One God, Three Persons: Unpacking the Mystery of the Trinity

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew, the 28th chapter. Glory to you, O Lord.

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

directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they 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 in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, and

teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am

with you always to the end of the age. This is the gospel of the Lord. Praise to

you, O Christ. You may be seated, and let us pray.

Blessed and Holy Trinity, we ask this day that you might weave us into your

pattern of grace and love, that you might build your community in this place and

throughout our world. God, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all

of our hearts be acceptable to you, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. On July the

16th, 1945, an event took place that would change world history. In Los Alamos, New

Mexico, the scientists of the Manhattan Project detonated the first-ever nuclear

weapon. The code name selected for the test by Director J. Robert Oppenheimer

was Trinity. Years later, when Oppenheimer was asked why he selected that name, he

referenced a poem written by 16th century author John Donne, a poem

specifically about the Trinity, Holy Sonnet 14, Batter My Heart, Three-Personed

God. I encourage you to look that poem up after worship. What Oppenheimer

anticipated regarding the size and scope of a nuclear explosion was

that it would be larger and more frightening and more sublime than

anything ever imagined in human history. He was right, and I think his reference

to the Trinity can be best understood in this light. There is no Christian concept

more mystical, more sublime, more confusing, or frustrating, and no concept

more powerful than the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is a concept that the

more you think on it, the less sense it makes rationally. The math does not math.

The math doesn't check out. How can God be both one and three? And yet,

theologically, paying close attention to the pattern of God throughout Scripture,

the Church, capital C, has found no better way to express the mechanics, the inner

workings of God in God's self than as a Trinity. We believe in God the Father, in

God the Son, and in God the Holy Spirit, one God, yet three persons co-equal,

co-majestic, of one same substance and essence. Now, the Sunday after the Feast

of Pentecost has, since its institution by Pope John XXII in the year 1334,

been devoted to honoring the Holy Trinity. This makes sense in the scope of

our larger church year. We're now transitioning to a season affectionately

known as Ordinary Time. On the way here, we have awaited Christ's coming at Advent,

celebrated his birth at Christmas, and we have journeyed with Jesus through

Lent, celebrating the victory of God the Son and God the Father during Holy Week.

Just this past Sunday, we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit to us at

Pentecost, and now we are left with what's next, the ongoing and unfolding

story of God as Holy Trinity in our world and in our lives. And so the church

has deemed it important to take at least one Sunday and break our brains just a

bit on God as Holy Trinity. Hopefully, I can do so without committing any

theological heresies. My colleagues shucked me after 927, I'm good. Don't

listen to Spence. First, let's talk about Scripture, specifically two verses.

Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4 reads as follows,

Deuteronomy 6:4

Here, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy 6.4, a verse

known in the Jewish tradition as the Shema, a word that means here. It's

recited as a prayer and meditation on God's nature. God is one. We of the

Judeo-Christian tradition are strict monotheists. This is one of the defining

features that set the religion of the Israelites apart from the other

religions that surrounded them in the ancient world. It's one of the

foundational verses in all of the Old Testament. And the second verse is one we

should all be familiar with, especially if you have worshiped here with us

liturgically. It is our apostolic reading. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the

love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all, and also

with you. Second Corinthians 13.13. I highlight these two verses because I

think our understanding of the mechanics and the nature of God is best

expressed in between these two verses. God is one. We are monotheists. And yet

the early church, as they reflected on the Old Testament, as they experienced

God working in their midst, found the best expression of the oneness of God in

three. God as Father, God as Son, God as Spirit. In our first reading from the

book of Hebrews, the author goes through great pains to encourage his audience

through a deepening of their understanding of just who Jesus is. He is

mediator, he is high priest. The author seeks to unpack just how Christ stands

in the pattern and tradition established by the Jewish patriarchs and codified by

the Jewish law and attested to by the Jewish prophets. In the passage

specifically that we read from Hebrews 10, we get one of the strongest texts in

support of the Trinity. All in just a few verses. I invite you to look back. Jesus,

our great high priest, has perfected our salvation and sat down at the right

hand of God the Father, and now the Holy Spirit continues to testify to us. It

seems we can't just talk about Jesus apart from God the Father and God the

Spirit, where one is, the other are also. This is a pattern that you can find in

several places throughout Scripture. Just check our gospel text this morning from

