Inheritance

Holy Trinity Sunday
May 31, 2015

 ¹²So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh —  ¹³for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  ¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”  ¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. – Romans 8:12-17

What have you inherited? Most of us probably haven’t inherited millions of dollars, though perhaps some have been heirs to a bit of money or property that a previous generation tucked away. Some of us perhaps have inherited items of sentimental value – a knick-knack or a piece of furniture. Some of it beautiful and useful and sentimental, and some of it just sentimental. Some of us have inherited family stories and photo albums. All of us have inherited genetic material, which for most of us creates a mixed bag of traits, some of which we love and some of which we love to hate.

What if you inherited enough money to make you comfortable for the rest of your life? Not filthy rich, but enough to live on comfortably for the rest of your days. How would it change you? Not so much what you’d buy, or how you’d treat yourself upon first receiving it, but more how would knowing your future was absolutely secure change the way you live in the present?

Paul uses language of inheritance to describe our relationship to God. We have been adopted into God’s family and made co-heirs with Christ, being given a spirit of adoption rather than a spirit of slavery. That sounds really great, but you know I have bills to pay, and things to get done. There’s a drought in California and flooding in Texas. There’s violence and racism and prejudice of all kinds. There’s cancer and all kinds of other diseases. And a spirit of adoption is real nice, but couldn’t we have inherited something a little more useful?

You see, I think in our minds we usually reduce Paul’s words about our inheritance to simply a get-out-of-hell-free card. And that’s great, but it just sits on a shelf until we need it. I think this inheritance is much more about the eternal present. I think it’s much more about the expansive love of God that surrounds you now and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. This inheritance is much more the kind of thing that has the power to change how we live.

I think we have the potential to miss the power of a lot of what we are doing and talking about in worship today. Some things feel like a real nice gift, but not quite the inheritance we were hoping for. Take the Holy Trinity for instance. Three-in-one, one-in-three, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal, et cetera, et cetera. Fascinating for systematic theologians, but not something most of us ponder in day-to-day life. Left in the realm of logic and explanation, it is an inheritance to be left on the shelf in a hidden-away corner with the tacky knickknack you inherited from old Aunt Mildred. But if it reminds us of God’s mystery, if it reminds us that God’s three persons exist in relational form for the sake of extending that relationship to us now, then maybe it has the power to transform how we live. Maybe it has the power to help us wonder at the world around us and discover the divine exploding in all kinds of mysterious ways.

And what is Trinity Sunday without a recitation of the creed? We have mostly stopped subjecting congregations to the Athanasian Creed, but the Nicene Creed we’ll recite today and the Apostles’ Creed we often recite are plenty confusing enough. It can be a lot to swallow all at once – the creation of the world, the incarnation, the resurrection, ascension, and coming again in glory, the unity of the church, and the life everlasting. In a world where we have learned to question everything, the creed feels to some like a lousy inheritance – something that is as outdated as avocado green appliances. Another reminder of a church that has all too often seemed concerned with right belief over faith and God and human relationships. And yet, we say it week after week recalling not just the deeper meaning the words can contain for us, but also drawing us together as a community to support one another when we cannot go it alone, tying us week after week to the saints who have recited those creeds before us, weaving us into a family of faith that for all its quirks and challenges bears the means of grace to us.

And today we carry out an ancient tradition that we have inherited from the church – anointing for healing. Here again, beautiful though it is, it’s not always what we might have hoped for as an inheritance. The God who created heaven and earth might well have handed down to us the power to fix. But instead we got only tools to invite God’s healing work: the of laying on of hands, anointing with oil, and prayer. This inheritance does not promise an answer to every prayer or a solution to every problem. But it offers the power of God shared in community. It offers hope and healing in deep ways that are sometimes hard to name.

And we offer a blessing to graduates. Once again, it seems inadequate to the realities they face: the uncertainty of the future, the student loans, the job search, the start of college, the important decisions. This blessing does not save you from that. If anything it reminds you to throw yourself into the hard stuff. It sends you with our love and support and prayers. It reminds you that you are part of something larger than yourself and larger than the sometimes all-consuming world of academia. But most of all it’s a reminder that no matter what, the inheritance you have is that God loves you today, tomorrow,  and forever.

It may not always look like much in the eyes of the world. And it may at times feel inadequate to stand up to the challenge of our reality. And yet we have the assurance that “God loves you for Christ’s sake and will never let you go.” That is our inheritance. Lived out in a community of broken people who sometimes get lost in dogma and doctrine or who forget to see beyond the simple actions we share in community with one another.

What if we let that reality change us? What if that promise became so real to us that we could let go of the things that create within us a spirit of fear and live instead in the spirit of adoption into God’s family? What might you do differently this week because of the truth of that promise? Because whether it changes us or not, it’s the reality we live in. We are children of God, heirs of the promise, co-heirs with Christ. We have been invited into the mystery of this God who cannot be explained in human language or formulas. We have the security of God’s love now and forever, and that changes everything.

-Pastor Steven Wilco, with thanks to David Lose for the springboard of talking about inheritance. And in loving memory of Professor David Truemper whose gospel in a nutshell phrase was “God loves you for Christ’s sake and will never let you go.”