My wife Mary Jane and I enjoy listening to Rachel Maddow’s daily evening program on the MSNBC channel. To us, she sounds so convincing in all her opinions on the latest controversies that it is hard for us to imagine anyone thinking otherwise. "Isn’t she just laying out the obvious facts?" we think. However, we have friends, including extended family members, who think otherwise because they listen to nothing but commentators on FOX News.  For them, those commentators sound so convincing on all the latest controversies that it is hard for them to imagine anyone thinking otherwise.  “Aren’t they simply laying out the obvious facts?” our friends ask.  Uh, ohh!  How can this be?  Competing obvious facts!  How can we be sure that we are the ones who know the real obvious facts?!  How can an earnest seeker of the truth sort things out when there is no universally agreed upon and trustworthy source of facts or wise interpreters of them?  

​Although the words “fake news” and “fake media” are new to us, cynicism about statements claiming to be true is not new.  When Jesus told Pontius Pilate that he, Jesus, is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Pilate responded by sneering, “What is truth?”  He was standing in a long skeptical and cynical tradition that believed that all truth claims are simply power moves.  The tradition is still around and is warning us to beware of anyone claiming to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth!  But, then, how then can we Christians, who believe that indeed Jesus is the embodiment of God’s truth, navigate competing truth claims, especially those dealing with racial injustice?  What light might today’s lessons shine on all of this?

​In today’s reading from Genesis, God tells Abraham to take Isaac, the son he waited his whole life for, bind him, kill him, and burn him as a sacrifice to God.  Abraham has already banished his son Ishmael.  Now he prepares to murder his other son.

​In the 18th chapter of Genesis, Abraham learns that God is going to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their great wickedness. Appalled that good people could perish with the wicked, Abraham engages in energetic and prolonged negotiations with God to gain God’s promise not to destroy innocent, righteous people.

​​And yet, when God tells Abraham to kill his beloved son Isaac, his sole remaining heir, Abraham does not say a word.  There is no argument -- not even a conversation -- with God.  Abraham says nothing to his wife Sarah.  During the 3 days’ journey to Moriah, Abraham shares no hint of what is to come with his intended victim Isaac.  Instead, Abraham calmly loads the wood on Isaac’s back with which to immolate his son.  Abraham builds an altar, lays out the wood, binds his son, and raises his knife to butcher him.  At that point we’re told that God decides Abraham has passed the test.  Abraham’s hand is stayed and a ram is sacrificed in place of Isaac.

Today is an unusual day on the Church Calendar.  It is about the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity—that God is three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in one Being.  From the beginning Christians had experienced God as their Creator, also as their Redeemer, and also as their Sustainer.  But, it took several centuries for them to agree on how these different experiences relate to each other, given that they also experienced God as One.  Finally, the trinitarian formula emerged, and Christians ever since have been trying to figure out how to explain this great Mystery.  Some today even suggest that it is time to put it on the shelf and forget about it.  But, the Trinity keeps bouncing back to shine crucial light on the life of the Church in new times and in new places.  So, I  want to try something ambitious today.  I want to see if we can shine that trinitarian light on this very conflicted moment in our country.  I want to use a more active version of the trinitarian formula, as it relates to our life in these troubled times.  Here it is: the Father wills, the Son shapes that will for us, and the Spirit empowers us to respond to it.  

​My grandmother, Mum-Mum, was not afraid of change.  She learned to drive when Henry Ford began producing Model Ts.  Mum-Mum was in her 70s when the Beatles hit the musical scene; she thought they were talented.  When she was in her 80s Mum-Mum buzzed her hair and bought a wig.  She died before the age of computers, but I’m confident she would have learned to surf the Internet.  Mum-Mum had a passion for living and a curiosity about people and things that enabled her to keep pace with the world around her.  However, as far as she was concerned there was only one worthwhile translation of the Bible:  the King James Version.  Some things could change.  Others could not.  

If anyone asked you, “What is the traditional symbol of Christianity?” you would probably answer that it is the Cross.  We might quibble a bit about its exact shape (there are dozens of different cross shapes) and whether it has the crucified body of Jesus on it.  But, in whatever form, it is still the Cross.  Would you be surprised to know that for the first 300 years of Christianity, Christians shunned the Cross as their symbol?  After all, it was the evil symbol of the hated Roman Empire, which ruled by violence.  There were a couple of other symbols used during that early period: first, there was the outline of a fish (based on the letters of the Greek word for fish being standing for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior").