Trinity Sunday 2025

St. Matthew’s Lutheran, Cornwall

Topical Sermon

SC AC Art 2

Trinity Sunday is, for many people in the church a day to groan, and complain, and lament, and say – AHGH ,not this day again. This day with the extremely LONG Creed. This day with the extremely boring and complicated words. This day that's all about DOCTRINE. And not JUST doctrine but , - agh, the most complex, complicated, confusing, deep, philosohpically charged and incomprehensible THINGS of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The day with questions like, WHAT AND WHO is God. What is a nature? What is an essence? What does it mean that Christ is begotten? How is Christ both God and man? What and who is the Holy Spirit? What does it mean that the Spirit PROCEEEDS? And not ONLY that, but here also is lumped in something else that so many people hate about Trinity Sunday, the anathemas and condemantions upon those who don’t believe it. And the insistence upon TRULY confessing, thinking, and speaking rightly about God in this, well, what seeems to be, this extremely precise, philosophical, complex, and deep manner. You know, the whole Whoever wants to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and inviolate will doubtless perish eternally. Whoever wants to be saved must think thus about the Trinity. it is necessary for eternal salvation that one also faithfully believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus

Christ. This is the catholic faith; a person cannot be saved without believing this firmly and faithfully. You know? Yeah, that. That’s here too. And not just HERE but its in our Gospel text also, and the context of Jonh’s gospel surrounding it, calling those who do not believe in the Triune God (and rihtly) as not knowing God, even if they claim to , even if they say they do. Of not knowing Him, and not worshiping Him, regardless of the fact that they think they do. Calling them, liars. Children of Satan. Those who SAY they know God, but – don’t. Yeah, - that’s here too.

And maybe you’re thinking now, no please… no. I don’t want that. Fair enough, don’t worry. Because im not preaching on that TODAY (maybe another day) . TODAY – I want to speak on this. With all of that in the background of today. The complex doctrines and people’s despair of their attempts to understand them, with all of the fear and uncomfortability people have surroudning what seems like the HARSHENESS of today and its condemanitons (Whcih are true, mind you) – I want to HELP you, to see, here, just one small thing today. That while to so many this doctrine of the Holy Trinity seems so, hmmm, lets say, impossible to understand, and to grasp. So beoynd their abilities, - that Here, at the center of it all, today, and yes, ever day also, is Christ, God incarnate IN THE FLESH, only begotten Son of the Father, conceived by the Holy Spirit. 2ndarticle of the Apostles Creed. The ground, root, and center of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

For just as the disciples later said to Jesus in John 14 Lord please show us the Father.And Jesus replied, if you have seen me you have seen the Father. Just as many cry out, saying , I want to rrecieve the Holy Spirit, (menaing by that, Oh, only God knows what), the Lord Christ stands before as the one conceived by the Holy Spirit, who fills us with that Spirit as we are baptized into Him, and breathes upon His Church that same Spirit after the resurrection, and sends that Spirit upon His mystical body at Holy Pentnecost – SO now He remains for us also the way that we SEE this doctrine of the Holy Trintiy.

Is it not so?

For before all time began, Proverbs 8 proclaims to us, there He was. As the King James puts it : The Lordpossessed me at the beginning of His way,Before His works of old.I have been established from everlasting,From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.When there wereno depths I was brought forth,When there wereno fountains abounding with water.Before the mountains were settled,Before the hills, I was brought forth;While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,Or the primal dust of the world.When He prepared the heavens, I wasthereWhen He marked out the foundations of thearth,30 Then I was beside Him asa master craftsman;And I was daily Hisdelight,Rejoicing always before Him,

Before all things, there was the Son. Before Abraham was, He says, I am. SO also we hear in the beginning of John’s Gospel, - in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.. All things were created by Him, through Him, and for Him, and without Him was not made anything that WAS made. Or as Genesis puts it,in the beginning In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness wason the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.Then God said, “Let there be light… and there was.

