The Trinity

Pastor Burcham's Sermon

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The service begins with a baptism. Not too unusual for us around here. The proud parents walk down the center aisle. In a few moments, they'll make some promises about how they'll raise the child. The sponsors will make some promises similar. We, as a congregation, will even make some promises to that child. And then, at the very end, the child's head is held over the water and then in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, they are brought into God's family.

What did we mean by that? I'm not talking about baptism this morning but the fact that we baptized the child in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A little bit later on in the service, we'll all join together in the Lord's Prayer but we'll start the prayer that Jesus taught us “Our Father who art in heaven.” Maybe the message for the day, we'll speak about God's one and only Son and how God's Son became incarnate and lived among us and died for us and rose again. Perhaps we'll speak about the power of the Holy Spirit and how that spirit generates faith in our hearts and builds up. What are we talking about?

When we talk about the fact that there is only one God, I would guess, I would hope, if I ask each one of you how many gods there were, you'd say, “Well, there is only one God.” And yet, throughout our service and throughout even our conversations in the midst of Christianity, we talk about the Father, we talk about the Son, and we talk about the Holy Spirit. What is that? What does that mean for us?

To simply it, we've come up with a name for it. We call it the Trinity or we call it the Triune God, the one God in three persons. Maybe you don't think about it at all. Maybe it's become so much a part of our belief that we just don't pay attention at baptisms or the Lord's prayer or any other time. But for this morning, let's focus in on the trinity. Let's focus in on our God, the one true God, the Triune God.

There are many different areas we could explore with that. For this morning, though, I'd like us to look at two. And that is the Trinity reveals for us the mystery of God, and the Trinity reveals for us the completeness of God's love for us. Certainly, the Trinity is a mystery. There's no way around it. Because scripture is crystal clear about its teaching about God. For instance, scripture is crystal clear that there is just one God and scripture condemns any belief that says there is anything other than just one God, both Old Testament and New Testament. When we start in the Old Testament, all we have to do is look at Deuteronomy 6:4. There, Moses gets up and he's speaking for God and he says, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” That was a point that needed to be made to the people of Israel at that time, that the Lord is one. There is only one God. They were surrounded by nations and cultures that had a God for every season, every need, you name it, they had a God for it. There is only one God. You might even remember when God led the people out of Egypt through Moses and he had the Ten Plagues, each of those plagues were an assault upon one of the gods of Egypt , the so-called gods of Egypt . God there, the true God, was proving what the Egyptians had, they weren't gods at all.

The point is there is only one true God. Throughout the whole history of the Israelites, God was always careful to instruct His people. He says, “Now I don't want you to associate too closely with your neighbors. Don't get too involved with the other nations because you might be pulled away to their false gods, their mini gods.” And so they were separate from everyone else. They were distinct. In fact, if you read through scripture and the history scripture reveals to us, you find out it really wasn't an anomaly for the people of Israel to worship just one God. The other nations couldn't understand it. “What do you mean you only have one God? How could you survive with just one God?” They had all kinds of gods. They would pit one God against another God. Otherwise, how could you get your way? They referred to the Israelites. God is a jealous God because He would only let them have one. Yet scripture remains loud and clear. “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

It carries over to the New Testament. Jesus Himself speaking in Matthew 12. He's identified when asked, “What's the greatest commandment?” That was the question given to Jesus. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:4 and He begins with the quote, “Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Jesus Himself saying God is one. If you look at the early church, it was the teaching that there was just one God. If you look at the Book of Acts, Chapter 17, you have Paul. He's in Athens . And he's walking around and he sees all the different idols, all the different gods, so he stands up on Mars Hill and he says, “I see you have a temple to the unknown God,” and he begins to explain to them he knows the one true God.

Or how about Peter and John? Peter and John are on trial. They're brought before the officials and they say, “Salvation is found in no one else. There is only one God that can save you. There is only one name under heaven and earth by which you can be saved, the name of the one true God.” And they named Jesus. It goes on and on. There's just one God.

