Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010
I do not want to give a lecture on the Holy Trinity. Rather, I want to worship and celebrate the fullness and wonder and mystery and revelation and salvation of our God.
We begin our worship service with the Trinitarian Invocation, gIn the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.h This is the God we worship. The Invocation is not Godfs telephone number or email address or password so that we can have access to his mercy and grace. These are the words spoken over us in blessing at our baptism. So each time when we hear these words, we should remember our baptism. In baptism we are made a child of God. Our sin is forgiven. We make a promise to God, and God makes a promise to us. It is the promise of salvation. The creation and redemption and sanctification power of God is poured down upon us. It is the fullness of God in our hearts and in our lives.
God is a mystery. Our human brains and our human hearts cannot fully understand God. The biggest mystery is not the science of God. How can God be eternal? Where is Heaven? How can God be everywhere? The biggest mystery is not the mathematics of God. 1+1+1=1. I can understand the wrath of God. He made the world perfect, but humans messed it up. We cannot put all the blame upon Adam and Eve, because we just repeat the same sort of sins ourselves. I can understand how God would want to destroy the world and start all over again, as in a big flood. What I think is the biggest mystery of God is the love, mercy, and tolerance of God.
And I see that mystery when I wonder why God has love, mercy, and tolerance for me. I know my sin. I know my weaknesses. It is humbling that God loves me. It is embarrassing that God tolerates me at all. Most Christians have experienced this sort of emotion. There are a number of hymns and gospel songs that are loved by a vast number of people because they express that mystery. For example, gAmazing Grace.h
God is a mystery, and yet he has revealed Himself to us. He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. He has revealed his love, mercy, and tolerance. In Jesus we see the love of God. We see that in his teaching and healing and death and resurrection. This love is the love poured out upon us in our baptism. It is Godfs promise to his precious child to bring that child to its heavenly home. It is the forgiveness of sin. It is a rebirth. It is Godfs promise to tolerate us as we sin and wander and defame the Holy Name. It is Godfs mercy to reveal to us again and again his love and promise.
How should we celebrate the Holy Trinity? With fireworks? With a feast? With a parade? With a smile on our face and a song in our heart?
I am going to suggest today that our commemoration of Trinity Sunday is to think about the mystery of God and to make that mystery a part of our lives. In other words, I think that Christians themselves should be mysterious. There should be something about a Christianfs life that other people cannot understand. A non-Christian should not be able to understand a Christian. I said before that I thought that the biggest mystery of God was Godfs love, mercy, and tolerance. If a Christian believer has that same love, mercy, and tolerance toward other people, people will be mystified. Tolerance means that we leave judgment up to God. Only God is the judge of other people. That is not the common way that people live and act toward others. Love is seen as selfishness, mercy is seen as weakness, tolerance is seen as being wishy-washy or condoning sin.
When I say that a Christian should be mysterious, I do not mean that they should be eccentric or weird or irrational. That is just plain being weird. I mean that a Christian should be different than non-Christians. We have our feet on the ground, but our heart is in heaven. Or rather, heaven is in our heart. We are a child of God as we walk down the street. The fullness of the Trinity, the fullness of our baptism is a mystery, and yet in our faith, it is revealed to us. That is the work of the Holy Spirit.
As we live as a Christian child of God, the mystery of God is revealed to the world. Godfs love and mercy come to the world. It is awe. It is awesome.
I think the most awesome and mysterious words are those words that proclaim the Name of God. gIn the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.h
Amen.
Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church