Seeing The Spirit; May 31, 2026

speaker-1: ⁓ When Israel was a child, I him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. The more I called them, ⁓ the more went from me. ⁓ They sacrificing to the ⁓ bells ⁓ offering ⁓ incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king. Because they have refused to return to me, the sword rages in their cities. It consumes their oracle priests and devours because of their schemes. My people are bent on turning away from me to the most high they call, but he does not raise them up at all. How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admouth? How can I treat you like Zebuim? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warmer and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim. For I am God and no mortal. And holy one in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

speaker-0: our second scripture reading is found in the Apostle Paul's epistle to the church in Corinth. So we can go to the first, the page ⁓ Some of you might be familiar with it. We are in the infamous love passage in 1 Corinthians 13, 1 to 13. And as I read this out loud this morning, I want to invite you to tap your hand with me on either your lap, your chair, and we will keep a steady beat going, all right? Well you'll understand this later, but if you would follow this timing. Can you hear that? All right. It's very rhythmic poem. So here it goes. If I speak in the tongues of humans and angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable. It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. All right, you can stop because I'm getting also distracted. But hear this, my friends love never ends. Even though the beat does, but as for prophecies, they will come to an end. As for tongues, they will seize. As for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we will prophesy only in part. But when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see only a reflection. As in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been known fully. And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love. The word of the Lord. Would you join your hearts with mine as we pray? Our triune God, this morning, may we be reminded of your nearness. May we be reminded of your love that always finds its way back to us. And may we rest in the truth that your love, your agape love, your Hesed love, found in the scriptures, is unconquerable and unconditional. So as we learn about you more, And what a privilege it is to do so. May we be inspired to also share about you more. In your name we pray. Amen. Thank you, my friends. So, that all happened because I find that rhythm and time are frequently on my mind in this season of life. Right? School is out, summer hours are now in session, and we are all adapting to a new rhythm in some way, perhaps. Whether you are navigating day camp hours or you are having to wake up early to get your morning walk or run in before the summer heat. There is a new rhythm that comes with summer to which we are all trying to adapt. And I have mentioned this musical metaphor before, but just to define these terms once again, and music, time is the structured framework of beats, tempos, and measures, while rhythm is the patterns of long and short sounds and silences within that framework. So, what we were just doing, the time was the beat, and me trying to read the scripture along to that was the rhythm, right? And I recently discovered the classic phrase: you keep time and you lose rhythm. If you've ever had any musical instruction, you might relate to that frustrating feeling when you're so hyper-fixated on keeping the time that you lose your groove or rhythm. Right? How many of you were so focused on the tapping that you missed the words? I know I did. Maybe for some of you, the tapping even might have helped you focus. But you keep time and you lose the rhythm, they say. But no matter how rhythmically challenged you think you are, there is a natural flow we all feel inside of us. This might be something within you, or the natural rhythm that flows within the band or ensemble that you are playing with. But there comes a point when you play when you just have to trust yourself and let the music take over. So, my friends, may the sermon begin with this, with this message of comfort, hopefully. Let's take our eyes off of the time more. And embrace the funky rhythm which summer offers and look for the spirit at work. Alright? Who's with me? Right? And stay with me now, because I'm about to get even more cringe. Can I declare this summer as the Holy Spirit season? Right? We are diving into the fruit of the Spirit this summer, and for some time, I'd like to declare this a Holy Spirit summer. And you may have heard the phrase, hot girl summer. And as a Gen Z pastor, I will say that the Holy Spirit is the epitome of hot girl. She's literally on fire, right? And is moving to the her own beat of her own drum. And for the record, I'm one of the preachers at our middle school conferences at Mo Ranch. And so that was me trying to workshop that analogy. I don't know if it landed. Josh and Braden who are chaperoning, stay tuned. I'll you'll hear that again. This is a Holy Spirit summer, and we think about the Holy Trinity on which our Christian faith stands. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you may also hear the Holy Trinity as our Creator God, our Redeemer in Jesus Christ, and the sustainer, the Holy Spirit. And perhaps this summer we will understand more about Holy Spirit, our sustainer. Before this morning, we will just scratch the surface of what it means for us to partner with the sustainer of. The Trinity and bear the fruit of love. And might I suggest, love is the rhythm that keeps us in time with the Spirit. We learned last week about the surprising, perhaps some might say unpredictable nature of the Holy Spirit. Right? All of a sudden the spirit came down. The people in the upper room with the rushing wind and fire and With the sound of people speaking in languages they have never heard or spoken before. And all of a sudden, the church was born. So, how do we keep time with such an unpredictable force to reckon with? I say love. Love is the grounding force. Out of love the earth and all of its inhabitants were created. Love is what put chaos back into order in the beginning, and dare I say, love in our present day as well. Love is the answer, right? My older sister is Christine Agape, which is the Greek word for God's love, right? And I am Kimberly Faith. And perhaps we can blame 1 Corinthians 13 on the start of our sibling rivalry, right? The last verse, 13, literally dividing a household. