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Grace, mercy and peace be yours from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, the Christ. Amen.
The reading we shall consider more closely for this Sunday of the Trinity is from Matthew, chapter 28.
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw Him they worshiped Him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (ESV)
Last Sunday, Christians who pay attention to the Church calendar celebrated Pentecost. Those who do, heard about Jesus and His Father pouring out the Holy Spirit on His disciples on earth to authorize His Church to tell the whole world about the mighty works of God (Acts 2:11); His mightiest work being His victory over death and the grave —His mightiest work of enduring the punishment sinners deserve so that we are free from it.
Today, on Trinity Sunday, Christians are called to consider the mystery of The God, our God, Who has done this mighty work; we are called to consider that He is One God, in three Persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So our Scripture readings for Trinity Sunday encourage us to meditate on God – first, in the Old Testament reading, we hear how the entire Trinity was involved in the work of creation. Then, in the book of Acts, we hear Peter, preaching about how all persons of the Trinity are at work for our salvation – Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father, sent the Spirit from heaven, because they, or He, rather, the One God, desires the salvation of all men, through the preaching of His Word.
And in the Gospel lesson, Jesus gives to His Apostles the commission to preach and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them; in baptism, Jesus gives the divine Name with which they are to baptize all nations– the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So when we baptize, it is into this Name; His Name; His mighty Name. So, why do we call upon This Name, at the beginning of every service, or when you do it at home in your daily prayers? We do it in remembrance of this Baptism, the one baptism with which you have been baptized, and by which you are united to Christ; you are united with Him in a death like His and also in His resurrection; (Romans 6:4) you are united to His Name – the Name above all names – the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
This is why Luther, in his Small Catechism, instructs us to make the sign of the Tcross (a simple gesture of devotion) upon ourselves when we remember This Name. The sign of the T cross was made upon you when you were baptized, because, in baptism, you were united to the Christ Who was killed on a cross for the forgiveness of all your sins. There, by virtue of being Baptized in His Name, you were crucified and killed with our Lord and Savior, the Good Shepherd, Who laid down His life for the sheep. And, by virtue of being Baptized in His Name, you have been and will be raised from death to eternal life on the Last Day.
So, the Name of our God is not something small, or unimportant; this is the Name that makes you children of God and temples of the Holy Spirit – which is what you are. Faith in This Name gives life, while unbelief brings condemnation. The stakes could not be higher.
So in the Athanasian Creed, which we'll confess in a moment, the ultimate importance of this faith is stated clearly. “Whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold the catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally.” You’ll confess it in a moment – but consider what it means – it means there is salvation for those who believe the true confession and it means there is eternal death for those who defile or deny it.
There is no in-between, no middle-ground. This is the Catholic faith, which is to say, this is the confession that the one Christian Church has held for the last two thousand years, since Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Don’t be put off by the word “Catholic,” as if the Athanasian Creed is somehow condoning the heresies that have come out of the Roman Catholic Church in the West, or out of the so-called “Orthodox” church in the East.
After all, what happened just a few days ago is the fruit of the Roman and Eastern churches' deadly heresies. Perhaps you heard about it in the news – how the Roman pontif hosted a joint, inter-faith service at the Vatican; it included a mixture of Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayers in the Vatican, as though it's somehow pleasing to The One True God to entertain the possibility that prayers to false gods might actually do some good. It's as the prophet Jeremiah warned, "For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain…" [these that includes popular photo ops and the like]; "…and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of My people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace." (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11)
God forbid.
Our only Hope is in Christ and Him crucified and Risen; God Himself has established the only Peace that lasts because He has established, in Himself, Peace between sinners and Himself; semi-private pagan prayers prayed along side or "at the same time as" or "in the same place as" someone who claims to represent The One True God do not benefit anyone. And what's worse is that encouraging prayers to false gods simply serves to deceive unbelievers in their unbelief and confirm them in their sin and condemnation.
The problem with any and all interfaith worship and interfaith prayer services is that they give the impression that all roads lead to heaven. Such behavior is only evidence that the leaders of the Roman Catholic and “Orthodox” churches of the East are daily engaged in undermining the one true Catholic faith.
If the Roman or Eastern churches have failed to do it, who does confess the true Catholic faith? Only those who stick to the same Gospel that the Lord sent His apostles to preach. YOU are the inheritors of the true Catholic faith, because you have believed the apostolic message, and have not been led astray by another gospel. Not that there is another gospel, of course, as St. Paul reminds us, before he adds divine condemnation to anyone who preaches a different message.
Remember what he said: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to The One you received, let himbe accursed.” (Galatians 1:8-9) What does it mean to be cursed in this way? It means to be outside the body of Christ, cut off from the Church, and handed over to the satanic Prince of this world – not only as a punishment – but also and especially because God desires all people to be saved; He doesn’t want anyone to be lost or led astray. So when Church discipline is exercised, and people are excommunicated, it’s always in the hope that they will repent and return to the one true faith.
