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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