In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We just affirmed the most mysterious and profound truth of the Christian Faith. A unique assertion given by God himself. As he has revealed himself as one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, the Holy Trinity.
It is the foundational truth of Christianity that is affirmed every time we pray, or worship. It is professed in the creeds, collects, liturgies and prayers of the Christian church. It is a basic belief, but it is certainly not an easy truth to understand.
Its significance is why this day, Trinity Sunday, is given over to recognize and celebrate this reality. Its complexity and peculiarity is why most preachers try at all cost to avoid preaching on this day
The doctrine of the Trinity, though fundamental, is also really beyond our actual comprehension. Over the centuries, theologians have been acclaimed or condemned for their contemplations on the topic.
A seminary professor introducing a class on the Trinity told his class: I have bad news for you, you will have to preach on the Trinity but there is good news, too, you only have to do it once a year.
I was talking to a rector just a couple of weeks ago who had proclaimed with the relief of a soldier who just ducked a bullet that he had not preach a Trinity sermon in many years, ever since he hired an assistant!
When I realized that I was preaching Trinity Sunday, yet again — I immediately thought that Isaiah’s words recorded in today’s Old Testament lesson were appropriate: “Woe is me! For I am undone” yet again!
Every time I preach on Trinity, I share my first attempt to make the doctrine of the Trinity intellectually legible. I do this because it was a very humbling experience that continues to loom large every time I attempt to consider God’s awesome and great nature, and secondly I thought it necessary to calibrate your expectations for an erudite enlightening dissertation on this wondrous mystery to a suitably low level.
It happened in my first semester at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, in theology 101. It took approximately three classes to realize that I was in deep theological trouble. Surprisingly, eight years in the army as a helicopter pilot was not sufficient preparation for graduate school. Who knew.
As I wandered aimlessly through this theological and philosophical quagmire in which God had seemingly abandoned me, I saw my first glimpse of hope. Dr. Wells had issued his list of appropriate term papers, and in that list I saw my first recognizable theological term: the Trinity.
I thought: I was raised up Roman Catholic, Catholic grammar school and high school, I ought to be able to talk about the Trinity; it was either Jesus, Mary and Joseph, or Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Either way, I thought I was in familiar territory.
Well, I had great fun with that paper, thirty pages with footnotes, and all. I read in all the early fathers and constructed my arguments carefully. I learned a lot.
That is what the professor put on my paper when he returned it. You learned a lot. Out of all the red ink on that paper – and I have no idea how many red pens he went through – it was the only positive thing he wrote.
He referred to my thinking in theological terms I didn’t understand, but I knew it couldn’t be good. He said I managed to syncretize every Trinitarian heresy he knew about, and thought I might have managed to invent one or two new ones. I thought I should have been given some credit for my creativity.
He didn’t. I got a D minus – isn’t that like and F plus?
When I went to talk to him about this he was very apologetic but said it was the highest grade he could give me and that tempered with a strong dose of Christian charity.
So…….That being said let us reflect on who God has revealed himself to be – one God in three persons – what has been called the Trinity.
The first thing to be said is that the word Trinity itself never appears in the scriptures; it was first coined by the church father Tertullian in about 200 AD as he attempted to understand the nature of God as revealed in scripture, and later accepted as the doctrine describing God in his self-revelation.
In the Old Testament we have the overt assertion that there is one God: “Hear O Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is one”. And yet we see strong intimations of something more. For instance, in Creation we hear that the spirit of God was hovering over the waters, and later God says: “let us make man in our image”.
Responding to the building of the Tower of Babel, God says: Let us go down and confuse their language.
In Isaiah’s glorious vision of heaven in today’s Old Testament lesson, he hears God say: “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
Abraham and Sarah had the three visitors who came to them to announce that Sarah would bear him a child and those three are referred to as the Lord- a word used for God.
We have the messianic prophecies proclaimed in the prophets referring to the Son of God, or the Son of man.
And we see in how many instances the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of the Lord coming down upon leaders like Saul, David, or Gideon.
In the New Testament the reality is much clearer. What we see in shadows in the Old Testament is brought into the light in the new. For instance, at Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove, and a voice from heaven proclaims this is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.
In Jesus great commission to his disciples he commands them to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
During our approach to Pentecost from Easter, we hear in John’s Gospel, Jesus praying for his disciples saying he was going to the Father that he might send the Holy Spirit, the comforter.
God’s self-revelation as one God in three persons is proclaimed as reality, truth, throughout the Bible, from Genesis through Revelation.
But how can it be that God is one, yet in three persons? It seems implausible. How can we believe it to be true when we can’t understand it?
Yet consider we vest a lot of trust in things we don’t truly comprehend. We trust when we climb on an airplane not comprehending all the aerodynamics of flight, or the training of pilots, or the dependability of radars and air traffic control.
