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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The most‑recent Pew Research Center study suggests that while some 80 percent of Americans may believe in God, only 56 percent of Americans say they believe in the God of the Bible, perhaps understood as an all‑powerful, all‑knowing, loving deity, but not necessarily as Triune (PewForum). For example, an older survey by the Barna Research Group indicates that already then one in five Americans had rejected the Trinity, three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in one God, perhaps because a majority of Americans wrongly think that truth can be discovered not from the Bible but only through logic, human reasoning, and personal experience (Barna). Do you and I think such things?
The Athanasian Creed, one of the three ecumenical creeds and so a confessional writing of the Lutheran Church, which we will confess together again this morning, says both that the catholic, or “universal” faith is that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance, and it says that whoever desires to be saved must hold and keep whole and undefiled that catholic faith. With that creedal expression of the faith in mind on this Trinity Sunday, which offers us an important and salutary opportunity to consider the existence and nature of the Triune God (Hartwig, CPR 28:3, p.15), we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “The Triune God gives birth to us for worship”.
All three of today’s appointed Readings certainly pertain to the Holy Trinity in one way or another, but especially in the Gospel Reading do we find the Son of God, in the flesh of the man Jesus, teaching about the Holy Spirit’s giving birth to us so that we can worship Him, the Son Who was lifted up on the cross for us, as sent by the Father Who loved the world and wanted to save it (see Brown, ad loc John 3:1-21, p.136, citing Roustang; confer Lenski, ad loc John 3:16, p.260). As you heard in the Gospel Reading, Nicodemus at least claimed that he and others knew about Jesus, but Jesus went on to tell Nicodemus that Nicodemus and the others did not truly know or understand or experience, as evident by their unbelieving rejection of the truly knowing witness of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (confer John 5:37; 15:26; and Brockman, CPR 25:3, pp.11‑12, who cites Chemnitz’s Harmony, which cites Chrysostom and Cyril).
As the surveys I mentioned earlier indicate, in our time people commonly reject the Triune God’s revelation of Himself, instead making gods in their own image and of their own imagination. Fallen human reason of course rejects the Bible’s teaching that there are three Persons in one God, and that one of those three Persons alone took into Himself a human nature, died and rose. Increasingly, people, especially younger people, wrongly think that they can believe in some sort of “higher power” but reject the God of the Bible, that they can be “spiritual” but not “religious”, and that they remain a Christian even if they seldom or never set foot in a church building to seek and receive forgiveness of sins, especially in the form of the Body and Blood of the Savior Who died for them. A congregation that removes such people from its membership rolls is properly warning them and calling them to repent!
Of course, God calls all of us to repent, for, by nature, even we who believe remain sinful. Apart from God’s enabling us, we truly do not know, understand, or experience the Triune God, how the Spirit works, or from where those who are born of the Spirit come and to where they are going. On its own, the sinful flesh we are born into is of no help at all (John 6:63), and so we cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15:50), unless we are reborn from above by the Spirit. Although Jesus did not primarily come to condemn the world, nevertheless, on the Last Day, His word will judge those who, despite God’s gracious invitation, reject Him and do not receive His words (John 12:48), their deeds, as we will confess in the Athanasian Creed, will give evidence to their faith or their lack thereof and so determine whether they go to eternal life or eternal fire.
As we heard in the Gospel Reading, whoever believes in God will not perish but have eternal life. For God the Father loved the sinful world, including you and me, by giving His only Son to be lifted up on the cross, and sending the Spirit to give birth to us from above, so that we might worship the Triune God in the highest-possible way, by seeking and receiving from Him the forgiveness of sins (confer 1 John 4:9; Romans 5:8; John 8:28; 11:32-34). God—Who was, is, and ever will be—is perfect in power, in love, and purity, and the eyes of sinful people may not see His glory, but God is also merciful and uses His might in order to save us (Lutheran Service Book 507). St. Peter’s Pentecost sermon, a portion of which we heard in today’s Second Reading (Acts 2:14a, 22-36), describes the Father’s saving work through the Son and the Holy Spirit. On our own we cannot know, understand, or experience the Triune God, but He reveals Himself and other heavenly things to us—not only the Son, Who has ascended into and descended from Heaven, but also the Father and the Holy Spirit. When we do not reject the Triune God but trust in Him, as evident in our worshipping Him by seeking His forgiveness, then He forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin through His Word in all of its forms.
In today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 6:1-8), in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah was given a vision of worship in heaven, in which vision one of the seraphim used a burning coal from the heavenly altar to touch Isaiah’s lips and in doing so told him that His guilt was taken away and his sin atoned for. In our time, that same message of taken‑away guilt and atoned‑for sin is proclaimed and effected for us in worship here on earth through God’s Word read and preached and applied with water in Holy Baptism, with the touch of a pastor’s hand in individual Holy Absolution, and with bread that is Christ’s Body and wine that is Christ’s Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. At the Baptismal Font, we are saved not because of our works but because of God’s own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). There, we are born not of the will of the flesh or the will of man but of God (John 1:13). And, as, under normal circumstances, such baptism is necessary in order to see and enter the Kingdom of God, so, under normal circumstances, eating the Son’s Flesh and drinking His Blood is necessary in order for us to have the Triune God and His eternal life in us and, on the Last Day, to be raised up to eternal life (John 6:53-58). Yet, already here this day, we worship the Trinity in person and the Unity in substance of majesty coequal (LSB: Altar Book, 235). Here, the songs of saints and angels blend (LSB 907) and sweep across the crystal sea (LSB 821); the Sacrament joins earth with heaven beyond us, time with eternity (LSB 639).
Jesus’s words to Nicodemus seem to have later brought forth from him fruits of faith (John 7:50; 19:39). Likewise, “The Triune God gives birth to us for worship”. Those so born of God at least try not to keep on sinning (1 John 5:18), but ultimately our victory comes by faith in Jesus as the crucified Christ (1 John 5:4; confer 5:1). Such faith shows itself in worship of the Triune God, here and now primarily in seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins, and there and then completely in praising Him for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +