Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Please join me in prayer: Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing, we may believe and in believing, we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Trinity Sunday is the only festival for the Church
that’s dedicated to a doctrine of the Church:
the idea that we worship One God revealed in three persons—that old three-for-the-price-of-one kind of deal.
Here’s the question I should probably ask you right off the bat: Is this important to you? Outside the ivory towers of dogmatic debate, bible banter, and church chat, does the Trinity matter:
to your life in the world?
or to the work of the Gospel?
or to our worship of God?
In fact, I would argue, it has, and does, and should. But before we get too far down that road, let’s make sure that we’re all looking at the same map.
Let’s share what we’ve learned in Church about the Trinity:
WHO are the persons of the three-in-one?
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
WHAT are their jobs?
Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier
HOW do they relate?
All are equal, none subordinate
Some popular images that have been used to explain the Trinity include:
− the isosceles triangle (equal sides, no point of higher importance)
− a caterpillar (each stage of development is as vital as the next)
− H2O (liquid/water, gas/steam, solid/ice)
− an egg (shell, yolk, white—again, each vital)
And what’s the problem with all such attempts; what characteristic do they share? They all use a physical reality to describe a relational truth.
Confirmation kids see this from a mile away. A favorite “stump the teacher” question for Sonia or me is this: If Jesus was truly God AND truly man at the same time, then who was he praying to in the garden of Gethsemane?
Those students see right away that, at the heart of the matter, we’re talking about a relationship issue . . . and that alone makes it vital business for all of us. Contrary to what Paul Simon may have sung back in the Sixties: I am not a rock . . . and I do feel pain . . . whenever my relationships suffer. So, our challenge is to talk about these relationships in a meaningful way within God, within us, AND between God and us.
Let’s imagine that in a very weak moment, you volunteered to teach Confirmation. How would you describe the relationship between Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Holy Spirit, and God in heaven?
I don’t claim to have a corner on the market, but the explanation that works best for me can be found in Philippians 2, vs. 6-7. There, the Apostle Paul says about Jesus:
though he was in the form of God, (he) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
Did you hear that? Something has happened, something so earth-shattering, life-threatening, hope-destroying, that the Lord willingly sacrifices part of God’s very identity to do what has to be done.
What goal could be so great?
What mission is so momentous?
What cause is so crucial that only an offering of
God’s own heart on the altar of sacrifice can make it happen?
That kind of takes the doctrine of the Trinity off the dusty shelf and puts it right on the front lines of our human engagement with love and hate, war and peace, fear and faith, sin and forgiveness, life and death. Jesus was sent to serve (us) and to suffer (us) and to save (us).
Now we don’t tend to hear a whole lot these days about service and suffering. Do you get the feeling that our culture has lost an understanding of and appreciation for the true meaning of sacrifice? Trust me, I’m not pointing fingers or throwing stones—some have said that we, who are baby boomers, started this whole mess.
On Memorial Day weekend, the History Channel ran a story about a few recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, one of the highest tributes in our land. The show introduced us to some incredibly humble people who had demonstrated some amazing acts of self-sacrifice, many of whom had suffered in the midst of or because of their willingness to serve and to save.
One story in particular featured a young Navy Corpsman, Robert Bush, who was part of the WWII assault on the Pacific island of Okinawa. He was wounded a number of times on the same day, yet continued to give first-aid to one injured Marine after another. Any one of his wounds was an automatic ticket off the island. So what held him there, what kept him motivated to brave the bullets and bombs of that battlefield?
I think it’s about relationships. . .
− Who are the easiest people to ignore in our lives? Strangers across the city, across the state, across the world—it doesn’t matter. If we don’t know them, most of the time we can pretend that they don’t even exist.
− On the other hand, who are the hardest people to ignore? Family members, neighbors, friends—people we know, with whom we have a relationship. Now, some of them we may wish we didn’t know, but most are people to whom we would rarely say No! if they asked us for help.
With all of this in mind, let’s turn once more to our Gospel lesson for today. John 3:16-17 defines heaven’s notion of family, those with whom God is in relationship. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
What an amazing claim! God is so interested in being in relationship with the likes of you, and me, and everyone everywhere . . . that Jesus sacrificed himself, laid himself down on our altar of spite and selfishness, greed and godlessness, fear and faithlessness—so that we, so that the world might know that we are known and loved by God.
That’s the good news about the Trinity, that the King of Creation, the Spirit of Life, the Savior of the World, was sent to serve, suffer, and save us. Hm—I wonder how God wants us to show our thanks? Amen.
Pastor Scott Fuller