I'm going to take a slight tangent right here and ask ourselves, “How is that really relevant for us today?” I mean, after all, we don't have idols stacked up on street corners. We're not surrounded by nations that worship the sun and all kinds of other gods that were prevalent in the Old Testament times, so really is it all that important that we emphasize the fact there is just one God? The way our world is turning and in our world culture, we've done an about face. Because we do live in a world that has multiple gods. We do live in a society and a culture that says you can pick and choose from all the various religions. It says now there are many paths that lead to heaven and it doesn't really matter which one you take. In fact, if you want to forge your own path, then that's okay too. The world we live in is more of a cafeteria-style religion, which means you walk through the line and you pick and choose a little bit of this one, a little bit of that one. Maybe you really like this religion, so you take a double helping of that one. And you formulate it all together and you come up with your own concept of God. We live in a world and a culture that has multiple gods. It's important we stand clear on the word of God, which says there is only one true God.

Okay, so far, so good. I probably wouldn't have any argument from any of you. There is one God. Right? Great, we have that settled. Except scripture throws a little monkey wrench into the whole deal because as crystal clear as scripture is that there is only one true God, then scripture starts talking about the Father and then it talks about the Son and it talks about the Holy Spirit. My math says that's three. So are there three gods? No, no, no scripture says, there is only one God. And yet scripture is crystal clear about the fact that there are what we call three persons of this God, that there may be only one God but yet there are these three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Again, scripture attests to that in Old Testament and New Testament. Go all the way back to the first book of the bible, the first chapter of the bible, and God is getting ready to create mankind and what does scripture say? It says, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” Hold the phone. What do you mean our likeness, in our image? Didn't Genesis 1 start out that God created the heavens and the earth? You remember, just one God. And yet here the language is crystal clear, it is the pleural that says let us make man in our image and in our likeness. You go throughout the Old Testament and it speaks about the spirit of the Lord or it talks about the Son of Man, which is a direct reference to the Son of God, that is, Jesus. Go into the New Testament and it's all over the place. Did you catch the irony of the quote from Matthew? Jesus, the second person of the trinity, Jesus who is the Son of God and yet He quotes a piece of scripture that says, “The Lord that is God is one.” So Jesus, the Son of God, the second person of the trinity, is teaching that there is only one God. And Jesus talks about how He'll send His Holy Spirit to the disciples. Jesus talks about how He's going to return back to His Father. You even have the Great Commission where He says, “Go and make disciples.” How do you do that? You baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So just as crystal clear as scripture is that there is only one God, scripture is crystal clear there are these three persons we call them, that there is a Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's the mystery of God. That's the mystery of the God we worship.

Oh sure, we can come up with a name for it. It's nowhere in scripture. We just decided to simplify it and name it, so we call it triune or we call it the trinity. We simply took two Latin words and put it together, the word for three, the word for one, we smashed them together, we came up with triune. It didn't exist before we decided to name it. You see, we can't fully explain or understand our God. We can name it by saying it's a triune God, but we can't really explain it or understand it. We can even diagram it out, but we can't really explain it. We can have the triangle and say that's the trinity. You see, it has three points but yet there's just one triangle. But if you took that out to its fullest conclusion, it still doesn't quite add up. Nor was it supposed to. In the end, the God we worship is a God we have to hold in awe and mystery. By faith, we believe what scripture says to us. By faith, we will hold firm that there is one God and by faith we'll accept there is a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that there are not three gods but only one. By faith, we'll accept it but we'll never completely understand it.

That's purposeful on God's part because we have a God who is beyond our understanding. We have a God who is beyond our comprehension. Scripture even tells us God says to us, “My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. As far as the heavens are from the earth, so is the way I think.” We don't worship a manmade God, a God that's custom fit, that we can easily understand and tuck in our pocket. We worship a God we can't fully understand, a God who is so great, a God who is so far beyond us that it almost seems like He's a contradiction, one God but yet three. But God is not a contradiction and the trinity is not a contradiction. In fact, the trinity is really a revelation of God's love. The trinity reveals the completeness of God's love to us. God is after a relationship with us, and He goes after that relationship so we can stand in awe of Him. Oftentimes, we speak of God as a loving God, as our friend God but how often do we stand just in awe of who He is? If you start thinking at night about the whole concept of the trinity instead of just accepting it because that's what you were taught in confirmation but really started to think about this whole idea, how can you not just sit back in awe and wonder who God is? He's beyond us. He's beyond our understanding. As far as I'm concerned, I want a God who's beyond me, not a God I can easily understand, a God that's of my own creation. But a God who created me, a God that I can't completely comprehend. And that's the God who is revealed to us in scripture.

