First Reading: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
1Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? 2On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; 3beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: 4“To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man.
22“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. 23Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 24When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, 26before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. 27When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth 30 then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”
Psalm 8
1O Lord our Lord, how exalted is your Name in all the world! 2Out of the mouths of infants and children your majesty is praised above the heavens. 3You have set up a stronghold against your adversaries, to quell the enemy and the avenger. 4When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, 5What is man that you should be mindful of him? the son of man that you should seek him out? 6You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor; 7You give him mastery over the works of your hands; you put all things under his feet: 8All sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field, 9The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea. 10O Lord our Lord, how exalted is your name in all the world!
Second Reading: Acts 2:14a, 22-36
14aPeter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them:
22“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know — 23this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. 24God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. 25For David says concerning him, ‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; 26therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. 27For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. 28You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’ 29Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. 30Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, 31he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. 32This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. 33Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. 34For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, 35 until I make your enemies your footstool.”’ 36Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Gospel: John 8:48-59
48The Jews answered {Jesus}, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” 49Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” 52The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ 53Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” 54Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ 55But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. 56Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” 57So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” 58Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” 59So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
The Holy Trinity
As I just mentioned, Holy Trinity Sunday begins the second half of the church year. The first half of our church year begins with Advent and ends on Pentecost Sunday, and the focus of the first half of the liturgical year is on Jesus and His incarnation, His life, death, and resurrection, His return to the Father, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. The second half of the church year we call the season of Pentecost or ordinary time, but when you think about it, there’s nothing ordinary about it.
The Sundays after Pentecost are an extraordinary time of the year when we focus on Jesus’ teachings and the church’s life and mission. Some have called Trinity Sunday the “great hinge” of the church year. Others have called it the “great pain”! And why? Because as the only Sunday of the church year that focuses on a doctrine instead of a historical event or person, Holy Trinity Sunday seems so abstract, complicated, and for some, downright boring.
Now before we go any further, we need to acknowledge and agree on a couple of things. First, the Holy Trinity, one God in three persons, is a mystery. Yes, we have volumes of documentation from various authors and councils that attempt to explain the doctrine of the Trinity; we have the Creeds, our confessions, and the writings of our church fathers. But we must admit, that with all the ink that has been spilled trying to define the nature of God, we still cannot seem to adequately explain the true nature of the Trinity. This morning, we’ll responsively say the Athanasian Creed, a creed from the early fifth century that attempts to provide a detailed statements of the nature of our triune God.
The second thing we need to agree on is that the only way we know God the Father is through the incarnate person of Jesus, and we know the Holy Spirit from His work in and through our lives. Even though we see the evidence of the work of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit throughout the Bible, in truth, for us to fully grasp the true oneness and nature of the Trinity, we must acknowledge that the true nature of God is a mystery that we will not fully comprehend until the return of Jesus. Until then, we’re still obligated to wrestle with the mystery and confess the Holy Trinity.
More than that, based on the teachings of the Bible and our confessions, it would feel strange not talking about God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We certainly don’t want to discard it from our worship life. But still, too few of us know why it’s important. Some might not even want me to preach on the Trinity. Preaching on this confession of the Christian church seems like the ultimate invitation to confusion for some, and utter boredom for others. But despite the risks, deep down we know that it’s important to spend our time and energy trying to understand our God.
Over the centuries, many have developed all kinds of interesting illustrations and examples to explain the Trinity, this phenomenon of one God in three persons. For example, probably one of my favorites is the illustration of a triangle that I used for the Children’s sermon a few minutes ago. And while it seems adequate for children, especially young children, it still leaves us asking questions. My second favorite illustration is water.
Water, H2O, one element, is comprised of 3 atoms, two distinct hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. All three atoms are unique, yet the bond between them makes up a very important compound not only in our lives but for life itself. But with all our attempts, we still end up with more questions than answers. When the early church fathers used the phrase “one God in three persons,” what they had in mind was very different from what we think of today. “Person” is actually a translation of the Greek word, persona, which refers to the mask an actor would wear in the theater. So, in the case of the Trinity, one God in three persons is comparable to one actor playing three different roles, wearing a different mask, a different persona, to play each role. But this explanation too falls short of adequate.
