Beulah UMC & Oak Grove UMC
Every year for Memorial Day Weekend, I can’t help but to think about my hometown’s community softball tournament. Our church always had a team in this tournament led by a church member who was our coach and pitcher. He also was the only one who had a bunch of bats and balls for us to use.
The tournament would begin on Friday evening and last through Monday afternoon of that long holiday weekend. There were about twenty adult teams who participated. Our team consisted mostly of teenagers but also had some really old guys and by old, I mean guys in their 40s! To us younger players, that was really old.
For a team that was pretty young and inexperienced, we did really well, even winning the tournament a couple of times. The church member who was our coach did a really good job of helping us to play as a team. The only broken bone I have ever had came from playing in one of those softball tournaments.
Since this was a community and not a church softball tournament, we were the only church team and the only team that prayed before each game. Theologically, I don’t think that our prayers had anything to do with our winning or losing, but it did remind us that we were representing our church when we took the field. It also taught us a lot about teamwork and giving our best.
In our Romans scripture reading for today, the Apostle Paul is reminding me a little of our softball coach. Like a good coach, Paul is reminding the church in Rome that they are children of God. They are teammates.
He uses this phrase, “children of God” three times in this one passage of scripture. We are children of God. We are teammates who represent Christ and his church. Win or lose, we belong to God. “We are joint heirs with Christ,” Paul says.
I love this image of the church being like a team where we are connected with each other and with God who has made us his children. Which brings me to the Trinity Sunday part of this scripture passage.
Paul refers to all three persons of the Trinity in this very short passage. He says that when we cry, “Abba, Father,” it is that very Spirit that bears witness with our spirit that we are teammates, we are children of God.
And then Paul says, that as God’s children we are all heirs with Christ. There you have it. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It only takes Paul two verses to include all three members of the Trinity and he does so in the context that we are children of God.
This is what is beautiful about being part of the church. We all have this in common where God’s Spirit keeps us from falling back in fear by reminding us that we are heirs with Christ. We are reminded of this every time that we offer our prayers to the Father.
This scripture reading is at the very middle of Romans, chapter eight, probably one of the most hope-filled chapters in all of the Bible. It concludes with this incredible exclamation point of who we are because of this God who is known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
After giving us this long list of things that might separate us from God and each other; things like rulers, worry about the future, powers, height, depth, and even death itself, Paul concludes this chapter by saying, “None of these things will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.”
We remind each other of this hope that we have together in a variety of ways. Through our weekly worship, through bible studies, through the sharing of testimonies, and through prayer requests that we receive each week.
Those prayer requests always remind me that we are children of God. Every church that I have served has had some type of prayer chain like we do here at the Upper Richland Charge.
In my previous church, I’ll never forget this particular prayer request that was shared by a member of the church who has been fighting cancer the past eight years.
He updated our prayer chain to let us know how our prayers for him over all these years have helped him to beat the odds of this disease and that he is truly blessed. He says “I am a winner in so many ways! Let’s celebrate!”
That was one of our teammates sharing this with his church family. That was a member of our team letting the church know that our prayers had been a lifeline to him, especially during the many months of being separated because of the COVID19 precautions.
As children of the Triune God, Paul wants us to be reminded again and again that we have much to celebrate. We are joint heirs of Christ and nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have the Spirit who Paul says will not allow us to fall back into fear but always keeps us moving forward in hope.
Heirs of Christ, children of God, Paul says. I like that. Children of the Triune God.
In reflecting on this passage, gifted speaker and author, Heather Murray Elkins says that “Trinity relationships are ties that bind and loosen at the same time. We are family because we’ve been adopted by the triune One whose nature and name is Love. We are heirs of God, not by right, not by ancestry, but by grace.”
This is what binds us together in the church, God’s grace, God’s unconditional, inclusive, and all-embracing grace. And it’s because of this grace, that the Triune God loosens us from our fears and doubts. We are freed from all that would enslave us and keep us from being the people that God has called us to be.
In two weeks, hundreds and hundreds of clergy and lay delegates, representing the 900 United Methodist churches from all over our South Carolina Conference will be meeting together in Greenville. Even though I am still a clergy member of the West Ohio Conference, I will be participating in some of the meetings here in this conference.
The purpose of Annual Conference is to receive new clergy into the conference, recognize pastors who are retiring, adopting a conference budget, voting on various legislation issues, and sharing in worship together.
By far, my favorite part of attending Annual Conference is to worship with over a thousand other United Methodists in the same place. It’s very inspirational.
One of the hymns that many annual conferences sing when we gather is the Charles Wesley hymn, “And Are We Yet Alive.” It’s a powerful hymn to sing when we’re all together because it’s a hymn that reminds us to celebrate these opportunities when we can gather as children of the Triune God.
The first verse says, “And are we yet alive, and see each other’s face? Glory and thanks to Jesus give for this almighty grace.” The 3rd verse says, “What troubles have we seen, what mighty conflicts past, fightings without, and fears within, since we assembled last.”
This leads to verse four, “Yet out of all the Lord hath brought us by his love; and still he doth his help afford and hides our life above.”
These verses build upon each other in describing what it means to be children of God together. We are a family. We are “heirs of God” as Heather Murray Elkins says so beautifully. We are heirs of God, not by right, not by ancestry, but by grace.
This is what makes us children or teammates of the Triune God.
Speaking of hymns, in one of the churches I served, the church building prior to the current church building had burnt down back in 1955. And in the historical archive room of that church, they had a glass encased hymnal that had been salvaged from the fire. It was partially burnt.
And if you look closely at it, the hymn that is at the top of that burnt hymnal is the hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.” It was our opening hymn for today’s worship service. It’s a hymn that celebrates the Triune God. “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”
It would be three years later in 1958 when the congregation would be able to worship for the first time in what is now their current building. I can’t even imagine what it must have felt like for the congregation to worship for the first time there.
They say they even needed forty ushers that first Sunday to accommodate the crowd. On that Sunday, February 9, 1958 they truly were children of the Triune God, teammates, brothers and sisters who together by God’s grace were able to start anew.
I’m sure that this church has been through many challenges over its long history. Like the Apostle Paul at the end of this eighth chapter, maybe the people from our church’s treasured history have asked this same question when faced with all kinds of challenges that have come our way, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or peril, or a leaking roof, or a global pandemic, or a shortage of funds, or denominational strife?”
And the good news of our faith is that we can answer that question with confidence. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Why?
The Apostle Paul reminds us: Because we are children and teammates of the Triune God!
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