Homily For Trinity Sunday 2025
Today marks the midpoint in the Christian Year. For on Trinity Sunday, we commemorate the true revelation that there is one God in three persons, The Blessed Trinity. Or as the Athanasian Creed declares “now the catholic (that being universal) faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity.” For the first half of the Church Year, from Advent to Pentecost, we have revealed unto us in greater and clearer light the mighty acts of God that purchased our salvation. We celebrate, year by year, the wonder that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became man to redeem man from sin and death. Christmas to Easter - we marvel at the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us - full of spirit and of truth. We enter into the mystery that Christ would offer perfect obedience to every command of the Law for us. Moreover, the perfect Son of God, begotten before all worlds, offered himself freely on Calvary for us.
He was resurrected and crowned king at the right hand of the Father at Ascension a couple of weeks back. Then, last Sunday, we recounted the Holy Spirit coming to the Church in a new way - indwelling individual Christians so that they might use the gifts of the Spirit to the building up of the Body of Christ - the Church. So in the first half of the Year, we have Father, then the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Today is a celebration that God has made Himself known to us. That we have reached the culmination of God’s revelation in the Holy Trinity. “We celebrate God as he has graciously revealed himself, as Father, Son and Spirit - Three persons, yet one God.” For the remainder of the Church Year, now to the next Advent, we will emphasize what life in the Spirit looks like, what being a true follower of Jesus means, how to walk in obedience to the Triune God that we celebrate today.
Why celebrate such a feast day? Now as it has been said, “the doctrine of the Trinity is notoriously obscure, and even well-informed Christians sometimes think themselves quite justified in knowing nothing whatever about it. One knows, perhaps, that in the early church, great battles were fought, and even some blood shed, over the refinement of those definitions; one knows, perhaps, that the great Bishop Athanasius went five times into exile in this cause, and that the mighty power of Rome was nearly shattered on this issue, but what does it come to in the end? A formula, the jargon of philosophers and theologians, which can never encompass the mystery of God: is that what it amounts to in the end?” I would suggest the Trinity is far more than a point of argument to be won.
It is because we celebrate that the true God has made himself known to us that we accept in some sense the mystery of mysteries in the Trinity. When I speak of the mystery of mysteries, I am not denying that God can be known.
A mystery in this sense is not merely uncertain, or unknowable, rather mystery in the biblical sense means something that is beyond us in the sense of being inexhaustible. We will never discover everything about God in its fullness, for the more you know, the more you realize that there is so much more to learn. He tells us about Himself and we believe it and do not serve some unknown God. But in an age where we believe that we can know most everything, and to know something is to control it, it is a humbling reality that we can only know God to the degree He allows us to know him. There is a dependence, truly a neediness in our approach to Him. He has revealed to us sufficient knowledge about him so that we might trust him and believe in Him so that we might have eternal life in His name. The purpose of the Holy Scriptures is to present to us all things necessary for salvation. He gives us what is truly needful for us but we must trust, have faith and seek our hope in Him.
God also wants to inform us about ourselves by teaching us about Him. We were created for fellowship with Him. Indeed, we were called to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Throughout the readings for today I want you to notice how God reveals Himself in three persons.
In our Old Testament Lesson we read of Isaiah’s commission as a prophet. The scene described is a vision of the throne room of God. The awesomeness of the glory of God with his angels in His holy presence. The angels declare him to be the thrice Holy God. Isaiah's response is that of anyone with spiritual sensitivity, of conviction of the reality of their estate, someone not self-deceived, self-righteous. He knows that no one can see God and live for God declared that to Moses early in the Bible. He says Woe unto me. I am undone. I am finished. Because he is a sinner, a man of unclean lips and he belongs to a nation of sinners as well.
He is undone, condemned, destroyed because the unclean sinner has come into contact with a holy God. Even in this vision, we see the loving mercy of God in providing cleansing for sin and power for service. God sends an angel to purge his sin; to take away his iniquity. We have the shadows of the Trinity in the commission of Isaiah as a prophet. The thrice Holy God says “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Who will be sent by the one true God of Israel, who dwells in a plurality of persons - “us.” Revelation of God as Trinity leads to conviction of sin, commissioning for mission and the changed heart eager to communicate, to preach the loving God whose perfect holiness makes atonement and restoration possible through His work.
The Epistle for today is from the Revelation of St. John - an apocalyptic vision of the end, the resolution of all things. It has been said the story of our redemption begins and ends in a garden.
We have the story of creation in Genesis where the Spirit moves on the water, where the universe is brought into being by the Word of God. In our Epistle, John receives a vision of heaven. He receives the commandment to see, to testify to the things that were to come. He says that the voice speaking with him was like a trumpet speaking to him. A voice and trumpet - this brings together two great events of Pentecost - a trumpet accompanied the giving on the Law on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19; the living tongues of fire at Pentecost where the people were given the power by the Holy Spirit to voice abroad God’s redemption - the mighty acts of God. As it has been said of these trumpet voices “the one expressive of fear, the other of love; the fear and love with which we are henceforth to live in the great mystery of Godliness, as revealed to us in the Old and New Testament. For as Whitsuntide is the giving out of the law written on the heart, so the Sundays after Whitsuntide are the keeping of that law.”
Indeed, St. John says he was in the spirit. That is, his vision, his comprehension of these things was directed by the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit that gave him spiritual sight to see these events. The Apostle tells us that there was a throne and one who sat on it. This is none other than the Ascended Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God; Jesus sitting in royal power in the throne room of heaven. The throne is surrounded by the elders, the angels and four living creatures. The 24 elders representing the 12 tribes of the old Covenant and the 12 apostles of the New. All the angelic host and the four living creatures - which many of the Church Fathers interpreted as the four Gospels. All worshipping, giving fullest adoration. All worship God in three persons, sharing in the language of the angels in Isaiah - declaring God to be thrice Holy - to each person of the Godhead. The Epistle adds the three fold expression - Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Who was our Creator in the past; the one who “is’ our redeemer and the who is to come is our sanctifier.
In terms of his holiness, he is the God who is holy in his creative power; holy in his being and holy in his judgments at the end of all things. God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
We celebrate today the fact that God is known in three persons - not as a bare theological fact; not as an assembly of trivia about God. God is our creator - he made all that is; God is our redeemer - through the self-giving love of Jesus on the Cross, we have been cleansed from our sins; God is our sanctifier - he is in the process of making us godly through the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit - whose descent we celebrated last Sunday. All that is necessary for our salvation has been provided.
So what is our proper response to this glorious truth of the threefold person of God? Our readings for today tell us that our joy and duty is worship of God. Joining our hearts and voices in serving the thrice holy God of Isaiah and Revelation.
The term worship is derived from an older term “worth-ship” - it assigns a value, often the pride of place, the highest value of a person or thing. To worship God is to value him properly - not just one good thing among many, but the best, the exclusive. Truth is, humans are fundamentally worshippers. It is unavoidable. We will worship - we will put an absolute value on something - the person or thing that must be maintained, protected, served at all costs. It could be money, it could be another person, it could be status, you name it. Whatever gets your first and your best. On this Trinity Sunday, we are called to worship the true God, who is revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; to make obedience and love of Him the most important priority in our lives. Let us enter into the joy he has promised to those who love and serve Him. Let our hearts join our voices as we worship Father, Son and Holy Spirit at the Holy Communion. Combining our earthly worship of God Almighty with the saints and angels now in God’s presence. Amen.