Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity
“Does not wisdom call, and understanding raise
her voice?”
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Today we come to that Sunday feared by all Lutheran pastors:
Trinity Sunday. Unlike most other feast days of the Church, the feast of the
Holy Trinity does not concern itself with some episode in the life of Our Lord
Jesus. It does not concern itself with His birth or death; His resurrection or
Ascension. It does not concern His giving of the Holy Spirit; strictly
speaking, it does not concern anything in the Bible, for the word ‘Trinity’
never appears in the Bible.
It is concerned with a doctrine, an idea. It celebrates the ‘doctrine’ of the
Holy Trinity, that God is one nature, one being, in three distinct persons,
united to one each other by perfect love, distinguished from one another by the
nature of their generation.
All pastors fear Trinity Sunday, for not only does it celebrate a doctrine, it
celebrates a doctrine which not even the most astute theologians fully
understand. How can one be made three? How can three be made one? How can three
equal one while remaining distinct from one? How can one remain single if it is
to also remain distinctly plural? If the Father and the Son are both God, what
makes them different, if they are the same thing? If the Son and the Father are
both God, why not say there are two gods, instead of one? ‘Wisdom calls, understanding raises her voice’ Yet there is none
who can hear.
A story is told about St. Augustine, the Bishop of a city called Hippo, in
North Africa. Having recently converted to Christianity, he sat upon the
beaches of the Mediterranean, and tried to understand the doctrine of the Holy
Trinity. He drew diagram after diagram in the sand, different organizations of
circles, representing the persons of the Trinity, and lines connecting them,
showing how they are one. With each wave from the shore, the diagram he had
just drawn would be washed away, and he would begin to create a new one; it
too, in only a moment, being swept away by the sea.
After hours of such reasoning and contemplation, an angel came to him, and
commanded him, ‘draw again, with your finger, a diagram which explains the
Lord’s Divine Majesty.’ So St. Augustine inserted his finger in the sand, and
immediately a wave crashed over it, wiping it away. Exasperated, St. Augustine
gave up. The angel asked him ‘why are you frustrated?’ He answered, ‘Because I
cannot come to understand the Holy Trinity.’
The angel responded, ‘Even as each diagram you draw cannot contain the entire
ocean within its grooves, but is whipped away by the sea, so the infinite
majesty of God cannot be contained by any human thought, but washes all human
thoughts into itself.’
Indeed, the doctrine of the Trinity ‘demolishes
arguments, and every pretension that sets itself up before the knowledge of
God, and it takes captive every thought, and makes it obedience to Christ.’
The Feast of Trinity humbles us, and reminds us of this lesson: that God is
God, and we are not. That He is infinite, and we are finite. That He is
incomprehensible, and we are simple creatures. That He is from everlasting to everlasting, and we are as the flowers of the field, which grow forth, and is cut down.
It humbles the intellect of the theologian, and makes him no more studied than
the layman. It lowers the priest, and makes him no more profound than his
hearer. It strikes down the pastor and his library, and exalts the simple faith
of Christians: the simple faith which does not dare plunge into the mysteries
of God, which does not have the conceit of human reason, believing that God can
be made small enough to be understood; the faith which confesses simply. ‘I
believe.’ The faith which fears God. The faith that is ‘the beginning of wisdom’. The faith that hears the call ‘to all the children of man.’
These words, ‘I believe’ are a translation of the Latin word ‘Credo’, from
which we derive our word ‘Creed’, and on this day we confess the Creed of
Athanasius. Seemingly contradictory, confusing, complex, profound, darkening,
the Athanasian Creed seems more likely to confuse than to clarify our belief.
But believe me when I tell you that it is not so complicated, for the entire
Creed follows from five words which explain the entire purpose and intent not
only of the Creed itself, but of our faith, our religion, our Church, our
Gospel. Those five words are the first in the Creed: ‘Whoever desires to be
saved…’
It is easy to read The Athanasian Creed as being a lengthy and repetitious
definition of God. But this is wrong. It is first and foremost about our
Salvation. ‘Whoever desires to be saved must hold the Catholic Faith.’ And what
is this faith? Put in many words in today’s Creed, and put in fewer words in
our usually confessed Nicene Creed, it is that salvation has come. And how has
it come? Through God in Christ, and through the Spirit, which works eternal
life in men through the Church, creating faith, for ‘if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.’
What is the Trinity? It is the divine name of God. It is the
name put upon you when you were reborn of water and the word. It is the name
carved upon your body in the sign of the cross when you were baptized. It is
the name which filled you through the Spirit in the washing of the Churches
life-giving font. It is the name which brings salvation. And indeed, ‘whoever
desires to be saved’ must be brought into the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian name, the name of the Divine Majesty,
of God Almighty and Eternal.
Therefore, ‘ascribe to the Lord the glory
due his name’, for by this name you were bought, and at a price. For from the foundation of the world, Christ was
crucified for you, that He may never be without you, His beloved child; that He
may never be without you, His glorious flock.
Trinity Sunday celebrates, then, not a doctrine, abstract and confusing, but
ascribes glory to the name of the Most High, who saved you, who has ever saved
age after age, and who shall always save, until the end of things.
And, indeed, on this day, we do not only celebrate and glorify the God who is
salvation, but the God who has saved and guarded his Church. For through
innumerable persecutions and countless heresies; through political assaults
from without and false doctrines from within have the beast of the sea, and the
beast of the earth constantly attacked Christ’s Church; the Church which
confesses ‘the catholic faith’, the church which proclaims defiantly ‘I
believe’, the Church which saves ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit.’
For at all times the Church has appeared frail, has appeared
corrupted, has appeared decadent, has appeared to be on the brink of utter
extermination. Yet ‘The souls of the just
are in the hand of God, and the torment of death shall not touch them. In the
sight of the unwise, they seemed to die; but they are in peace.’ For ‘he has
cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has exalted the lowly.’
What has outlived Christ’s Church? What Empire, what kingdom, what temple,
what worship, what philosophy has overcome the faith in the Trinity? For
invincible Rome for centuries executed and maimed the baptized, and what is it
now, but ruins and a memory? Yet we still pray ‘I believe’. What god or
pantheon is still served by heathen sacrifices from blood-guilty hands? Those
gods live on only in textbooks, and their servants rest in graves. Yet we still
sing ‘[God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.’ What philosophy or what thought
still captivates the minds of the masses? They have become little more than
cocktail conversation, a way to impress strangers. Yet myriad hundred millions
on this day sing praise and blessing upon the Wisdom of Our Lord.
Though the Triune God, and those who confess Him, are everywhere derided as
low, stupid, unenlightened, simpletons, barbarous, backwards, yet shall the
Triune God shall number their days,
and all such slanderers, and all their ideas will one day be reckoned among the
superstitions of a past age. But the Trinity will be praised with ever-new
voices, and worshiped by ever-reborn hearts. For Our Lord, the eternal Christ
has said it:
‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my
Words shall never pass away.’
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Preached by Pastor
Fields
Sermon texts: Proverbs
8:1-4, 22-31; Acts 2:14, 22-36; John 8:48-59