Sermon: Holy Trinity - 2020

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.