Our next semi-annual meeting will be held after worship on Sunday, June 14. The meeting will convene shortly after worship, at 10:45. We will be electing new council members and hearing updates and reports. An agenda for our meeting will be available the Sunday prior, on June 7. All voting members are strongly encouraged to attend.
Our meeting will be followed by a potluck brunch, so please bring a dish to share.
CLICK HERE for a worship video for May 31
Sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday – May 31, 2026
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from our Triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is the one Sunday on the church calendar devoted to a doctrine, to a church teaching. On Holy Trinity Sunday we celebrate that God has revealed himself to us as one God existing as three persons, as a blessed Trinity.
Some congregations will recite the Athanasian Creed today – one of the ecumenical creeds alongside the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. While each of these creeds are trinitarian, describing the three-fold nature and being of God, it is the Athanasian Creed which describes the Trinity in the greatest detail, going to great lengths to do so. It took up two full pages in the old LBW, our previous book of worship. It isn’t even included in the new book, to our shame. We aren’t going to recite the Athanasian Creed this morning, but I do want to give you a taste of it. It begins with these words:
Now this is the catholic (or universal Christian) faith:
That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,
neither blending their persons
nor dividing their essence.
For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
the person of the Son is another,
and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.
And a little later it says:
Nothing in this trinity is before or after,
nothing is greater or smaller;
in their entirety the three persons
are coeternal and coequal with each other.
So in everything, as was said earlier,
we must worship their trinity in their unity
and their unity in their trinity.
As strange and convoluted as this might sound, this is foundational Christian theology. It articulates the nature and being of God as one God who has been revealed to us in three persons. You don’t need to understand it in a logical sense – in fact, you can’t understand it in that way! It is ultimately a mystery! But it is essential to believe that this is who God really is! The Father is God, Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God, AND there is only one God.
You can’t really explain a mystery, but perhaps a simple symbol can help here, a simple shape. The Trinity has often been represented as a triangle. You can see a couple of triangles representing the Trinity in your bulletin for today. There’s one on the cover. There’s one in the middle pages. You also see a triangle design on the screen today.
Other shapes or designs are used to illustrate the Trinity too. For example, you often see three interlocking circles, such as we see on our banner for Trinity Sunday. Circles have no beginning and no ending, and so they represent eternity. With three of them connected to each other you get a picture of a triune, eternal God. It is wonderful symbolism for the Trinity. The shapes in this design work too. But I can’t help but notice that if you were to superimpose a frame over those circles, you would get a triangle! When there are three of them connected to each other in that way, even there you have a triangle!
I am the furthest thing from an engineer. I have two sons who have Engineering degrees, and how they managed to do that with my DNA in them is a mystery to me second only to the Trinity. But my engineering major sons will tell you that the strongest shape in engineering is a triangle. You see it in the design of roofs. You see it in trusses for bridges. You see it in braces that hold up square and rectangle-shaped walls. You never want to be on scaffolding that doesn’t have some triangles somewhere, because on their own those other shapes tend to topple over! But not triangles. Triangles are stable. Triangles exist in perfect structural balance, evenly distributing tension. Triangles are foundational.
In the same way, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is foundational for Christian theology. It holds up other important Christian teachings, such as the divinity of Jesus. It gives us the theological structure by which to claim that Jesus is God while also claiming that there is only one God.
Some critics of Christianity, and even some within Christianity, like to point out that the word Trinity never appears in scripture, like that’s some big gotcha. But that’s beside the point. The word “Trinity” is just a word describing the shape of God that we find in scripture. The word “Trinity” is a word referring to the triangle shape of this one-in-three and three-in-one God we find over and over again as God reveals himself to us in this way in his Word.
We find this triangle shape in the very first verses of the Bible. We see the Trinity at work already in the first chapter of Genesis. When God created the heavens and the earth, a wind swept over the waters. The word “wind” here can also be translated as Spirit. They are the exact same word in both Hebrew and Greek! God the Father is with his Spirit at the very beginning!
Where is the Son? Well, God created the world by speaking. “Let there be light!” God said, and there was light. “Let there be waters and dry land and living creatures,” and they all came to be. God creates by his Word. We know from the gospel of John that “in the beginning the Word was with God and the Word was God.” We also learn from John that this same Word “became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, as the glory of a father’s only son.” The same Word of God that created all things became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.
And so from the very first verses of the Bible, at the very beginning of creation, before anything else existed, there was this foundational triangle shape of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
We also find this triangle shape in our reading from Second Corinthians, where St. Paul blesses the Christians in Corinth with a three-fold blessing, saying, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The God Paul is invoking here is three, and yet one.
We find this triangle shape most clearly in our gospel reading, where Jesus himself commands us to go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Note that the word “name” is singular. There is one name, because there is one God, but God’s name is threefold. God’s proper name, Jesus says, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the name in which we are to baptize. This is the name of the God who claims us in those waters. This is who God is. Jesus himself has made God known to us as a Holy Trinity, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is not merely a metaphor. This is not a cultural relic which can be changed at will. This is a revelation from the One who has all authority in heaven and on earth! And so, this is foundational! It is foundational to Christian theology. It is foundational to the Christian church.
