EDITOR'S NOTE: On Oct. 23, 2021, I was ordained as a minister of word and sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and installed as pastor at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. I also served the same church for four years from October 2017 to October 2021 a synodically authorized minister. The journey together these past four years has been an amazing one, full of learning, growing and a deepening of my theological mind. This sermon took place on June 15, 2022.
This week's gospel: John 16:12-15
12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
The message:
Welcome to Holy Trinity Wednesday, as we’ll call it for our specific purposes. … The service where we pay homage to the Holy Trinity, or the intertwining of God, his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit into one entity, that is considered the Godhead.
Now, if none of that helped you to understand the Holy Trinity any better, then I would highly encourage you NOT to go searching through the Bible for a better definition.
Because, you likely won’t find one. … At least not an outright, explicit description of the Holy Trinity. … Because one never appears. … Not even in Paul’s letters.
Even though from the earliest days of growing up in our church, to later studying the three forms of the Holy Trinity during confirmation, and having it driven home to us as adults that God encompasses all three forms, but yet they remain distinct from one another … despite all of that: The Holy Trinity is never directly explained to us in the scriptures.
And therein lies one of the problems of trying to be human and fully grasp this enigmatic entity of the simultaneous three-in-one … AND one-in-three nature of the Trinity.
The Trinity, while if one works hard to find it, can be found in the Bible. … But it is never fully explained in any scriptures devoted to just the Trinity.
And, so we have to rely on the human explanations of what the Trinity are. … And frankly, we all know how far short we come … when we try to explain the divine in mere words!
Take this description, for instance: “The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as being one god existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons sharing one essence. In this context, the three persons define who God is, while the one essence defines what God is.
There! … Clear as mud, right?!?!?!
No, I suspect not. … And how could it ever be clear when we are trying to explain the deep mystery of the Holy Trinity to humans, a creation so unable to comprehend -- or bear as Jesus says in the gospel reading tonight -- the makings of God's universe.
I don’t find the theologians’ descriptions of the Holy Trinity anymore helpful than you do. So what do I find helpful?
Maybe, I would call it a pastor’s understanding of the Trinity. And I would describe it this way: The Trinity is best explained as the way the church, and its faithful, have experienced the essence -- and essences -- of God from the beginning of the church on through 2,000 years later to today.
First there was God the creator, who with the power of the Holy Spirit created the universe, including our little corner of it here on earth.
Then there was Jesus Christ, God’s only son, who was both human and divine, and whom God sent to live among us, teach us how to love and then sacrificed himself for our sins so that we all can be together in God’s Kingdom one day.
And then there is the Holy Spirit … or the Paraclete, or the Advocate … whom God sent to live and be present among us when he called his own son home to prepare the Kingdom for us. … And that Holy Spirit continues to live among us, continues to teach us Jesus’ ways and also intervenes for us in an active way in our daily lives.
God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. All separate, but intertwined essences. And you can’t experience one, without also experiencing aspects of the others.
And in my limited human capacity, that’s about as close to the understanding of the Holy Trinity that I can get.
But if you are humbled by this exercise, just as I am, take heart. Jesus knew, before he even left earth, that we could never come close to fully grasping the divine relationship of the Holy Trinity.
Just take a look back at our gospel tonight: “Jesus said, ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.’”
So, there you go! … Cut yourself some slack if you’ve ever found yourself at a loss of words as to how to explain the Holy Trinity to someone else. … Jesus even knew that we would struggle 2,000 years ago!
However, Jesus also didn’t give up on trying to nudge us toward understanding.
He knew our brains couldn’t fully grasp the essences of God, BUT he believed that maybe our souls one day might: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
Did you catch the interplay of the Holy Trinity there … in Jesus’ own words?
When the Spirit comes.
He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Finally: All that the Father has is mine.
The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit. … Intertwined, and all acting together on our behalf, to do what? … To take what is Jesus’ -- and thus also the Father’s -- and declare it to us.
To declare God’s love for us. … To declare God’s grace for us. … To declare Jesus’ salvation to us. … To declare eternity to us.
In other words, the Holy Trinity makes it possible so that we -- as God’s faithful people -- have access to this unimaginable kind of grace!
We may never be able to bear all the things about God, as Jesus knowingly tells us in tonight’s gospel. … But thanks to the work of all three essences of God, we can see, touch and experience the Holy Trinity in ways that our human brains aren’t meant to comprehend.
We can see God’s work in the creation around us. In all of the living creatures, the sunsets, the beautiful summer evenings, the life springing forth in the spring and the quiet time of Sabbath in the winter.
And we can study and learn the stories about Jesus’ love, how he turned the values of this earthly kingdom on their head, and how he ensured that no matter how marginalized this world may make some feel, that they still are treasured in God’s eyes and will most certainly inherit the kingdom.
Finally, we may not be able to capture it with a camera, or bottle it up for inspection, but if we are attentive, and we are on the lookout for it, we can experience the Holy Spirit’s active presence in this world.
Whether it’s divine intervention in our own life, or in the affairs of the world. If you try to, you can absolutely see that the Spirit ensures that our God, and Jesus Christ, are present in our everyday lives even today.
And that, Faith Family, is how I as a pastor would describe the Holy Trinity.
And that also is the Good News this Holy Trinity … Wednesday, June 15, 2022. … Amen.
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