“All God’s Children”
Holy Trinity Sunday –
Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. Would you have known it without looking at your bulletin? Did you miss the big Three-Day Trinity Sale at Kohl’s? (Get it: three-day, Trinity?) Eight weeks ago on Easter we focused on God the Father and his resurrection of God the Son. Last week, at Pentecost, we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit. All the players are on the field: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So it only makes sense that this Sunday we lift up the one God who is also three – the Triune God, the God I just asked to give you grace and peace.
Or does it make sense? Quite frankly, we struggle with the idea, let alone the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It’s abstract. It’s full of church talk, fine for pastors but way out there for the regular folks in the pews.
Let me let you in on a little secret: it’s way out there for a lot of pastors, too.
Even popular culture struggles with the idea. It seems to me that one of the most confusing aspects of the Matrix trilogy of movies is that they have made some attempts to use a sort of Trinity concept in their plot and there are three movies in the sequence: a trilogy.. Something about Trinity just lends itself to mystery.
The fact is the triune God doesn’t touch us the way Jesus or the Father do. We can relate to Jesus as fully God and fully human, Jesus as a Son because we are all someone’s son or daughter. We can relate to God the Father because we all have a father and a mother. When we get to the Holy Spirit, things start to get a little “spacey”. And when the Holy Trinity comes in and we have all three in one – Katie bar the door! [Rod Serling voice].You’ve just crossed the threshold – of the Twilight Zone.
But remember I just said we can “relate” to Father and son? That word relate is at the heart of the Holy Trinity – in fact I’d go so far as to say it IS the Holy Trinity.
Unlike other gods, with a small “g”, our God is a God of and in relationship within himself But not only within himself, but he carries that relationship to all of his creatures, to you and me.
If you get that part, you’ve can begin to see why God sent his Son on that redemption mission to his broken people living in a broken world. If you get that part, you begin to see why it was necessary for Jesus to send his Spirit to dwell within each of us.
To redeem, to bring his people back to Himself, to make a people broken and dying of sin whole, to make them part of Himself, as he created them was the only way God could be God. To not sacrifice the son and send the Spirit was to be some other, small g, kind of god. Not the creator of a universe conceived and brought into being as an expression of the love that IS God. If you get the For God so loved the world part of John 3:16, you get the smallest sliver of the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
And the Holy Trinity is a mystery. But it is hard to relate to a mystery. Mysteries don’t always help us deal with divorce and weddings, newborns and death, good days and anxious or depressing days. Especially as we grow older but also as younger people when we find ourselves in long-term situation of chronic illness or strained relationships, you take the good days as they come. And sometimes they don’t come very often.
What we need at times like those – and, frankly, every other time in our lives, every the highest highs – is a relationship that is above, in and under all our other relationships. A relationship that both transcends and penetrates all our relationships because it is the basis, the stuff and foundation of all our relationships.
I talked about this relationship when I greeted you at the beginning of the sermon. a phrase we use almost without thinking. And yet, it is the very heart of every human relationship. It is a form of address that comes as second nature, like calling a policewoman in uniform, “officer.” I say this phrase at the beginning of every sermon I preach, as I did just now: “Brothers and sisters in Christ.”
Do you see the little trinity in the words: brothers, sisters, Christ. And that little word in is important. It could have been of or near or under. But Paul wrote in, as in intimate, within, inside. He could have written men and women instead of brothers and sisters. But he chose words that not only name us as men and women but as people in relationship to one another AND to Jesus.
When I address you as brothers and sisters in Christ, I am making an audacious, bold, and mysterious proclamation of who you are, not just as individuals but as individuals in relationship to each other and to God, a triune God in whose image and very self you have been made brothers and sisters.
Paul talks about how this happens by using the word adoption, specifically adoption as children. There are few stories with the power to stir our deepest emotions, to bring a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat than adoption stories.
I have been blessed to hear many since coming to Christ Lutheran.
Every such story, no matter what the age of the children involved, is the story of new life erupting into already existing lives and existences. Whether it is a foreign or a domestic adoption, the lives of everyone is transformed. The adoptive parents and family as much as the adopted child experience a new life taking shape. The extended family and the community in which an adoption occurs are touched and changed in ways they cannot predict or even feel.
Think back to what I said earlier about the triune God, and hold that against what I just said about adoption. Since God adopts us as his children, he does not claim us on the basis of our genetics or parentage, but on the basis of our relationship with him – the spirit of adoption! The Holy Spirit, given by Christ, here in our hearts cries – and I like to think here, like a baby cries for its parent – that spirit of adoption cries out to God on our behalf, to be related to God, not as a slave, but as a child, an heir with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities as a new member of a family. In this case, the family of God.
If you have experienced yourself, or know people who have been unable to have children when they had hoped, even planned, to become parents, you know that it can be devastating to those involved. Marriages have been broken on the rock of infertility. Families have been stressed. Tens of thousands of dollars and years of trips to fertility clinics. Frustration and heartache all take their toll even when the outcome is a happy one. And when the outcome is not successful and medical science throws up its hands, and prayers go unanswered, it as if a child has died. So great is our human need to be part of a family, to be in relationship to one another.
God knows. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. God gave himself, gave up part of the love that is God for you. Because he knows you were waiting for and needing adoption. And because he wants to adopt you. To bring you home from that distant land, that far country, of your sin and brokenness.
The Triune God exists. And because he exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he cannot leave you lost, anymore than he could fail to raise His Son from the dead or prevent the Holy Spirit from dwelling in your heart. This God of three-in-one uses his grace and mercy, as loving parent, obedient child, and wild, free spirit to restore you to that place in his family.
It is a place to which the father calls you. It is a place that is in Christ, his only Son our Lord. It is a place in your heart where the Spirit burns. It is a place that has been waiting for you since he formed you in your mother’s womb.
This place is in relationship to the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the relationship that makes all of the other relationships in your life possible. This is the relationship that forgives your sin and heals your brokenness. This is the relationship of adoption that transforms your life. it gives you the strength to get up in the morning, to live your life as an adopted child of God.
You can’t do anything to receive adoption, except let the Spirit given you through the Son call “Abba! Father!” and it will be so. Welcome to your family of faith. Amen.
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