Sermon: Holy Trinity Sunday, John 3:1-17

May 26, 2024 

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, a day which many preachers love to hate, because they think that they have to explain how rationally we can believe in one God, who consists of three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

I am not a pastor who hates preaching on this day, for I love a good challenge. But my job is not to explain the Trinity. Rather, I am called to bear witness to what our God in three persons is up to in the world. Even the Athanasian Creed only describes the Trinity; it doesn’t attempt to explain it. Thus, God as Trinity persists as mystery.

You may know that the doctrine about the Trinity does not appear as such in the bible. But the biblical witness does indeed lay the foundation for and provides hints about what would become the Christian understanding of the Trinity. We see such hints in all of today’s readings. 

In the reading from Isaiah, we hear recounted a vision of the mystery of the Lord, and we hear familiar words which we sing every Sunday during the liturgy of the Eucharist: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of the glory of the Lord.” (Isaiah 6:3) Christians associate singing “holy, holy, holy” with the Trinity.

And then in the reading from Romans the persons of our Trinitarian God appear in Paul’s thinking. Paul writes, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…” (Romans 8:15b-17a) There they are: God, the Father, Christ the Son, and the Spirit in the space of a couple of verses.

Then, too, in today’s gospel reading depicting Jesus’ conversation with the religious leader, Nicodemus, about the need to be baptized thereby being born of water and Spirit, we also see each of the persons of what would become the Trinity: God, who sent the Son, and the Spirit who gives us new birth. 

But here’s an essential point about the doctrine of the Trinity: the whole development of the teaching about one God in three persons was the early church’s attempt to account for their lived experience of God, a lived experience recounted in the stories found in the scriptures. 

In the encounter with Jesus of Nazareth, the early Christians experienced God in Jesus to such an extent that they confessed Jesus is God, sent from God in heaven. 

Moreover, after Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, the early Christians experienced the sacred energies which they called the Holy Spirit, in whom they also continued to experience the ongoing presence of both Jesus and God, the Father. 

Which is to say, the Trinity is not an abstract, philosophical or theological idea made up out of whole cloth in some ivory tower., No, not at all. I’ll say it again: the Trinity is an attempt to make sense of the lived experience of God seen in Jesus Christ. 

With that in mind, I invite you to think of the Trinity, one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as a family, a community, bound together by love. And love cannot be kept to itself. Love is expressive. Love by its nature expands beyond itself. 

God created the world, the universe, as an outpouring expression of divine love. The Son was present at the creation, according to John’s gospel, and the Spirit from God blew over the face of the deep. Thus, the love of the Trinity was there at creation.

And when things fell apart here on earth because of human rebellion, sin, and brokenness, divine love again became active, was poured out and sent from heaven in the person of the Son, Jesus of Nazareth, fully human and fully divine. The Son of the Father was sent in love to clean up the messes we made in an act of supreme love by dying on the cross. 

And when Jesus rose from the dead and returned to his heavenly Father, the Spirit was sent on another mission of love to extend this sacred love through us, the church, into the whole world, not just ancient Israel and Palestine. 

So, when it’s all said and done, the Trinity is all about God’s mission of love. And this mission is best summed up in those well-known words we heard in today’s gospel reading from John: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that God gave the Son, the only begotten one, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:14-17)

That’s what the Trinity is all about, dear people of God. And we share in the life of the Trinity, and in God’s mission of love when we are claimed, called, enlivened, empowered, and sent from this place to extend God’s love in word and deed to this broken world. This love cannot be contained. And that’s good news for us, and for all the world! In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.