Moravians have a proud tradition of thinking in 3's. Partly that is just how we humans think about anything. Partly it is a result of God giving us Luke of Prague as a spiritual ancestor (although there is evidence of Moravians thinking in 3's long before Luke). And partly -- the third part! -- doing theology in 3's is a reflection of how God relates with us, a relationship we often experience as Trinity: Father Creator. Jesus the Son and the Word, Spirit of Inspiration and Wisdom.
Moravians have a particular gift of 3's to share with each other and
with our fellow Christians: The classification among Fundamental,
Instrumental, and Incidental. Not everything is of fundamental
importance but trying to get by with just the 2 categories of
fundamentally important
and just your opinion
has not been very
successful. Using 3 categories helps us think more clearly. It
provides a place to put things which are very important but not
truly fundamental.
When the old Moravian church was dying away, what we call the
Ancient Unity, Bishop Comenius imagined the church as a mother and
composed a last will and testament for her. What did the ancient
Moravian church leave to the rest of Christianity? In Comenius'
Bequest
the old church says,
may God give you wisdom to discern the distinction between the things fundamental, instrumental, and accidental, as He gave me to perceive! For then ye all would know what things are or are not worthy of zeal
https://reference.pivotrock.net/Quotes/Moravians/Comenius_Bequest.html#xviii
Incidental things are important for the people involved. Do we accompany congregational singing with steel drums or a pipe organ or a trombone choir? That is an important question, for those of us who are actively planning and participating in a particular Sunday morning, but it is an issue which just travels along with the bigger matter of how we worship God.
As for the instrumental things, it turns out there are lots of them and maybe I should preach on them some day. Instrumentals are what guide us to the fundamental things. Worship, for example, is not important in itself; worship is important because it aligns us with what God is doing.
What God does is fundamental to the entire cosmos. How we respond to God is fundamental to our human lives. Of course, each of those is expressed in 3's.
We say:
God creates.
God invites us into family.
God changes us into God's own people.
We say:
We respond with faithfulness.
We respond with love.
We respond in hope.
In the first place God creates.
The Gospel According to John says, In the first place the Word
was. What God was, the Word was. The Word was face to face with
God. All that was created came into existence through the Word and
nothing came into existence, not one thing, unless it was created
through the Word.
Meister Eckhart tells us that God was bubbling up with creativity. God was boiling over, Eckhart suggests. Everything which is is from God. Everything which exists exists in the fullness of God.
God created electrons and tulips, black holes, black bears, maple trees and apple trees and redwood trees, red granite and red sunsets, cats, comets, stars and sea stars and baker's yeast, 3 year old girls and 18 year old boys, and a plethora of other things. And we respond faithfully to all of that, to all of everything.
In the first place God creates and we respond with faithfulness.
Colosians turns us around to look the other way. Colosians says,
The church, in its fullness, is the whole of the cosmos coming
together in Christ.
God was everything, God is everything, God
will be everything. The cosmos is coming together in the Word
of God. All of it, everything in the whole cosmos, all came from
God. Together the whole cosmos is the church to which we belong.
And we respond faithfully to all of that.
In the first place God creates and we respond faithfully. That is essential. That is fundamental. That is the beginning and the end of true religion.
It is also a little bit abstract. And overwhelming. And hard to translate into Monday morning. What does the Word of God have to say about human life as we humans live it?
The Word says this in the Gospel According to Matthew: Love the
people who stand in your way and pray for the people who knock you
down. Love and pray so much that you become like your Father in
heaven. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and
sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
If we are faithful to the God who created sunrise and rain, not to mention opossums and volcanoes, we develop a broader sense of who we need to love, a better sense of who God loves, a hint of how comprehensive is the love of God, is the love of the one who, in the first place, creates everything that is.
In the first place God creates and we respond with faithfulness and with love and in hope.
So then,
Jesus said, be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect.
Perfect. If we take "perfect" to mean "without flaw" or "matching an ideal standard" we are in danger of giving up in the face of an impossible demand. But "perfect" can also be understood as "complete" or "mature". Can our faithfulness be mature? Can our faithfulness be complete?
How can we respond faithfully to a God who creates everything which is? How can we respond in faithfulness to the creation of galaxies and gluons and DNA and deuterium? faithful to the Word which creates people who grow up to be progressives or partisans? We are called to a faithfulness more expansive than we experience in everyday life.
So then,
Jesus said, be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect.
Here is the good news: In the first place, God is the one who creates. We respond. And the faithfulness with which we respond to the wholeness of God's creating everything that is — however faithful, mature, and complete we can be — that faithfulness is counted as if it made us right.