An old adage warns, “bad things always come in threes.” Have you found this true in your own experience? That bad things (and good things) like to happen in community, in bunches? You say: we invent this connection by suddenly realizing that we got a flat tire on the same day that a computer glitch devoured our hard drive, shortly after our last contact lens just slid down the drain. I say: there seems to be something significant about the power of three.

Today the church celebrates the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—on this “Trinity Sunday.” We recognize God as power (the Father), God as person (the Son), and God as presence (the Holy Spirit). Paul’s final benediction to the Corinthians switches this order a bit to better express each person’s unique experience of the divine. For Paul, Jesus Christ comes first, for it is through the grace of his life, death and resurrection that humans may be reconciled to God. Only grace enables us to experience “the love of God.” As we stand renewed and redeemed before this loving God, yet another gift is made available, “the communion of the Holy Spirit.” The person, the power, and the presence of God come to us in a threefold design-package.

Those forces that work AGAINST the divine have also traditionally been divided into the “big three.” How many of you remember preachers warning their flock to be on guard against the three evils—“the world, the flesh, and the Devil.” If we really do experience bad things in clusters of three, it is the result of these Big Three: The World, The Flesh, The Devil.

The Trinity of Evils

The World: This is not the world that the God of Genesis brought forth at creation. This is the “world” that turned deadly force against tens of thousands in Myanmar (Burma) this past week. This “world” is the broken world where tsunamis and cyclones and tornadoes and hurricanes pulverize the landscape. This “world” is the barren world where food disappears and famine grips every living thing. This “world” is the bleak worlds where pestilence hunts its prey.

The Flesh: This is not the Adam-flesh created in the Garden of Eden by the God of Genesis. This is the “flesh” that now knows disease and death and decay. This “flesh” is fragile, subject to infection, physical fodder for plagues and pandemics. This “flesh” breaks down, breaks apart, and breaks our hearts and spirits with its decay.

The Devil: There is no Devil, no antithesis to God’s creative power in the first creation story (Genesis 1:1-2:4a). This Devil doesn’t make an appearance until the second creation story, the tale of the serpent and the forbidden fruit and the draw-down of desire. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit so that they might become “like God,” knowing good from evil. Willful disobedience, a passion for power, seeking to de-throne God, this was the origin of the Devil. Our own irrationalities, hatreds, fears, and despairs bring the “devil” to life.

These three evils—the world, the flesh, and the devil---look like an unbeatable team, dooming humans to a mere scratch-and-claw existence. It was subservience to this spirit, to this “tooth and claw” combativeness, that kept the Corinthian community from experiencing the full embrace of Christ. The apostle Paul was so troubled these caustic Corinthians that he penned at least two (some say three) lengthy letters to this community, offering advice, admonitions and out-and-out orders. The world, the flesh, and the Devil were doing a booming business in Corinth.

In his final letter, in his final words, in his final benediction, to this contentious community, Paul offered a positive, powerful, alternative Trinity to this struggling church. Paul’s closing command lays out a new kind of three-fold pattern, a pattern that will lead to wholeness and holy living. I call them the 3-Rs of holiness, or the 3-Rs of godly living. Here are the 3 essentials of holiness: Respect, Responsibility, and Relationship. If you want to live a holy life, a life of godliness and truth, you must learn the elementary but elemental 3-Rs of life: Respect, Responsibility and Relationship.

I. Respect

The ultimate blow-off you can give to someone when they are talking, arguing, confronting, cajoling is this: hold up your hand, turn your face away, and crush their words with this directive, “Talk to the Hand.”

“Talk to the Hand,” means “I’m not listening to you.” “Talk to the Hand” means “You aren’t saying anything I need to hear.” “Talk to the Hand” means “If you have to drone on just to hear your own voice, then just talk to my hand.”

“Talk to the Hand” is a degrading dismissal and dissing, a sign of disrespect.

