I Am with You Always

Ah…The Good Ol’ Days! Remember them? Life was simpler. There was not as much chaos, violence, hatred, crime, and lies as there are today. Not saying that these things never took place, but it certainly was not anything like it is today, unless you are black and come from the south.

Today is Trinity Sunday, the one Sunday a year that we focus specifically on the Triuneness of God. The Trinity is something that we must accept on faith because reason dictates this is impossible. You all do understand the Trinity? God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. These are not three separate and distinct entities, but are one. “Hear o’ Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Deut. 6.4). And yet at the same time, even though they are three, they are one in essence, power, and divinity. This type of stuff is what keeps people like me awake at night.

Usually, within our Lutheran world, the Trinity is often depicted as a triangle, God the Father at the top, God the Son to the bottom left, and God the Holy Spirit bottom right. In this triangle, connecting the three, are the words “is not”, so picture in your mind this triangle, God the Father is not God the Son, nor God the Holy Spirit, but God the Father only. Likewise with the Son, He is not God the Father nor the Holy Spirit. And so on. However, there are three arrows pointing to the center with the word, “Is” and in the center is the word God.

The text that confronts us on this Holy Trinity Sunday is the Gospel reading from Matthew. Jesus meets with His disciples and sends them or makes them apostles, by exhorting them to “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

On the eighth day, Jesus began something new. It all started with His resurrection, the destruction of death itself, and the new Word of Promise has been given, eternal life for all who believe in Jesus. And this new thing that Jesus has begun, starting with His resurrection, is a return back to ‘the good ol’ days’. However, these ‘good ol’ days’ are not days that we would remember. These ‘good ol’ days’ are a return to the goodness of the Garden of Eden, before Satan and the fall. It is a return to the divine.

The Old Testament reading for Trinity Sunday is the creation narrative of Genesis 1. The astounding thing about this text is the use of the Hebrew word אֱלֹהִ֑ים for God. Normal Hebrew word for God is just אֱלֹ, (El, present example has incorrect vowel pointing). The הִ֑ים on the end of this noun makes it plural. I was perplexed by this for a number of years, or as Dr. Dell Tacket puts it, “I found myself in a cocoon” for a number of years. Then at the Seminary it hit me like a ton of bricks. In three verses in Genesis 1:1-3, we can see through the eyes of faith, the Trinity. So, we have God the Father creating the heavens and the earth. The Holy Spirit was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said…the Word of God, that the beloved disciple and apostle of Jesus, John proclaims in the first chapter of his gospel, the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us. The Word of God was active in creation, and everything that has been created was created through this same Word of God that became flesh, this same Jesus. You will also see this in the proverbs where “wisdom” is with the Father in creation. And that ‘wisdom’ is also none other than Jesus Christ Himself.

The Trinity is just not something that our human finite minds can comprehend fully. Yet the Holy Scriptures show it time and time again, in both Testaments. Here in our text today, from Matthew, Jesus is near the end of His post-resurrection 40 day stay. He directs His disciples to meet Him on a specific mountain in Galilee; which one we don’t know, but it was one that Jesus’ disciples were familiar with. While in Galilee, Jesus preached His Sermon on the mount. It was on a mountain in Galilee where Jesus called His disciples. it was on a mountain where Jesus was transfigured before the three disciples, Peter, James and John. On mountain heights, heaven and earth, as it were, meet, and here the glorified Jesus spoke of His power in heaven and on earth. With the vast expanse of the sky above Him and the great panorama of the earth spread beneath Him, Jesus stands in His exaltation and His glory—a striking vision indeed.

“And when they saw Him they worshiped Him…” (v. 17). One thing that was lost in the fall was this personal and physical “walk with the Lord”. Adam and Eve had personal visits from God in the Garden. They worshiped Him in person. However, when they took upon themselves being their own god, that personal and physical relationship with God was severed. God would no longer walk with them ”in the cool of the day” (Gen 3.8). Now, Jesus calls His disciples to Himself on this mountain, and when He appeared to them, they worshiped Him in person. Through the person and work of Jesus, God is bringing us back to the divine.

