed his mind about wiping out the Hebrews right then and there. Wait, Moses rejected the gift? The key is in verse 10: 10 Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation. Moses defended the Covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and declined God’s offer. Moses knew God better than any person at that time, and knowing God he knew God’s majestic name and recognized it when he heard ““The LORD, the LORD,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” Moses knew he could trust God even if God could not trust the people Moses led.
The Hebrews, who threw one heck of a kegger the first time Moses went up to discourse with the Lord, were the ones who rejected God’s Gift of deliverance and freedom, and Moses – in a type – an Old Testament antecedent of Christ – pleaded for God’s mercy and forgiveness. Hmmm. Where have we heard that before? By the time we get around to the time of Daniel – a contemporary of Ezekiel, Judith, and Jeremiah – Israel is now captive in Babylon, and Daniel is one of the very few that still trust in, and pray to, God calling him THE God who is and to be highly praised and highly exalted forever. Daniel persisted even though it meant a trip to the lion’s den (↔ Music Link) where he prevailed because of his persistence – just like Moses in the wilderness. Just as one can say “Jesus is Lord” only in the Holy Spirit, one can only know God as the Ultimate Source and Infinite Pinnacle of all Eternity, and nowadays we profess that as “the Source and Summit of our Faith,” the Eucharist. It is the highest form of fellowship with each other and with God because God includes us in his fellowship of the Trinity. I apologize for the redundancy, but I must say it again: We keep forgetting that God is God and that everything we had, have, or will have, all that we were (sinners), all that we are (saints in development), and all that we will be (The Resurrected Children of God) is exactly what God keeps telling us throughout Scripture, Apostolic Teaching, and Authorized Revelation: “I LOVE YOU ENOUGH TO CREATE YOU SO YOU CAN LOVE ME ENOUGH TO FOLLOW ME.” In this relationship, God NEVER forgets (↔ Music Link) us, (See Isaiah 49:15), but we forget – way too often – to remember we are his and he is ours when we live like we believe that.
Here’s something from last November. You might (or might not) remember it, but in my heart and mind, it sums up all that I know is true about The Trinity. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church §’s 232 – 267 (see it here as a summary or here as the full text) we 
find a full discussion of the Trinity that is Scripture-based and passed down through the Traditions and Teachings of the Church. Let’s just read one “leg.” The Son is not the Father, the Son is in the Father, the Son Glorifies the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Son is God. Did I miss any? Do I understand all of it, how it can be that the Holy Trinity is One God in Three Persons? Nope. Do I understand that in this image, “glorifies” also means “Loves?” Yep. Do I understand enough of it so that I’ll never forget? Nope. Do I know that it’s true? Yes! Because why? Because everything in it is a mystery that I tightly embrace as an inestimable Treasure to claim as my Gift from God. Whenever I forget, he relents and declares “it shall not be” forestalling the correction I deserve. (See Amos 7:3) God does that so often throughout Scripture. Belovéd, do you know why?
Because God IS LOVE. Up there in that diagram, we see that God is community. Guess what? So are we! We are made in the likeness of God. How much can we trust God, anyway? If he is what he claims to be – One God (Shema Yisroel Adonoi Eloheinu Adonoi Echad) – then there is absolutely nothing to distrust or dishonor! No matter how we understand Him/Them, the complexity of the Trinity is its simplicity as well. No matter how much or how little of it we understand, it is always part of us and we are always part of it. However you perceive Him to be, God is always the same, always Faithful, always Loving, always Saving, always ONE. He alone possesses those Core Qualities of “Perfect Integrity, Endless Mercy, Everlasting Love, and Eternal Salvation through Christ our Lord.” I’ve just got to fly in one more witness in for this: Isaiah.
Isaiah 43:10-13 –
10 You are my witnesses, says the Lord,
and my servant whom I have chosen,
so that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am he.
Before me no god was formed,
nor shall there be any after me.
11 I, I AM the Lord,
and besides me there is no savior.
12 I declared and saved and proclaimed,
when there was no strange god among you;
and you are my witnesses, says the Lord.
13 I am God, and also henceforth I am He;
there is no one who can deliver from my hand;
I work and who can hinder it?
Reflect on this Belovéd: We know God because we know Jesus, and through Jesus we can live in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the Giver of Life. We are edified by the Holy Spirit in 
whom we encounter Jesus who makes us present to the Father. We are called by the Father to follow Jesus by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As some of us have recently learned, when one member of the Trinity Acts, all three Persons act in union to produce the same efficacious result which is to know and do the Will of God. And what is the Will of God that we should know and do it? Well, we might pull up an old chestnut (for some of us) from the venerable Baltimore Catechism, Lesson 1, Question 6.
- Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven.
We have a Father as our Creator, a Son as our Brother, and the Holy Spirit as our Paraclete. We have had these available to us from the beginning of eternity and then lost direct access to all because people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. They forgot what was Good, ignored what is Right, and Dishonored the Giver.
It is our responsibility to stop “forgetting.” Whenever we do forget, if we remember God will forget that we forgot, that should make it easier for us to remember to honor the Giver by accepting the Gift. To do any less is to dishonor the Giver. When our forgetfulness is intentional, that’s when we need to rely on God’s Core Qualities the most. Sometimes I think of it this way:
Because of God’s Absolutely Perfect Plan, I have three wonderful Friends to whom I can take any problem, pose any question, or confess any sin, and they all live at the same address: Home. That’s where I’m heading now, and I am so very glad you are going with me, ’cause I’m Standing In The Need Of Prayer!
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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