Matthew 28, baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This matters because this pattern of God as Trinity, I think, unleashes the

potential for Christian community. You see, and this shouldn't be a surprise to

any of you, one of the problems with us humans is our self-orientation. It is a

challenge for us, isn't it, to love others. Sin, at its root, is a state of being

curved in on oneself. It's a fundamental disorientation that prevents us from the

kind of relationship that we were designed to enjoy, both with God and with

others of the human community and with this world are itself. I think one of the

most sinful temptations comes out of this misaligned love of self that comes

out of a fear of scarcity and loss, and it is to consolidate, to shore up one's

own power, especially at the cost of community. Human history writ large, and

many of our individual stories writ small have been consumed by this search

and quest and drive for power, right? Dictators, kings, politician, wars, genocide,

nuclear explosions, that's on the large scale. But on the small scale of our

lives, right, all those little breakdowns in relationship that we face, all those

attempts that we make, whether we know it or not, to manipulate or dominate or

explain away, right, cries and the voices of those we are called to love. It's easy

to lie to ourselves and think that we are always in the right. It is much more

difficult to discern God's will in community together. Make no mistake, we

are created for community. Something like this was happening in the backdrop of

the book of Hebrews. We get a hint in verses 24 and 25, which read as follows,

let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not

neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one

another. It seems that even for the early Christians, the temptation to go their

own way, to rely and trust on themselves, and to leave community by the wayside

was strong. The temptations of pride and power and self-assurance and

self-righteousness lie close at the door of every human heart. This is exactly, I

think, why the Trinity, why God as three, matters for us and our Christian walk.

God's own nature is the pattern for Christian discipleship. I'm gonna say

that again because I think it's important. God's own nature is the

pattern for Christian discipleship. Our reading in Hebrews hints at this. Because

Jesus has made the perfect sacrifice, because he sits his work completed at

the right hand of God, and because the Spirit of God continues to testify to

us, we are changed. We are changed. We are forgiven for our sins. We are liberated

from the power of sin, and we are empowered towards Christian community.

God's law is written into our hearts. We are left invited and empowered for right

relationship once again, as God originally intended. And this passage

leaves us with a haunting picture, right? Where is Jesus when we leave him in the

story? He has ascended, he is seated at the right hand of God, and he is

essentially waiting for us to get our act together. The doctrine of the

Trinity reminds us that God in God's own self is a community of perfect love. If

you think about the nature of love itself, if you take a step back and think

about it philosophically, right, you can't love without another. Love is a

relationship between at least two things, and you can't love perfectly without

someone else who is your own equal, right? The power dynamics of that would be off.

Perfect love exists between equals, hence the Father needs the Son. If God is, as

Scripture teaches us, truly love. And love only grows deeper and more perfect when

you have a third object of love that you can share with the person that you love.

This is why we more readily and more easily love those with whom we have

things in common. This is to say that the Father and the Son need the Holy Spirit.

There seems to be a rule of three inherent in the concept of love itself.

Love demands a Trinity. And a love that is perfected like this cannot be stopped,

hence God creates, hence God redeems, hence God sustains. God in God's own self.

One God, three persons, is a community of perfect love. And the good news of the

gospel that we remember on Holy Trinity Sunday is that God always invites us in

to that community. If sin is disoriented love, if salvation is perfect love

poured out for us, then our sanctification is God's loving of us.

Always back into right relationship when we err. Not only is Christ seated at the

right hand of God waiting for us to get our acts together, the Holy Spirit

continues to minister to us in our weakness. There can be no sanctification.

There can be no growth in grace, no deepening of faith, no increase in love

without the Christian community, without us doing what we are doing right now.

This is where the Holy Spirit activates.

And so our passage in Hebrews ends with three points of encouragement grounded

in the identity of the triune God. Let us approach God with a heart, with a true

heart, in full assurance of faith. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope

without wavering. Let us provoke one another to love and good deeds. Faith,

hope, and love. Another Trinity. The ingredients for right relationship laid

out there for us, all grounded in just who God is, all fostered by what we are

doing right now, Christian community. As Hebrews reminds us, we cannot neglect to

meet together. Take that with you on summer vacation. We cannot neglect to

meet together because the community we invest in shapes who we become. And just

as the inner workings of God is community, our community, again the math

and grammar gets tricky, just as the Trinity itself has unlimited potential

for love, so too does the community that is founded by Christ have a potential

for our lives, for our walk with the Lord, for our growth in holiness that is, well,

it's nuclear, more powerful than anything we can begin to imagine. Sisters and

brothers, siblings in Christ, on Holy Trinity Sunday, we remember that our God

is one, that our God is somehow also three, and that our God is a community of

love. Let us not neglect to meet together with hearts full of faith and hope and

that same love that is always offered to us. Amen.