However, not everyone present believed, the text tells us “And when they saw Him they worshiped Him, but some doubted” (v. 17). Why they doubted, we don’t really know. Perhaps it was the strangeness and the wonderful nature of the appearance that perplexed a few and thus made them doubt. But we also need to consider the fickleness of the human heart. Because of the work of the first Adam, to allow Eve to be deceived and eat of the forbidden fruit, the human heart is full of deceitfulness, and our minds…well our thoughts are also held captive to sin, and it is easily seen in our own thoughts, as it twists and meanders into forbidden fields of toxicity and depravity of perversion darken faith and the peculiar satisfaction of raising doubts. Regardless, Jesus finds His disciples receptive, some slow to apprehend, of little faith, easily discouraged and troubled, unable to let go of their old notions and to rise to the new spiritual heights of Christ. Imagine though, how they must have felt after the fact. The shame of doubting fills the heart of those whose vapor of doubt has been driven away by the shining sun of God’s truth.

Jesus proclaims to His disciples that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been give me. God therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (vv 18b-20a). It wouldn’t be but a few days when Jesus would tell His disciples to stay in Jerusalem until the gift of the Holy Spirit was given. And on Pentecost, that happened, as we celebrated last Sunday.

The Holy Spirit is the most interesting person of the Trinity. We can’s see Him, we really don’t know much of what He is doing with us, except for one thing that we all can attest to. He brings the non-believer to Christ, and all throughout the life of a believer, He continually points us to Jesus and the Word of God. For here, in the person and work of the Holy Spirit, He is our Paraclete. He is the Comforter sent from the Father and the Son. He brings to our remembrance all that Jesus has taught us, He strengths us for our daily fight as the Church Militant, and He fills our lives with hope and the love of Jesus.

The Holy Trinity. It cannot be divided, it cannot be understood by human reason or intellect. God has not changed His mode of dealing with His creation. He has not broken a piece off Himself to become Jesus. And it’s not like a part of the Father and the Son are missing in the sending of the Holy Spirit. All are equally divine, eternal and majestic.

This is our God. His love for humanity has been proven since He first uttered those words in the beginning, “Let there be...”. He knew from before He ever uttered those words that we would turn our back on Him and want to be our own little gods instead. His love for you and me has never been broken, even after Adam and Eve did what they did. He has had you and I and all who would believe first and foremost in His heart and mind since. His love was poured out on Adam and Eve when He sacrificed innocent blood to cover their sin and guilt as He presented them with new clothing, the skins of those animals to cover their shame. He also poured out His love for them and us as He set His angel at the entrance of the garden to protect them from reentering and eating from the tree of life which would have prevented them from ever dying in the flesh, with the curse of everlasting life separated from God because of their sin that severed that daily personal relationship with their Creator. That would be a curse worse than death.

Yes, our God is Triune, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All three play every role in your salvation. God the Father has created you and continues to sustain you both in physical and spiritual ways every day of our lives. Our Father loves us so much that He would not be able to leave us in our sinful condition to work out our salvation on our own, because He knew the price was too steep for us to ever be able to pay it, so He sent His Son Jesus. He live the sinless life that you and I are incapable of. And be makes us a part of that life through Baptism, where He displays His love poured out on the cross as He bled and died for our sins. Then He raises us together with Him on the eighth day, the first day of the new creation. The first day of our return to the Divine. Jesus has conquered all our enemies for us; our sinful flesh, the devil, and death itself. And our Father dresses us in His Son, through Baptism, giving us all that His Son has accomplished. And as Jesus has completed the will of the Father, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, as He and the Father send us the Holy Spirit to point us to Jesus and His work, and enables us to believe, and continues to strengthen and sustain us in this new life, this new journey as we are brought back to the Divine. Our journey ends with the last leg of our trip, physical death, but our next breath, the moment we wake from our rest in Christ, will be our own resurrection, and the culmination of all of God’s promises to us are finally fully realized as He says to you, “‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’” (Matthew 25:23, ESV)

But until that time, Jesus gives us work to do, to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We do that work with love for others as we proclaim the Gospel of Jesus through deed and word, showing love by our words and actions to those who are, like we were in conception and birth at odds with our Creator. And we have Jesus, with us always, as we carry out the work He gives us to do, walking with the divine, every day.