May 31, 2026 | One God and Three Persons

This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.

And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Please be seated.

Good morning, St.

Paul's.

It is wonderful to be with you this morning to worship the living God together to see your faces.

Very handsome, beautiful faces, and to proclaim God's unfailing word.

St.

Paul's is at one of those moments in which you have an opportunity to see and experience the trustworthiness of the Lord as you walk through this time of transition of your leadership.

We say and we believe that Jesus is the head of the church.

And it's precisely at moments like this that we get to live into that reality, to believe what we say.

And as we trust in him, I believe what you all will experience is just another moment of growing in faith, another moment of experiencing and tasting God's faithfulness and his trustworthiness.

Knowing that he is a shepherd who hears your prayers, who cares for his flock, and who through this transition will lead you beside the still waters.

Now I'm sure in many ways this is a weird time for T and for Libby and perhaps for the entire staff as a whole.

And yet through that time, and I've heard them say this, and I believe it, the Lord is saying, look to me, trust in me.

And as we do that, I believe all of us will see his hand at work and his goodwill and his pleasure unfold in this place and among this community.

I think you heard a report last week.

Your search team is doing an amazing and prayerful work on your behalf as they search for your new rector.

And I would ask you to continue to pray for them and for the vestry as they seek the person who the Lord is calling to be your next rector.

I also pray for the candidates that they're considering that the Lord would confirm and speak to them as they walk through this process.

Meanwhile, the month of June, which is almost here, I would say the focus for St.

Paul's is to reflect and express thanks to the Lord for the Browns for their leadership in this place and for the remarkable work that the Lord has done in this community through this people we call St.

Paul's.

Faith can rightly be spelled R-I-S-K.

And that's exactly what the Browns did when they heard God's call and uprooted their very full lives on the coast and came here to plant a church.

And so this month, this coming month, is a time to give thanks to the Lord for the multiple ways that He has borne the fruit of His Spirit in you and in this people and in this community.

So let us take a moment and pray.

Father, as we come to open your word together, we invite your Holy Spirit to speak to us with clarity.

Indeed, your word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

And so we pray, come Holy Spirit, speak in ways that we can hear, soften hearts, open minds, transform us into the likeness of Jesus.

Amen.

So as we've already heard this morning in our worship on the church calendar, as we know, Pentecost was last Sunday, and Pentecost Sunday is followed by Trinity Sunday.

And while we don't actually find that word Trinity in our Bibles, we can certainly see what we've come to understand and articulate as the Trinity revealed very clearly in the pages of Holy Scripture.

From the get-go, on the opening verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, we read this: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light, and there was light.

Genesis 1:1

John picks up on this language, on this motif in Genesis 1 in his gospel, and he says, In the beginning was the word.

And the word was with God, and the word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

And all things he said that were made were made through him.

And without him, not anything that was made was made.

Then down in verse 14 of that opening chapter of that gospel, he tells us who that word is that spoke creation into existence.

He said the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of glory.

We've seen his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

The word, John is being very clear, is Jesus.

And so there you have it at the very beginning.

The Trinity is at work in creation.

God is calling creation forth.

He's speaking forth through his son, his word, and calling into existence.

The Spirit of the God is hovering over the waters.

Another place where we see the Trinity revealed is at the baptism of Jesus.

It's so very clear.

Jesus presents himself on the shores of the Jordan to John to be baptized into the baptism of repentance.

He's about to begin his ministry, and he goes under the water and he comes up.

And what do we hear?

But the voice speaks from heaven.

This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

And what else happens?

The Spirit descends upon him like a dove and empowers him for the ministry that he is about to begin, which we read about in our gospels.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all revealed.

Our readings today that we've heard, these two scripture readings today, are further instances of God's self-revelation as the triune God.

Our epistle reading, the first reading we heard.

Paul's writing to the Corinthians.

It's his second letter to the Corinthians.

And he concludes it with these words.

He says, Finally, brothers, rejoice.

He speaks to the life of the body.

He says, Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace.

And there's a promise.

And the God of love and peace will be with you.

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the saints greet you.

But then he says this this is the final benediction.

He says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

There is the Trinity.

For the Apostle, one God and three persons together mediating God's saving work in our lives.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

But he begins with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And Paul speaks those words of grace in Jesus Christ over the church.

And what we can never forget is that we're people of grace.

That we do not earn or merit our way to God.

That it's all gift, it's all grace, it's all given because of Jesus.

We don't work our way up to God.

He actually has come down to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

And it's Jesus who on the cross makes the way of grace for us.

So it's not just a casual greeting, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all, Paul says.

John Stott uses the acronym of that word grace to spell it out if we're not getting it.

G and grace.

God's riches at Christ's expense.

That's what grace is about.

It's God's riches, the fullness of God and his riches at Christ's expense.

G-R-A-C-E.

Beloved, this is the gospel.

We are a people of grace.

We're no longer bound to performance religion.

We don't earn our way.

The apostle Paul says it in Ephesians 2, for by grace you've been saved through faith, not that of yourselves, for it's a gift of God and not as a result of works that no man should boast.

So it's no wonder that the apostle begins his benediction with this, this word of grace.

It's no wonder that connected to Jesus is that word, grace.

And then he concludes and he speaks these words over the church.

He says, and the love of God.

And that is the love of the Father.

You see, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and sometimes folks don't understand.

They say, I think Jesus is kind of the good cop, and the Father is the one who's angry with us.

But but Jesus' grace is rooted in what?

In the love of God the Father.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

It was out of God's love that Jesus came into the world.

The Apostle John, now an old man, writes his epistles, and he can't seem to get over this reality of the love of the Father.

