Is God some larger-than-life figure, powerful and mighty, sitting on a throne in Heaven, and looking down – sometimes approvingly, sometimes critically – on His creation?

Or is God for you, a person who walks with you; someone who knows your doubts and worries, and shares them with you?  …..the person who experienced life here on earth at its nastiest,   but who did not flinch, and who finally was tortured, and put to death – not for anything he had done wrong, but for the things he had done right?

Or is God what animates you? Is God, someone who sees your powerlessness, your life in a rut, and who somehow infuses you with the spirit, the energy, the need to get out of the rut, and go on a great adventure?

I suppose the answer to that question could be different depending on the state of your life at the time of asking.

I guess we experience God in all of His three persons, during our lives haven’t we?

There are times when I take a walk down to the beach, and just sit there, on that rocky jetty, and listen to the lapping of the water, and feel the wind against my face, and look out across that great expanse, and I just know that a Creator God is responsible for it all. And I feel a peace, and an affinity with the earth, and all that God has made, and I know Him as God, Creator God, Loving God.

And when you feel like that, the cares of everyday living and loving fall away, almost as if He or She has taken them from you, and a great sense of freedom ensues.

Reluctantly you pull yourself away, and head back to the everyday world.

In that everyday world, unfortunately, when  I read the newspaper, and watch the television news,  I hear about the latest suicide bomber; new statistics on how many women and children have been killed in the latest war,fresh evidence of climate change we are told has come about because of our misuse of creation; new statistics that tell us how we are poisoning the very air we breathe, and a ghastly litany of humanity’s lack of humanity.

And I despair.

Then I remember a baby, born into a working-class family, placed in an animal’s eating trough for a crib, in a shed, in a place called Bethlehem – a place in the news these days – and how that baby grew to become a man who took on the immense task, not of changing the world, but of changing people – so that people could change the world.

And I recall how this man gathered around him twelve friends, and inculcated them with his love of people, and his belief in our ability to change, and how somehow, his death, which many thought would shut them all up, did the opposite, and that young man’s message of  salvation – did in fact change the lives of many for the better.

And perhaps more important than the message, if that is possible,  is that this young man died specifically for my salvation – so that I could change – and not be punished for the way I had been…………

………….that his whole reason for being was to call us back from selfishness, and wickedness, and being stuck in sin, and open to us the possibility of real life – life that gives, and is fulfilled; life that is involved, life that will go on for ever.

And  remembering all this about that young man called Jesus, I experience hope. I know that everyone who suffers has a loving brother – someone who himself suffered – to be with them, and to travel with them, even in the midst of the filth of this world – and to bring them to a knowledge of that God who created us to love him, and to love each other.

Not to abuse; not to use; not to manipulate; not to hurt; not to degrade; but to love and uplift, and to encourage, and to help, and to care for.

And that sounds such a wonderful place to be, such a wonderful goal to which to aspire, but alas, something that could be too tough, too difficult, just too hard to manage by myself.

But then I remember how those men and women who followed this man Jesus, how they too must have felt inadequate, and ill-equipped, and just not up to it, and yet they did in fact make a difference.

And I remember that they didn’t do it by themselves. Yes they had Jesus’s teachings to guide them – but so do we. They had more than that. They had a life-changing encounter with another person of the God we love. They  had an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

And remembering this, I rest assured, that whatever I try to do in His name, His Spirit will be there to give me the strength, the courage, the wherewithal to do it.

You might be thinking, “How can that be?   It’s ok to say that, but how can people be changed so profoudly? “

Eighty or more years ago, a man by the name of Adolph Hitler, took control of a nation and by his  rhetoric, by his evil will, he turned thousands of good people into monsters who could torture and kill in his name, without compunction.

Beginning a little time before that, a man named Stalin took an ideology of materialism, of an economic system,  and using that ideology, turned thousands of  formally good people into torturers, killers, informers, oppressors – guards of the gulag.

So don’t tell me that the Creator of the universe  – the God above all gods, the one who placed the stars and the planets in their courses – that this God  can’t take  ordinary good people – like you and me – and do miracles through them.

Because he is greater than evil. He is stronger than ideology. He is more powerful  than rhetoric, than spin doctoring, than advertising.

Than advertising?

Do you know that the average child is exposed to more than a thousand hours of advertising during it’s formative years?

And do you know what advertising tells us? It tells  us that we bring happiness into our lives by the shampoo we use, the clothes we wear, the jewelry we buy, the car we drive. 

A thousand hours of propaganda!

God can even counteract that.

I read that there is a movement among young people these days to search for something beyond themselves, beyond the facile messages of advertising jingles.

There is a need.

For a Creator God, and a Saving God and an Enabling God. A Trinity.

There is an emptiness that needs filling, a hunger for something more than the pap that is fed to them twenty four hours a day by this culture of consumerism.  

And we have that.

Don’t we?

We have a God who delivers.

We have a God who saves.

We have a God who is willing to give power to those who ask.

It’s about time that we Christians started telling people what we have. And how to get it. If we are going to do one tiny bit of what those first disciples accomplished.

I don’t know about you, but I want this world to be a little bit better than it was when I came into it.

Else what’s the point?

And people are doing it you know.  People are leaving this place a little better  than when they came.

I see it all the time.  In the families that people leave behind. In the legacy of care and love that people leave behind them. In the monuments to their care for the kingdom that they leave behind.

You know what I am talking about.

I don’t have to tell you.

So why am I – telling you?

Because I want others – those who have never darkened the door of a church, who have never  known salvific love, others who have a need and a hunger, and a desire to be better, and do better, and leave their portion of this place better – I want them  to know what we know.

But they won’t know if we keep our joy to ourselves.

Let’s bring this God of ours out and share with everyone else.

This God of ours being God the Holy Trinity. The God who created all that we have and all that we are. The God who sacrificed Himself to save us. The God who everyday fills with power, those who want to bring about change.

Created. Saved. Empowered.

United in God, and in the Church, and determined to make this world a much, much better place.

Amen.