There it was, the Father, creating, and working all things out into creation, BY THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT (the breath of God), - as He SPOKE with that same breath, HisWORD. Whcih, as St. John continues – BECAME FELSH, AND DWELT AMONG US. And we called His name? - Jesus.

Becoming flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit.For as the Angel spoke to Mary of this, behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the most high, for TheHoly Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God

And thus it was, that He was born, both God, and yet, having BECOME man. Yet not by Himself, but by the Spirit. Not merely Son of Mary, but only begotten Son of the Father. - come into the world, He says Himself, TO DO THE WILL OF THE FATHER. Comeinto the world, He says, - to REVEAL the Father. The image, St. Paul says, of the Invisible God. Who then, living, dying, and rising, breathes upon His disciples, and places upon them His Holy Spirit.

Friends, what is this? It is the doctrine of the Trinity. Hopefully I have thus spared you from your fears of Philosophy. Yes? But greater still, I hope that I have shown you something else here. This doctirne of the Trinity is not some unsee-able, unimaginable mystery to be left to the text books and abstact lectures on natures, essences, persons, spiritations, and so on. But it is REAL. You say, Lord show us the Father? He says, - behold, you see Him in me, His Son. His revelation, the very image of the inviisble God. Yu say, Pastor, explain to us the Doctrine of the Trinity? Behold, you see it, in this Christ.

And what is it that this Christ says? What is it that this Christ does? He is for you. He is born for you. Lives for you, suffers and dies for you, He rises fro you, ascends for you, and speaks to you the singular Word of Peace – the singular Word of forgiveness. The Word and the Works of Salvation.

You say, Pastor I don’t understand the Trinity, - well, no, maybe you don’t. But you SEE IT. You see it there in Christ. The Father’s Son. You see it there in Baptism, the Spirit filling you as He buries you into Christ’s death and resurrection. You see it there in the Holy Eucharist, as the Father’s promise is poured out as you partake of the once for all atoning sacrifice of His Son’s flesh and blood. And you HEAR IT, at the Spirit speaks CHRIST’S Word to you, in His Holy Scriptures, and pronounces upon you Christ’s Word of absolution.

You see it. You receive it. You are met by it. Understand it? We tried that last year and we can return to it in the future but right now – I WANT YOU TO MERELY, see it. In Christ. The image of the Inviislbe God. The revealtion o the Father, the fullness of deity dwleling bodily, the Spirit’s GIVER.

Son of the Father, begotten by the Spirit, Christ is the key. To the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

There is no scary God hiding behind this Christ. In this Christ is seen all of Him. For as St. Paul writes in 2 Cor 5 : 19, in this Christ, GOD (the only God, there is no other) , is reconciling the whole world to Himself.

This is God. Behold Him in the pierced hands and feet. Behold Him in the wounded side. Behold Him in the eyes of love. The death of the Son sent to be curicfiied. Here is God. Son of the Father. Here is God, begotten of the Spirit. Here is God, by whom the breath of God is breathed. Here is God.

There is no other. Speak all you want of mysteries and abstracts. Of persons, substances, essences, and natures. But at the end of the day – the things of which we speak, cannot be known, cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, apart from the one IN FLESH, Christ the crucified. Image of the invisible. Voice of the unhearable. Revelaton of the unseable. Unveiling of the unknowable. Christ – the revealer of the Holy Trintiy. Christ – the unity of God and man. Christ, salvation of the whole world.

We say to Christ, SHOW US THE FATHER. And He does, arms splayed out on the cross pouring out, with His blood, all the Fathers divine love. We say to Christ, send us the Spirit! And He says, speaking over us the Word of absolution with His Divine breath the Ruach of God. We say to Christ, show us the doctrine of the Trinity, and He does. Born in flesh. Crucified unto death. And risen, with eternal life to give, to bestow, and therewrith to bless. This is God. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This is God. Who in Christ alone we may behold. This is God. F, S. HS, bless you, and absolve you, redeem you, and perfect you.F, S, HS. Amen.