The Triune God

My Advent reading this year came from a book entitled, "Advent." by an Episcopalian priest named Fleming Rutledge.  In a section which focused on the way the church could resist the power of evil, she wrote, "True worship isn't focused on exhortations to do better, or lessons about inclusivity, or instructions about 'spirituality,' or even one dimensional repetitions about how 'God loves you as you are.' which shifts the emphasis away from God to our own little selves."  All of this resonated as truth, but the next word about something often missing in worship really struck home: "The first order of worship is the triune God alone, God as He is in Himself."  

It often seems that we have forgotten the source of the church's power in its struggle against injustice, greed, and all other forms of evil.  The church is not powerful because of our efforts, our programming, or because of its influence in the community, but because it represents and is the continuing presence of God in our midst.  The Apostle Paul makes it clear that the we alone cannot stand against the "wiles of the devil" (Ephesians 6:11). It is easy for us to forget as we go about doing good that "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against...the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places..." (Ephesians 6:12). 

A feel good sermon will not enable us to stand.  A feel good theology will not build the church.  It is the triune all powerful God of the Universe who is Sovereign and Lord, whose Son came and died for us on the cross, and who continues to abide within it through the Holy Spirit that will deliver the church and make it the church triumphant as evil swirls all around it.