It is foundational for us as individual Christians too. It is foundational for our lives.
You see, the same Holy Trinity who called creation into existence, also called YOU into existence. The same Trinity who spoke life into being spoke you into being too! To believe this is to believe that your life has meaning and purpose and value. To believe this is to believe that you are not a cosmic accident. To believe this is to believe that God himself wanted one of you and wants you still. Believing this, trusting that it is true, is foundational for our lives!
The same Holy Trinity Paul invokes in his blessing over the Christians in Corinth is spoken over you in the Apostolic Greeting which has become part of the Christian liturgy. Every week this Holy Trinity blesses you with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to cover your sin, with the love of God the Father to fill your heart, and with the communion of the Holy Spirit to draw you into fellowship with God and with God’s people.
The same Holy Trinity Jesus names as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit makes you his own when baptism is bestowed in this Holy Name, when this name is put on you. The same Holy Trinity continues to teach us to live as disciples, to live in obedience to everything Jesus has commanded us. The same Holy Trinity promises to be with us always, even to the end of the age.
To paraphrase St. Augustine, we all have a God-shaped hole in our lives – and that shape is a triangle. It can only filled by the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
Our gospel reading for today says that as the disciples worshipped Jesus, some doubted. This doesn’t mean they were rejecting Jesus. They weren’t. It just means they had a hard time taking in everything they had seen and heard. But Jesus was patient with them. He kept teaching them. He preached a word to them that moved their hearts from doubt to trust.
You don’t need to understand everything about the Holy Trinity or the Athanasian Creed. In fact, you can’t understand it. Not completely. There may well be parts that make your head hurt, parts you can’t quite take in. But by trusting in Jesus, by trusting in the triangle-shaped words of Holy Scripture, by trusting in the God who reveals himself to us as a Holy Trinity, you can find something better than mere understanding. You find a strong foundation for your life. You find a God strong enough to hold you up, no matter what. You find that triangle-shaped hole in your life to be filled with the grace of Jesus and with love of God and with the communion of the Holy Spirit. You find a strong promise assuring you that this powerful, loving, forgiving, life-giving triune God will be with you always, even to the end of the age.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
Join us out back at our fire pit on Sunday, June 7, from 4pm-6pm for a bonfire, roasting hot dogs and making s’mores, and a short Bible study with Pastor Jeff. All are welcome!
CLICK HERE for a worship video for May 24
Sermon for Pentecost Sunday – May 24, 2026
Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have two Holy Spirit stories before us on this Pentecost Sunday, and they couldn’t be more different from one another. One is loud: The Spirit comes with a sound like the rush of a violent wind! The other is quiet: It comes as a whisper, as a breath. Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to the disciples by breathing on them.
One Holy Spirit story, the one we hear in the book of Acts, is showy and dramatic and full of fireworks: Tongues of fire rested on the disciples. A large crowd gathered, people from all over the world who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish harvest festival. The disciples miraculously began to speak other languages, proclaiming God’s deeds of power in the native languages of those who were there. It was such a big, loud public spectacle that the scoffers accused the disciples of disorderly conduct. They were accused of being drunk – which Peter countered by pointing out that it was only nine o’clock in the morning.
The other Holy Spirit story we hear, in the gospel of John, is more intimate and simple: Jesus met the disciples in the Upper Room. He showed them his hands and his side. He gave them the Holy Spirit quietly and softly, with a breath. He spoke to them, saying, “Peace be with you,” gently calming their fears.
In both stories, the Spirit is at work through language, through speech, through talking, through a Word. In one, the Spirit is loud and dramatic, in the other, the Spirit is quiet and calm, but in both, the Spirit uses language to change hearts, to change minds, to change lives. In both, the Spirit uses verbal communication to bring forgiveness, life, and salvation to people by telling them of God’s deeds of power through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I love it when we have these two Holy Spirit stories back-to-back on Pentecost Sunday because it shows us that the Holy Spirit works in a variety of ways. The predominant view in popular American Christianity is that the Spirit is always flashy, always dramatic. There is this idea out there that if you haven’t had some kind of flashy, dramatic, usually highly emotional experience, then you don’t truly have the Spirit. Some Christians even say that if you haven’t had a flashy, dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit, the really loud kind, then you aren’t truly saved. This idea is what Lutheran theologians call, “horse pucky.”
But this idea even sneaks in among Lutherans from time to time. It sneaks in when we think the Spirit is more present in big crowds than it is in small gatherings. It sneaks in when we think the Spirit is more at work when things are loud and upbeat than when things are quiet or reflective. It sneaks in when we think that other Christians have more of the Spirit than we do.
I also notice this idea sneaking in when people hear that someone has become a Christian, or when they hear that someone has had a renewal of their Christian faith. There is often an assumption that something big must have happened. There must have been a sound like the rush of a violent wind. Usually though, what has happened instead has been more like a series of whispers, a series of small breaths.
