Homily for Trinity Sunday
Psalm 93, Exodus 3:1-6, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-16
The Old Testament Trinity
Several years ago, my wife and I were in a liberal Lutheran church on Trinity Sunday. We arrived at the end of what they billed as their traditional service, which appeared to us to be a curious mixture of men in vestments similar to what I am wearing today, sharing the altar space with a stage band containing several electric guitars, an electronic keyboard, a drum set, and a small chorus of women to sing background to the male soloist who played lead guitar. I suppose that musical set up passes for traditional nowadays, so long as the tradition isn’t allowed to go back in time more than 10 or 20 years!
The contemporary service was also oddly traditional in this new way of thinking about tradition – except it was drawing on the tradition of the standup comic on late-night television shows or nightclub acts. Whatever. It was Trinity Sunday, and so we were not surprised to find that the topic chosen by the standup comic … oh .. I mean the pastor, of course … was the Trinity. Among other things, he attempted to explain the Trinity by likening Him to an egg. When he got around to comparing the Holy Trinity to a Hostess Twinkie, I began to look for the nearest exit, just in case lightening struck.
Ever since then, I have thought that I would never try to explain the Trinity in the context of a gathering of God’s people for the purpose of worship. It’s just too risky, don’t you think? But, here we are on Trinity Sunday, and it’s meet and right to say something on the topic. And, so in the space we have today, I will do two things. I will state the doctrine of the Trinity in an abbreviated form, and then I will show that it is a thoroughly Biblical doctrine by pointing to places in the Old Testament which are adumbrations – hints and foreshadowings if you will – of the doctrine that is central to the Christian faith.
First of all, what is the doctrine of the Trinity? If you want a full statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, I refer you to what is known as the Anthanasian Creed in the Book of Common Prayer. For now, a summary of that creed boils down to this: God is a single being who exists simultaneously and eternally as three persons, revealed in the New Testament as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
To know that this single God is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God in three persons, is a distinctly Christian doctrine. You cannot come to this doctrine without the revelation that comes with Jesus Christ and the teaching of the Apostles. Because of that, the doctrine of the Trinity has often been challenged as being in conflict with the central tenet of the faith of the Old Testament, a faith that is best summed up in what the Jews refer to as the Shema’, recorded in Deuteronomy 6:
4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
From the data of the Old Testament revelation, you cannot generate anything like the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, most certainly not in the terms we find in the New Testament – God is the Father, God is the Son, God is the Holy Spirit, all of them together One God. But, while we cannot find Father, Son, and Holy Spirit AS SUCH in the Old Testament, we can find in the Old Testament what theologians call “adumbrations” of the Holy Trinity, dim foreshadowings, odd things that are frankly puzzling and confusing in the Old Testament context, but when we look at them again from the New Testament perspective, we find they point to what Christians would eventually call the Holy Trinity. Let me pass a few of these Old Testament verses by you, to show you what I mean.
The earliest hint that God is somehow multi-personal comes in the very first chapter of the Bible. In Genesis 1, verses 26ff, we read this:
26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Who is being referred to by the word ‘Us’? It is not angels because angels do not have the power to create. God said, “Let US make man in OUR image”; two plural terms. And, this is followed by the statement that God created man in HIS own image. Note that we have evidence here that God is a singularity of some sort, and that God is a plurality of some sort. It looks like a contradiction, and it has given Old Testament scholars and Jewish theologians fits trying to explain it.
The most common explanation is that this is an example of “the royal we,” likening this language to the way European monarchs would refer to themselves in the plural. Queen Victoria is famous for expressing her disapproval of something by saying, “We are not amused.” No, Queen Victoria was not suffering from schizophrenia. The “we” was the “royal we,” and it was supposed to be referring to “me and God.”
Of course, this won’t actually work in the text of Genesis, because it is God who says “we” and “us.” This same way of speaking about God shows up Genesis 3:22 says, “Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil’”. The LORD God said (singular), man has become like Us (plural). This passage affirms that there is one God, but also affirms a plurality of persons.
And, Genesis 11 contains yet another example of this kind of speech. When God wishes to disrupt a fresh human rebellion after the Great Flood, we read this in verses 7 and 8:
7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. So, again, we have the LORD said, ‘let Us go down’ (God is a plurality), followed by a statement that the LORD scattered them (God is a singularity).
We see this again in the vision of Isaiah in Chapter 6 of his prophecy, in which God asks ‘Who will go for Us’. But, one of the more striking examples from Isaiah’s prophecy is in chapter 48. In context, the one speaking is identified in verse 12 with these words:
12 “ Listen to Me, O Jacob, and Israel, My called: I am He, I am the First, I am also the Last. 13 Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth, And My right hand has stretched out the heavens; …”
Now, listen closely to what God says in verses 16 and 17:
16 "Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; From the time that it was, I was there. And now the Lord GOD and His Spirit Have sent Me."
