Winter-walking with God at the Villa Infantil ... or, what better Father's Day gift is there than grown-up children in whom he is able to see the best of himself?

In worship this week, in place of a sermon Pam F shared pictures from an orphanage near San Pedro Tesistan, Mexico where she spends winters, and talked about her experience of volunteering at the orphanage during her vacation time there.  

For more information about the orphanage, go to https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://villainfantil.infored.mx/&prev=search.

The readings in worship were Deuteronomy 24:17-22; Psalm 68:4-6; and James 1:27.

The following is the introduction to the liturgy.

 

It's interesting sometimes how a worship service comes together.

Maybe two years ago I heard of how Pam F volunteers every winter at an orphanage in Mexico while she vacations there.  What an amazing way to spend one's winter get-away, I thought; I think we need to hear more about this in our worship here at Fifty.

And so it sat for a while.

Then with this spring's Lenten focus on different ways that members of our congregation have felt individually called into mission in different ways in the world, it just made sense finally to ask Pam to share with us the calling she has answered every winter for a number of years in Mexico.  

We sat down to look at the dates that would work.  Today, June 16, seemed the best of what was open.  We got to planning, and as part of the planning I googled "orphan images" and found this image, which now is the central focusing image for our worship today:

And then ... (how often is there an "and then"?) as this past week unfolded I suddenly realized:  Father's Day!  And I had not planned anything special in our worship, to celebrate Father's Day.  Oops!

But then (and how often is there also a "but then"?) ... isn't creating and maintaining an orphanage, and making a safe, supportive home for the world's children, at least part of what fatherhood -- the fatherhood of God and our own fatherhood, is about?

I think of my own dad.  The first years of his life were spent without a safe and settled home in the world.  As an infant only several months old in 1918 he was carried by his family as they fled Russia with only what they could carry in their hands and on their backs.  The next ten years were spent in borrowed and not-always-happy lodging with his mother's parents in Germany, almost as indentured labour.  Finally in 1929 the family was able to emigrate to Canada -- a good country, but a really bad time for a German immigrant family to try to establish a secure foothold and a settled home.  It was really hard, and took a long time.

Maybe in part because of that experience, one of the dominant themes, imperatives, happinesses and successes of my father's life was to create, provide and maintain a good, safe, comfortable, secure home for his family.  He gave his life, and sacrificed much of himself to do that.  And he did it very well, far better than I have been able to replicate.

So who is to say that the image of a strong, providing, protecting hand extended to a weak, little child is not also a Father's Day image -- celebration of those who do all they can to provide and maintain safe and secure homes for the world's children?

And then, of course ... the surprises for today were not over.  As I looked beyond the secular, Hallmark calendar to the liturgical calendar, I realized today is also Trinity Sunday.

Trinity Sunday?  There is such a thing?

Yes, and it's today.  It's the Sunday after Pentecost's celebration of the giving of the Spirit to the disciples of Jesus.  Or, perhaps not the "giving" of the Spirit, as though the Spirit were not alive or present or poured out prior to this, because Spirit was, and always has been, since the beginning of the world.  Maybe better to call it a new experience of the Spirit by the disciples of Jesus.  A new awareness of the Spirit that always is there, and always is here.  New openness to the holy Spirit as the guiding, empowering spirit of all our lives, and all the life of the world.

Which is why we make this day Trinity Sunday -- a time to remember that we now really know and are open to God not only as transcendent Father/Mother above and beyond and beneath all that is, and as Word revealed in the law and prophets and incarnate in Jesus, the Son who walks with us, but also as Spirit enlivening us, alive within us, empowering us to participate consciously and intentionally in the life and being and work of God in the world.  

To be, in effect, like children now grown up to be taking on and doing the Father's work in the world -- adult heirs of all that the Father has made, and executors of the Father's good will for all that is made.

And isn't this a good image for that as well?  At least to get us started?

So, happy Father's Day.  Happy Trinity Sunday.  Welcome, Pam.  Let us worship.  And let us hear about, and celebrate one way in which one of our members lives out the good will of our Father in the world.