Holy Trinity C

The Holy Trinity, Year C

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

From an early age, I can recall being frustrated by this thing the pastor was teaching us: “Three in One and One in Three.” I think the first time I really paid attention to it was when I was getting ready for First Communion. I think at some point I heard someone - probably my Sunday school teacher - say: “we can’t really understand what that means, so don’t bother trying to figure it out.” Or words similar to that. I wasn’t really satisfied with that answer, but no one could give me any better explanation.

A few years later, I started Confirmation class. I was a little older, and I figured that maybe someone would explain it to me in a way that I could understand. We started with the same “3 in 1 and 1 in 3” stuff, but then they added a little more: “One God in Three Persons.” Ok, now what the heck does THAT mean? Again, no real satisfactory answer. But they confirmed me, so that told me I understood enough. I began to embrace the idea of “divine mystery” - we’ll never understand it until the Second Coming of Christ. Right - put that in my top 3 questions when I get to meet Jesus. It will be up there with “how long were each of the days of the Creation story?” and “If you didn’t want Adam and Eve to know good and evil, why even have a tree like that in the first place?” From that point forward, I would just regurgitate what I was taught: “we aren’t meant to understand it....One God in Three Persons…3 in 1 and 1 in 3.” I stopped trying to figure it out.

But THEN I came to seminary. NOW, finally I thought, they’re going to explain this to me well enough that I can understand it. Well,…not so much. I can say with complete honesty that I really don’t understand the Holy Trinity any better now than I did after Confirmation. But I can tell you that I have a much better appreciation for this mystery now. Theologians much smarter than I am have been wrestling with this since at least Jesus’ baptism. In fact, some of the most important work of the early Christian church involved settling arguments about the Holy Trinity.

Several of the heresies in our church history came from poor attempts to explain this One God in Three Persons. One of the most famous is the analogy used by St. Patrick: the Shamrock. It’s a leaf with 3 leaflets. So each leaflet would be like one part of the Trinity, but all three together would make the whole leaf: the “whole” God. And that’s why it’s heresy: 3 parts do not make the whole. That would assume that each person of the Godhead is only 1/3 God…partially God. True description of the Persons of the Trinity says that each of them is fully God, not part of a greater whole. This heresy was labeled “partialism”.

There is also a heresy called “modalism” which says that there is one God, but He assumes a different “mode” to perform different roles. The analogy used here is the God is like water, which can be ice or water or steam. It says that God is not three distinct persons, but that He merely reveals himself in three distinct forms. This one is easy to debunk using Scripture - look at Jesus’ baptism. They saw Jesus come up out of the water; they saw the Spirit descent “like a dove”; and they heard the voice of God from heaven. That is clearly three distinct persons, and the early Church condemned this teaching very early on.

There is also a heresy called Arianism, named after its teacher Arius, who did not believe that Jesus was God, but that he was created by the Father and given special power to perform miracles. This heresy uses the analogy of the sun, with the star itself and the light and the heat that come from it. The problem here is that the light and the head are created by the star. If the Father created the Son and the Holy Spirit, then they are not fully God as the Father is God. They are not of the same nature as the Father in this teaching, and therefore it is a false teaching. All Three Persons are equally divine, not created.

The bottom line is that any analogy we might think of to help us understand the nature of God is going to either fall short or lead us into heresy. God’s own Law, in Deuteronomy 6:4 tells us that we only have One God -“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” We do not believe in three Gods for this reason. The First Commandment tells us that we cannot worship any other gods. There can be only one God for us. But the Father sent His Son to save us, and now that the Son is with the Father, we have been sent His Holy Spirit to gather us, to teach us, and to make us holy. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. But the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

I hope you will believe me when I tell you that there are volumes and volumes of theological books, articles, and essays on just the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It will absolutely make your head hurt.

As we think about the mystery of God, I also think it’s important that we ask ourselves: “so what?” Why is this mystery important? What difference does it make? I submit to you that the very question of “who God is” lies at the center of everything that it means to be a Christian, and what it means to be a child of this God Who is 3 in 1 and 1 in 3.

“All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love.’ But they seem not to notice that the words 'God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.” [C.S. Lewis]

Or, how about this: Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” - “there are three distinct persons: in the Name, not names; there is one essence.” [Thomas Adams] And notice those names - 2 of them can only make any sense in relationship to the other. You cannot be a “Father” without a child; you cannot be a “Son” without a parent. These are relationship-specific names.

And that’s really what this all boils down to: God is relationship. It is His nature from before there was anything else but the Godhead. When God created us in His image, it was to invite us into the already-existing relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was to include us in the love of God that existed before anything else existed. God created us to be in relationship with Him, to share His love with us.

Ok, so we might not understand fully what 3 in 1 and 1 in 3 truly is in all its complex mystery. But we know that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and we worship One God. Stop right there. From that point, what’s important is the relationship that we are invited into. Yes, we spoiled our invitation and got evicted from the Garden party. And we strayed pretty far from that Garden, too. And ever since, the Host has been working to get us back into the party. It was a long and complex plan, but ultimately, we get invited back - not because we deserve to come back, but because He loves us so much that He took care of the arrangements so that we MAY come back. All we have to do is believe that He did this out of love for us.

But here’s the thing: this invitation comes with expectations. No, we don’t have to buy a ticket. We are given some instructions - back to that Matthew 28 verse - “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...” Not just people who wear a goofy collar. ALL of us who have been given this invitation are to do this. We have a mission. We have the task of informing others of this invitation, which is open to all who would accept it. What happens if we don’t tell them?

In the months ahead, we’re going to talk more deeply about what our part of God’s mission we are called to do here at Miller’s. It will require us to think deeply about what we believe about God, about church, about discipleship, about evangelism, about mission, about stewardship, about worship, about community, about faith. At the heart of all these principles there is our belief about God, who He is, and what He has done for us. His promise gives us hope, and with that hope in our hearts, we can do many good things for our family, our church, and our community. Let us all pray that the Holy Spirit will help us and teach us as we seek to do the Father’s will, sharing the good news of His Son.

So what should we take away from all of this Triune God/Holy Trinity talk?

I like what Luther tells us in his Large Catechism: “6 But to make it most clear and simple for teaching to children, we shall briefly sum up the entire Creed in three articles, according to the three persons of the Godhead, to whom all that we believe is related. The first article, of God the Father, explains creation; the second, of the Son, [explains] redemption; the third, of the Holy Spirit, [explains] sanctification.

7 Hence the Creed may be briefly comprised in these few words: ‘I believe in God the Father, who created me; I believe in God the Son, who redeemed me; I believe in the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies me.’ One God and one faith, but three persons, and therefore three articles or confessions.” [Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 411.]

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.