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Goodness gracious, how do you compete with that? I at least made it to the top three, you know? But I cannot Agree that agape love is the greatest for good reason. Oftentimes, our epistle reading for today is preached at weddings. But we must not forget that Paul is writing to the church in Corinth, not a romantic couple. Right? 1 Corinthians 13 is filled with rhetoric to persuade a disunified church back into unity. Furthermore, this agape love, which Paul hopes to ground the church back on, is not a war. Warm and fuzzy feeling, but rather a muscle that requires strength training and work. Agape love is a mark of the Spirit's presence in the church then and now. And for Paul, agape love is a necessary muscle to flex for others to know about God and the meaning of Christ's resurrection life. And this agape love is patient and is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no records of wrong. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Agape love that God offers to us and invites us to also cultivate within us is steadfast and loyal. Right? I had a somebody say to me, the love that I have to offer is not a parade, but it's steadfast and loyal. It's not a person holding a boombox outside of your room, but it's steadfast and loyal. Love has a cadence, love has a rhythm. We were created out of agape love, therefore we have agape love already inside of us that we must grow and share. And we must not hyperfixate on the keeping of the Spirit's time, but rather let the love inside of us flow and live in its natural funky grow. Because love is truly a dance, right? And we can learn how to dance by looking at the Holy Trinity, believe it or not. As complicated as it is to understand the phenomenon of God in three persons, we can rest in solidarity with the past saints and see how important it was for them to clarify this theological matter as well. So much so that there was a whole council to discuss this matter. But years after this council, the Council of Nicaea, a term pericuresis was coined to describe the loving relationship between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. You know, one of the more no notable memories of my seminary time was a late night in the dining hall with my friends, trying to understand this term pericuresis. It's a Greek word. And I remember my friend grabbing the salt and pepper shakers on the dining room table, and she was trying to create a visual of this holy dance, right? The napkin holder was right in the middle. maybe the Holy Spirit, which is the love that they all share. And then she was moving the salt and pepper shakers, pretending to be God and the Father. But this word pericuresis is also used for a typical Greek wedding dance where at least three people weave in and out. And gradually get faster until they become one blur. But the idea is that these three individual persons are so in sync that they become one thing. So, furthermore, the idea of pericuresis enables us to imagine the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit dancing together, giving and receiving love again and again. We are invited to join this holy dance. Katerina Penelova writes, to dance with the Trinity we need to overcome worrying about doing all dance steps right. Because dance is free and fun and is also loving and lively. The only way to enjoy the dance is to let the Trinity captivate our hearts with its tune and draw us into its dance of giving ourselves away to serve others. Loving and honoring them above ourselves. Of course, we will occasionally step on someone else's foot or step out of line in the dance, but the beauty of this dance is that God is in control and always invites us back. All we have to do is Accept the invitation of the triune God and step out onto the dance floor. End quote. My friends, this summer we are stepping into a different rhythm. And what a gift it is to explore the fruit of the Spirit as a church and to start with love, right? And might we rest in the reminder that we hope that our lives bear such fruit as a result of our life in the spirit first. It starts with our relationship with God. Therefore, the unconquerable agape love is not something that we will perfect by the end of the summer, but it is something that we can work towards together by living in relationship with one another. And so perhaps the first step for us is this: to commit to staying in relationship this summer. Of course, we will rest. Of course, some of us will go on vacation. And maybe we push ourselves to gather as well. And this commitment to love and each other will get messy. Because love opens the depths of our hearts, both the healed places and the wounded ones. Even the love of God is not prone to the feeling of hurt, as we see in our passage in Hosea, which Karen read. The prophet Hosea gives us a picture of our God who mourns their child who has gone astray. And our God grieves with us in the mess that comes with love and still calls us to this task. But when it gets messy and we forget the steps. Maybe we lean on the paternal God just as a child leans in and dances on the feet of their father. As we see in Hosea, God's compassion grows warm and tender, even in the heart. Friends, may we trust the timing of the Spirit, follow the funky groove of love's rhythm, and accept the invitation to dance with our triune God. Embracing all of the mess that comes with it. Amen.