One of the greatest leaders and theologians of the early church, St. Augustine, wrote a massive work, On The Trinity, that has greatly shaped our understanding of the Trinity today. It took him ten years to write, and is actually not one book, but fifteen books, all on the Trinity. In that work he developed the famous formulation of the Trinity that we see reflected in much of our church teaching, hymnody, and even art. This is why I always go back to the triangle illustration. In Augustine’s illustration, each point of the triangle portrays a different person of the Trinity — Father, Son, and Spirit. In the center is the word God. Between each person of the Trinity and the center is the word “is.” So, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. Then between each person of the Trinity are the words “is not”. So, the Father is not the Son. The Father is not the Spirit. The Son is not the Father, and so on. But Augustine didn’t stop there.
Like so many others, Augustine wasn’t satisfied with this illustration, so he looked at the world around him and saw examples of the Trinity everywhere. One well-known example went like this: love. Even Jesus said that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We say, “I love myself.” “I” is the subject of love, the lover. “Myself” is the object of love, the beloved. And “love” is the action of the lover for the beloved. It’s all one activity with three distinct parts: the lover, the beloved, and love. Such are the ways we often try to explain the Trinity. It isn’t easy.
Attempting to explain the doctrine of the Trinity seems to require a lot of intellectual gymnastics. It seems to have its own kind of strange logic and rationality. For example, have you ever heard of “Trinitarian math”? Normal math is 1+1+1=3. But Trinitarian math is 1+1+1=1. As I said before, it can be both mysterious and confounding, reflecting the reality of a God who defies human explanation. And the doctrine of the Trinity does have its critics. The other two monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Islam, have complained that we Christians need to make up our minds. Do we believe in one God or three Gods? The short answer to this complaint is yes. Yes, we serve one God, one God in three persons.
Others have complained that the doctrine of the Trinity reflects the concerns of a world that’s in the past. It cannot be doubted that the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated in the philosophical categories of a world dominated by Greek philosophy. When we recite the Nicene Creed, the influence of those philosophical categories is obvious. Today we don’t think that way. We don’t argue about “substance,” “accident,” and “essence.” Therefore, some say we need to discard the doctrine of the Trinity as ancient and antiquated. Still others, have complained that the doctrine of the Trinity is just another tool of a patriarchal, racist, and an oppressive church.
What seems to be common to all these attempts to explain the Trinity is that they treat it as an intellectual exercise that seeks to clarify a mystery that defies explanation. Unfortunately, that often results in doctrinal formulas that are simply “imposed” upon us. We’re told that this is what we “must” believe, if we want to be a Christian. Sometimes I get the impression that when we teach the Trinity to our young people, what we’re essentially telling them is, this is such a difficult doctrine, we just need to accept it and believe. But if we do this, we miss the point of the doctrine of Trinity and what it needs to accomplish when we treat it as some sort of ideology or doctrine.
What’s important to remember is that the doctrine of the Trinity is the result of our experience of the gospel. The Trinity is the way we talk about a God whose love we experience and encounter in the person of Jesus Christ. We simply cannot talk about a God who loves us like this without using Trinitarian language. It’s because God loves us like He does, that we must speak of God as three in one, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A classic example of basing the doctrine of the Trinity in the experience of the gospel is St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. In chapter 13, verse 14 we read, “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Our service each week includes this Apostolic greeting.
In this benediction, St. Paul brings this letter to a conclusion. In the four previous chapters Paul has had to defend the authority of his apostleship after his critics have attacked the authority and legitimacy of his apostleship in every way. Paul’s defense is not so much a defense of himself personally but a restatement of the gospel of the crucified Christ. He has warned and admonished the Corinthians, but his final word to them is a blessing. For Paul this is a must because the basis of his call for a change among the Corinthians is not his anger or personal indignation, but God’s love for them in Jesus Christ. Paul’s last word to them must be love because that’s God’s last word to them. The only way Paul can talk about a God who loves the world, is to talk about his experience of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul simply can’t talk about the God who loves them without resorting to the language of the Trinity. For Paul, the Trinity is never just about a division of power within the person of God but is always about God’s love for the world in Jesus Christ. It’s no accident that the Trinitarian formula that Paul uses here is slightly different from later Trinitarian formulas. It begins not with God but with Christ and then follows with God and the Spirit. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” He formulates his benediction this way because of his experience of the love of Christ, therefore, Paul must resort to Trinitarian language to talk about the God who loves the world through the power of the Holy Spirit.
