The Feast of the Holy Trinity
Defiance Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks in exclusive terms: “Truly, truly, I say to you,” declares the Lord, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Dear Christian friends, Ask Anhueser-Busch, MillerCoors or Pabst Brewing how to sell a lot of beer. They will tell you to make your beer as bland as possible, so that it will appeal as many people as possible. Baseball caps often have a snap closure or Velcro strip at the back, so that you can adjust the size of the cap. Pumpkin head or pinhead: one and the same cap can be customized personally to you. Many people think of religion as if it were a Budweiser or Coors product. That is, many people think the best confessions of faith are the blandest confessions of faith, stripped of anything that might offend the masses. When speaking in public, it is often easiest and safest to repeat that popular lie, “We all pray to the same God.” Much less popular, much more offensive, are the Words of Jesus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Many people think of religion as if it were a one-size-fits-all baseball cap. In the same way that the cap can be adjusted to accommodate any size head, many people think that matters of faith are likewise best when they are adapted and adjusted to suit your personal tastes. That is why some people can describe themselves as Jewish Buddhists or some other insane combination of ideas. That is also why some people can claim to be Christians all while refusing anything to do with the Christian faith, such as hearing God’s Word and doing good works. Bland Christianity; Make-It-Fit-Your-Preferences Christianity: this is NO Christianity. Our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and lifted up for the sins of the world, is foolish and offensive in their eyes (1 Corinthians 1:23). Isaiah called Jesus “the one from whom people hide their faces” and the one “held in low esteem” (Isaiah 53:3). Give us something with mass market appeal! Today is Trinity Sunday. Today is more than a day for us to remember that our God is One God, yet three persons, “Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance” (Athanasian Creed). Today is also the day for us to remember that ours is NOT a bland faith or a one-size-fits-all faith. Ours is a distinctive faith, more comparable to Guinness than to Natty Light. Ours is a customizing faith that fits you for the hat, so to speak, rather than the hat for you. Ours is a defiant faith. When I say that ours is a defiant faith, I am NOT talking about the sort of defiance that the world loves. The defiance of our faith is NOT comparable to covering yourself with tattoos or allowing your underwear to hang out of the back of your pants. That sort of defiance is really no defiance at all. It merely signals an up-and-coming fashion trend. When I say that ours is a defiant faith, I am speaking about a faith that holds the Holy Scriptures of God unapologetically before the world. I am speaking about a faith that will NOT say, “Many roads get to God,” but a faith confesses instead, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Like it or not, those are the Words of Jesus. Like it or not, those Words speak about Baptism, as Paul testifies elsewhere (Titus 3:5-6). When Jesus says, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” He is talking about a faith that not many will hold: • The unbelieving world wants nothing to do with God’s miracle of Baptism because the unbelieving world wants nothing to do with the Christ. Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” Meanwhile, the unbelieving world would prefer to look the other way. On Trinity Sunday, we must defy the world and proclaim the salvation that comes through Christ ALONE. As you are about to confess in the exclusive terms of the Athanasian Creed, It is the right faith that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both God and man… who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead. • Like the unbelieving world, many of our fellow Christians also want nothing to do with the Baptism Christ proclaims in today’s Gospel. These Christians do not want Baptism to be God’s act and they do not want Baptism to be the door to the Kingdom of God. They have no choice but to dance around the Words of our Lord. On Trinity Sunday, we must speak in defiance of those who reject the miracle of Baptism. We must insist that the Words of Jesus cannot be Velcro-sized to personal preferences and that the Words of Jesus must be held in faith, even when they cannot be fully understood. • Today is Trinity Sunday. Today we must hold the faith of the Scriptures, even in defiance of our own reason and senses and experiences. Personally, I choke on the Words of Jesus in today’s Gospel. I want to find exceptions to Jesus’ Words, especially where He says, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” I choke and balk at these Words because I know more than one child who has died before birth, and therefore, before Baptism. I have no choice but to commend such children to the Lord of Hosts, who abounds in mercy and compassion and steadfast love. Christ Jesus died and rose for the sins of the whole world—your sins, my sins, and even the sins of those whom we lose in utero. The blood of Jesus could not be delivered personally to them through Baptism, it is true, but the Triune God is greater even than Baptism. I must leave such exceptional cases to God. The Christian faith stands in defiance even against the reason and the senses of the Christians. Meanwhile, you and I have a job to do. God’s job is to save the world. We will leave it to Him to get the job done in any way He sees fit. Our job is merely to hold the distinctive Christian faith before the eyes of a bland world. Our job is to confess, “thus says the Lord,” and to do so without hedging, without wavering, without apologizing. The Scriptures teach that God wants all people to be saved. Today’s Gospel declares that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, whose forgiveness is now for you and for me and for all people. Ours is not a God who can be adjusted like a baseball hat, so that He will fit us the way we please. Ours is a God who fits and adjusts and shapes US by the power of His Word, so that we may be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18) and made worthy for the kingdom of God (2 Thessalonians 1:5). Today is Trinity Sunday and you are about to repeat with me the difficult Athanasian Creed, if you dare. The difficulty of the Athanasian Creed is NOT in its length, but in its content. Here we say there is only one catholic (that is say, universal) faith by which anyone can be saved. Here we say that there is only one God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit—and that this is the only God that is a god. Here we say that our Lord Jesus Christ is the one and only source of salvation and life for any person, no matter who they are or where they might live. Essentially, we are about to spell out in the details of the Athanasian Creed that there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:5). This is not a Budweiser religion. We should therefore not feel surprised if not many like the taste of it. We should nevertheless hold this faith faithfully to the lips of a thirsty world, even while we drink deeply of it ourselves. Yes, it is defiance, but our defiance is love. _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
