Exploring the Triune Nature of God in Jesus' Baptism

Foreign.

Thank you for engaging with the homily.

By Pastor Chill Will from Chapel Hill.

I hope this message encourages you, challenges you and moves you

to go deeper in your faith and enrich how you love God and love

your neighbor in your day to day life.

Just a reminder.

Like the Scriptures and Gospels themselves, this homily was

written for a particular community in a particular, particular

context, time in history.

And yet, like our sacred texts, I hope that these words hold

timeless truths about God's unconditional love and grace.

We hope these words speak to you in a meaningful way.

Welcome to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Campus

ministry.

We're glad you're able to worship with us this morning.

Mine Pastor Will the Holy Gospel According to Matthew Then

Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized

by him.

John would have prevented him saying, I need to be baptized by

you and do you come to me?

But Jesus answered him, let it be so now, for it is proper for us

in this way to fulfill all righteousness.

And John consented.

When Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water,

suddenly the heavens were open to him and he saw God's spirit descending

like a dove and alighting on him.

And a voice from the heavens said, my son, the Beloved, with whom

I am well pleased.

The Gospel of the Lord in the name of the Father and the Son and

of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

He's back.

And by he I mean John the Baptist.

But this time he's back, not situated in the season of Advent

that was so 2025.

He's not shouting in the wilderness, calling people snakes

and for onlookers to prepare the way of the Lord.

Rather, today the spotlight shifts over to Jesus with John the

Baptist doing what he does best and how he got his title.

Baptizing, Baptizing Jesus.

And we get a voice from heaven revealing who Jesus is.

Happy Epiphany epiphany begins on January 6th with the story of

the Magi following a star.

The season of Epiphany and the Sundays after the epiphany leads

up to Ash Wednesday where we begin the season of Lent.

So over the next six weeks we are called to pay attention what

God is revealing to us in this Christian who was born for us.

How does he posture himself in the world?

What does he say?

Does he teach?

What does he do?

Who does he hang with?

Who does he call?

This morning the light shines and guides and leads us to a body

of water.

Water, the basic necessity for life.

We can't Go but a few days without it.

When scientists are looking for life out in space, on other planets

and moons, they are looking for water, knowing that water holds

the possibility of life.

The Book of Genesis at the beginning of all things, God's spirit

hovers over the water and life and purpose brought into being.

So it makes sense that to begin this exploring of who Jesus

is, that we start with water, with the spirit again.

Hovering over water, a voice that says out loud, this is my son.

A naming, a claiming and a promise.

I'll confess that I've never heard the audible voice of God from

heaven.

My friend Stephen and pastor colleague fears that he has.

He shared with me that at one of the ELCA national youth gatherings,

he heard God say to him out loud, stephen, go to seminary.

He shared that it wasn't necessarily a big booming voice that

everyone heard around him, was just a normal voice.

STEPHEN GERTIS SEMINARY he looked around at the people around

him and it was like, what did you just say?

And they were like, we didn't say anything.

You okay?

Like, I don't know.

And he was kind of freaked out.

That wasn't my experience and why I went to seminary.

But I can claim that I've experienced God communicating with

me in different ways over the course of my journey of faith.

For example, I was in college and I was going through some pretty

hard times, hard medical problems and with lots of uncertainty.

I was really scared.

I was wondering how it would affect the rest of my life as I was

trying to discern what kind of vocation I should go into.

I went down to the beach near my parents house to pray and to think.

I found myself on a dock in the Intercoastal Waterway in front

of my parents house.

The water that day in front of me was clear and calm and glassy.

I prayed and out loud said, before God, lord, I'm scared and

I'm not sure what's going to happen next or what I should do or

shouldn't do.

And then as soon as those words left my mouth, a pretty big

boat drove by and its wake hit the dock and it started to rock back

and forth.

I was in no danger of falling in the water, but it was moving up

and down and back and forth pretty hard.

After the wake and the waves from that boat passed by, the dock

calmed back down and the water returned back to its calm and glassy

form.

I sat for a moment.

That was that experience.

I thought about how I prayed that prayer out loud.

And then I had an epiphany in that moment I heard God say to me,

will, right now things are pretty rough, but it will calm down.

This too shall pass.

The waters will get calm again.

