Something to Celebrate
Commentary
Chances are that most of the people in our pews will not know that it’s Trinity Sunday unless we tell them. They are not sending and receiving Trinity Sunday cards these days. They are not buying their friends and loved ones Trinity Sunday presents. And they are not hearing Trinity Sunday carols played in stores and restaurants. This is a holiday that will pass without recognition unless we recognize it.
We should recognize it, and the lectionary will help us to recognize it. In fact, the very contrast between the church’s attention to the holiday and the culture’s neglect of it serves as its own sort of lesson. It will be instructive, you see, for us to ask and explore the question of why any given holiday should be observed and celebrated.
The prevailing commercialism and consumerism of our larger culture may have robbed us of a meaningful rationale for observing holidays. Our celebrations have become utilitarian and self-centered — that is to say, no matter what we say we are celebrating, we let the celebration become more or less about us. That’s easy and natural when the occasion really is about us, as is the case with birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and such. But even such occasions as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Independence Day have lost sight of their original focal point as the culture has made them about our buying and getting, our menus and eating, our gatherings and festivities. So it is that folks can make a great, expensive to-do about Christmas while giving no thought to Jesus. Thanksgiving can feature dozens of guests and thousands of calories, but not a moment of actually giving thanks. And the cookouts of Independence Day can be devoid of any patriotism beyond the color scheme of our decorations.
Accordingly, there is no cultural momentum toward celebrating Trinity Sunday. It is not, after all, about us. And it is marvelously difficult to pervert into making it about us because it is, so explicitly, about him. And therein lies the import and profound beauty of our observance this Sunday. The celebration of Trinity Sunday becomes for us a catalyst to help us better understand all our worship gatherings, for it marshals our focus to make us not about ourselves but all about him.
Each of our selected passages for this Sunday give us an entree into thinking and talking about the Trinity. The theme is most explicit in the gospel lection, of course, where the son speaks openly about both the Father and the Spirit. The excerpt from Paul’s letter to the Romans, too, gives expression to the work and will of each member of the Trinity, especially with respect to our salvation. And, finally, the picturesque language of Proverbs 8 leaves us with some room for interpretation. God as Creator is clearly present there, but he also has someone at his side. “Wisdom,” in this passage, is sometimes regarded as an allusion to the Holy Spirit. At the same time, however, we recognize Christ as the logos, and we affirm with John that,“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3 ESV), and with Paul that, “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16 ESV).
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Psalm 8
Our Old Testament lection this week makes for a different sort of preaching assignment. We are not tasked with one of the many stories from the books we think of as history books. Neither are we assigned a message from one of the prophets. Instead, we have an exhortation from Proverbs and a prayer of wonder from Psalms. We will devote our attention here to the verses from Proverbs, and then we will attend to the Psalm in the alternative application below.
The selection from Proverbs features the famous personification of wisdom. It is a brilliant and effective rhetorical technique, as the ancient writer portrays wisdom as a woman. Wisdom, thus, becomes a person with whom we are invited into relationship; a person who introduces herself to us; and eventually a person who reasons with us and warns us. The material that immediately follows would be comparatively dry if the writer had just made simple, declarative statements about wisdom, about sin, or about life's choices. But to frame it as exhortation from lady wisdom makes the larger passage dynamic in its counsel.
At an analytical level, what wisdom eventually does is frame the debate. We’ll think more about that in a moment. But framing a debate, in and of itself, might be cold and even off-putting. The personification technique, on the other hand, makes the same material warm, personal, and literally appealing.
I say that wisdom frames the debate because she seeks to explain to the listener/reader how life in this world works. Before the rest of the book follows with its particular, micro-level advice, wisdom begins by giving us an orientation to the big picture. If we do not see the big picture of life as it is, we are bound to navigate it poorly.
But before we hear the contents of wisdom, before she makes her specific exhortations to us, first we are introduced to her: to her location, her role, and her tone. We observe that she is locating herself in public places, in the midst of life’s traffic. She is not sequestered in some proverbial ivory tower but is right where life is being lived and decisions are being made. We observe, too, that she is not quiet or passive. Rather, she is deliberate and assertive, calling out to those who will hear her. And, finally, we will come to sense in her tone an urgency. She is not just making conversation; rather, she is communicating a crucial message, and she does so insistently.
