Sunday, June 15, 2025, Holy Trinity Sunday

“Fathers, Sons, and Blessed Spirits”

Psalm 8; Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Acts 2:14a, 22-36; John 8:48-59

Divine Service IV with Holy Communion

Hymns: #905 “Come Thou Almighty King”; #507 “Holy, Holy, Holy”; #791 “All People That On Earth Do Dwell”

Dear Friends in Christ, 

     Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father, from His holy Son Jesus, and from His blessed Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Today is Holy Trinity Sunday on the Church calendar, a day when our preachers have the impossible task of explaining exactly what a “Holy Trinity” is; because when it comes to describing the Trinity, every attempt at illustration always somehow falls short or breaks down.

     An egg is sometimes used as an illustration for the Trinity, with a shell, and a white, and a yoke; but all of those are still separate parts, unless you scramble them; and to do that, you have to break the egg. A shamrock, with its three leaves of the clover, is sometimes used to illustrate the Trinity. But again, that’s three separate parts that never truly combine into one. The three states of water – ice, liquid, and vapor – are used sometimes; but that doesn’t really work, either, because water can’t be liquid and vapor and ice all at the same time.  A newer one, the fidget spinner, sort of works; it has three separate parts until you spin it, and then it looks like one thing. But that only lasts for a minute, and then you have to spin it again. All these illustrations fall short in the end, because we’re trying to express something too great and wonderful for our human minds to comprehend. Someone said God trying to explain Himself to us is like trying to explain quantum physics to a dog or a squirrel. 

     This being Father’s Day, though, another way to try to describe the Triune God comes to mind; this may turn out to be imperfect as well, but maybe we can get close… The Trinity, the Triune God, our God, is a relationship - three distinct Persons in one divine Being. A Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, in perfect harmony with one another, and so perfect in love for one another as to be inseparable and indistinguishable from one another – a perfect family!

     Now, a little bit about harmony, which is important to the discussion this morning.

Harmony is when all the separate parts of a thing all work perfectly and harmoniously together. In music, harmony is when all the different notes on a piano are played just right to make a beautiful tune; or when all the voices in a choir – the sopranos, the altos, the tenors, the basses – all come together to sing a beautiful song; or when all the instruments in a band combine to play a symphony. Some say the harmony of the Trinity is like beautiful choreography, like a beautiful, perfect, everlasting heavenly dance. The opposite of harmony, though, is dissonance - like one off-key voice in an otherwise beautiful choir; or like a four-year old banging on all the piano keys at once; or like if I tried to play the piano - not a pleasant sound at all.

     The Holy Trinity is an Eternal Father who is love, and who always loves; and an Eternal Son - “begotten of His Father before all worlds,” as we say in the Creed - always loves and obeys His Father; and a Spirit of Love who binds them together in perfect harmony. And that perfect-in-love heavenly family, that we call the Trinity, is intended to be the source and the model for all our human relationships here on earth. It’s what we’re supposed to look like.

     But when it comes to our human families – to human fathers and sons – eh, not so much. Sin has brought dissonance into our relationships - a wrench in the works; an off-key, cracking voice in the choir; an amateur accordion squawking away in the heavenly orchestra. All of us have, or have had, imperfect heavenly fathers, because there is no other kind. All of us fathers have our sinful flaws, some of us more than others. (For my own flaws, dear children, I apologize!) And all of us have been, at times, disobedient children. The Trinity gives us a picture of what our relationships ought to be; and our own relationships so often paint a picture of what sin has done to us instead.

     I went to a Promise Keepers rally once, back in 1990. 90,000 men came to fill the old Pontiac Silverdome, praying and worshiping together. We sang “Holy, Holy, Holy” a cappella – and in harmony, I might add; it was amazing. Then, at one point in the afternoon, all the fathers and sons who were there together were asked to turn and pray with one another. My own father left our family before I was born; I never knew him, and he never bothered to acknowledge me. So I sat there alone, listening to those other fathers praying with their sons - and it made me so angry. Dissonance…

     Now, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, perfect in their love for each other, are also in perfect agreement on their love for us. They each had a hand together in our creation - the Father Creator, the Son as the “let-there-be” Word that brought all things into being, the Spirit hovering over the waters as the “craftsman by His side” as all things were brought together. And all three of them together wanting peace and harmony for us, and all knowing about the disharmony, the dissonance, that would be caused by human sin. And from the beginning, deciding together that the Son would be the One to come down to the sin-broken world to make it right again.

     So Jesus, God’s Son, came at last to walk in this broken world, a world full of sin and grief and pain and dissonant voices, sons against fathers and fathers against sons. In John’s Gospel, Jesus openly declared Himself to be the Light of the World. And the Pharisees, always the contrary voices, called Him a liar. Jesus said He was only telling them what He Himself had heard from His Father. And they answered, “And who is Your Father?” implying that He was an illegitimate child.

