Sermon: Holy Trinity - 2020
7 June 2020
Text: John 3:1-17 (Isa
6:1-7, Rom 11:33-36)
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
“Blessed
be the Holy Trinity and the Undivided Unity; Let us give glory to Him, for He
has shown mercy unto us.”
We
like to be in control. We like to have
everything in its place. We like to
understand how things work.
We
like to understand why things are the way they are. And that is because God made us that
way. He created us in His image, in the
image of the Creator (and we can be wonderfully creative), the Redeemer (and we
can indeed fix that which is broken and lay down our own lives as a ransom),
and the Sanctifier (and we can indeed lead people to holiness and to that which
is transcendent).
But
we are also fallen. And so we often
display a parody of the divine nature to embrace sin instead of holiness; death
instead of life; and the devil instead of the Most Holy Trinity.
And
most of the world doesn’t understand.
They accept brokenness as normal, death as natural, and evil as rational
self-interest. They deny the
transcendent. They don’t think about
death – and when they do, it is with either utter terror or morbid
fascination. And they mock and hate the
very God they claim not to believe in.
The
unbelieving world wants a God that they can understand, explain, and
control. But such a god is no God at
all.
Fortunately
for us, for those who believe and have been born again by water and the Spirit,
we understand things that the world doesn’t, and we are content not to
understand the things that the world demands to know. We Christians, we who confess the catholic
faith “whole and undefiled” confess a holy and transcendent God who is
“inscrutable” and “unsearchable.” He is
one, and He is three. He is just and He
is merciful. He is transcendent and He
is near. He is beyond matter and He
takes on flesh. We do not understand,
but we confess, we adore, and we worship.
We
understand that we do not understand everything. But we also understand that we understand
what He has revealed to us.
In
the Divine Service, we find ourselves like Isaiah, brought physically into the
Lord’s presence. In the Holy Eucharist,
the messenger of the Lord brings the “burning coal that he had taken… from the
altar,” and he touches it to your lips.
The Lord Himself offers it to you: “Take, eat.” And even as the Lord’s own invitation says,
this Supper is “for the forgiveness of sins,” the Lord God Almighty, God in
Three Persons, proclaims to you, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your
guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
How
the Holy Sacrament is the body and blood of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity,
we don’t know. But we do know that this
Jesus, the Word Made Flesh by whom the universe was created, the voice that
said “Let there be” at the creation, “and there was,” He who was lifted up like
unto the serpent in the wilderness, He, God in the flesh, declares it to be
so. And it is so! We do not explain; we confess. We do not demand to know “how,” rather we
rejoice in what is.
“Blessed
be the Holy Trinity and the Undivided Unity; Let us give glory to Him, for He
has shown mercy unto us.”
“For
who,” asks the apostle, “who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been
His counselor?” St. Paul confesses and
rejoices in the mystery: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all
things. To Him be glory forever.”
But
there are indeed times when, perplexed by our lack of understanding, or beaten
down by the crafts and assaults of the devil, we slink to Jesus, to the Word,
by night, in the paraphrase of the poet: “Nicodemus came at night so he wouldn’t
be seen by men, Saying, ‘Master, tell me why a man must be born again.’”
We
want to know “why?”
There
are things that Jesus reveals through the Holy Spirit, and there are things He
does not. What we do know is this:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he
cannot enter the kingdom of God.” And
rather than gaze into the unsearchable will and inscrutable mind of God seeking
further elaboration, we confess it. And
so we make disciples, bringing them to this new birth by water and the Spirit
in Holy Baptism. And our Lord even tells
us “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” Do not marvel, dear friends, but
rejoice! Remember your baptism! Bring disciples to the font, from the very
young to the very old, to this new birth, to be given the promises of the
Transcendent God who is near!
Do
not try to make sense of this, but rather rejoice in the Gospel, the Good News,
that our Triune God loves us: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His
only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal
life. For God did not send His Son into
the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved
through Him.”
While
those who have sought to make sense of the world and of the transcendence that
we all know to be true, those who do not confess the catholic faith have
invented gods that they could understand, explain and control. The Greeks and Romans had a goddess of love:
Aphrodite in Greek, Venus in Latin. But
this goddess was just a character in a myth.
We Christians, dear friends, we who have the revelation of the Most Holy
Trinity, we have not a god of love, but a God who is love. And we know His love for us in that the
Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word Made Flesh, dies for us that we
might live. And what’s more, He shares
His body and blood with us, He absolves us, He fills us with the proclaimed
Good News, and He washes us in Baptism – in the second birth.
And
like Isaiah, though we rightly fear God and His mighty power, we know that His
power is in His mercy. For the same Word
that said, “Let there be light,” also says, “I forgive you all your sins.” That same Word invites you to “Take eat” and
“Take drink” and bids you to live eternally, rising from your tomb, on the Last
Day, the Day of Resurrection.
For
the Holy Trinity isn’t some obscure doctrine that dead theologians debated in a
dusty, irrelevant past, rather the Holy Trinity is our God, here and now, who
is love: who creates us, redeems us, and sanctifies us. He shows mercy to us. He forgives us. He gives us life that never ends. And with St. Patrick, the missionary bishop
of Ireland, we do not merely draw theological insights from the Trinity, but
rather confess, love, adore, and praise “the Three in One and One in Three.” We bind the Holy Trinity unto ourselves “by
invocation of the same.” In confessing
the Holy Trinity, we bind unto ourselves Christ’s incarnation, baptism,
crucifixion, and His “bursting from the spiced tomb.” His “hand to guide, His shield to ward, the
Word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.”
And
in binding ourselves thus, we array ourselves “against the demon snares of sin…
the hostile foes that mar my course.”
With
St. Patrick and all the saints, with the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant,
we bind unto ourselves the name of the Holy Trinity, “of whom all nature has
creation, Eternal Father, Spirit, Word, Praise to the Lord of my salvation;
salvation is of Christ the Lord.”
Let
us rejoice in this salvation, dear brothers and sisters, in the cross, in our
second birth, in the glory of the revelation of the Most Holy Trinity, in His
transcendence and in His closeness, in the Word, in Holy Baptism, in the
Sacrament of the Altar. For God is in
control. God has everything in its place. God understands how things work. Indeed, let us joyfully and eternally sing
and pray:
“Blessed
be the Holy Trinity and the Undivided Unity; Let us give glory to Him, for He
has shown mercy unto us.” Amen.
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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