Trinity Sunday - June 11, 2006        

     A kindergarten-age boy had just gotten home from Sunday school and his mom was cooking lunch.  “Mommy,” he asked, “is it true that before you’re born you’re just dust and after you die you go back to being dust?”

     “That’s right, son,” she said.  “Why do you ask?”

     “Well, that’s just what they said in Sunday school today,” he said.

     Thinking that was the end of the conversation, his mom said, “Run upstairs and wash your hands.  Lunch will be ready in a few minutes.”

     After about 10 minutes, she called out for him to come down.  “Be there in a minute,” he said.

     As they were about to sit down at the table, the little boy asked again about being dust before being born and after you die.  Once again his mother said, “Yes, that’s true.”

     The little boy looked at her and said, “Then you better get up to my room pretty quick, because something under my bed is either coming or going!”

      This is Trinity Sunday in our calendar.  We celebrate the three manifestations of God in our midst; as Creator, as Redeemer, and as Comforter and Guide.  This co-eternal, Triune God, was established for us in the great ecumenical councils of the Church held in the fourth and fifth centuries.  Holding on to that faith requires great effort.  Searching for new and creative ways to express that truth requires continual diligence on the part of preachers and teachers of the Christian doctrine.

     I ran across one of those creative ways some time back.  In the highly symbolic Chinese written language the highest expression of love is constructed by combining two seemingly contradictory symbols.  The character-strokes for “love” and “pain” are brushed together in one symbol.  The meaning is that sacrifices are made on behalf of others and the result is “pain/love.”  Children are brought into the world by pain/love.  The National D-Day Memorial is our attempt to thank a large group of heroes for their pain/love in our behalf.

     Theologically, it is perfectly proper to say, “God so pain/loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

     Most of us have a favorite passage of scripture.  Usually, we have committed that passage to memory and we say it to ourselves in good times and bad.  One of my favorites for many years is I Corinthians 15:10; “By the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain.”  Perhaps, John 3:16 is one of your favorites.  Martin Luther called it “the Gospel in miniature.”  In the simplest terms for the simple in heart it is the essence of the Gospel.  “For God so pain/loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

     Of all the thousands of verses in the 66 books of the Bible this is the one that speaks of the amazing vulnerability of God.  It is that vulnerability that moves human beings to repentance and faith.  God did not sit with arms crossed on a far distant throne in his eternal castle.  God chose to come crashing into this world as a dependent, crying infant.  God finished that all too brief stay as a bleeding, dying convict, in pain and in love.  When John says God gave, it the biggest understatement in the history of the world.

     I would want to suggest that there are three marvelous things in this one verse for us as we celebrate Trinity Sunday.  The first is to remember that the origin and the initiative for salvation begins and ends with God.  Sometimes, Christianity is presented in such a way that it sounds like God had to be persuaded to forgive us fallen creatures.  God knew full well that granted free will to the top creature in the created order was a risky thing to do.  I’ve heard sermons, read collections of many others, which speak as if God were a stern, angry, unforgiving, and totally legalistic Creator just waiting for us to trip our toe so we could be zapped, so God could have a big belly laugh.  Sometimes we hear that our actions change God’s attitude from condemnation to forgiveness.  John 3:16 tells us that it was with God that it all started.  It was God’s idea, without any coercion on our part, to send the only begotten into the world.  God knew all along that doing so might be necessary.  God knew that coercing and manipulating us into loving him would not be the loving thing to do.  Of the many things John 3:16 tells us it says most clearly that the origin and the initiative for salvation begins and ends with God.

     Secondly, John 3:16 is an indication that at the center of the divine nature of the Trinity is love.  We may be tempted to think of God as looking at us in our callousness, our intolerance, our self-will run riot, and our rebellion against any and all claims that God makes of us and saying, “I’ll break them, I’ll humble them, and I’ll punish them until they come back to me.”  Do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son?  The turning point in that story was when the prodigal came to himself in the far country and cried out, “God!  Father!  I give up!  You take charge of my life!  Doing things my way is a disaster and nothing but misery!”  While he was yet far off the Father ran to him, put his arms around him, wrapped him in a coat of pain/love, kissed him, and washed away the dirt with his own tears.  God is the Father who cannot be happy until his wandering children come home.  God does not smash us into submission, God yearns over us, woos us into a loving relationship with himself.  All we have to say is, “I need you to love me,” and God swoops us up into tender arms and says, “Oh, I love you so much.  Let me show you how much.”

     Finally, John 3:16 shows us the extent of God’s love.  It was and is the world that God so loved; not a nation, not a political system, not a liberal worldview nor a conservative one.  We make a feeble attempt to limit what cannot be limited when we buy into the notion that God prefers a particular political party or system.  God does not just love good people, not just those who return the love, but the world that God so loves.  That includes the lonely and outcast, those who have no one to care for them or about them and those who have a lot of friends.  God loves not just the sober and the disease-free, but also the drunk and diseased-infested.  God’s love encompasses those who rest in that love and those who spurn it.  All are included in the vast inclusiveness of God’s love.

     One thing more about the extent of God’s love: the question comes to every single life.  “So and so, do you love me?”  “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  “Feed my lambs.”  “So and so, do you love me?”  “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”  “Tend my flock.”  “So and so, do you love me?”  “Lord, you know everything.  You know that I love you.”  “Feed my sheep.” 

     Love is given away if we want to feel it for ourselves.  We get to keep what we give to others.  That’s only one of the amazing paradoxes of loving and serving this awesome God.

     If we need some justification, some rationalization for all we do, it can be found when we come to understand how much God loved us first.  It begins and ends with God, whose nature is to love in an infinite, total way, for it is profoundly true that “God so pain/loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” 

     It does not matter whether you are coming or going; that is the very best news you will hear today.  Amen.