Trinity Sunday sermon for House of Hope Lutheran Church

In the long sad shadow of the Minnesota political assassinations, which had happened the day before I preached.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Trinity Sunday is not necessarily every pastor's favorite Sunday to preach on.

You're meant to thread the needle of these complicated texts about the beauty of creation and the indwelling of the master of the universe God in the person of Jesus Christ, and wrap that all up in a sermon that also makes sure to avoid any heresies.

Most of the time we miss something. But what a gift our texts have for us today—these stories laid out for us of Proverbs, of the Psalm, and of Romans—saying to us how beautiful the world is, drawing us into this celebration of creation that feels very fitting for a cool June day. Or perhaps annoying because at least a few of you thought, "God is very much like a river stream. Why am I not out fishing instead?"

So for any of you who might be thinking that, we are grateful that you are here instead, at least for the next 35 minutes.

Scripture abounds with these glorious depictions of the world around us. The writer of Proverbs wrote down this beautiful imagination of wisdom, personified as a woman indwelling at the very beginning of God's work, when God established the heavens, drew a circle over the face of the deep, and lifted up the rain clouds; when the sea was set limits, when it was decided this is land, this is sea, here is the sandy beach, and the waters will go no further; when the first bits of soil turned into something that plants could spring forth from; before all this, wisdom was there, guiding and shaping the world into beauty and delight. The psalmist invites us into the same kind of celebration, turning to look at the world and saying, "Look at the heavens, the sparkling stars, the work of God's fingers. What are mere humans that you would care for us, but you have made us in charge of all this?"

And then in breaks Jesus in the Gospel of John.

In this particular part of the Gospel, in chapter 16, we find ourselves back with Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples. He is giving them a long explanation of who he is and what he has come to do and what they are going to see happen, most of which they will not understand. And Jesus says to them, "You cannot yet bear what I have to say."

And it feels a strange thing to hold alongside these beautiful Bible stories about God's wondrous creation, to then say, "But Jesus said there's more to hear that you cannot yet bear." It's strange and jarring, but it's true too, isn't it? We can look outside and rejoice and celebrate in the world creation at the same time that we mourn the ways that the world, the created world, the earth, can break in and terrify us. We celebrate and rejoice in the beauty of creation while still making sure that our basements are ready for the next tornado siren, still praying for those who may be in paths of tsunamis or earthquakes or other natural disasters. We know that the world, for all its beauty, can still break us.

And we know, particularly today with such heavy hearts, just how much God's beautifully made humans, sculpted in God's image, can still break each other.

We cannot bear what Jesus has to say. And perhaps what Jesus had to say was, even as the incarnate God, even as the God who made the universe came and was present among us, the world is still broken. Things still go wrong. Things still go wrong in the created and natural world. Things still go wrong in our own bodies with sickness and struggle and death. And things still go wrong in our hearts and in our communities. So in all of that, why does it matter if there is a God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Why does a triune God matter when things can still be so heavy, still so broken here?

Here is something that I've noticed about myself, and I suspect might be true of a few other humans who, like me, were made in the image of God: that when there is danger, I want to disengage and disappear. When the world feels broken or scary or intimidating or hateful, I daydream about just going off the grid and living in the woods for a bit. Couple of weeks, weekend on the North Shore, maybe the rest of my life. Depends on how I'm feeling about humanity that day.

When things are dangerous, when the world outside is threatening, we might choose to close our doors and stay inside. We'll skip the errands for today. We'll keep our family close. We won't go out to the park or the playground just, just in case. Just in case. At least for me, when there is danger, I have a tendency to want to disengage and disappear.

And the promise of a triune God, of God who is revealed to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is that God does the exact opposite. God remains forever in relationship. The internal heart of the divine that we cannot understand and can only make our best logical philosophical guesses about chooses to be in relationship. The inner heart of God is multiple. What does that mean? That God is never solo? That God is never going it alone, but always has these three persons, as we call them—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—interrelating, speaking, and working with each other? God is inherently relational. God is always in community, even before creation, even before humans, even before anything. God is many, and God is one.

When I sense danger, I want to disengage and disappear. And God does the opposite. God is permanently, eternally, forever in relationship. And God is permanently, forever, eternally choosing us, which I think is just about the most illogical thing that God could do considering just how broken or terrible or silly we can be. But God chooses us over and over. God chooses to be present with us. God chooses to forgive us. God chooses to act in love for us every time. Every time.

And out of that, God is not calling us to be perfect. Not even, I think, calling us to be right as much as we would like to be, as much as we would like to get all the facts and all the science and all the history and all the details straight so that we can have the right opinion. But what God is actually doing is calling us to be not right but to be in relationship, to care for one another, to stay connected, to reach out where we want to close in. God is inviting us not to be right but to be in relationship. When we look at the political divides in our country that seem each day to go deeper — and I'm not sure how they manage to, but it seems like they do every day — we can feel like disengaging and disappearing, closing the door to those unlike us and keeping ourselves safe. And the invitation from God is to find ways to stay in community, to find ways to be in relationship, because it nurtures us, because it changes us and others, because it makes the world better, and because it reflects the image of God in which we are made.

All that said, musing on the internal heart of God is not particularly my skill or style. So if you just got very bored by the past eight minutes, I was too. And so if you did, all I want you to hear is the next minute, the promise from in his letter to the Romans: that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. That choosing to believe, that choosing to hope that we can be better, that the world can be better, that we can be kinder, that Jesus can continue sending the Spirit to transform us and speak truth into a world that seeks division, that that will not put us to shame. It will not disappoint us.

The hope of God given us through the Spirit as promised in Jesus will not disappoint us. Perhaps it might for a minute seem like it has. But that hope, that resolution, that resilience, that stubborn belief that a better world is possible and that God is drawing us toward it—that will not put us to shame. That hope will always see us through.