Now, this experience didn't change any uncertainty or answer

any big questions.

But it did reveal to me, and I received a certain kind of newfound

peace.

I was able to get up, go back to school and focus on my studies.

And looking back on that situation and experience, it was

true.

The rough waters subsided and God saw me.

As we've stated, God is a mystery.

St. Augustine is recorded to have said, if you understand God,

then God ceases to be God.

And yet we've also shared.

We believe in a personal God speaks to us who longs and desires

to be in relationship with us.

So much so that God became flesh and blood for us in the person

of Jesus Christ.

What we know of God or experience as God, God chooses to

reveal to us.

And God is still speaking as Christians, those who embrace and

follow Jesus Christ while still believing and confessing that

God is indeed a mystery.

We place our faith in that God has chosen to reveal God's self to

us in a number of ways.

God reveals God's self to us in creation.

We can see God's fingerprints all over the created universe and

even in ourselves and in one another.

We are a part of creation, and we are told that we are created in

the image of God.

I see God and the diverse ecosystems of creation.

And I see God in you.

God reveals God's self to us in the gift of community.

The gift of community.

In this gift of community, we not only come to understand that

we do not travel in this journey of faith alone, but there

we are woven together in a web where we, what we do, affects one

another.

And in this gift of community, God shapes us.

And to a people of God that God calls us to be, God reveals God's

self to us in the words of Scripture.

Through the words and stories found in the Bible, we hear divorce

voices across generations who have experienced the divine and pass

that on to us.

In the Bible, we see who God is and God's actions in the world.

We explore and study these words and stories.

In the gift of community, God reveals God's self in the sacraments

of holy communion, baptism, in earthy material of bread and wine

and water.

God gives us a means of grace that is tangible.

And in these earthly elements, they are entangled with God's word

and promise that God's grace, mercy and love will accompany us

throughout the journey of faith.

And ultimately, we believe God has revealed God's self to us in

the person of Jesus, the Christ.

In Christ, God's heart and true personality is revealed.

We see who God is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of

Nazareth, who we call the Christ.

Now I'll confess that each one of these means of communication and

self revealing could be a whole sermon all by itself, or a

whole Sunday school series or a whole semester class.

And yet my hope is that over the course of this season will not

only be mindful of these means of communication, but also that you

will pay close attention what God is revealing and saying to you,

to me, and to us as a community of faith.

In any healthy relationship there is a need for honesty and self

disclosure, that is trusting our true self with the other.

In Jesus's baptism we see God's full disclosure to us.

This baptism reveals the triune nature of God, the divine

voice of parenthood, the Christ the Son, the primordial wind

and spirit of God still hovering.

God is more and deeper than a more mysterious than two dudes in

a bird.

And yet within God's self, God is a community of mutual love, a

love that we are entangled with, a love that we are called to

be a part of.

Divine love, song and dance that we are called to be in sync

and in rhythm with.

The Holy Trinity is the name of our community of faith.

So we journey together on this journey of faith in a mutuality of

love.

And we grow with one another and what it means to love how Jesus

loved.

I love the baptism of our Lord Sunday because we see the triune

God on full display.

It's true, you never find the word Trinity in the Bible.

That's a word that we constructed to help describe this

mystery.

But here in the baptism of Jesus, in this sacramental matter

of water, we see the tri nature of God.

We also see the full humanness of Jesus who teaches us how to be

human.

Jesus shows or reveals to us that he is in solidarity with us.

He's in solidarity with us when the waters are calm or when

they are rough.

No matter what sees us three at Jesus's baptism, God spoke and

God is still speaking.

And God will continue to speak in our midst, whether it's at Lucas

baptism, later on at 11 o', clock, or at this table of bread

and wine, or as we journey together as brothers and sisters

in Christ.

God is still speaking in our midst, in creation, at the table,

in the words of Scripture, within our community and in Christ.

And so remembering our own baptisms and the divine love that

will never leave our side.

Let us open our ears and our hearts to hear what God has to say

that we can lift our voice.

Reveal to a hurting world God's grace and love will see us

through.

Amen.

Thank you for listening.

If there is anything that stood out.

For you, or if you have a question or you just want to have

a conversation, you are always free to reach out and contact us.

And remember you are not alone and that you are loved with a love

stronger than death.