When wisdom actually begins to speak, she introduces herself in terms of two key relationships: her relationship to God and her relationship to creation. These, then, serve as her remarkable credentials. They commend her to us and make it apparent how fortunate we are to be invited into relationship with her as well.
In an old turn-of-phrase, we would characterize her relationship to God as his “right-hand-man.” She is at his side, evidently assisting as he does his creative work. And this, in turn, implies her relationship to creation. For the order, beauty, variety, functionality, and fruitfulness of creation all bear witness to wisdom. Indeed, the more we learn about elements of creation in our advanced scientific age, the more we see evidence of the intricate wisdom required to design it.
If then, wisdom is valued by God; and if wisdom is to be credited with how creation functions rightly; then surely humankind would do well to heed her voice and her counsel as she stands at the gates and crossroads, calling out to us!
Romans 5:1-5
Our epistle lection is brief — only five verses. Yet as is typical of Paul, it is dense with meaning. We will not easily exhaust the meaning and significance of what the apostle writes here.
It seems to me that one way of unpacking the truths of this text is to evaluate the verbs. At first blush, that may sound unexciting. But let us not too quickly dismiss such a grammatical approach, for verbs, after all, tell us who is doing what. And as we meditate on the process of our salvation, it is a marvel to contemplate who does what!
We are introduced first to an aorist active participle that is translated “having been justified” or “being justified.” The passive form of the verb is crucial, of course, for it reveals the “justified” is something that happens to us but is not at all something that we do ourselves. The result of that justification, however, does bring us to an active verb: “we have.” The justification that happens to us results in our having peace with God.
Then, in verse 2, we find that we have something else, as well: “we have access” — access by faith into grace. Paul uses the same underlying verb for “have” as in verse 1, but he employs a different form. In verse 1 it is present active, while in verse 2 it is perfect active. The former suggests current and ongoing action, while the latter suggests a completed action.
On the heels of those two instances of having comes a marvelous litany of other things that we do: we stand, we celebrate or rejoice, and then we celebrate or rejoice some more! This is the behavior that characterizes those who have known the saving grace of God. The truly noteworthy detail of these two uses of “celebrate,” meanwhile, is the object of our celebrating. In the first instance, “we celebrate in the hope of the glory of God.” In the second instance, however, “we celebrate in our tribulations.” The former is its own kind of profound. The latter, however, seems altogether counterintuitive.
How is it that we celebrate or rejoice in our tribulations? Are we semi-oblivious, unwilling, or unable to distinguish favorable from unfavorable circumstances? Are we grin-and-bear-it stoics? Is there something mildly masochistic about Paul’s Christianity that we actually embrace suffering?
This mystery leads us, then, to the verb in verse 3 that is variously translated “worketh,” “produces,” “brings about,” or some such. After a series of first personplural verbs, now we meet a thirdpersonsingular verb. No longer are we dealing with what we do, but what someone or something else does. And who or what is that new actor? Tribulation.
The verb for “produces” or “brings about” only appears once in verse 3, but it is implicit throughout verse 4. So, the NIV renders Paul’s reasoning thus: “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” There is a chain reaction of results, all of which are prompted in the beginning by tribulation.
If people were guaranteed that some unidentified pill would produce in them perseverance, character, and hope, I expect that drug stores would have a hard time keeping that pill in stock. Well, that “pill,” according to Paul, is tribulation, suffering.
Come, and get it!
Finally, in verse 5, we meet three more verbs — one active and two passive — and none of these verbs are things that we ourselves do. The subject of the first verb is hope. Hope, you recall, is the surprising byproduct of tribulation or suffering. And that hope, Paul assures us, does not disappoint us, or make us ashamed.
Meanwhile, the two passive verbs with which our passage concludes remind us of the passive verb with which the passage began, for they all suggest the work of God. He is the one, after all, who justifies us. And now, here, we understand that he is the one who makes his love shed abroad in our hearts, and he is the one who gives us the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Paul says a great deal in just five verses. By looking at the verbs that he uses, we get a sense for who is doing what in our salvation process. And that is both intrusive to us and marvelous to behold.
John 16:12-15
John favors us with the longest “last supper” scene of all the gospel writers. Indeed, in terms of sheer volume, it is arguably the most important part of his gospel. And our brief gospel lection is one small slice from that larger last supper narrative.