When we witness an infant baptism, we’re privileged to welcome a young child into the God’s family through this sacrament. When water is poured on the child, in order to talk about the wonderful thing God is doing for the child, we must speak of the Trinity. In baptism, God, the creator of the universe, promised the little child a new future that’s in the hands of the risen and ascended Jesus. Therefore, we baptize, as Jesus commanded, in the name of the Triune God who has bestowed upon the child this marvelous gift: “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
The promise of baptism, like the promise of the gospel, is like a murder mystery. Are you familiar with the genre of literature called the “whodunit?” murder mystery? Agatha Christie is one of the most famous authors of this style of mystery. Some years ago, the television series, Murder She Wrote, was a similar adaptation of this style. A crime was committed. The suspects were examined. By the end of the story, Inspector Poirot, or a similar character, solved the mystery by identifying the culprit.
Suppose you came across a murder mystery you had never read before. You bought the book or checked it out of the library, and, when you get it home, you cheat. When nobody’s looking, you read the last chapter first. Then you went back and read the story from the beginning. Or you recorded Murder She Wrote on your DVR, and when you come home, you cheat. You watched the last five minutes first before watching the entire show from the beginning. Because you know in advance the ending, now you experience the plot and story of the mystery in an entirely new way. In a sense, you now have an entirely new story. Now you have … Columbo! For those you who are old enough to remember or have seen the show, in Columbo you knew from the very beginning who the murderer was. The suspense came in watching Columbo track down the culprit whose identity you already know. That’s what we have in the promise of the gospel.
In baptism, God gives us a new last chapter, Jesus’ last chapter. Jesus’ fate and destiny are now ours. In the waters of Baptism, we have died and risen with Christ in advance, before we ever reach our last chapter. Because we now know what that last chapter will be, even before we get there, we get to live and experience the plot of our lives in a new way. Our lives are changed, different, altered because of the “down payment” we have received on this new last chapter written by God in the life of Jesus and offered to us in the power of the Spirit. In truth, anytime we talk about the gospel, we cannot do so without talking about the Trinity, one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s the reason the doctrine of the Trinity is important. It’s the reason why orthodoxy matters.
Orthodoxy becomes perverted when it’s imposed as some sort of ideology or doctrine that we “must believe.” Orthodoxy is always about what needs to be said in order for the good news to be good news. The Trinity is the way we need to talk about God in order for the good news to be good news. Is there still a mystery to the Trinity? Yes. The Trinity will always sound somewhat irrational and confounding. Trinitarian math will always sound absurd. But the real mystery of the Trinity isn’t simply its complexity or a strange sort of logic. The real mystery of the Trinity is centered in this question: Why does God bother at all? Why does God bother with us at all?
Why does God bother to love us like He does? Why does God bother to be merciful, compassionate, and excessively generous? Perhaps one day we’ll know the answer to that question. But even if we never find out, even if we never fully understand the mystery of our Triune God, it won’t matter. God the Father still sent His Son to save us and reconcile us to Himself, and Jesus still sent the promised Holy Spirit to be with us, to strengthen us, and to guide us in all truth.
Why is God a triune God, one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Why did God bother to love us so much that He gave His only begotten Son and sent His Spirt to be with us? Perhaps part of the reason He sent His Son is so that we can, in our limited capacity, understand the true love and nature of our loving God. He sent Jesus to us so we could experience God’s amazing love and then share that love with others. The doctrine of the Trinity is important because it’s the only way we can share the Good News with others. But it’s okay for us to acknowledge, that on this side of eternity, God is still a mystery and it’s okay if we don’t have all the answers.
Amen.