What an amazing statement! The LORD (Jehovah) is saying, ‘the Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me’. How can the Lord God and His Spirit send YHWH to redeem Israel? In this passage we have YHWH identifying Himself in three persons.
We see a similar passage in Zechariah 2: 10 " Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For behold, I am coming and I will dwell in your midst," says the LORD. 11 "Many nations shall be joined to the LORD in that day, and they shall become My people. And I will dwell in your midst. Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent Me to you.”
Here in Zechariah’s prophecy we have the YHWH saying that He was sent to Israel by the YHWH. How can this be unless God, unless YHWH is somehow plural in personality?
There is a one more place to notice in the Old Testament, because it points not only to a plurality in the Godhead, but also to the Incarnation of God as a man. Psalm 110 bears the heading “a psalm of David.” and the first words of that Psalm go like this:
1 The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”
In the last public confrontation Jesus had with the Pharisees and Sadducees before they arranged to arrest him, Jesus said to them, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” They said to Him, “ The Son of David.” 43 He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying: 44 ‘ The LORD said to my Lord, ‘ Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool’?
45 If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?”
The humanity of the Messiah is pretty well determined by the fact that he is David’s descendant. But, Jesus points to something else in this Psalm: David calls the Messiah “Lord.” and there is no one of higher rank than David in Israel except God. Jesus’ point to the Pharisees and Sadducees is plain: Messiah is both human and also divine. And, yet if he is divine, Psalm 110 shows us one divine person, YHWH, speaking to another divine person (David’s Lord). In this place in the Old Testament, we not only have a plurality of persons in the godhead, one of these persons is understood to be a human descendant of King David.
No wonder that Matthew continues in his gospel with these words: “46 And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.”
My point is a simple one: the Trinity, as we have summarized it today, is most definitely a mystery, something difficult to fathom, and most definitely a Christian doctrine in the sense that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are not clearly and unambiguously revealed until the teaching of Jesus and his Apostles after Him. On the other hand, it is also true that hints, foreshadowings, adumbrations of the Holy Trinity are present in the Old Testament, many of them in the very first chapters of Genesis.
What we do not find in the New Testament is what the Church later developed – a succinct statement that summarizes the data of both Old and New Testaments concerning the nature of God. Instead what we find are things like the gospel and the lesson from the New Testament appointed for today.
Remember what Paul wrote in that eighth chapter of Romans: “14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. … you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, …” There in two verses Paul speaks of God, the Father, the Spirit of God, and Christ. One God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Or consider again how our Lord was speaking with Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Most of what Jesus said to Nicodemus involved a pun on the word “pneuma” which could mean “wind” or “spirit.” There is also another pun in Greek on a word that can mean “again” or “from above.” In any event, it is clear when we ponder these puns Jesus is making that there is a work of the Spirit of God that must happen – something Jesus calls being born of the Spirit – before one can enter the Kingdom of God. And, yet, Jesus concludes his teaching to Nicodemus with these words: “16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” So, just as we saw in Paul’s writing, we see in Jesus teaching – a fluid and uncomplicated mention of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The New Testament is full of this kind of thing. At his baptism, we have Jesus, the Holy Spirit alighting on him, and the voice of God in heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” And so it is that Jesus as he departs the earth tells his disciples, to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
So, where does that leave us? In the Old Testament there are several places where God is a singularity and also a plurality. It is not explained. In the New Testament, that plurality is verified to be three – the minimum number of persons required for all possible relationships between persons to be manifest. Moreover, we are told that the name of this God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Is that the end of the matter? Perhaps so.
We will, in any event, never fully comprehend God in His essential glory, for He is God and infinite, and we are creature and finite. But, we find, additionally, hints in the New Testament that a fuller, greater, and more glorious revelation of God awaits those who are redeemed in Jesus Christ. Peter, for example, says that we are given [2 Pet. 1:4ff] “exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature …” Jesus prayed for his disciples that they would arrive at a place described in these words of our Lord: "And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one...." The astounding thing here is that Jesus prays to the Father for a unity amongst believers and between believers and Jesus that is the same as the unity of the Godhead.
I do not think we have arrived there just yet. And, when we do, I cannot tell you now what that glory will be like. As John said in 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
That is an aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity you may not have considered. It not only summarizes what the New Testament tells us about God, it points to something true of our own destiny in Christ. For whatever it is that the life of the Holy Trinity is like, that is what we shall share one day when we are glorified in Christ at his return.
On this Trinity Sunday, may we find in our Lord’s teaching, not only a fuller understanding of the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, but also a glimmer of the unimaginable glory that we shall share with him on the day the Jesus Christ is revealed once more in glory. God grant that this hope will steady us while we remain in this world of troubles, since we know that this world is passing away. But, in Christ, we have a glory which will never pass away, for it is the very glory of the Holy Trinity which is shared with us in our Savior Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