A nd the concept of the trinity is a further revelation of God's love for us. St. Paul is expressing that in his second letter to the Church at Corinth . He's ending that letter in Chapter 13 and so he leaves them with a blessing and he leaves them with the Trinitarian blessing we call that. But if you look at that blessing, it talks about the completeness of God's love. He says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” Well, if you take that apart, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, grace is undeserved love. That's the kind of love God has for us. It's not something we earn. It's not something we deserve and that grace is delivered over to us in the person of the Son, that is, Jesus Christ. You and I know we don't deserve God's love. It started all the way back in the Garden of Eden. As soon as God turned His back, as soon as Adam and Eve had the first chance, they turned their back on God and rebelled. And you and I, as soon as we lower down our guard, as soon as maybe we walk out those doors or we get into traffic on I-235, we're going to sin, we're going to go against God's way. We don't deserve anything God has given to us. But that's what grace is all about. Grace says God loves us, not because of something we've done or something we're going to do. Grace says God loves you. It's an unconditional kind of love. It's an undeserved love. That is demonstrated for us in Jesus. It is the Son of God who came and lived among us. And scripture says that, although He didn't know sin, in other words, He didn't sin, He became sin for us. Now why would He do that? Because He loves us. Jesus says, “I didn't come into the world to condemn the world but to give my life as a ransom for many.” That's God's love for us. It's demonstrated so clearly in Jesus, that Jesus would come and live among us, that He'd willingly die in our place, and that He'd rise again from the dead so all of us could stand forgiven in front of the Father, so all of us could be in heaven one day. The grace of God is demonstrated in the second person of the trinity, that is, the Son Jesus.

It goes on to talk about the love of God, the love of God the Father. Think about the love of a parent for a child. You think about when the first child comes around. Didn't you get the nursery ready? Even if you didn't have a room that was ready for a nursery, didn't you do something special? You got a bed all set for them. Maybe you did something to the walls. You got all the stuff you need. You made all the preparations for this new life. Isn't that what creation is all about? God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them and why? So He could create male and female and place them there to live. That's the love of God the Father. Even after they sinned against Him, remember Adam and Eve are hiding in the garden, God comes and He's looking for them. He makes the condemnation, and they have to leave the garden and all of that. Then what's the very next thing scripture says? God made clothes for them. Now you know He had to be just as mad as a hornet. Wouldn't you be as a parent? But don't you still take care of your kids? God made clothes for them. And then God made a plan for salvation of all of mankind. There isn't anything the Father wouldn't give for you, including watching His Son die. That's the completeness of God's love.

The fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and calls us to faith. Maybe it was through the gospel message. Maybe it was through the gift of baptism, but it's God's Holy Spirit who enters our heart and turns us and calls us to faith in the Son and to the Father. It's the Holy Spirit that gives us fellowship with God, communion with God. Now think about that for a moment. Fellowship communion with God. This awe-inspiring God, this almighty God, this creator of the heavens and the earth and everything in it and yet we can call Him our Father. We can call Him our brother. We can call Him a friend.

The trinity is a revelation of God's complete love for us, His grace, his love and care, the fact that we have fellowship with Him. That's what the trinity's about. We may not understand it, but we believe it. We accept it.

So I wonder the next time the service begins with a baptism, would you take just a moment and stop looking at the cute little baby, just a moment, I know you want to look, but just for a moment, and sit back in awe of God. As you hear the words, “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and you think there's only one God and yet there are three persons of that God. I can't understand it. I sure am glad He's my God. As He reveals to us the completeness of His love. Amen.

Copyright 2005 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church