I love how C. S. Lewis spoke of his conversion to the Christian faith. He spent much of his adult life as an atheist. He had lots of conversations with Christian friends, including his good friend J.R.R. Tolkien. He read a lot of G.K. Chesterton, the great British Christian intellectual. And through words on a page, through speech, through quiet conversations, God slowly changed his heart. God slowly changed his mind. God eventually changed his life. There were no loud sounds, no dramatic experiences. Lewis recounted that one day he was riding a motorcycle to spend the day at the zoo with his brother. He said that when he left his house, he didn’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God, but when he arrived, he did. That’s the Spirit at work too!
Just this past week I had someone ask me about my call to ordained ministry. Often people assume that there’s some dramatic Holy Spirit story lurking in the background of a pastor’s life. I’m kind of embarrassed sometimes that there isn’t for me. Instead, it was a series of whispers, a series of breaths, a series of quiet nudges. I was thinking about it this week after I was asked about it, and I remembered that the first time that being a pastor ever crossed my mind came when I was talking to my mom while she was in the bathroom. I was really excited about some theological insight I’d had after a conversation with the pastor of my home church, and I was telling my mom about it through the bathroom door. As the conversation ended, she said, “Maybe you should be a pastor.” And then she flushed the toilet. That’s my Holy Spirit story! There was more to it than that, of course, but my call to ministry was a series of quiet, simple, unremarkable, ordinary moments. The Holy Spirit got to me through whispers, through breaths.
Now maybe God got to you through something loud and flashy and dramatic. Maybe God got to you through a sound like the rush of a violent wind. Maybe God got to you through fireworks. If that’s your story, God bless you! God be praised! The loud story in Acts is indeed an example of God pouring out his Spirit on all kinds of people. The loud story in Acts has sometimes been called the birth of the Christian church, which seeks to speak loudly of God’s deeds of power to people of all nations and tongues, changing peoples’ lives in powerful ways.
But the loud story isn’t the only Holy Spirit story we have. It isn’t the only way God pours out his Spirit. In fact, I think it is more often the case that the Spirit works quietly, in whispers, in breaths. I think it is more common for the Spirit to work in ways that are simple, ordinary, even unremarkable.
The Spirit is at work in those seemingly unremarkable conversations you might have with a friend, maybe when they’re driving you to a doctor’s appointment, or coming to see you after a surgery, or inviting you out to lunch at a time when you really needed the company.
The Spirit is at work in those quiet moments with your Bible or book of devotions, when a passage lands right where it needs to, easing your fears, giving you perspective, giving you peace.
The Spirit is at work whenever we gather around the scriptures, whether that’s in Sunday school or Adult Bible Study or Lydia circle or Deborah circle or the Brotherhood of St. Bernard. Those conversations around the Word, even when we go down rabbit holes, are the Spirit’s workspace.
The Spirit is at work each and every Sunday when we gather for worship, no matter how routine or ordinary it might seem. What happens here in worship is sometimes boisterous and loud and celebratory, but more often than not it is quiet and simple. But don’t be mistaken when it is quiet and simple. What is happening in our routine Sunday services is a powerful work of the Spirit too! Our quiet, simple Sunday morning moments are an echo of what we see happening in the Holy Spirit story we hear today in our gospel reading. Jesus comes to us. He breathes on us, giving us his Word, coming close to us. Like the disciples, we often come to this Upper Room confused or afraid or troubled, and Jesus says to us, “Peace be with you.” And then, because he knows how badly we need his peace, he says it again, “Peace be with you.” On our ordinary Sunday mornings, Jesus shows us his hands and his side, he shows himself as our crucified and risen Lord. What is he doing in the Lord’s Supper if he isn’t showing us his wounds? Giving us his body and his blood? He shows us that he has taken care of everything necessary for our salvation. Jesus comes to us to assure us that our sin is forgiven, and then he renews us in our calling to share that forgiveness with others. This all comes through breaths, through whispers, through ordinary words spoken in a more quiet, intimate setting. This is the Spirit at work too!
There’s a saying I like very much. It isn’t a biblical saying, but it is still pretty good. You’ve probably heard it. It is a quote from the writer Kurt Vonnegut, who said, “Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you will look back and realize they were the big things.”
We can apply this to the work of the Spirit in the little things. We should pay attention to them. We should notice them. We should treasure them. We should enjoy them. Because one day we will realize that those little things – those little breaths from Jesus over the course of our lifetime – those are the big things.
I pray that that day of realization for us is today. My prayer for each of you is that you know that the Spirit is at work in your life even now. In the little things of a pastor’s meager voice, in the little things of bread and wine, in the little things of ordinary Christians gathered together to share conversation and consolation, the Spirit is at work – right here, right now.
The Holy Spirit is at work in many ways. Don’t overlook the little ones. They are bigger than you might think.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
Our Sunday morning Adult Bible study is currently studying the book of Revelation. Join us in the church library from 9:15am to 10:15am for a hope-filled take on an often confusing book!