He says in the third chapter of his first epistle, see what kind of love the Father has given us.

And so we are.

And this is love.

Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

See, can't you see the alignment of the Father and the Son?

It's out of love for you and me.

It's out of love for a broken world, love for sometimes unlovely people, that the Father sends the Son.

He could have left us to our own devices, but his love would not let it be.

The Father spoke his word, just as he did in creation.

And he did it out of his great love for us.

My encouragement to you is to listen to God's word, to allow this reality of a God who loves you to permeate every part of your being.

You are loved beyond your own comprehension.

How else could the apostle Paul write in Romans?

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things presents, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God.

And lastly, Paul concludes with the third person of the Trinity.

And this is just as significant.

He says, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

We've just walked through this season of Pentecost and this story of Pentecost, lest you fell asleep during Bishop Thad's sermon.

I don't even think that's possible.

But the Holy Spirit was poured out on the church.

This was the promise of the Father given through the prophets, a new day to come when the Spirit would not just rest upon the prophet or the king or the priest, but the Spirit would be the possession of all of God's people.

Pentecost is the fulfillment of Jesus' words that it's to your advantage that I go away.

It's actually better if I go away.

Because then I can send the helper, I can send the advocate, the Holy Spirit, and He will live in you.

You will have fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

Fellowship with the Holy Spirit because He's taken up residency in our lives.

The Holy Spirit lives in us.

And Paul speaks of fellowship that we have in the Spirit.

You see, we live in the age of the Spirit.

That's where we are in the story of salvation.

We're awaiting Christ's return.

We're awaiting the new heaven and the new earth.

But now we live in the age of the spirit.

Bill Bright loved to tell the story of old man Yates, who owned a ranch in Texas.

During the Great Depression, this ranch was filled with sheep.

Mr.

Yates wasn't able to make enough on his ranching operations to pay the principal an interest on his mortgage, so he was actually in danger of losing the ranch.

He had so little money for clothes and food that his family, like many others during the Depression, had to live on government subsidy.

And day after day, as his sheep grazed the rolling hills of West Texas, he no doubtly was greatly troubled about how he would pay the bills.

And then one glorious day, a seismographic crew from an oil company showed up on his property and thought there may be something underground that you'd be interested in.

And they asked permission to drill a wildcat well, and he signed a lease and a contract, and at 1,115 feet, they struck a huge oil reserve.

The first well came out at 80,000 barrels a day.

Many subsequent wells were drilled that were twice as large.

In fact, 30 years after the initial discovery, a government test said one of the wells showed the potential flow of at least 125,000 barrels of oil a day.

And Mr.

Yates owned it all.

The day he purchased the land, he had received the oil and mineral rights, and yet he was living in poverty.

A multimillionaire living in poverty.

What was the problem?

The problem was that he didn't know that there was oil and that he owned it.

We live in the poverty of our own resources, not realizing that what we have in Christ is the fellowship and power and life of the Holy Spirit.

That we're not subject to our own limitations, but that God in the Spirit takes up residency in us and does things that we could never do apart from his power.

Paul spells out his understanding of the Holy Spirit in his letters.

He says it's only by the Holy Spirit that one can confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

In another place, he asks, How do you think you received the Holy Spirit?

Was it through works of the law or was it through hearing with faith?

It was from hearing with faith.

It wasn't something, it's a gift.

It wasn't something you deserve or earn.

It's still grace when it comes to the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

And then in Galatians, he he says this, these words always strike me.

He says, if then you live by the Spirit, because we only live by the Holy Spirit, we can't come to Christ on our own.

It's the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

He says, if you live by the Holy Spirit, so also then walk by the Spirit.

There's a possibility that we can have life through the Spirit, but be walking in our own power.

And Paul says, don't do it.

Live in the fellowship and the fullness of God's Spirit.

The Apostle Paul prays that we will be a people who live under the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that live under the love of God the Father for us, knowing that we are loved by the one who created us and living in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus had promised his disciples, even as he was telling them that he was to depart, that there was a cross before him, he promised them, I will not leave you as orphans, but I will send the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, and he will be in you.

Finally, we come to our gospel reading today, in which Jesus gives the great commission to the disciples.

He says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you to the end of the age.

Here again we see the Trinity.

We see it in the Great Commission.

Jesus says, We are to go make disciples, we are to baptize what?

In the name of the Father?

And the Son and the Holy Spirit.

You see, for us to understand the nature of God and the mission of God is to understand who we are, our own nature, is to understand the mission that we have as his people.

Jesus says, go make disciples.

It's said a different way, I think, on the covers of your bulletins, to know Jesus and to make him known.

It's not something we keep to ourselves, it's something we give away.

And as we read through the book of Acts and through the New Testament, we see the way this was lived out in the early church.

And interestingly, as I speak to a community, what we see in the book of Acts is the formation of communities.

The gospel was proclaimed and lives were transformed, and communities were formed.

In every place the gospel went.

Communities were the place where the new converts would come to be discipled and grown up in the faith, to be empowered in the Spirit, in order to witness, to wit, well, I guess the best say, to witness the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to the world, the fullness of who God is, a God who is pursuing us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a God who loves us.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and a God who takes up residency in us.

Jesus said, Go.

And so we go.

We dismiss every Sunday and we go out into our world.

He says, baptize, we baptize as folks come into faith and as babies are born.

And we teach and we disciple those children.

And we disciple one another in the life of the church.

Because, beloved, we live in the age of the Holy Spirit as people on mission.

And through the power of the Spirit, we let our light shine into a dark world.

In this gospel, we have the power to give hope to the hopeless and love to the unlovely.

Why do we do it?

We do it because that's the heart of God.

That's the heart of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Amen.