All through this extended episode, we can see that the disciples are troubled and bewildered. They were unsettled by Jesus’ washing of their feet. They were deeply disturbed by his talk of going away. They were stunned and bewildered by his predictions of betrayal and denial. And so, against that backdrop, we understand well the opening words of this passage: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at the present time.” The followers of Jesus were already overwhelmed and weighed down by the things he had told them thus far; truly they couldn’t bear anymore!
Yet still he had more to tell them. I wonder how often that is still true — perhaps perpetually true — in our own relationships with him. I wonder if he always has more to tell us than we are able to bear.
We understand how this works in parent-child relationships. There is always more that a parent knows than what he or she tells or explains to the child. Why? Because the parent is secretive? No, because of the limitations of the child. And so it is, too, with us and our Lord.
But our limitations do not force him to stop talking to us altogether. Rather, Jesus introduces to his disciples a marvelous promise of his continuing presence with them: “the Spirit of truth.” And so, Jesus’ bodily departure from their midst does not end their communion with him or his leadership of them. For the Spirit will lead them into all truth.
Just as John gives us the fullest record of the last supper, he also gives us the greatest insights into the Trinity of any of the four Gospels. That’s not to say that Matthew, Mark, and Luke have nothing to offer on the subject. But John, more than any of the others, gives us passages that offer marvelous insight into the relationships within and among the persons of the Trinity. And so, here in this passage, we hear the Son speaking of both the Father and the Spirit.
Meanwhile, what Jesus says here about the Trinity carries profound implications for us. All that the Father has is shared with the Son. And what the Son has, the Spirit in turn will disclose to the followers of the Son. So it is that the disciples are not distantly believing in Father, Son, and Spirit, but rather are brought mysteriously into that relationship and that union.
Here, as an aside, is where Christian faith should never be confused or conflated with other ancient religions. Critics and skeptics are prone to lump all ancient faiths together as primitive and superstitious. But Christian theology is, on so many levels, a completely different species from any of its contemporaries. And that includes this beginning-to-end manifestation of God’s will that we human beings should be partners with him — in love, in relationship, in dominion, in work. Remarkable!
Application
When our children were young, they were sometimes fascinated and sometimes bewildered by stories of the life and experiences my wife and I had before they were born. On the one hand, they seemed to get a great kick out of those stories. On the other hand, it was hard for them to conceive of Mommy and Daddy before they were Mommy and Daddy. They could hardly imagine that we had a life before they came along.
So it is with us and God. We are tempted to think exclusively in terms of his role in our lives and our experience with him. But the excerpt from Proverbs gives us opportunity for a healthy exercise: namely, to think about God apart from us. As the ancient writer depicts God as Creator, with wisdom at his side, we are prompted to recall that the Lord was fully in existence before he brought us into the picture.
Moreover, a part of what we affirm in celebrating the Trinity is not merely that the Lord existed apart from us but also that he was in relationship apart from us. Much like the parents were already in a love relationship before the children came along, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were already in an eternal relationship of love quite independent of us. And just as the mother and father are welcoming the children into an existing love, so it is, remarkably, with God and us.
This gospel truth is made explicit in several New Testament passages. We think, for example, of our adoption (Ephesians 1:5), our status as joint heirs (Romans 8:17), our extension of the divine mission (John 20:21), and our invitation to oneness with the Lord (John 17:22-23). In this respect, the celebration of Trinity Sunday turns out to be about us in a most sobering, humbling, and astonishingly gracious way.
The truth of that grace — that the loving work of the Trinity involves and includes us — is evident in the selection from Romans 5. The God who existed and loved prior to us and without us, the God who graciously created us, and the God against whom we presumptuously rebelled, is now the God who redeems us and reconciles us to himself. We have peace with God the Father, accomplished by the Son, and sealed by the Spirit.
The continuing work of the Spirit in our lives, meanwhile, is at the heart of the gospel lection. The disciples are understandably troubled by the prospect of Jesus leaving them, but they will not be abandoned. Indeed, rather than the localized, physical presence of the Son, they would enjoy the ubiquitous presence of the Spirit. And in describing the work of the Spirit, Jesus gives us a magnificent glimpse into the nature of the relationships within the Trinity. “All things that the Father has are mine; this is why I said that he (i.e., the Spirit) takes from mine and will disclose it to you.” The gracious sharing within the persons of the Trinity is extended to us.
