Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Sermon - Holy Trinity Sunday - John 3:1-17

 

Holy Trinity Sunday

One of the nifty little neo-logisms we hear these days is “man-splaining”.  When someone, especially a man, explains something in a condescending way, especially to a woman.  A related term is “over-explaining”.  In our impatient world of fast-moving information, we don’t have time to sit through a long explanation of something we already know, so we skip to the end, or speed up the video, or ask for the “too long, didn’t read” version.

And while we probably all could be well-served by more patience, especially when it comes to the important teachings of the faith….  It is also true that Christian preachers may run into the danger of “over-explaining” certain doctrines, especially the one on center stage today – the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

Through many years of experience and great controversies, the church has learned a hard lesson about the doctrine of the Trinity.  It is a truth of scripture to be confessed, but not over-explained. It is a teaching to be fully accepted, but never completely understood.  It is a blessing that God graciously reveals to us, not something that we, of ourselves, concluded or deciphered about him. 

And so a right approach to such a doctrine comports very well with the Gospel itself.  Just as we are saved by grace and not by works, so we receive God’s revelation of himself as three and one – by grace – it comes to us, it’s not something we, even the whole church has “worked out”.  It is, rather, a gift.

This is why tools like the Athanasian Creed are so valuable for the church.  It sets a safe framework in which we may rightly confess the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  It guards us from going astray, and repeating the errors of the past, which the church has already resolved.  It keeps us from new and divergent and false teachings which always detract from the Gospel, tend toward works righteousness, and diminish the work of God in Christ for our salvation.

We sinners want to master the material, we want to claim expertise and knowledge.  We want to be, in a word, like God.  It was our first temptation.  But just as Adam and Eve would have done far better if they simply trusted God’s word, “in the day you eat of it you will die”.  So we also do better to simply trust what God says about himself in Holy Scripture, concerning the Holy Trinity.

Today we have three of the great passages on which the doctrine of the Trinity rests… Isaiah 6, John 3, and Acts 2.

In Isaiah’s vision, like much of the Old Testament, the three-ness and one-ness of God is not as clearly revealed as it is in the New Testament.  Nonetheless, there are shades of it.  The angels sing that God is, “Holy, Holy, Holy”.  In the Hebrew, a three-fold repetition indicates a superlative.  As if to say, holy, holier, holiest.  But therein is also a hint of the three persons of this Holy Trinity and Undivided Unity.  The early church fathers understood this to be such a reference to the Trinity.

In John 3, Jesus explains to Nicodemus the importance of Holy Baptism, that is, being born again.  Later Jesus would command his disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  But already with Nicodemus, Jesus is teaching that the Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that we may be born of water and the Spirit.

Holy Baptism is thus another doctrine that is intricately linked to the doctrine of the Trinity.  For we are baptized into that threefold name of the one true God.  His triune name is upon us.  We are people of the triune God.  Children of the Father, Saved by the Son, Sanctified by the Spirit.  And whenever we hear that triune Name we can remember our baptism and make the sign of the cross.  In a way, your baptism is where the rubber of the this doctrine hits the road of your life.  You are baptized into the name, the three-fold name of God.  Thus he shares his divine unity with you.

Lest anyone say that the Christian Church invented this teaching at some council hundreds of years later, we have also the testimony of St. Peter in his Pentecost Day sermon.  From Acts 2, today, we hear Peter preach: 

this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.  God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death,

Peter unfolds the working of the Father and the Son: Jesus is crucified according to the Father’s plan, and the Father raises him from the dead, also according to plan.  Peter goes on:

Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

The ascended and exalted Christ, at the right hand of God the Father, pours out his Holy Spirit.  Here we see the oneness of purpose, the united activity, the deep and mysterious way in which the Triune God accomplishes his purposes.

The Father sends the Son, to take on our flesh, to suffer, to die, to rise… to ascend and reign over all things.  The Son obeys the Father’s will, makes the Father known to his people, is obedient unto death, even death on a cross, and rises victorious, ascends in glory.  The Son then sends the Spirit, the Helper, the Comforter, to guide his people into all truth.  The Spirit, who testifies to Christ.  The Spirit, who calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies.  The Spirit who gives life, and that life is in Christ.

The Christian faith is no preschool lesson.  Yes, there are simple truths – God created you.  You are a sinner.  Jesus died for you.  We get to go to heaven.  But here there is not only spiritual milk, but meat. 

Here there are truths that exceed the greatest minds of the most learned scholars.  The deep and profound and sublime – the mysteries of the faith which are worthy of our attention, our study, and our pondering.  And the deeper we peer into these, like the doctrine of the Trinity, the more we are both humbled and amazed.  The more we see the riches of God’s grace.  The more we are comforted and encouraged.  The more we appreciate our salvation in Jesus Christ.

And then we come back to this, that we can ultimately not understand it, but only confess it.  That Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, by the power of his Holy Spirit.  One God, Three Persons, a Holy Trinity and Undivided Unity – all for you, always.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment