The Holy Trinity

June 03, 2007

Preached at Providence Lutheran Church, Holland, O.

by Pastor Dennis R. King

“Trinity Sunday”

John 16: 12-15

Once again we have come to that special day in the church calendar that we call “Trinity Sunday.” As I say this, I don’t sense a rush of excitement on your part. “Trinity Sunday” simply doesn’t evoke the same response as Christmas, Easter or even Pentecost. In truth, if mentioning this day brings any response it is most likely confusion.

And come to think of it, this is the way it should be. The concept and the truth on which this Sunday is based was born out of confusion, so to speak, so it is altogether appropriate that you might have such a feeling as we begin talking about the Holy Trinity.

Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday in our church calendar that is named for a teaching of the church. Other special days, like Easter, Ascension Sunday and Pentecost are named for events, for things that happened. We celebrate those Sundays because of something that once took place. But Trinity Sunday is named for something that we believe. This indicates that the belief or the teaching that is involved is uniquely important and significant.

The teaching of the Trinity is in many ways the most significant teaching of the Christian faith. You have often heard it said that there are three great monotheistic religions in the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, that is, religions that believe there is only one God. The rest of the world religions believe there are many gods, perhaps hundreds or thousands, but Judaism, Christianity and Islam teach that there is only one God.

But Christianity adds a unique element to the belief in one God: We believe that God is manifest in three persons; that is, that there is one God in three persons. We use the word “Trinity” to describe this belief. As you can see, if you spell out the word on paper, the word spells out literally, tri — that is, three; and unity — that is, one. Thus, God is three in one. And only Christianity has such an insight.

This teaching is as old as the Christian faith. In a sense, in fact, it came before the Christian faith was fully in existence. This brings us to our scripture lesson of the day. The passage we have read comes from the gospel of John, from the heart-to-heart talk Jesus had with his disciples on the night he was arrested, was brought to trial and then crucified. Jesus knew that his end was very near, so what he said to his disciples that night was strategically important. As Jesus speaks, he seems suddenly to interrupt himself. “I have many things to say to you,” he exclaims, “but you cannot bear them now.” That is, the disciples were not yet at a place in their faith or in their understanding to grasp what Jesus hoped still to teach them.

Then Jesus continued, “When the Spirit of Truth has come, he will lead you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own authority and out of his own knowledge, but he will speak all that he will hear, and he will tell you of things to come. He will glorify me, for he will take of the things which belong to me, and will tell you of them. All things that the Father has are mine. That is why I said that the Spirit will take of the things which belong to me, and tell them to you.”

I wonder how confusing those sentences must have been for Jesus’ disciples. They were Jews, and if there is anything the Jews believed unreservedly about their faith, it was that God was one. Indeed, this was the language in which Judaism had received its great commandment. Think for a moment of the language of the book of Deuteronomy, at the giving of the Law: “Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your being and with all your might.” The pre-eminent contemporary Jewish scholar, Robert Alter, notes that this passage is “a ringing declaration of monotheism.” It is, he said, a kind of “catechism,” so that it has been “incorporated in the daily liturgy, recited twice each day in Jewish worship.”

Try to imagine, then, how the disciples — faithful Jews — might have felt that evening. They heard their Master refer to himself, the Father and the Spirit as if they were one. Jesus was mixing the language in such a way that it seemed He was blending the three personalities together as if they were one. How could God be one, yet be referred to by these three names — essentially, Father, Son and Spirit?

And of course this idea appears in other places in the New Testament when in benedictions and in reference to baptism the biblical writers speak of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, placing the three names in a pattern of equality, with no differentiating between them. How can this be?

So it is that we are led into the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. But the Bible doesn’t call it that. Because, you see, the word “Trinity” doesn’t appear in the Bible. This is a term that became part of our Christian vocabulary and of our teaching perhaps three or more centuries later. Christians believed that there was one God in three persons, but they didn’t have a name for what they believed; they knew a fact, a grand reality, but they didn’t have a name for it. But in time they came up with a name, and a very logical one: They called it the doctrine of the Trinity.

Now come to think of it, some of the most important facts of human life are realities that had to look for a name. Take love, for instance, or goodness. All of us know what love is: We have experienced it. But have you ever wondered how humans first found a name for this strange and wonderful fact? It is also true of the word, goodness. We know goodness when we see it. I wonder how humans ever found a word to describe such an intangible thing? It’s easy to see how people would find names for something like dogs or potatoes or trees, because they are physical objects that look a certain way and can therefore be identified. But you can’t take hold of goodness and you can’t see it. Don’t you wonder, therefore, how our ancestors ever found a word for it and how they came to agree even in a general way as to what goodness is?

All of which is to say that some of the most important facts of life are real and undeniable, but we have to give them names. And so it is with this profound teaching of the Christian faith — that God is of such a nature that we can’t describe this nature in our ordinary terms. God is one, indivisible and utterly unified; and yet within God we have three persons. The holy scriptures describe this as a reality, but we admit readily that it is very difficult to understand. But I’m glad, at the least, to have a name for this reality: the Trinity.

And between you and me, I won’t apologize for the fact that this is an idea that is difficult to understand or to explain. Of course God is beyond our grasp. If we fully understood God, then we would be God because in the very act of fully understanding we would have God under our control — and a God under our control surely isn’t much of a god. Of course God is beyond our complete grasp. If there were no mystery in God, nothing about God that I couldn’t fully comprehend, it would be a very insignificant god, quite unworthy of worship.

But see the wonder we have here. On the one hand, the Trinity stretches our thinking to the limits and still leaves us shaking our heads in limitation. And yet it is this very doctrine of the Trinity that makes God so accessible, so available, so within reach. This happened at one point when God came to our planet in the person of Jesus Christ; as someone has put it, in Jesus God put on a human face. Then there’s the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. Here is a fact most of us have experienced at one time or another: the very real sense of God’s presence in some event, some conversation, some quickening of the mind or heart. Without seeing or touching anything, we have sensed a full reality, and we call it the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ.

The idea of the Trinity may, indeed, be difficult to understand. But it is a reality, as we know by history — in the coming of Jesus to our planet — and in experience, as we know when we encounter the divine and call it the Spirit. No wonder, then, when the early Christians found something so real, so accessible, so active in their daily lives, that they had to find a name for it: God in three persons, blessed Trinity.