The culture around us will pay no attention to Trinity Sunday. It doesn’t fit the consumer appetite for holidays and celebrations that are all about us. Ah, but they don’t know what they are missing!
Alternative Application(s)
Psalm 8 — “Ancient Prayer, Modern Message”
A part of the Old Testament assigned to us for this Sunday is the cherished and familiar Psalm 8. It is, on the one hand, a very ancient prayer. On the other hand, it expresses marvelously the modern mind, and it addresses a very contemporary struggle.
No previous generation has been as aware of the puniness of humankind as our generation is. It has been a growing realization for hundreds of years, of course, with the development of astronomy, telescopes, space travel, and such. Our understanding — if we can presume to call it that — of the age and size of the universe tends to make the modern man or woman feel less than inconsequential. We are told that the earth is a comparatively small planet orbiting a rather modest star at the edge of a rather average galaxy, and that there is an incomprehensibly enormous number of galaxies in our universe. Human life is dwarfed by what we have come to know about the universe around us.
But even that ancient man of faith was wise enough to look up into the sky and, with just his naked eye, realize the same basic fact that we are now able to measure and quantify. For he and we alike, when we consider the heavens, are forced to ask, “What is man...?”
That sense of being overwhelmed by both time and space, the feeling of being dwarfed into insignificance, has pushed many a modern soul to some form of despair. They reckon that life in this world in general, and their own life in particular, is rendered meaningless by the vastness of time and space. But the psalmist came to a completely different conclusion, and his conclusion is essential good news for the modern mind.
The psalmist began with a question about the significance of human beings, to be sure. But he moved on to an affirmation about the significance of human beings. Not, however, an affirmation that a human being is significant by his or her own merits or achievements. Rather, our significance is found in God's plan for us.
It is true enough that we are dwarfed by the universe. The universe, however, is dwarfed in turn by the majesty, holiness, power, and eternality of its Creator. And it is that awesome Creator who has vested humankind with improbable value and importance.
If we were big fish in a small pond, we might take ourselves too seriously; but we are not. The universe doesn't allow us to assume self-importance, “lest any man should boast.” And so, we are perfectly set up to receive the gracious good news of the love of God, wherein we find our true and lasting value.
We should recognize it, and the lectionary will help us to recognize it. In fact, the very contrast between the church’s attention to the holiday and the culture’s neglect of it serves as its own sort of lesson. It will be instructive, you see, for us to ask and explore the question of why any given holiday should be observed and celebrated.
The prevailing commercialism and consumerism of our larger culture may have robbed us of a meaningful rationale for observing holidays. Our celebrations have become utilitarian and self-centered — that is to say, no matter what we say we are celebrating, we let the celebration become more or less about us. That’s easy and natural when the occasion really is about us, as is the case with birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and such. But even such occasions as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Independence Day have lost sight of their original focal point as the culture has made them about our buying and getting, our menus and eating, our gatherings and festivities. So it is that folks can make a great, expensive to-do about Christmas while giving no thought to Jesus. Thanksgiving can feature dozens of guests and thousands of calories, but not a moment of actually giving thanks. And the cookouts of Independence Day can be devoid of any patriotism beyond the color scheme of our decorations.
Accordingly, there is no cultural momentum toward celebrating Trinity Sunday. It is not, after all, about us. And it is marvelously difficult to pervert into making it about us because it is, so explicitly, about him. And therein lies the import and profound beauty of our observance this Sunday. The celebration of Trinity Sunday becomes for us a catalyst to help us better understand all our worship gatherings, for it marshals our focus to make us not about ourselves but all about him.
Each of our selected passages for this Sunday give us an entree into thinking and talking about the Trinity. The theme is most explicit in the gospel lection, of course, where the son speaks openly about both the Father and the Spirit. The excerpt from Paul’s letter to the Romans, too, gives expression to the work and will of each member of the Trinity, especially with respect to our salvation. And, finally, the picturesque language of Proverbs 8 leaves us with some room for interpretation. God as Creator is clearly present there, but he also has someone at his side. “Wisdom,” in this passage, is sometimes regarded as an allusion to the Holy Spirit. At the same time, however, we recognize Christ as the logos, and we affirm with John that,“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3 ESV), and with Paul that, “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16 ESV).