We trust our surgeon, when he tells us he is going to cut us open and repair our body parts, without comprehending the anatomy of the surgery, or the chemistry involved in the anesthesia.
We trust in computers to do all sorts of things without really understanding the black magic that makes them work.
We even trust that our food and pharmaceuticals are safe because there is a government approval on it, in spite of understanding how government works.
But what we are dealing with here is true mystery. So if God’s self-revelation of himself to us is a truth that is so far beyond us – far beyond any sphere of human reference that it is impossible to completely understand – might it none the less be true and trustworthy?
John Wesley said: “Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the triune God.”
There are analogies galore offered to help us to wrap our heads around it, and to communicate it to the world.
St. Patrick in Ireland used the shamrock, a three leaf clover three in one, to communicate the reality of the Trinity.
Someone else used the analogy of the states of water, liquid, steam, and ice, to do the same. Another used the analogy of the egg: shell, yolk, and white. Someone else the apple: skin, core and meat.
St. Augustine used the analogy of love. You have the lover, the object of one’s love, and the love itself between the two binding them together.
All these analogies and many others have been used to try to communicate the reality of the Trinity. But all fall woefully short because they are all attempts to understand a reality that is beyond us, something that we must accept as a true mystery.
Yet we are called to believe this truth. The Athanasian Creed which used to be read on this day states: “He who will be saved must think of the Trinity”. One cannot be a Christian without believing the trinity to be true.
God has revealed himself to us that we might know him as he is – and that reality should leave us a bit bewildered because he is so beyond us – at least as distinct as a worm and a man, and that should leave us humbled and a bit in awe. That response is what lies at the heart of true worship; the reality that God is so great that a holy fear is evoked.
Yet the mystery of the Trinity proclaims an invitation to us into a personal relationship with a living God who can change our lives.
To know God, then, is to know him as father. It is not allegory or metaphor, it is his being: He is Father. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus tells them, pray like this, Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Thy name……..
A father, he is the perfect father, he is all-loving, all-caring. He always wants what is best for us, always loves us even when we don’t deserve it. We can always run to him and he will always reach down and grab us to himself, that all will be saved.
As father, he is our absolute authority. He is the author of our life. And he has a plan for us to be in an eternal relationship with him that he might not be just father, but my father, your father – Abba, Dad – to have a personal and intimate relationship with us.
The father accomplishes this by giving to the world he loves, his only begotten son, that whosoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, God enfleshed, is the visible image of the invisible God who invites us into the relationship with God as Father by faith in him.
The son is the fulfillment of both God’s absolute love for us in spite of our sinfulness. God in his holiness can never just wink at sin. God cannot ignore willful disobedience to his will. Justice demands punishment and his love sends Jesus coming from the Father’s side, taking on flesh, and going to the cross to pay that debt, the debt of sin; your debt, my debt. It is through his sacrifice, his death on the cross that enables us to be forgiven, absolute love and absolute justice together, upholding God’s holiness.
Because of Jesus there is not a sin that cannot be pardoned, not an offense that cannot be forgiven, not a shame that cannot be removed because the price has been paid, for you and for me. All we must do is to come to him, admit our need for forgiveness and ask him for it, accept his work accomplished for us on the cross, and believe in him as Lord and Messiah. Jesus invites us into a relationship with the Father through him as Savior and Redeemer, and friend. And he guarantees that relationship by sending into us his Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity.
For those that accept God as Father through the work of Jesus, God sends the Holy Spirit to be the presence of Christ within us. He is a personal presence not an impersonal force, guiding us in the Father’s way, revealing the father’s mind, bending us to the father’s will, that we would be holy as he is Holy. How that is, is a mystery in itself, yet we celebrate it every time we receive the body and blood of Christ at the altar rail: The mystery of Christ in us.
The Holy Spirit is the source of power that enables us to be a new creation by fostering holiness in us, convicting us of sin, and giving us power to change sinful habits, sinful thinking and sinful lifestyles.
He will and can make us to be a new creation if we but listen to his direction, and yield to his power. He can cause us to lead a changed life, a life fruitful in grace, and joy, and peace, having the assurance of God’s love, the knowledge of his constant presence with us, and the security of the salvation of our lives. All this is the father’s plan, accomplished for us, and offered to us through his very being; what we call the Holy Trinity.
Trinity Sunday is a day to contemplate the truly awesome nature of the god we worship. it should give us pause to consider that such an awesome god should love us so much to do all he has done for us in the mystery of his very being.
God is so far beyond us, yet through scripture, he deigns to make himself known personally to all. A father who loves us and cares for us, who seeks us and wants us to call him dad, the son who gave his life that we might live, and in fact experience that relationship with God as Father and the Holy Spirit who lives in our souls to give us the guidance and the power to live out that relationship shaping holy, fruitful lives in service to the God we worship. This is the work of the Trinity.
Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.