PASTOR'S
MESSAGE - June, July 2002
PASTOR'S
MESSAGE -
June, July 2002
ZION NEWSLETTER
Volume 17, Number 3
The Trinity issue
June/July 2002
Pastor’s Message
The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all!
Die Gnade unseres Herrrn Jesus Christus, die Liebe Gottes
des Vaters
und die Gemeinschaft des Heiligen Geistes sei mit euch allen!
(2.
Korinther / II Corinthians 13:13)
Trinity Sunday sums up the festive half of the Church year. Unless other festivals, it does not relate to a specific event in the history of salvation. That’s why the liturgists call it an “idea holiday”. But that title is misleading. Many people think that the holy Trinity is such a complicated idea. “Each year when I attend church on Holy Trinity Sunday, I carry with me a certain air of anticipation – maybe this year the Trinity will finally make sense.” That’s what I read somewhere.
But the texts and the message of Trinity Sunday – and eventually the doctrine of the trinity are not abstract theological ideas. They are the honest and prayerful way to make sense of the personhood of God. They are intended to safeguard the very personality of God, our belief that God revealed not something, but himself, his inner being in Christ Jesus, and that he is still leaning towards us with the same Spirit that has been the eternal bond between him and the Son.
There was a time, when this doctrine was definitely out of fashion. Many earnest theologians thought they could regard the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as something that had been vital in the Early church, necessary to be kept in the Reformation, but outdated in the 19th century. One of my predecessors, and not the least of them, Pastor Heinrich (Henry) Scheib, was one of them. When he celebrated the remarkable occasion of his 60th anniversary as Pastor of Zion in 1895, the church fathers (at that time only men were eligible on church council) decided to honor him with a stained glass window. That window on the south side of the sanctuary shows St. Paul, the apostle, standing on the Areopagus in Athens and preaching to the Athenians “the unknown God” (Acts 17:22ff). “God is not far from each one of us” and “In him we live and move and have our being” were sentences they would identify with.
But Paul goes on in his sermon and talks about the resurrection of Christ as the one assurance God gave us. In order to avoid mistaking some loose religious feeling for the saving faith it is essential to recognize how God the creator revealed himself as savior and comforter. To some, that might seem unimportant, or even hindering true interfaith dialog. But in order to enter into a dialog, you must know where you come from and what you stand for. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is our specific Christian grammar of faith. It helps us to understand who God is – that he is somebody in communion within himself and towards us. As Paul himself makes it clear in that sentence from II Corinthians 13 that opens every sermon on Zion’s pulpit: the trinity spells out God’s being as GRACE, LOVE and COMMUNION – and that, I hope, is much more than just an idea, or is it?!
Have
a good Trinity/Summertime! Eine
guteSommerzeit wünscht Ihnen
Pastor Dr Holger
Roggelin
Zion’s First May Pole / Der
erste maibaum
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Zion’s
first ever May pole was erected on Saturday, May 4 for the Maifest – thanks to
Mr. Bill Anderson, who donated the tree, the united efforts of the men of the
“DEUTSCHE GESELLIGKEIT” under the expert leadership of Mr. Rolf Sorg, and
the decorating skills of our in-house florist, Mrs. Gisela Schwartz. The
pictures were made by Mr. Randy Chase, our excellent webmaster, and you can see
more of his beautiful pictures of the Maifest
and the people involved at http://www.zionbaltimore.org
Back to Pastor Roggelin's Archive of Messages from Zion Church of Baltimore
