Sermon Sunday June 15th, 2025
Rev. Norman A. Michaud
Last Sunday, we celebrated Pentecost. I described that event as the story of Babel in reverse. The Apostles and followers of Jesus find the flames of the Holy Spirit descending upon them, giving the gift of a common language to all present. This unity included all in the presence of God, His Beloved, and Lady Wisdom, or the Holy Spirit. Pentecost excluded no one. This Sunday, the Common Lectionary proclaims Trinity Sunday.
Trinity Sunday originated from the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, which was seventeen hundred years ago. The Nicene Creed asserts the Trinity, which reminds us that God can be understood as Three Persons: God, the parent, Christ, the Beloved Child, and the Holy Spirit. Three in One. The United Church Of Christ remains a Trinitarian Church, as do all Mainline Christian denominations.
At our First Congregational Church of Millbury, we read our Statement of Faith each Sunday. Our Statement of Faith is a unique and inclusive form of the Nicene Creed. Our interpretation of the Nicene Creed begins with, “We believe in God known to us in three persons: Creator of all, resurrected Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who guides and brings about the creative and redemptive work of God’s love in the world.”
The passage from Proverbs 8 directs the reader to the role of the Holy Spirit and asserts that the Holy Spirit is female. The female personification of the Holy Spirit in Proverbs aligns with the feminine wind, “ruach” which is the name of the wind of the Holy Spirit in Genesis. Recall that in Genesis, the Holy Spirit blows across the earth and ignites life. This is the Spirit that creatively breathes into our lives every day and offers us Wisdom.
Proverbs 8 describes a feminine figure named Wisdom. The author of Proverbs describes Lady Wisdom as existing one with the divine, “The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago.” In 8:22-23, “Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” Judaism and Christianity sought language to describe beings in close association with God yet distinct from God. Proverbs defines Wisdom as an ancient force, aligned with God and present at creation, who calls human beings into a relationship with God and with good ways of life. We must love our world, for it is alive, created by God, and shaped by the work of the Holy Spirit. We must parent Mother Earth. Should we fail, evolution may move on without humanity. Not unlike in the time of Noah, God may find a new rainbow to mark yet another covenant where justice for all living things will prevail.
Today’s epistle from Romans 5:1-5 presents Paul’s understanding of God in three persons. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit create and sustain Christian hope. It is the Holy Spirit that still speaks and informs our Wisdom. Paul concludes that hope becomes realized through the following: “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God,” “character produces hope,” “and hope does not disappoint us.” Hope comes from our actions, through the light of Christ’s teachings, and guides our path to eternal life. God is with us because of Christ. Even in the midst of human suffering, God is with us. Our acts of love shows our belief in Christ’s teachings. Even in our darkest times, we can trust in the peace and grace that the Holy Spirit sustains. Paul writes, “God’s love is poured through the Holy Spirit.”
Ironically, this year Father’s Day lands on the same day as Trinity Sunday. We hope that all fathers are informed by the Holy Spirit and Christ. We hope that they do not see their role in the lives of their families as a single and ultimate authority. Shared authority provides wisdom. I know many families who revere their fathers and fondly recall their nurturing kindness. Many recall their fathers teaching how to play sports, how to fish, and learn how to learn.
The memories of my father always challenge for me. We never played catch, fished, or did anything together for fun. He did teach me how to pump gas at his Sunoco Station on Route 1 when I was six. He got angry when I had trouble making change for Canadian cash. He was angry enough to leave a scar on my face for life.
My father, Norman Louis Michaud, lived a life of brokenness. He could not find spiritual peace during his lifetime. He lost all hope and connection to the living God. He died in the VA facility in Bangor, Maine, in August of 2007. His death certificate reads, “failure to thrive.”
When I was a child, I recall finding a box deep in the back of my father’s closet. I knew it was important to him, but why had he hidden it? I was an inquisitive child. I opened the box.
In it, I found three medals, a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, a small tattered Nazi flag with rust-colored stains, several chunks of torn steel shrapnel, and what appeared to be a rust-stained Nazi armband with a hole torn through it. I held in my hands the Nazi uniform insignias that German soldiers wore during the Battle of the Bulge. Two had the letters SS on them. I did not have the courage then to ask him about the context of this box. I did not ask him about this box until he was in the VA hospital in 2001.
He told me that the shrapnel had been removed from his back in a hospital in England after the Battle of the Bulge. He returned to the front as a member of the 82nd Airborne since his battalion no longer existed. He was among the troops who greeted the Russians at the River Elbe on April 25, 1945.
My dad identified the tattered flag which came from a destroyed Nazi machine gun bunker during that battle. My father cut the Nazi armband from the arm of an SS officer he killed in hand-to-hand combat during that battle. He no longer had the box or its contents. Still, he had the documentation of how he was one of 28 US paratroopers who survived their engagement against the Nazi SS in January of 1945. He also received a copy of the Presidential Unit Citation for the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion, which was not issued until February 2001. My dad, Norman Louis Michaud, was and remains a military hero.
However, he was not a hero to me or my family. He was a troubled soul, and that soul seemed lost in his abuse and addiction to alcohol. Perhaps it gave him relief; possibly, it allowed him to sleep. In the end, it took his mind and then his life.
I sought mentors, and mentors replaced my father with their Wisdom and kindness. In the world — teachers, pastors, and friends became mentors. The world provided me with many fathers in both male and female forms. God’s regenerative power, working through the Holy Spirit, never abandoned me. Perhaps some of you had fathers like mine. Maybe most had terrific and nurturing fathers. However, I believe we all have had positive encounters with mentors who have left lasting impressions.
On this day, I celebrate all mentors, both female and male, while I mourn my father. I honor all acts of kindness, love, and compassion through the teachings of Jesus and the resurrection of Christ. In faith, the actions of our love for others may yield an ocean of love. The mystery of creation belongs to the winds of Wisdom, the feminine Holy Spirit. We are freed from the thought that our successes or failures hasten or deter God’s plans. God’s time is not our manufactured time. Creation comes. Each of us may have the opportunity to mentor others, and such opportunities arise through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
God is with us, and we are not alone.
Amen