Holy Trinity 2008
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
During the week I thought maybe this Sunday I might take off from going deep. It’s been a tough week on everybody, and I thought a nice relaxing, perhaps uncomplicated message might be in order.
Today is The Holy Trinity. How that for an uncomplicated topic? While the Holy Trinity may seem like a deep concept, I’m determined to make this a nice relaxing message, if it kills me. So here we go.
The greeting that I just gave, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all,” is the first written concept of the Holy Trinity found in the New Testament, in 2 Corinthians. The term Trinity is found nowhere in Scripture. However, when we baptize, which is our main sacrament, or sign we hear the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit.” When we embrace new members, what we are doing is simply affirming our Baptism in the name of a Triune God.
Today is The Holy Trinity.
All this Trinitarian language is simply or not simply the Christian effort to identify God. The God who has made us, redeemed us, and sanctified us. We need to know who God is. That is our nature.
The official doctrine of the Trinity reads something like this. Pay attention, because I’m going to test you. Ok are you ready?
That the Being of the one eternal deity there are three eternal and essential distinctions, the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons in one substance and one being in three distinct beings. They are coeternal and coequal.
The divine nature is fully undividedly contained. Even through the persons are in the closest possible unity with one another and interpenetrate one another, each has a peculiar character when viewed in relation to the others.
The Father is not begotten but is said to be ingenerate. The Son is begotten eternally and proceeds by filiation. The Spirit proceeds by spiration from both the Father and the Son.
That’s the official doctrine of the Trinity. Did you get all of that?
It took the early church over 400 to come up with this statement. The doctrine of the Spirit almost a thousand, and believe it or not these people were not even Lutheran. This makes no sense to me.
I once heard, “Bring me a person that can comprehend the Trinity and I’ll show you a worm that can comprehend a person.
Well, with a definition like the one I just read, this statement may be true. But this doesn’t have to be the case. I think the Holy Trinity can be explained in a way that is understandable and hopefully can lead one to a closer relationship with God.
I really don’t think it is as complicated as some make it out to be. The Triune God is about Love. Simple as that!
It’s about Love, Love, Love.
Today I want to share with how I view the doctrine of the Trinity and see if it might clear up some of the misconception that this is an unexplainable concept.
When I think of the Holy Trinity I think about God the God, God the God, and finally God the God.
God the God, or God the Father I cannot say a whole lot about. This is God who is way beyond my knowledge and way beyond my rational thinking, but I still know that I am in the presence of this God, because of the feeling I have of being overwhelmed by awe. A kind of presence or feeling that just will not let go, an experience of the Almighty that gives me goose bumps.
It is God that I see when I stand on the shores of Ocean Isle and watch the waves pound the coast. It is God I feel when I watched the birth of my three children. It is God that grasps me when I wake up to twelve inches of freshly fallen snow, and the same God that makes me smile when I see the first flower burst through the cold ground of early spring.
God the God is what Martin Luther calls a mystery. This is God who shakes me makes me say WOW! How can these things be?
This is God we read about in the Old Testament. God the Creator. God the God, creator of all there is, all there was, all there every will be.
This is God the Judge that we read about in the story of Noah and the Ark, the tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah. This is God the Liberator who delivers the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. This is God the Lawgiver at Mount Sinai. This is God the Father.
This is God the God who is everywhere and this everywhere is what this God cares about. This is a God of Love. Its about Love, Love.
God the God is not only the mystery that I have no way of comprehending. God the God is also Jesus Christ. This is God through Jesus showing us the face of the mystery. This is God revealed in the little baby of Jesus, come to live among us, telling us with his life and death that our life and death also have meaning and make sense. I count for something. You count for something.
This is God, in Jesus, who teaches us the meaning of family and neighbor, and who redefines our true daily needs. This is God calling back those who are lost, those who have been separated from the Almighty. This is God who brings the poor dignity, the oppressed hope, and the sick healing and comfort. People who have been despised are now accepted. People who have become rigid and fossilized come alive again and tired life can become young and fruitful once more.
This is God who out of love took care of the greatest fear that us humans must deal with, the power of death. This is God who out of love wiped out this one final and monstrous fear on the cross—Jesus who was perfectly innocent and without sins was willing to suffer the most humiliating death to accomplish some wonderful things for you.
Through the death and resurrection of this God you can now have incredible hope that things don’t come to an end with this life. Free to live life in obedience to this Triune God.
Now you can look to Jesus upon the cross see the love that the Father has for you, so that in your sufferings and trials of everyday life you may find comfort and strength that God the God is actually suffering with you. You are not alone.
This is God who is everywhere and this everywhere is what this God cares about. This is a God of Love. It’s about Love, Love, Love.
Finally, we come the God the God, who we refer to as the Holy Spirit. It has been called by some the shy person of the Trinity. I disagree, I don’t believe the Holy Spirit is shy at all, but only neglected. Some claim the Holy Spirit is the most difficult to grasp and understand. I disagree. I’m good at that—disagreeing.
Ok, I realize I will never comprehend the God the God, the mystery, even though I will always be in awe. I realize I cannot go back 2000 years and shake hand of Jesus of Nazareth, and be able to thank him personally for everything he has done in my life, though I hold out hope that someday I will.
But I can experience the same God of creation, the same God of Jesus in a very powerful and real sense. I can experience God as inspiring, motivating, empowering, indwelling, and loving as ways of the personal active continuing presence of God the God, God the God, and God the God.
God the God of the Holy Spirit is once again God’s self. This is God, not a third entity mediating between God and Christ, but rather this is God. This is God who calls you, gathers you, enlightens you, and sanctifies you. This is God who is the giver of true life!
Think about it. When you ponder the love of God, it is the same God of Creation, the same God that hung on a cross that is working in you right now, helping you believe and understand the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is God who is everywhere and this everywhere is what this God cares about. This is God of Love.
Thought I was going to sing uh?
So next time when sitting around your dinner party talking about the Holy Trinity, or the God who loves us, and someone states that all this is just too complicated to understand, I want you to reach deep into your pocket, or purse for that worm who understands humanity. Look them straight in the eye and say, “It is rather simple my friend, It’s about Love, Love, Love.”
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Amen!
