In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
Today is one of the most awesome feasts in the Christian faith. It is the day we celebrate the reality I just affirmed in the opening prayer.
Isn’t that exciting? Can I get an alleluia! That’s not very enthusiastic!
Why is it that this feast day doesn’t get the same level of excitement and involvement as say Christmas, or Easter, or even Pentecost? This is one of those feast days that just sort of happens; we do it. There is no real excitement. Many of us really wonder why we do it. We wouldn’t miss it if we didn’t celebrate it.
In fact, this feast day is the foundation of every other feast day in the Christian calendar; it is the seed bed out of which the rest of our more well-known feast days spring to life. In fact, this day celebrates the bedrock of the Christian faith itself. It is the day we celebrate God in himself. We celebrate and acknowledge the very identity of God as he has revealed himself to us: one God, three persons, the Holy Trinity.
The reality of the Trinity is certainly biblical. The Bible is replete with passages that give evidence of God’s triune nature, more than we have time to look at this morning but I would challenge you to do some homework on your own, and look up the scriptures that either imply or directly state God’s existence as trinity.
We hear a few in today’s appointed readings.
– In Genesis God is referred to in the plural: let us make man in our image. We hear of the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters.
– We hear it in Paul’s benediction in 2 Corinthians: “the grace of the lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
– We hear it in Jesus’ commission to his disciples in Matthew –“…baptize them in the name, not the names, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”
But the word ‘trinity’ itself never appears in the scriptures, it was first used by Theophilus of Antioch in 170, the doctrine later developed by Tertullian in about 200 and established as orthodox theology in the first Council of Nicea in 325.
And that is what the church catholic has affirmed as essential Christian belief ever since.
Our catechism states “the Trinity is one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit”—a truth Christians everywhere affirm every time we gather for worship, say the Apostles’ or Nicene creed: the Eucharistic prayers, the collects, the prayers.
It is not the easiest concept to grasp; at some level it is a mystery. However that does not mean that we can’t believe it.
I am a mechanical kind of guy: I like mechanical things. I used to do all my own work on cars, when I was a pilot I could work on most of the mechanical elements of the helicopter. I always found that there was very little that could not be fixed with good tools, a little finesse, brute force and a bit of cussing. I understood the mechanical systems, I could mentally grasp it, and I knew what they were supposed to do.
Then came the computer age and I discovered that no amount of brute force or cursing could make computer things do what I wanted them to do – just ask the office staff!
I don’t like computers; I certainly don’t understand how they work, but I end up having to accept them and trust them to do what they are supposed to do.
Our lives are like that today. Computers and wondrous electronic gizmos enable our lives in ways we take for granted. We go about our day, trusting that the car will start and run efficiently, the elevator will stop when it is supposed to, the airplane we are flying on will continue to its destination safely, the medical treatments and surgeries will be successful, and yet most of us don’t have a clue how it all works. But we trust that it will, because someone who knows tells us, and we trust them.
It is similar when we talk about God and who he has revealed himself to be. We can grasp enough of the reality that allows us to be able to trust because we can trust who has told us. It is God himself revealing himself to us.
God introduces himself, shows his very nature to us as one God in three persons; a mode of existence that we are unfamiliar with, as unfamiliar as our mode of existence is to a potato. Yet it is none the less true because it is God himself doing the self revealing.
Could you imagine going to a hotel for instance and at the desk you introduce yourself.
I am Fr. Rick – and the host says no you’re not.
Well yes, I am. Here is my identification to prove it.
But you’re dressed in black.
Dude, I’m a priest at Redeemer; basic black is it.
But you are old.
Well, it happens.
But you’re driving an old pick-up truck and it really needs to be cleaned.
You been talking to my wife? And so you call your wife and she tells him who you are.
Well and good but I still don’t believe you are who you say you are.
So you show him all the contents of your wallet, your briefcase, anything that shows you are who you are.
Well, I just don’t believe you are who you say you are. You are not Fr. Rick, and there is nothing you can do to prove otherwise. I think you’re my uncle Bob!
Since the enlightenment and the rise of skeptic liberal theology in the 18th and 19th centuries, many people have acted just that way. We open the bible and we hear God say Hello, I am one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And many say, no you’re not.
God reveals himself to us but some refuse to receive him as he is and we create alternate views, rejecting his own revelation, rejecting truth to claim The Trinity as a pre-modern primitive interpretive story, or metaphor, or a western European theological construct, or just an obsolete idea.
To reject the veracity of the scripture is to reject the self revelation of God himself and we end up with a God of our own construct – uncle Bob – a God who is not God and a religion that is not Christian.
Karl Barth one of the most influential theologians of the last century has stated in his classic church dogmatics: “the doctrine of the trinity itself belongs to the very basis of the Christian faith and constitutes the fundamental grammar of dogmatic theology.”
Historian W.E.H. Leckey whose statue graces the campus of Trinity College, Dublin attributes the sense of humanity, the sanctity of human life evident in Western culture to the influence of the Christian doctrine of The Trinity.
Our right understanding of God is important; our religion and our culture would not be the same without it. To take God as he has revealed himself has great consequence.
Consider how it impacts us right here as we gather to worship. At one level we gather in awe because of the wholly otherness of our God: immortal, invisible, almighty, holy and just. When he manifested himself unveiled to Moses, to prophets, their response was fear: to recognize their own un-holiness before him.
And yet he is an all-loving God in that he sent his son Jesus, veiled in flesh, that we might know him and that we might be saved.
We worship with a sense of thanksgiving for what God in his love has done in Jesus paying the price for our sins. Jesus sacrificing himself that we would be able to run into his father’s open arms as little children to their dad.
In his resurrection and ascension he gives us the promise blessed by his father that for those who come to him through the son death is overcome, and our final destiny is life with him in eternity. God the son makes God personal to us. We can be in a living relationship with him who is almighty and omnipotent, now and into eternity.
Not only is the relationship with God personal, it is made intimately and powerfully so, in that the father sends the holy spirit to indwell his beloved – that person of God who makes a personal connection to the father that we could sense his presence, know his will, feel his power, have the assurance to know his abiding and overwhelming love and his sovereignty in all things in life.
All of these realities we emphasize specifically in our celebrations of Christmas, Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost.
All of these realities we celebrate in summary every Sunday when we gather together as the body of Christ to worship a God who is awesome and personal, unapproachable, loving, intimate, powerful, sovereign; a God who is both mystery and knowable at the same time.
Today we worship not uncle Bob but a God who is one, in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, mysterious to us in nature, who out of his love for us sent from the depth of his own being his son, and the Holy Spirit, that we might know him intimately, be converted to him absolutely, and follow him resolutely, and likewise be sent by him, his body the Church sent forth, that others might also share in the glorious mystery of his love and work.
Remember what Jesus told us: 19 therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Now 14 may the grace of the lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.