Trinity Sunday (June 15, 2025)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

At the Council of Nicaea 1700 years ago, the great Fathers of the Church gave us the beautiful exposition of the faith that is the Nicene Creed. The Creed is inherently Trinitarian, not only in substance, but in style with each section of the Creed focusing on one of the Persons of the Trinity and that Person’s relation to the other members of the Trinity. The Creed is useful in many ways: it helps us know God better and to avoid error, but perhaps one of its great contributions is that it helps us foster what we might call a Trinitarian imagination. The imagination is a powerful thing. When we think about imagination, we might think of children and their imaginary friends or imaginary games of pretend, but imagination isn’t something we age out of. Imagination refers to the faculty of forming new ideas, images, or concepts of external objects that aren’t present to the senses. Someone with a great imagination might be able to demonstrate it in the writing of stories, drawing of pictures, or writing music. it’s also true that imagination is invaluable in whatever field one works in. for example, a judge needs to have a legal imagination so that they can anticipate how their decisions might impact lives. A salesperson needs an imagination that help them connect the person’s needs to the product they’re selling. A parent might need imagination to help them shepherd their children through difficult circumstances. One of the benefits of Nicene Christianity is that it helps us develop a Trinitarian imagination. And maybe you’re thinking that the Council of Nicaea was 1700 years ago and we won so why do we need a Trinitarian imagination at this point? The Creed remains relevant to us today not only because God has revealed himself to be three-in-one and one-in-three, but also because we find ourselves at a moment when many seem to downplay the importance of orthodoxy. Some people might say, “Just give me Jesus” to eschew any emphasis on doctrine. Many popular preachers will shy away from talking about doctrine to favor a positive psychology that will give people things like practical approaches to parenting and ten steps to a better marriage (these things aren’t bad of course, but they also flow out from the Church’s mission and so it’s important that we build on a sure foundation). In progressive circles, the Trinity can be seen as patriarchal and useless antiquarianism that distracts us from more pertinent issues of social justice. And so we come to Trinity Sunday, the conclusion of the liturgical cycle of Jesus’ life, to be reminded that the Creeds of the Church matter, reminding us that Jesus is God of God and that God is three-in-one and one-in-three. Like the air we breathe, the Trinity surrounds every doctrine. It’s easy to forget it’s there, but without it, nothing else holds together and we would be hopelessly adrift in a sea of heresy. And so what I hope to convince you of today is the Trinity is not just an exercise in academic theology but that our very salvation is entirely dependent on the Trinity.

Our entry point into the Trinity this morning is the Gospel reading from John 3. The Jewish religious leader Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. That’s not an accident: the darkness of night here parallels Nicodemus’s ignorance of who Jesus really is. Still, even amidst that ignorance, Nicodemus recognize that Jesus is one who has been sent by God the Father (John 3:2), a recognition, however faint, that the Father speaks to us through his Word, the Son. Based on their encounter, Jesus reveals that the Son is the cause of salvation; via the Incarnation, he has descended to us and is now lifted up like the bronze serpent from the book of Numbers that was lifted up in the middle of Israel’s camp to save those who had been bitten by snakes. And yet we see that while the Son was sent by the Father in order to be the means of our salvation, the Holy Spirit is the cause of our salvation because Jesus tells us that we must be born of water and the Spirit, a reference to the Sacrament of Baptism. But that’s not the only place we see the Trinity this morning; we also see it in the Sacrament of Baptism.

We see a thoroughly Trinitarian liturgy in the liturgy of Baptism. We begin by calling on God the Father through the Son for the Holy Spirit to be imparted to the person being baptized. The Father is the recipient of the opening prayer. We pray to him on behalf of the child being baptized and based on the Scripture we become convinced of his good will towards the child. And good news: the triune God, the three Persons of the Trinity, share a singular will. If the Father loves this child, the Son does too: “for that thy dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ , for the forgiveness of sins, did shed out of his most precious side both water and blood.” How could God express his love more profoundly than that? When the person for him the Father sent his Son to die on the Cross is baptized, they are washed and incorporated into Christ; they are given the Holy Spirit: “Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this Child is regenerate,” we say. And then “it hath pleased thee to regenerate this Child with the Holy Spirit.” God makes us alive by the operation of the Holy Spirit which indwells in the newly baptized person. This shows us that salvation is a Trinitarian work where the singular will of the Trinity that the sinner shouldn’t perish and that all may be saved becomes realized.

But it doesn’t stop there. As Anglicans, the Book of Common Prayer forms the basis and rhythm of our devotional lives. Drawing on an even more ancient way of being, the Prayer Book emphasizes three facets: Holy Communion, Morning and Evening Prayer, and what we might call private or individual prayer. The foundation for structuring our spiritual lives that way comes from the Trinity as revealed in Holy Scripture and the teachings of the Church as revealed in the Apostle’s, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds. Martin Thornton, the great Anglican ascetical theologian reminds us that “The health of the soul depends upon the health of its Prayer, which in turn depends upon the adequacy of its conception of God.” God is the Father is a statement that emphasizes his transcendence. God is the Son emphasizes the sacrament and the connection of all things to the Father. The Holy Ghost is God reminds us that God is immanent and intimately involved with the world; he is closer to us than we are to ourselves. And so we offer the Office as a kind of corporate worship. It’s always corporate whether we’re praying it at home by ourselves or here together at church because it’s the prayer of Jesus to his Father. The Daily Office then is the prayer of the whole Church, the Body of Christ. Holy Communion, the center of our worship, is the direct worship of Christ because it makes his mediatoral sacrifice present to us. in the form of bread and wine, he condescends to us and gives us his very body, blood, soul, and divinity. Then we have our private prayer, the acts of recollection we make throughout the day, the petitions that we offer to God, the conversations that we have with him in our hearts. This is a Spirit-focused way of being because he’s always there, prompting us and nudging us. Now, of course, none of our prayer can ever be divorced from the Trinity. Jesus and the Holy Spirit feature prominently in Morning and Evening Prayer, the Holy Spirit plays an active role in Holy Communion in transforming the elements into Christ, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are important foci in our prayers. We don’t want to be tritheists; God is still one. But each of those distinct modes of prayer—Daily Office, Holy Communion, and Private Prayer—help us focus on each aspect of the Trinity so that our very worshipping life follows the Trinitarian formula.

Theology matters because it helps us become better at prayer. All prayer, all theology, starts with the Trinity. The plan of salvation is a trinitarian work: the Son offers himself to the Father; the Father receives the sacrifice of the Son; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and is given to the Church. This is because God doesn’t hate what he has made; he doesn’t want any to perish, but wants all to be saved. In our own lives, baptism incorporated us into the Son and made us partakers of the divine nature. The Son has bridged the gap between us and the Father so that his Father becomes our Father and his Spirit becomes our Spirit; we become sharers in their love. Our prayer life then is organized to celebrate and honor the Trinity. It forms and shapes our imaginations to think in a Trinitarian way. And so our goal should be to translate that beautiful theology into lives that worship the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity: “Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity. Let us give glory to Him because He has shown mercy to us.”

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