The highest compliment we pay to hospitality is when we say, “You treated us like family.” Forget for a moment your memories of what sometimes seemed to be your mother’s competition to be the Meanest Mother in the World. Being treated like family really is hospitality—you are welcomed, made to feel that you contribute to the overall well-being of the household just by your presence. It’s as if you have been temporarily adopted.

Which is what is going on in Romans today. Adoption language has become so common in the Church that we speak of our “church family.” In the culture to which Paul was writing, adoption was a big deal. Ties to the birth family were severed, debts cancelled, and the child literally came under the control of the new father. But also a full heir, no matter who else gets born into the family. This is the type of adoption that happens when we baptize or receive someone into the fellowship of our congregation. The Romans passage suggests that this is the ultimate custody dispute taking place on our behalf. In fighting for our custody, God says, “The other parent can’t take care of you. I’m bringing you to my house.”

If God is the custodial parent, you would think we’d be like the kids who say, “I want to be just like my daddy (or mommy) when I grow up.” But, as if we can’t figure out how, do you know the one question I hear more than any other? “How can I find out what God’s will is for me?” also pronounced, “What is the purpose of my life?” I’ve asked the same thing. As the graduate of both a Baptist Sunday School and a seminary, I know the pat, slick answers. “God tells us in scripture. We have Jesus as our model. Stay in prayer, and it will be revealed to you.” Those answers aren’t very pastoral, because the person hearing them has heard them before, just like I have, and the answers have done nothing to answer the fundamental question. The logical conclusion then is, “I must not be a good Christian, because I can’t figure out what God wants.” That’s where I end up! This week a switch went off in my head. I was trying to figure out the Trinity thing. Preaching is a great incentive for wrestling with unanswerable questions. The Trinity is an incomprehensible paradox that alternates in my mind between being a cynical theological compromise and a profound Absolute Truth. One person or three or both? What occurred to me this week is that, as we get deeper into the revelation of God—the more we wrestle with the question, “what sort of God?”—the more God will reveal to us God’s will and purpose for our lives. Really! This is not an easy-out answer, slick, pat, and sentimental. Like most of you, I’d just like God to speak to me. Give me a mapped-out program. Smart objectives. Measurable, achievable goals. Time-limited, accountable, something I can get my teeth into. This is not an easy-out answer. Looking for the answer to the purpose of your life in the revelation of God is not for tourists and weekend warriors.

Most kids at some time or another want to do, when they grow up, whatever it is their parents do. This is partly a loving response, but it is also because they think that what their life is like is the way things are supposed to be. I grew up believing that Sunday dinner conversation was supposed to be about construction, but weekday conversations were about educating people with developmental disabilities—because that was how things were in my family. Children grow up believing that everybody goes to church on Sunday or everybody goes to the beach in the summer or everybody heats with wood or everybody sleeps with a dog—because that is how life is for them. If God is who you hang out with, that’s what you will think life is supposed to be like.

The answer to what God wants for your life lies in the doctrine of the Trinity. When you graduate from a Presbyterian seminary, you have to be able to say what you believe about the Trinity. Then, just to make sure you are worthy of ordination as Minister of Word and Sacrament, the denomination gives you essay questions about it, grades you on your answers, and gives an oral exam. This is the “answer” that I’m prepared to stake my grade on today. We don’t believe in “the Trinity.” We believe in a triune God, a God who has been revealed to us as Three Persons so that we can come to understand what God’s will and purpose is for our lives. The Trinity is a way of understanding God, and trying to understand God helps us understand ourselves. God creates us, saves us, and gives us the juice to keep on keeping on—and that’s “trinity.” What we see of an apple is the skin, but there is more to an apple than just what we see. An apple is also the fruit, and seeds, and we need all of it to know an apple as an apple.

If you are still in the spiritual developmental stage in which you just want to be like your parent, this is good news. That’s God’s will for you and the purpose of your life: to be like your adoptive parent. Yeah, I know. “Be like Jesus.” It’s our baptismal vows. We ask this question with bracelets, key chains, tee-shirts. It’s the secret code words, “WWJD.” What would Jesus do? What can I do? It’s sappy, but the theology makes sense. “What would Jesus do?” is how we answer the question, “What is God’s will for me?” Jesus worked miracles, but we don’t notice too many these days. That red tub in the front hall is the Springwater equivalent of Jesus feeding 4,000. Everything that supports that red tub—the people buy the food, who haul the food, the ones who put it on shelves and hand it out respectfully to clients, the ones who drive it to homebound folks. That is all miracle—what Jesus did. The care-givers who bring news of the church and good cheer to homebound friends, that’s miracle, what Jesus did. The teachers and volunteers who read to school kids, giving them eyes to read and learn—they are miracles, doing what Jesus did. Standing with people when they are in trouble, helping people see their situations with redemption in mind, helping them see how what they do contributes to the kingdom of God—more miracles. It is hard to remember that to see the revelation of God in these insignificant events and people, is to know we are doing God’s will. Sometimes we don’t know we’ve been living out God’s purpose for us until the events are long past.

The conviction that we are doing God’s will does not come in dump truck loads. It only comes one little piece at a time, and that is hopeful, good news. It does not all depend on us—so you don’t have to work as if the fate of the whole world is hanging on your shoulders! But on the other hand, God usually takes the smallest, most insignificant, vulnerable person and situation—and on that hangs everything. This paradox is meant as hope, not a scare tactic. Don’t let the weight of responsibility keep you from doing what you are called to do. Incredibly, it may be that small act of respect toward another, that act of kindness, that bag of rice you bring to the red tub, that gives another person the hope to keep on with God’s purpose for their life. It does not depend on you alone. But God can’t do it without you. The bottom line is love. Being in love with your fellow human beings, being in love with the one who creates and saves and helps you to keep on. This is the meaning of the Trinity. It is for us: created, saved, keeping on. Thanks be to God!