Yet, if you look at the context of Paul's letter to the Christians in Galatia, the Apostle was saying this about those who wanted to make necessary for salvation the conditional promise signified by circumcision; circumcision was a sign God gave the children of Abraham that if they kept their end of the covenant, God would keep His. But because the children of Abraham never could keep their end of the old covenant, God sent His Son, born of a woman so the old conditional covenant, (symbolized by circumcision), could finally be fulfilled by a Man.
Because of Christ's bodily fulfillment of His Father's covenant, faith in Christ and His mighty, manly work of salvation is all it takes to benefit from all His good and gracious work. Because Jesus and faith in Jesus is the only way sinners are saved, St. Paul condemns anyone and everyone who corrupts the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So how much more would our Lord's Apostle condemn the Muslims, who teach that salvation does not come through Jesus Christ but through ritual prayer, almsgiving, fasting and pilgrimage; to top it all off, in their misguided zeal, they teach that Jesus is not God. So, no! – Good Muslims cannot be saved, unless they repent of both their blasphemy against Christ and their unbelief regarding the clear teachings of His Apostles, and also come to believe and confess that God is not just One – in that much we agree – but He is also Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is Jesus’ Name – and there is no salvation apart from Him; no exceptions.
God’s righteous condemnation awaits those who refuse to believe, and on the Last Day, before Christ’s throne of judgment, since, without faith in Jesus, they will have cut themselves off from the forgiveness of sins through Christ, and they will not have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them; all unbelievers will be found to have done nothing good, and will be sentenced to the eternal fire, because they have sinned and refused forgiveness and salvation from God in the way He has provided it.
Such a message is not popular.
The idea that a good God would condemn anyone to eternal suffering is rejected by most people; as sinners we tend to think our own sense of justice is better than God’s. Instead of learning from God according to what He has revealed in Scripture through His prophets and apostles, sinners attempt to make and shape God into what they want Him to be – merciful, sure, but not righteous, just and holy. It’s true, after all, that God is merciful – in that respect, we agree – but it’s also true that God is holy, righteous and just; He will repay to each according to their works if they do not trust in the mighty works of Jesus for them.
Now this message – of condemnation and judgment for those who don’t believe – might seem to be unloving and unkind. Unbelievers think – “Can’t God just leave everyone alone and stop interfering? If He loves the world so much why would God tell people they’re going to be damned?”
He warns them because He wants all people to be saved. He warns them before it's too late. God warns them by sending His messengers to share His warning of judgment for sin and hope in Jesus Christ. God tells sinners what the verdict will be before the trial! And He tells sinners that He has created the Solution to their sin and condemnation problem; He has promised that the Judge will also be our Advocate and Intercessor. You see, when you think about it, the message of God’s judgment is a message of undeserved mercy and grace, precisely because that message is a call to repentance and faith, so that sins are forgiven, and penalties are paid by the only One Who can afford it all. God wants all people to be saved, so He commands this Message to be preached – not just of condemnation for those who do not believe, but also of salvation for all who WILL believe.
Consider this illustration – suppose two friends are working together, and one of them likes to whistle while he works, but his whistling annoys his friend. In fact, it annoys his friend so much, that he just can’t control himself, and he’s about to throw him out the window. But because he’s his friend, and he doesn’t want to throw him out the window, what does he do? He tells his friend – “Stop that, or I’m gonna have to throw you out the window!”
It would have been a lot less kind of him to have just thrown his friend out the window without any warning, wouldn’t it? That may not be the best illustration. But, please, understand it's exactly God’s love for us that made Him do what He did on the cross, —what we call The Gospel, the Good News of the salvation of sinners; God's love also makes Him want the Gospel, the Good News, to be preached to all nations – that’s why Jesus said what He said to the eleven – “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
It’s not for us to criticize God and blame Him for having what the world considers a bad plan for the salvation of mankind, as if we sinners could make a better plan than His. The one and only Son of God took on human flesh and was crucified for our sake – do we criticize that part of the plan? Well, certainly unbelievers do, but they are fools! When God does something, how can anyone criticize Him?
Instead, we should believe and trust that whatever He does, He does because it’s the best way to do it. And if we can’t understand why He does what He does in the way He does it, then let’s confess our own shortcomings – and exclaim with the Apostle, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!”
So God’s plan doesn’t end with the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus into Heaven. It goes on, in the revelation of Scripture, even after the Day of Pentecost. So John the Evangelist writes, “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His Name” precisely because God has allowed and ordained faith to be the only requirement for salvation; faith is the requirement He freely provides through the work of His Spirit —through the Word of God proclaimed into your ears; because, although it is true that, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,” it’s also true that “whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) The lack of belief in Jesus is what condemns sinners, and saving faith is created by hearing the Word of God. (Romans 10:17)
So Jesus appointed the apostles to preach, baptize, teach and to forgive and retain sins, because this too is part of His plan – that specific men were appointed to do this ministry, and that they in turn appointed other men, from the midst of the Church, through the laying on of hands, to share in the same ministry, until the end of time. Why?
So that all the elect of God will be saved by believing, because sinners cannot believe without hearing, and sinners cannot hear without someone preaching, and no one can preach, unless he is sent, so Jesus sent His preachers – and still sends them today – to fulfill this mission of making disciples of all nations. (Romans 10:14-17)
This is how He is with us today; this is how He is with you each day.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.