Paul countered this devil of disrespect with the exhortation “listen to my appeal.” One way to holiness is through hearing the voice of others, the words and wisdom of those whom God has sent into our lives. Without respect for the voices of others, no new messages will be heard. The Corinthians had been so busy bickering over whose spiritual gifts were greatest or who was a true member of the new covenant, that they had forgotten they had all been called together in Christ. Paul called the Corinthians to listen to his words, to heed and respect his directives, because his only concern was Christ.

Here is the essence of respect: There is no understanding without standing under. Too much of what goes for “understanding” is really “overstanding,” as we seek to place ourselves “over” others, treat them like objects, size them up and judge them according to our “objective” standards. True “understanding” requires standing under, giving another subject the respect of our willingness to place ourselves in their stead, to “walk a mile in their shoes.”

II. Responsibility

Holy living means responsible living. The triune evils of “the world, the flesh, and the devil” thrive in the vacuum of irresponsibility. When no one steps forward to take responsibility for the ills of the earth, we all take a giant step backward.

Are WE responsible for children in India dying from exposure to toxic chemicals as a result of disassembling old computers?

Are WE responsible for de-forestation in Indonesia and the devastating erosion, landslides, and crop failures it causes?

Are WE responsible for drug dealers and drive-by shootings being accepted as part of the “normal” landscape of whole communities in America?

Are WE responsible for the global spread of hate and the terrorisms birthed by that hatred?

Paul urged the Corinthians to do no less than “aim for perfection,” to put all things in good order to work together and be of one mind. These are not pint-sized, puny dreams. These are bhags (big hairy audacious goals), ambitious dreams. But they are not ambitions for the self. They are ambitions for God, ambitions for the good, ambitions for the gospel and its implantation into the new creation. This is the “one mind” that Paul urges the Corinthians to have together. This is how “wholeness” becomes “holiness.” We ARE responsible. We ARE responsible because we are enjoined to join as one mind, one heart, one dream for the sake of the gospel.

III. Relationship

In the early centuries of the Christian church there were a number of fervent believers who sought to deepen their spirituality through solitude. There were holy men who secluded themselves in caves, clung to the top of rocky spires, wandered in the wilderness. But in the end the church determined that these solitary spiritual journeys were suspect. Monastic life as it developed and grew throughout the middle ages embraced the person’s life of spiritual growth, but did so in the midst of an ordered, intentional community life of growth. The Christian life of faith is inseparable from a life lived in relationship to others.

The Good News is not delivered via individual telegram. The Gospel is delivered in a crowd. The first IBM computer was introduced in 1953. If you are born BC (before computers), maybe think of a party line. If you are born AC (after computers), maybe think of a chat room. By the way, AC people know that spam and cookies are NOT things you want to eat.

The most complete, the most complex relationship you will ever embrace is the braiding of the Trinity. God is One. God is Three. God is Father. God is Son. God is Holy Spirit.

Paul, who had been told to “talk to the hand” plenty of times by the curmudgeonly Corinthians, offered as his final admonition the directive to “greet each other with a holy kiss.” That must have been just a little fun for him. The “holy kiss” Paul demanded was the symbol of new kind of community where lives are lived in a new kind of relationship, a relationship wherein Christ is all in all. This greeting was to be exchanged between ALL Christians—Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, male and female, free and slave, the five-minute faithful and the life-long saint. Paul’s directive forced the Corinthians to look each other square in the eye, and in Christ’s name, kiss each other on the cheek. In Christ’s name, they were to accept each other as part of the complex triune unity of God’s presence and purpose for the world.

There are plenty of Corinthian communities still around today where the trinity of evils, the world, the flesh and the devil, are at work. Maybe it is your work place. Maybe it is your school. Maybe it is your neighborhood. Maybe it is your family. Maybe it is your church.

Paul’s directive remains: “Greet each other with a holy kiss.” Be in genuine, Christ-directed relationship with all those around you. You are to respect those who are before you. You are responsible for your actions to these others. You are in relationship to these others. There are, in fact, no “others,” for this is the Body of Christ and we are the gospel incarnate. These are the 3-Rs of a holy life: :Respect, Responsibility, Relationship.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”