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Trinity Sunday 2023
Immanuel Lutheran Church, Hamilton, Ohio
Pastor Kevin Jud
June 4, 2023
Gen. 1:1-2:4, Acts 2:14a, 22-36, Matthew 28:16-20
Sermons online:
Text and Audio: immanuelhamiltonchurch.com click “sermons”
Text: pastorjud.org
Audio: pastorjud.podbean.com
itunes: bit.ly/pastorjud
Full Service Audio: bit.ly/ImmanuelWorship
Ahh, the experience of a brand new, 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. There is a beautiful picture on the top of the box which is sealed on all four sides of the bottom by the paper cover overlapping the joint. You run your thumbnail along the edge to cut the paper and then carefully open the box so you do not drop any pieces. Looking inside it is a jumbled, incomprehensible mass of gray pieces and colorful pieces all in complicated shapes. It is a crazy mess, but you don’t give up and close the box. Instead, you dump out the pieces on the table and start to sort. You turn all the pieces colorful side up and separate the edge pieces from the center pieces. If you are patient and persistent, you can make sense of the jumble and assemble all 1,000 pieces in the proper way to replicate the picture on the front of the box. Now, I hear that it is a great joy to work a puzzle from beginning to completion. I can help for a few minutes at a time, but, having the attention span of a hummingbird drinking espresso, I mostly just marvel at other’s patience. Starting out, the puzzle is a jumble; an incomprehensible mess. But through hard work and perseverance, you can sort it out and assemble it and make it all make sense.
Today is Trinity Sunday. Really, every Sunday is Trinity Sunday as the Trinity is with us every Sunday at worship. In our normal liturgy we reference the Trinity at least six times not counting hymns. Today, however, we think about the Trinity a little more than usual and what we will find is that thinking deeply about the Trinity can give you a headache. The more you think about the Trinity, the more you realize you cannot understand the Trinity and in this lack of understanding you learn a great truth about God.
Today we will confess the Athanasian Creed which is the longest of the three ecumenical creeds confessed by Christians throughout the world. This creed confesses the catholic faith; small “c” catholic, meaning the whole Christian church. The catholic faith is this, “that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For the Father is one person, the Son is another, and the Holy Spirit is another. But the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one.” One Godhead… with equal glory and coeternal majesty.
Thinking about how all this fits together is like staring at a jumbled up puzzle, but there are no colors, no straight edges, nothing makes sense.
Three persons, one God. Whoever would come up with a God that is three persons and one God? It does not make sense. It is beyond comprehension.
Then other words are used to describe God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; words that indicate that God is beyond human understanding.
Uncreated
Infinite
Eternal
Almighty
In mathematics, an 8 lying sideways is the symbol for infinity. A line with an arrow at each end indicates an eternal line. We can symbolize the infinite, the eternal, but we cannot understand it. We really, really want things to have a beginning and an end, but with God there are no edge pieces, there is no border. God has always been… and that just does not make sense. Who created God? God is uncreated. God does not make sense.
God does not make sense and a lot of what God is doing does not make sense. People are made disciples of Jesus, God the Son, by being baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and being taught to observe all Jesus has commanded. Just water and words. How can water and words do such great things?
Jesus said, this bread is my body; this cup is the new testament in My blood. But how can the body of the eternal, infinite, almighty, God the Son be present in a wafer of bread and His blood in a sip of wine. It does not make sense.
There is a tremendous, prideful temptation to want to make everything make sense. Your pride tempts you to believe that you should be able to understand everything.
Many people have fallen prey to this temptation. Huge groups of Christians have given up on baptismal regeneration and the real presence of Christ in Holy Communion because it does not make sense. They still baptize and have Communion, but they believe, teach and confess that these acts are not something God is doing for you, but rather something that you are doing for God; because that makes better sense. That is something you can understand.
Others have gone much further. Mohammed did not like the idea of the Trinity and so when He made up a new religion in 610 AD he invented a new god without God the Son or God the Holy Spirit. Jesus and the Holy Spirit were reinvented into just prophets. Makes more sense than the Trinity.
More recently, in 1830 in New York, Joseph Smith made up a new god in a religion called Mormonism. Mormons reject the idea of three persons in one God as illogical and contradictory. They teach that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each separate gods along with many other gods and if Mormon men are good enough they can become gods. Makes more sense than the Trinity.
The Trinity does not make sense and yet we confess the Trinity to be the true catholic faith. Because it makes sense that God does not make sense. In fact, it is essential that God does not make sense. Why is that? Why does it make sense for God to not make sense?
Even more recently, in 1872, Charles Taze Russell made up a new god and founded the Jehovah’s Witnesses that reject the Trinity as Satanic. They teach that Jesus is not God but a created being. Makes more sense than the Trinity.
For vast numbers of others they find they cannot comprehend the Trinity and they just give up on God altogether. How can they believe in something beyond their understanding? So they give up on God and follow their own feelings; they follow the desires of their flesh. The desires of the flesh make more sense than the Trinity.
The Trinity does not make sense and yet we confess the Trinity to be the true catholic faith. Because it makes sense that God does not make sense. In fact, it is essential that God does not make sense. Why is that? Why does it make sense for God to not make sense?
Because Genesis 1:1–2 (ESV) 1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 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, John 1:1–3 (ESV) 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. John 1:14 (ESV) 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Now, the puzzle of the Trinity is not completely incomprehensible. The one part of the puzzle of God that we get a bit of a handle on is Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. What we know about God the Father and God the Holy Spirit we learn from God the Son who came to be God with us; Immanuel.
God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the creators. You are a creation of God. God created and in the creation established the ongoing creation of life. The plants yield seeds, the creatures of the sea are to, Genesis 1:22 (ESV) 22 …“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” God created the creatures of the land to multiply and then Genesis 1:27–28 (ESV) 27 …God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
God created you through your parents, through their parents, all the way back to your first parents created by God from the dust of the ground. You are the creation, God is the creator. The creation cannot understand everything about the creator. If you have a god you can understand it means it is a god that someone made up; a god with a beginning and an end. A god that acts like you. A god that has demands you can meet to earn salvation. A glorious god enthroned far above the human fray. A god that makes sense.
The true God does things that do not make sense. The true God enters the human fray by taking on flesh and living among us. The true God shows His Godly glory by suffering and dying in bloody, naked, humiliation on a cruel cross. The true God conquers death by rising from the dead. What you know about God you learn from Jesus. You learn God is a God of sacrificial love who breathed life into the first man, and after that man’s fall into sin, it is this God who gives Himself as the sacrifice for sin, and breathes His Spirit, His breath, into you, to give you faith in the true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You confess the true God to be God, even though it does not make sense, because it is essential that God does not make sense. For He is three persons, one God.
Uncreated
Infinite
Eternal
Almighty
Amen.