     He told them plainly that He’d come down from the Father in Heaven, and was returning to the Father soon. And He told them that if they didn’t believe He was telling the truth, they’d die in their sins. “But if You hold to My teaching,” He told them, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They were offended at that, and told Him that they were Abraham’s children, and didn’t need to be set free from anything. They told Him, “We’re Abraham’s true children, and God’s children, and we’re the ones God loves – but we don’t even know who You are or where You came from.”

     He told them, “When you have lifted Me up – crucified Me – then you’ll come to understand that I Am just who I claim to be.” They didn’t understand – or wouldn’t understand – that this Jesus, standing in from of them, was an inseparable part of the Trinity, the Second Person, the Son of God, God come to them in the flesh, come to earth to die on a cross to save them from their sins. Without knowing that, and believing it, and accepting it as true – without confessing the Trinity and Jesus Christ as an indivisible part of it - there’s no way to be saved. So with Satan’s dissonant voice ringing in their ears, clouding their hearts, and filling their souls, they refused to believe Him. Jesus told them, “Then you belong to your father, the devil.” I think He said that more out of sadness than out of anger, to tell you the truth.

      The Jews responded, as our Gospel reading begins, by calling Him a Samaritan and demon-possessed. They were losing the argument, so they resorted to calling Him names. Jesus answered them, "I am not possessed by a demon, but I honor my Father and you dishonor Me. I’m not seeking glory for Myself; but there is One who seeks it, and He will be your judge. I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death." 

     The Jews answered, “Now we know You’re demon-possessed! Now we know You’re crazy! Abraham died! The prophets all died! Everyone dies! How can Your words keep people from dying? Who do You think You are?" You and I know the answer to that, having the benefit of hindsight and Holy Scripture; they didn’t just yet. Jesus replied, "If I glorify Myself, My glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies Me.” (Again He’s declaring His place as an essential part of the Trinity). “Though you do not know Him,” says Jesus, “I know Him. If I said I didn’t, I’d be a liar like you, but I do know Him and I keep His word.” Trinity again; the Father who loves the Son, the Son who’s always obedient to the Father. 

     “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing My day,” says Jesus. “He saw it and was glad." That’s Jesus’ claim to be eternal. The Jews scoffed and complained, "You are not yet fifty years old and You have seen Abraham!" And Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I Am!" – there naming Himself with the everlasting name of God. “I and the Father are One,” Jesus said. “May they be one, Father, as we are One,” He prayed, inviting all of us to take part in the divine relationship. 

     “The reason the Son of Man came was to take away sin,” Jesus said. The Trinity is about a Father who loved us all so much, He gave us His own precious Son, so that we could have our sins forgiven. You fathers who have sons, think about what that means and the depth of love and pain involved in such a thing. It’s what Abraham went through when God asked him to sacrifice young Isaac. I had a dream years ago, when my son was about three years old, that he’d died. And when my wife and I walked into the funeral parlor, they were nailing him to a cross. I woke up thinking, “Oh, that’s harsh, Lord, that’s harsh… but I get the point.”

     When I got back from that Promise Keepers rally, I talked to my pastor about how that little father-son episode had made me feel. He told me, “Sit down and write your father a letter; don’t hold anything back, let it all out; and when you’re finished, tear it up and throw it away, and maybe try writing another one later.” It was surprising how helpful writing that letter was, as far as my peace of mind goes; although I never did get around to writing the second letter or sending it; and then there was no one left to send it to. Relationships are hard…

     Because we’ve been loved and forgiven, we’ve also been given the grace to be able to love and forgive one another. All our human relationships – fathers and sons, parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and friends – depend on our willingness to forgive one another. If we can’t forgive the wrongs we do to each other, there can be no harmony or peace in our homes, no peace in our hearts, and we can’t live together in peace, as God – all of God – wants it to be.

     Oh, thank God that all of us have been Baptized, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and that Baptism has made us children of God, sinners though we yet may be. Thank God that we get to come back here every Sunday and hear those blessed words again: “Your sins are forgiven, in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Thank the blessed Triune God in heaven that He gives Himself to us again today in the Body and Blood of His Son iHis Jesus, by the power of the Spirit that speaks through the Word – all so we who’ve been forgiven can now get about the blessed work of forgiving that needs to be done.

     May our own relationships – fathers and sons, husbands and wives, our own dear human families- come to resemble the blessed Holy Trinity: Blessed by peace and harmony, and held together always by forgiveness and mercy and love and holy grace. 

     In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.