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31, Psalm 8
Our Old Testament lection this week makes for a different sort of preaching assignment. We are not tasked with one of the many stories from the books we think of as history books. Neither are we assigned a message from one of the prophets. Instead, we have an exhortation from Proverbs and a prayer of wonder from Psalms. We will devote our attention here to the verses from Proverbs, and then we will attend to the Psalm in the alternative application below.
The selection from Proverbs features the famous personification of wisdom. It is a brilliant and effective rhetorical technique, as the ancient writer portrays wisdom as a woman. Wisdom, thus, becomes a person with whom we are invited into relationship; a person who introduces herself to us; and eventually a person who reasons with us and warns us. The material that immediately follows would be comparatively dry if the writer had just made simple, declarative statements about wisdom, about sin, or about life's choices. But to frame it as exhortation from lady wisdom makes the larger passage dynamic in its counsel.
At an analytical level, what wisdom eventually does is frame the debate. We’ll think more about that in a moment. But framing a debate, in and of itself, might be cold and even off-putting. The personification technique, on the other hand, makes the same material warm, personal, and literally appealing.
I say that wisdom frames the debate because she seeks to explain to the listener/reader how life in this world works. Before the rest of the book follows with its particular, micro-level advice, wisdom begins by giving us an orientation to the big picture. If we do not see the big picture of life as it is, we are bound to navigate it poorly.
But before we hear the contents of wisdom, before she makes her specific exhortations to us, first we are introduced to her: to her location, her role, and her tone. We observe that she is locating herself in public places, in the midst of life’s traffic. She is not sequestered in some proverbial ivory tower but is right where life is being lived and decisions are being made. We observe, too, that she is not quiet or passive. Rather, she is deliberate and assertive, calling out to those who will hear her. And, finally, we will come to sense in her tone an urgency. She is not just making conversation; rather, she is communicating a crucial message, and she does so insistently.
When wisdom actually begins to speak, she introduces herself in terms of two key relationships: her relationship to God and her relationship to creation. These, then, serve as her remarkable credentials. They commend her to us and make it apparent how fortunate we are to be invited into relationship with her as well.
In an old turn-of-phrase, we would characterize her relationship to God as his “right-hand-man.” She is at his side, evidently assisting as he does his creative work. And this, in turn, implies her relationship to creation. For the order, beauty, variety, functionality, and fruitfulness of creation all bear witness to wisdom. Indeed, the more we learn about elements of creation in our advanced scientific age, the more we see evidence of the intricate wisdom required to design it.
If then, wisdom is valued by God; and if wisdom is to be credited with how creation functions rightly; then surely humankind would do well to heed her voice and her counsel as she stands at the gates and crossroads, calling out to us!
Romans 5:1-5
Our epistle lection is brief — only five verses. Yet as is typical of Paul, it is dense with meaning. We will not easily exhaust the meaning and significance of what the apostle writes here.
It seems to me that one way of unpacking the truths of this text is to evaluate the verbs. At first blush, that may sound unexciting. But let us not too quickly dismiss such a grammatical approach, for verbs, after all, tell us who is doing what. And as we meditate on the process of our salvation, it is a marvel to contemplate who does what!
We are introduced first to an aorist active participle that is translated “having been justified” or “being justified.” The passive form of the verb is crucial, of course, for it reveals the “justified” is something that happens to us but is not at all something that we do ourselves. The result of that justification, however, does bring us to an active verb: “we have.” The justification that happens to us results in our having peace with God.
Then, in verse 2, we find that we have something else, as well: “we have access” — access by faith into grace. Paul uses the same underlying verb for “have” as in verse 1, but he employs a different form. In verse 1 it is present active, while in verse 2 it is perfect active. The former suggests current and ongoing action, while the latter suggests a completed action.
On the heels of those two instances of having comes a marvelous litany of other things that we do: we stand, we celebrate or rejoice, and then we celebrate or rejoice some more! This is the behavior that characterizes those who have known the saving grace of God. The truly noteworthy detail of these two uses of “celebrate,” meanwhile, is the object of our celebrating. In the first instance, “we celebrate in the hope of the glory of God.” In the second instance, however, “we celebrate in our tribulations.” The former is its own kind of profound. The latter, however, seems altogether counterintuitive.
