The Blessings of the Blessing!

Text:  2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Theme:  "The Blessings of the Blessing!"

The Holy Trinity

June 15, 2014

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Denton, Texas

Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

Finally, brothers, good-by.  Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace.  And the God of love and peace will be with you.  Greet one another with a holy kiss.  All the saints send their greetings.  May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all this day -- and especially with the fathers among us. 

It's important to keep first things first, so the first thing to acknowledged  from the pulpit is that this is Holy Trinity Sunday.  It is a feast day on the calendar, and since it is a feast it calls for a celebration!  In our time together and in the rest of your day, I hope that it will be touched with celebratory moments! 

This particular feast, Holy Trinity, is unique in that it is the only celebration that focuses our spirits and minds on a teaching.  All the other feasts -- be them major feasts or minor feasts -- remind us of events or people.  But Holy Trinity is about a teaching -- a teaching about how God has been revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; a lesson, from the Scriptures, that God has been made known as our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sanctifier.

The word "Trinity", while not a term of the Bible, is enormously helpful because it captures in one word what God's Word teaches about God.  Trinity is a compound word:  it comes from "Tri" (which means three) and "unity" (which means one).  So it's three in one and one in three, and one in three and three in one.  It's a not three gods, but one God in three persons. We sang it in the opening hymn:  "God in three persons -- blessed Trinity."   Is this good math?  Not really.  Is this a mystery?  That's better.  Absolutely!  It is a mystery.  But it is a mystery to confess, to acknowledge, to affirm.  Put it out there!  Keep putting it out there -- with gladness, with energy, with enthusiasm.  Don't use "Trinity" as some talking point in an argument.  Celebrate it as the blessing it is:  "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (the second person of the Trinity), the love of God (the first person of the Trinity) and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (the third person of the Holy Trinity) be with you all"!

Now it's also Father's Day, 2014.  There's a story about fathers that lends itself quite well.  It will show us how the blessings of the blessing, the blessing of the Holy Trinity, works in peoples' lives. 

The story begins with one of our own members:  Louise Kraft.  Louise has a grandson by the name of Kelly.   She is justifiably proud of him. One of the reasons for this is that Kelly won the United States Amateur Golf Championship.   His early golf started right out here at North Lake driving range.  Then Kelly would go play at TWU's Pioneer Golf Course just down the street from us.  He'd be joined by the Vance boys.  Mike and Ladine Vance, the boys' parents, are regular guests with us here.  There are connections all over the place! When Kelly was attending SMU and playing on the golf team, he had a roommate by the name of Aaron. 

I cannot help but think that this is a very bittersweet Father's Day for this Aaron.  For, you see, Aaron is the son of this man:  Payne Stewart.  Fifteen years ago, on Father's Day, Payne Stewart made a putt on the 72nd and final hole of our national championship of golf:  the U.S. Open.  He clinched that victory with a fist pump. 

Then he turned to a young Phil Mickelson who happened to be carrying a pager.  You see, his wife, Amy, was going to give birth to their first child at any time.  Payne Stewart clasped Phil Mickelson's face and said:  "You're going to be a father."  It wasn't about golf; it wasn't about wins or losses; it wasn't about success in your fields, etc., and so forth.  Instead, it was:  "You're going to be a father."

I've hung around a few golf clubs and pro shops and locker rooms in my day, and I know the type.  Sometimes I am the type.  Payne was a super-talented golfer.  He had a natural athleticism.  In addition to that, he was kind of cocky.  You had to be  if you were going to wear the flashy apparel and the knickers that he would parade around in on the golf course.   Dress like that you better have the flashy game to go with it.  Payne did.   He  liked to smoke a cigarette now and then and throw back a few Budweisers with the boys. 

He grew up in Missouri and he had those "midwestern values", as they are called, instilled by his parents.  He'd probably say he was essentially a Christian man, but the faith didn't make all that much difference to him. There was a career to unfold, a future to build, and more golf tournaments to win.

Then he met a beautiful Australian girl named Tracey.  They were married.  That union brought two incredible young people into the world:  Chelsea Stewart (Payne's daughter) and, as I mentioned, Aaron Stewart (Payne's son). 

One of Payne's closest friends was a fellow professional golf by the name of Paul Azinger.  "Zinger", as he is called, also won a major:  the PGA Championship.  But Payne noticed that there was something different about Zinger.  He was a super-cool guy, but he was also serious about his faith.  Zinger led a Bible study for men on the PGA tour.  Payne started to hang around that and he even found himself starting to attend church in Orlando.

Then something happened.  Payne learned a powerful lesson that there is more to life than success and golf and career and making lots of money.  You see,  Paul Azinger, Payne's close friend, was diagnosed with cancer at the pinnacle of his career.  And it was how Azinger, a Christian man, dealt with that diagnosis and treatment that changed Payne. 

Payne came to appreciate three things more fully than he ever had before.  First, and before anything else, he was a child of God.  As the Scripture teaches, he was "fearfully and wonderfully made."  Second, his life was touched by the grace of Jesus Christ.  Whether his time on this earth was long or short, he knew where his ultimate destination would be.  Jesus Christ -- the second person of the Holy Trinity and the One who died and rose for him -- made that possible.  Third, he realized he was not alone.  He did not live to or for himself.  He embraced the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  He gathered around himself fellow believers and friends that he could help and that could help him on this journey that we call life. He had the blessings of the blessing.  He had the love of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  That's a powerful combination, wouldn't you say?

Then he died.  He died in October of 1999 -- some five months after winning the U.S. Open on Father's Day.  There was decompression on his plane.  It flew miles off course, and then it crashed in a South Dakota field when it ran out of fuel.

Among the items retrieved from the crash site were a couple of devotional books and  a black wrist bracelet.  It had four letters on it:  "W.W.J.D." "What would Jesus do?"

In Payne's life, we have a "snapshot" of how the teaching of the Holy Trinity settles in to life, settles into our lives.  We come to embrace and hold the truth that we are created by God, fearfully and wonderfully made by God, loved by God.  We look at what Jesus did when He offered his life for us all.  We discover that we are a part of that.  And we celebrate the we are not alone; we have the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

The blessings that come from the blessing:  this is what it's all about on this Father's Day and festival day -- the Feast of the Holy Trinity.

Amen.