A New Fire Triangle

A New Fire Triangle 

Psalm 1; Luke 24:44 - 50 

One of the basic things taught to fire fighters and first responders is that most fires depend on three things: fuel, oxygen and heat. If you are able to effectively remove any one of the three elements, the fire will go out. This fundamental understanding guides most fire response scenarios. This is what they mean by the “Fire Triangle.” 

We routinely speak of God as a Trinity, three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is not any one presentation, but God is the power - might I say ‘fire’ - of the relationship among the three. The Trinity is often represented as a triangle. This is graphically represented in the stained glass window near the center of the sanctuary on the south side. Pater, is Latin for ‘father’, filio means ‘son’, and spiritus means the ‘spirit.’ 

I have heard it said that the day your realize that all adults, even your own parents, are not perfect, you become an adolescent. The day you can forgive your parents for not being perfect, you become an adult. Then, if you ever reach the point when you can forgive yourself for not being perfect, you are finally mature. 

All of this has been on my mind as we approached Mothers’ Day. We know that Mothers’ Day can be anything but easy for many women, and men too. Not every woman who wants children gets to have children. Not every mother who has children, is able to love and nurture them. There are always issues, some of our own making, and some are imposed by nature or the actions of others. 

The gospel lesson today comes from the scriptures of the Ascension, which was last Thursday. The gospel of Luke, and the Acts of the Apostles are both written by the same person. At the heart of the story, Jesus encourages the disciples to stop being anxious about the earthly power and accept their personal role, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 

The elements of our witnesses are clear, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” 

This mission statement, to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins, is Luke’s take on the great commission. The gospel of Matthew said the great commission was, “Go and baptize all nations.” Baptism appears a much easier sell than repentance and forgiveness. Our friend Luke is all about the relationship, and living relationships are messy, and challenging, and often push us into periods of growth, when it does not feel like a convenient time. 

I cared for a woman who told me of her childhood. She talked of the rage she still feels for her mother, who was not able to protect her from abuse. There was no way possible for her to imagine forgiving her mother, who died years ago at an early age. 

As it happens so often, she entered into not one, but two successive abusive marriages of her own. In desperation, she found a job as an over the road trucker. In the long hours of solitude, she was able to find some bits of peace, and some level of trust in her own person. 

But those hours took her away from home. In another familiar pattern, when you find peace on the road, you hesitate to go home. You believe that “distance” has saved you, not trusting in your own growth. Her own daughters grew increasingly dependent on the care and attention of others. They grew to resent their absent mother. 

After many years on the road, her now tired body was ready to settle down. She wanted to rebuild a relationship with her children, especially her daughters, and get to know her grandchildren. This task has been an ugly and difficult challenge. 

There are times when she gets along with one or more of them. They begin to talk on the phone, there are some shared meals. Then one day, she does something caring for a grandchild, and the old hatred and disgust in the daughters flares up uncontrollably. In a flurry of cruel words and accusations, both parties retreat. 

After listening to her describe a couple of the painful cycles, I tried to explain that - she herself had taught her daughters how to hate their mother. The key to making progress with this generation, is to find a way to make peace with the memory of her own mother. Until she understood the cost of forgiveness, it was inappropriate to expect it of others. 

We have control of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not dependent on an apology, it is not dependent on any action of the perpetrator. Forgiveness is born in our own move toward maturity. I am reminded of the generous forgiveness of the Amish community in Pennsylvania, to the family of a gunman who murdered their school children - in West Nickel Mines in 2006. 

Not a one of us is perfect. We are made up of the genetic material our parents contributed. I physically resemble my father more now than I ever expected to. I was very proud of myself to graduate college at 48, and seminary at 52. It was only then explained that my paternal grandfather, who died when I was very young, joined the IRS as a bookkeeper, earned an accounting degree at night school, then earned his CPA, and then finished law school, all while working full time. Our stuff comes from somewhere else. 

As I opened this talk, it seemed as if there was a simple checklist to maturity that we could work our way through. In truth, we have to live through each step, be alive in each step, before the possibility exists to move on to the next. 

It is important to remember that growth of a plant does not happen over night. The roots have to develop. There needs to be enough sun and water, and then finally there may be a blossom. Growth in our emotional and spiritual lives needs time and nurture to develop. 

I believe that to be our best selves, we must stay connected to our families. It might be necessary to get some temporary distance, to avoid injury, to hear ourselves think. But we cannot push into the next level of maturity without being our best selves in the midst of our families of origin. True growth depends on us going home, and demonstrating our growth, where we confront the pushback.   

Reconciliation is really finding peace with our past and past imperfections, including and especially our own. Forgiveness does not mean that everything is suddenly all better. Forgiveness means that we have decided to put down the burden of feeding our anger or hatred. Those fires are not from God. For the fires of anger or hatred to burn continuously they must be attended to and fed fresh fuel. When we choose to starve the fires of anger and hatred, then we begin to make our heads and hearts a better place to live and grow.  

So make a kind of external peace with our agitators, but within ourselves we accept that we did the best we were able - with what we knew - and what we could do at the time. We are not perfect, and do not expect to be perfect anytime soon. Our peace comes from the love of God, and we follow the model of forgiveness that Jesus offers us. 

Forgiveness is rooted in accountability. Those who have hurt us are held accountable, and must earn any trust that is to come. Still we decide to treat them with hope for their future, and not bind them forever in the pain of the past. 

And we are accountable to ourselves for seeking our own peace. In evaluating our own reaction being hurt, we extend ourselves grace. Forgiveness is hard work. It is not too hard to teach children to hate. But to teach children to forgive, begins with forgiving those who have hurt us - stop feeding those fires - and then forgiving ourselves - for living through the righteous anger of the victim. Then, with time and prayer, the fires begin to taper off, we can feel the peace of Christ which reaches out to us.   

On Mothers’ Day, we celebrate the life we have, to which our mothers made a lasting contribution. We go on to celebrate all of those - who have been a mother to us when we have needed care and attention. We recognize that the predominantly female characteristics that we call “motherly” are present in both women and men, who are able to support us as we live through the stages of our lives. 

On Mothers’ Day, we rededicate ourselves to the spiritual and emotional growth it takes to be a child of God, and all of us are children. An essential part of being in a faith community, is that we have friends from different generations. Having multiple examples of how to be faithful at different ages, gives us a wider range of models to aspire to and better ways to be.  

We turn our faces upward, weathered by the storms of life, but with our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Jesus whose Spirit we are anxiously awaiting. We are waiting for the power, and the courage, and the enthusiasm that comes when God, the new fire triangle: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; comes to fill our hearts with the maturity that comes from love and forgiveness, and snuffs out the fires of anger and pain, Amen.