How is it that we celebrate or rejoice in our tribulations? Are we semi-oblivious, unwilling, or unable to distinguish favorable from unfavorable circumstances? Are we grin-and-bear-it stoics? Is there something mildly masochistic about Paul’s Christianity that we actually embrace suffering?
This mystery leads us, then, to the verb in verse 3 that is variously translated “worketh,” “produces,” “brings about,” or some such. After a series of first personplural verbs, now we meet a thirdpersonsingular verb. No longer are we dealing with what we do, but what someone or something else does. And who or what is that new actor? Tribulation.
The verb for “produces” or “brings about” only appears once in verse 3, but it is implicit throughout verse 4. So, the NIV renders Paul’s reasoning thus: “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” There is a chain reaction of results, all of which are prompted in the beginning by tribulation.
If people were guaranteed that some unidentified pill would produce in them perseverance, character, and hope, I expect that drug stores would have a hard time keeping that pill in stock. Well, that “pill,” according to Paul, is tribulation, suffering.
Come, and get it!
Finally, in verse 5, we meet three more verbs — one active and two passive — and none of these verbs are things that we ourselves do. The subject of the first verb is hope. Hope, you recall, is the surprising byproduct of tribulation or suffering. And that hope, Paul assures us, does not disappoint us, or make us ashamed.
Meanwhile, the two passive verbs with which our passage concludes remind us of the passive verb with which the passage began, for they all suggest the work of God. He is the one, after all, who justifies us. And now, here, we understand that he is the one who makes his love shed abroad in our hearts, and he is the one who gives us the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Paul says a great deal in just five verses. By looking at the verbs that he uses, we get a sense for who is doing what in our salvation process. And that is both intrusive to us and marvelous to behold.
John 16:12-15
John favors us with the longest “last supper” scene of all the gospel writers. Indeed, in terms of sheer volume, it is arguably the most important part of his gospel. And our brief gospel lection is one small slice from that larger last supper narrative.
All through this extended episode, we can see that the disciples are troubled and bewildered. They were unsettled by Jesus’ washing of their feet. They were deeply disturbed by his talk of going away. They were stunned and bewildered by his predictions of betrayal and denial. And so, against that backdrop, we understand well the opening words of this passage: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at the present time.” The followers of Jesus were already overwhelmed and weighed down by the things he had told them thus far; truly they couldn’t bear anymore!
Yet still he had more to tell them. I wonder how often that is still true — perhaps perpetually true — in our own relationships with him. I wonder if he always has more to tell us than we are able to bear.
We understand how this works in parent-child relationships. There is always more that a parent knows than what he or she tells or explains to the child. Why? Because the parent is secretive? No, because of the limitations of the child. And so it is, too, with us and our Lord.
But our limitations do not force him to stop talking to us altogether. Rather, Jesus introduces to his disciples a marvelous promise of his continuing presence with them: “the Spirit of truth.” And so, Jesus’ bodily departure from their midst does not end their communion with him or his leadership of them. For the Spirit will lead them into all truth.
Just as John gives us the fullest record of the last supper, he also gives us the greatest insights into the Trinity of any of the four Gospels. That’s not to say that Matthew, Mark, and Luke have nothing to offer on the subject. But John, more than any of the others, gives us passages that offer marvelous insight into the relationships within and among the persons of the Trinity. And so, here in this passage, we hear the Son speaking of both the Father and the Spirit.
Meanwhile, what Jesus says here about the Trinity carries profound implications for us. All that the Father has is shared with the Son. And what the Son has, the Spirit in turn will disclose to the followers of the Son. So it is that the disciples are not distantly believing in Father, Son, and Spirit, but rather are brought mysteriously into that relationship and that union.
Here, as an aside, is where Christian faith should never be confused or conflated with other ancient religions. Critics and skeptics are prone to lump all ancient faiths together as primitive and superstitious. But Christian theology is, on so many levels, a completely different species from any of its contemporaries. And that includes this beginning-to-end manifestation of God’s will that we human beings should be partners with him — in love, in relationship, in dominion, in work. Remarkable!
Application
When our children were young, they were sometimes fascinated and sometimes bewildered by stories of the life and experiences my wife and I had before they were born. On the one hand, they seemed to get a great kick out of those stories. On the other hand, it was hard for them to conceive of Mommy and Daddy before they were Mommy and Daddy. They could hardly imagine that we had a life before they came along.
