This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, May 30, 2010.

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Readings

Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31
Psalm 8 (antiphon v.2)
Romans 5:1–5
John 16:12–15

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Prayer

Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may trust and obey Jesus Christ, your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.

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Message

Everybody knows how a good fairy tale begins:
Once upon a time.
And then we get to the details that pull us in:
there were three little pigs;
there was an orphan girl with a wicked step-mother;
there was a man who traded his cow for some magic beans.

These are the fairy tales, the tall tales,
the legends and epics and fables
that fill the imaginations and memories
of people all over the world.

When we hear them,
we learn about the big bad wolf and his taste for pork,
the true love of Cinderella and Prince Charming,
the cunning and bravery of Jack in the land of giants.

These stories never grow old.
We can hear them time and again.
We can remake them, recast them into different periods.
They are timeless, and attractive to us,
because they fit anywhere, anytime.
And that’s the case because they are not history.

The stories we tell about history
and the figures that we remember
can be just as enchanting, mesmerizing, and exciting.
But they start out differently.

We don’t say,
“Once upon a time there was a man of troubled spirit,
thrown from his horse in a thunderstorm,
who vowed to become a monk,
and came to lead a revolution in the Church.”

Instead, we recount,
“In 1483, Martin Luther was born of middle-class parents.
He became an Augustinian monk.
And on October 31, 1517, he posted 95 topics for debate
upon the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.”

We never say,
“Once upon a time there was a man born in a log cabin,
who wrote his lessons with charcoal on a shovel.
He grew up to wear a stovepipe hat,
and even though he was lanky and homely,
was chosen to be the leader of his country.”

Instead, we begin,
“Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky.”

History is story, but it is story with detail,
with specifics that help us to know
that we are hearing about real people in real places.

We tell one another stories of history all the time.
When’s the last conversation you had that went something like this:
“Did you hear about Alice?”
“Which Alice was that?”
“You know, Alice who married Bob.
She works at the insurance agency on the corner.
They live over on Main Street.”
“Oh, yeah, I know who you’re talking about.”

What happens is that we mention people by name
and then we go on to identify them
by telling enough of their history
until we can all say, “Yes, I know who we’re talking about.”

The Bible is like that kind of conversation.
Its stories were told and retold
and then eventually committed to writing.
Its main character is God.

But that’s such a generic name.
Many people use that name,
but they don’t all mean to refer to the same God.

Maybe God is Baal,
who brings fertility to land and animals and people,
so long as he receives the proper offerings.

Maybe God is the golden calf,
cast from the melted-down jewelry of the people of Israel
who grew impatient waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain.

Maybe God is a statue in the Agora of Athens,
one of the sculptures Paul passed
as he prepared for his conversation with the people.

We know that none of those gods are God.
Just as we know in our hearts
that all of the little gods we worship
are not really God.
Not our possessions, not our families,
not our most absorbing pastimes,
or even the flag or this country.

We know that God is none of these, then or now.
We know that.
But which god is our God?

The answer to that question comes as a story.

God is the one who made the first people, Adam and Eve.
He put them into a garden and gave them everything they needed.
But when they rebelled, he cast them out,
but watched over them as they raised their family.

He is the God who saved Noah and his family,
along with pairs of animals,
while he sent a great flood to wipe clean the earth.

He is the God who called Abram and Sarai
to leave their land in Ur of Chaldees—now Iraq—
and to journey to a promised land, sight unseen.

He is the God who gave Abraham and Sarah their son, Isaac.
He guided the family, leading Jacob and then his sons,
protecting them when they journeyed to Egypt.

He raised up Moses and used him to lead the people out of Egypt.
He delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh
and led them through the wilderness for forty years.
He gave them his Law, fed them, defended them,
and then brought them into the land of promise.

And on we go through the rest of the Old Testament.
And then we come to the New Testament,
and we tell how God is the Father who sent his Son, Jesus,
born of a virgin, Mary.
He rescued Jesus from the slaughter of the innocents,
raised him to manhood,
guided him into the wilderness for forty days,
then poured out the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism
under the hand of his cousin, John.

This Jesus is the God who gave himself up to the forces of this world,
who went willingly and humbly to the cross,
who suffered the most unimaginable pain,
who bore the weight of all human sin, the sin of all humanity,
who died by crucifixion,
who descended to the dead.

And we go on to tell the rest of the story.
On the third day, the Father raised the Son from death by power of their Spirit.
And then we proclaim, “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!”

This risen Son sends his Spirit,
so that all who believe may join with him in faith,
as children of the heavenly Father,
and in the end, bend the knee to the God and Father of us all.

This is no fairy tale, no story about once upon a time.
This is the sacred history of God.
In fact, the word “God” is just shorthand for this history,
because when we say “God,” we mean all of this,
from the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth
until the end when his Son says, “I am coming soon.”

And for us who bear the Son’s name as Christians,
who have been baptized in the name of God— Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit—
that triune name is God’s proper name.

When we use it, there is no confusion about which God we mean.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not the vague and false god of prosperity
or the idolotrous god of good times
or the make-believe god we can satisfy with empty gestures.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
is the name of the God with a real and specific history
of dealings with Israel and the Church
from before the first word of creation
to his coming to us as Immanuel
and beyond the final judgment at the end.

God has been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
from the beginning, and in fact, from all eternity.
His name tells the whole story.

The Father created the world through his Son, the Word, and by the power of the Spirit.
The Father blessed his people with Wisdom and led them along his Way.
The Father gave his prophets his Message and guided them to speak with Power.
The Father sent his Son to be born of Mary, who conceived him by the gift of the Spirit.
The Father raised is Son from death by the power of the love they shared in their Spirit.
The Father made the Church to be the bride of his Son and filled it with the Spirit of truth.

This is why we confess that God is Father, Son, and Spirit.
We confess that our God is one God because the three are one.

In every way, in every action,
God reveals himself as one,
where Father and Son and Spirit
each act in relation to one another
so that the perfect community they share
is never broken or divided or in conflict.

This is why the divine math does not follow the rules of human arithmetic.
One plus one plus one is one and not three.

And the blessing for us
is that our God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—
calls us to share in this divine unity,
gathering us to himself in our Baptism
and nourishing us by our Communion with him. Amen.