Richard Davenport
May 26, 2024 – Trinity Sunday
John 3:1-17
In the church calendar, Trinity Sunday always follows Pentecost. It’s a bit of an odd holiday in the church year. It isn’t really something from the life of Christ. Not in the sense we usually think of, at any rate. This is the Sunday we pull out the Athanasian Creed. It’s a little different than the other two, not just because it’s longer, but also because of what it’s trying to say. The three ecumenical creeds, the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, all came about in response to different heresies that threatened to infect the church. The early theologians wrote down these statements of faith to fight against the encroaching heresies.
They’re ecumenical, meaning that they’re accepted by all of Christendom. They’re an easy way to check and see if someone really is Christian or not. If someone can look at the three creeds and accept what they say, great, we can continue to have a discussion. If not, then you’re not actually Christian, no matter how much you might look or act like Christian or even if you think you are, the creeds declare who God is and you’re doing something different.
There’s the odd statement that comes out every so often that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God. The creeds say otherwise. Jews and Muslims will never accept what the creeds say. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, for as much as they try and mimic Christian things still reject what God says about himself and the creeds make that clear too.
All of that is to say that Trinity Sunday isn’t so much about an event as it is a teaching, a doctrine of the church. Here we consider the God we worship, the Triune God, three Persons – one God. You are baptized into the Triune name of God, we invoke the Triune name at the beginning of worship, we confess our faith in the Triune God in the creeds. This is who the true God is. If what you are worshipping is not this God, then you have created a false and dead god.
The Triune God is the focus of everything we do here. We begin the service in the Triune name of God, indicating exactly whose house this is and whose invitation has brought us here. We confess the Triune God in the creed and we name him in many of our prayers, “We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.” We begin our life in God’s family when we are given his name, baptized in the Triune name of God. This is when our life of discipleship formally begins as well, as we spend the rest of our lives following in his footsteps.
Baptism is the subject of the discussion Jesus has with Nicodemus in our gospel reading today. “Born…again? What does that even mean? How could that possibly work? It’s biologically impossible. Your mouth is moving but all I hear is crazy.” That isn’t to say Nicodemus disbelieved. He acknowledged him as a teacher sent from God. Jesus must know what he’s talking about, but poor Nicodemus doesn’t understand. I can’t really blame him either. If someone, even someone I respected as a teacher and theologian, such as one of my professors at the seminary, came to me and started talking like this, I’m not sure what I’d think about it either. “I’ve taken your classes. I’ve head you talk about the Bible before. I’m pretty sure you know what you’re talking about, but I’m not really following this at all.”
So what really is the problem here? Jesus instructs him on the great gift of baptism and how it brings the Spirit and salvation. There’s plenty there to talk about. Baptism does great things. We can talk and talk and talk about how wonderful baptism is.
Baptism isn’t the problem here. The problem is Nicodemus. The problem is us. “Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” I’m sure Nicodemus thought he did. I’m sure he would have said he had all of this God stuff pretty well in hand.
How well do you know God? How well do you understand God, what he does, why he does it, what he’s capable of, all of it? Most Lutherans can say they went to Sunday school as children. They went through confirmation. They studied the basic Bible stories and the small catechism. After that? Well, maybe some study here and there, maybe not. Maybe you have a prayer life, maybe you don’t. How sure are you that you have all of the answers?
Nicodemus, a Pharisee, one who spent his life studying the Bible and the history of Israel, thought he had a pretty solid handle on what God is all about, and he was wrong. We, like Nicodemus, can become so certain we know it all, so certain we understand it all, that we completely miss what God is actually saying and doing. Even worse, we can reject it as impossible. “God doesn’t work like that. God won’t work like that. That doesn’t make any sense. God doesn’t do things that way.”
True, there are things God says he doesn’t do. But there are a lot of things he says he does do, many of them go beyond anything we poor humans could ever hope to achieve or accomplish. There are many more things that he doesn’t explain to us very well at all. God does something, whether it’s something we like or something we don’t like, something that doesn’t quite fit our own notions of what God is all about and we reject it out of hand as nonsense. Jesus chastises Nicodemus, not because he asks questions, but because he should have known all of this already. All of the pieces are there, scattered throughout the Old Testament. This Spirit thing, this new life thing, it isn’t crazy talk. It’s what God has been doing all along, at the Red Sea, in the flood, with lepers, with anyone unfit and unworthy to be in the presence of God where light and life are found. God washes with water and gives his poor, exiled, dying people, new life.
Trinity Sunday is here as a reminder. It is a reminder of our limitations. It is a reminder that, no matter how smart you think you are, you will never fully grasp all of God’s qualities. Many throughout history thought they could understand it all, make sense of it all, and they ended up bringing terrible heresies into the church. That’s why the Creeds exist, as a buffer. We may not know all there is to know about God, but we can at least say this much with certainty.
We know God created all there is and all there ever will be. We know sin is a result of our own rejection of God and his law. We know sin brings death. We know God loves us so much he sent his Son to pay the penalty for that sin, to purify us and make us worthy to be with him again. We know that the Spirit alone gives life, and that nothing in this world can sustain us eternally. All of this is sure and certain, because this is what God has revealed to us.
We think we have God all figured out and end up setting our own limits on what he can or will do. “I know God forgives, but not even he would forgive me for the terrible things I’ve done that have caused so much grief for my family.” Are you sure about that? “I made such a mess of my life in the past and now my body suffers for it. I know I’ll die young. I certainly shouldn’t be given anything like eternal life.” How do you know any of that? “I’m awful. I’m unredeemable. I’m worthless. No one should ever love me. No one should even want me around.” Who told you all of that? I certainly wasn’t God.
Can God give you new life? Can God cause you to be born again? Can God take care of you when all earthly means have failed? Can God even the most wretched and unlovable? Can God forgive even the most heinous and despicable? Can God be somehow three and one at the same time? Can Jesus be both God and man at the same time? Can God die? Can God rise again?
The answer is yes, yes, and yes again. God can do all of these things. The only limits to what God can do are those he imposes on himself. Trinity Sunday is where we confess what God has done, what he is doing, and what he will do. How do we know any of these things? Because this is what he has revealed to us and we trust that it is so. When we apply worldly limits to God, we make him less, but he will always be more. More majestic, more infinite, more almighty, more loving, more forgiving, than we can ever fathom.
We confess a God who is all of that and more. We confess a God who can do all of that and more and who does everything out of love for his fallen creatures. Our salvation, our life, is only possible because God is greater than us in every way. Why does he do any of this? Because he chooses to love and forgive even we poor sinners who fight against him, who reject him, who break everything and everyone. He takes us and makes us new again, all because of a love that overshadows everything we can imagine.