So it is with us and God. We are tempted to think exclusively in terms of his role in our lives and our experience with him. But the excerpt from Proverbs gives us opportunity for a healthy exercise: namely, to think about God apart from us. As the ancient writer depicts God as Creator, with wisdom at his side, we are prompted to recall that the Lord was fully in existence before he brought us into the picture.
Moreover, a part of what we affirm in celebrating the Trinity is not merely that the Lord existed apart from us but also that he was in relationship apart from us. Much like the parents were already in a love relationship before the children came along, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were already in an eternal relationship of love quite independent of us. And just as the mother and father are welcoming the children into an existing love, so it is, remarkably, with God and us.
This gospel truth is made explicit in several New Testament passages. We think, for example, of our adoption (Ephesians 1:5), our status as joint heirs (Romans 8:17), our extension of the divine mission (John 20:21), and our invitation to oneness with the Lord (John 17:22-23). In this respect, the celebration of Trinity Sunday turns out to be about us in a most sobering, humbling, and astonishingly gracious way.
The truth of that grace — that the loving work of the Trinity involves and includes us — is evident in the selection from Romans 5. The God who existed and loved prior to us and without us, the God who graciously created us, and the God against whom we presumptuously rebelled, is now the God who redeems us and reconciles us to himself. We have peace with God the Father, accomplished by the Son, and sealed by the Spirit.
The continuing work of the Spirit in our lives, meanwhile, is at the heart of the gospel lection. The disciples are understandably troubled by the prospect of Jesus leaving them, but they will not be abandoned. Indeed, rather than the localized, physical presence of the Son, they would enjoy the ubiquitous presence of the Spirit. And in describing the work of the Spirit, Jesus gives us a magnificent glimpse into the nature of the relationships within the Trinity. “All things that the Father has are mine; this is why I said that he (i.e., the Spirit) takes from mine and will disclose it to you.” The gracious sharing within the persons of the Trinity is extended to us.
The culture around us will pay no attention to Trinity Sunday. It doesn’t fit the consumer appetite for holidays and celebrations that are all about us. Ah, but they don’t know what they are missing!
Alternative Application(s)
Psalm 8 — “Ancient Prayer, Modern Message”
A part of the Old Testament assigned to us for this Sunday is the cherished and familiar Psalm 8. It is, on the one hand, a very ancient prayer. On the other hand, it expresses marvelously the modern mind, and it addresses a very contemporary struggle.
No previous generation has been as aware of the puniness of humankind as our generation is. It has been a growing realization for hundreds of years, of course, with the development of astronomy, telescopes, space travel, and such. Our understanding — if we can presume to call it that — of the age and size of the universe tends to make the modern man or woman feel less than inconsequential. We are told that the earth is a comparatively small planet orbiting a rather modest star at the edge of a rather average galaxy, and that there is an incomprehensibly enormous number of galaxies in our universe. Human life is dwarfed by what we have come to know about the universe around us.
But even that ancient man of faith was wise enough to look up into the sky and, with just his naked eye, realize the same basic fact that we are now able to measure and quantify. For he and we alike, when we consider the heavens, are forced to ask, “What is man...?”
That sense of being overwhelmed by both time and space, the feeling of being dwarfed into insignificance, has pushed many a modern soul to some form of despair. They reckon that life in this world in general, and their own life in particular, is rendered meaningless by the vastness of time and space. But the psalmist came to a completely different conclusion, and his conclusion is essential good news for the modern mind.
The psalmist began with a question about the significance of human beings, to be sure. But he moved on to an affirmation about the significance of human beings. Not, however, an affirmation that a human being is significant by his or her own merits or achievements. Rather, our significance is found in God's plan for us.
It is true enough that we are dwarfed by the universe. The universe, however, is dwarfed in turn by the majesty, holiness, power, and eternality of its Creator. And it is that awesome Creator who has vested humankind with improbable value and importance.
If we were big fish in a small pond, we might take ourselves too seriously; but we are not. The universe doesn't allow us to assume self-importance, “lest any man should boast.” And so, we are perfectly set up to receive the gracious good news of the love of God, wherein we find our true and lasting value.
