Homily For Trinity Sunday 2026
Today, we celebrate the fullness of what God has chosen to tell us about himself - that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the only Lord who shares his glory with no one else, exists in perfect harmony of three persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God, three persons, blessed Trinity. Trinity Sunday is a celebration of the joy and love between each person of the Trinity and the love of God through the ministry of each person to bring about man’s salvation and the renewal of all creation. In other words, there is no new revelation needed for us to have abundant life and an eternal inheritance.
While today is a feast, there is much to be gained by considering the very beginning of one of the more penitential elements in our prayer book - the Litany. The beginning of all petition, all supplication is the recognition of the distinct persons of the Holy Trinity.
In the Litany, on page 54 of the BCP, we pray “O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth. Have mercy upon us. O God the Son, Redeemer of the World. Have mercy upon us. O God the Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faithful; Have mercy upon us. O holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, one God; have mercy upon us.
It begin by praying to God the Father, the creator of heaven and earth. God the Father is the great creator. This is the testimony of Genesis - God spoke the Word and the universe came into being and it was good. This is the pattern of the created order in the first few chapters of Genesis. Yet, man rebelled against his good Creator - and was cast out of the perfection of the Garden. An angel was set with a flaming sword to prevent Adam and Eve from coming back. The created order reveals the goodness of God the Father but causes anxiety and fear for there is a radical otherness - holiness to God - that both repels and draws men.
This tension is revealed in Romans Chapter 1 when St. Paul speaks to the reality that all men know God as creator - they have seen the manifestation of God in his creation. What do we see when we look at the world around us? We see the radically small in microscopic structures and the incredibly big in the vastness of the solar system. Both bear witness of God’s presence because they reveal intricate order and great variety. Even so, our knowledge of God as creator is insufficient to tell us about our relationship to Him.
Many men will readily acknowledge God the Father as creator of heaven and earth as long as He remains a distant power. Far fewer will worship God as He has revealed himself in the second person of the Trinity - Jesus Christ the Son of God, redeemer of the world. Why is that? What is there about Jesus that is unacceptable, and even offensive? Perhaps it is the fact that He was sent to redeem us, which implicates our sinfulness. Our redemption rests in the Son’s loving submission to the Father’s will.
The Father loves his creation and sent his Son who offers up himself as a living sacrifice of perfect obedience and the complete atonement through his death. This revelation from God has implications. If God made the universe, that’s one thing, but if God’s holiness requires our reconciliation, that is quite another.
You may recall that our Easter liturgy included the following joyful declaration. “How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son. O wonderful providence of Adam’s sin destroyed completely by the death of Christ. O happy fault, which gained for us so great and glorious a Redeemer. A redeemer, one to stand in our place faultless, the one to offer himself to release us from slavery to sin and death.
If some believe and acknowledge God the Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and and fewer believe in Jesus, His Only begotten son, fewer still are conformed to the likeness of Christ through the sanctification given by the Holy Spirit. Most of humanity believes in a Creator; multitudes profess the Lordship of the Son, but how many celebrate, indeed embrace, the Holy Spirit as sanctifier of the faithful. Praise be to God that He sends one Person of the Godhead to inhabit the Christian believer. He was not satisfied to be remote but sent the Comforter, the Teacher, the One who brings supernatural strength to us. Justification - being declared righteous before God -is the gift of God through the Son’s redemption. Sanctification, that great inheritance, is the gift of God through the Spirit’s presence in our lives. He convicts us of our sins that we might repent from them. The Holy Spirit makes the life and the work of Jesus Christ appealing to us; The glory of the Holy Spirit is His direction of our attention away from ourselves and toward the glories of Christ.
His ministry is not one of greater self-realization, rather the gifts of the Spirit are directed primarily toward loving service of others, much in the vein of Our Lord’s earthly ministry, whose life we are called to emulate. I am not denying the power of the Holy Spirit to heal and His presence in our testimony to the world at large, but the Spirit’s ministry to the Church is found primarily in directing God’s people to simple obedience to His will. This can be gradual, almost indistinguishable, silent and even hidden to the outward eyes of others, but slowly, there is a change of character and aspirations that is real and ultimately shapes who we are. Sanctifier of the faithful. And who are the faithful? They are those who persevere. Perseverance is the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s presence. Only He can produce the well-pleasing fruit of likeness to Christ.
As I return to the end of the invocations of the Litany, the Father creates, the Son redeems and the Holy Spirit sanctifies. Yet, all three persons of the Trinity are one Lord. This is key.
It is why we have a Sunday like this one in which we recite the Athanasian Creed, with all its repetition and distinction, acknowledging each person of the Trinity while also emphasizing the fundamental unity of the Godhead that has always existed.
So, what is the point? Is the Trinity yet another necessary bit of Christian orthodoxy with no practical use? It might be tempting to think so, but I would invite us to meditate on the love of God expressed through the work of all three persons. Perhaps we can see in the Trinity a love that seeks and saves the lost, that converts the worst of sinners into saints. The true God sends His redeemed out into the world. He is a missionary God. He sends out the redeemed so that others might hear and believe.
In our OT lesson, we read this thrice Holy God who sends out Isaiah to testify to God’s work in this world.
Isaiah 6 features Isaiah entering the throne room of God - the thrice Holy who asks the question who will go for US. Notice the pattern in the commissioning of Isaiah - he is overwhelmed by the realization that he is a sinner and has entered into the presence of God. He laments his sinfulness - woe unto me, I am undone - and the wickedness of his people - I am from a people whose words do not reflect the character of God. These things are true, but they are not the whole story. God redirects Isaiah from the truth of his words - they are indeed sinful, he indeed is a sinner - to God’s planned provision, namely the proclamation of redemption through the purging of Isaiah’s lips. See this coal has touched your lips. I have cleansed you and now go forth on mission. Tell the world of God the Creator who redeems mankind through redemption, the atonement for sins, so that God’s redeemed people may grow in godliness, that they may grow in their understanding of what it means to be a redeemed people.
Beloved, on this Trinity Sunday, let us not be distracted by the theological formulae, let us revel in it. God’s revealed identity, that God is one Lord in three persons points to all the aspects of our redemption. God is a Father who loves His creation, especially mankind. God in fact loves us so much, that He gave up His Throne, coming down Himself as the only acceptable, perfect sacrifice in the Person of the Son, who is the exact image of the invisible God and God the Holy Spirit, our promised Helper, who comes in all the power of the father and the son to make us alive in Christ through the same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead. This declaration of the nature of the triune God is the declaration of the coming of the kingdom of God. The love of God animates the harmony and fellowship between the three persons of the Trinity; it is what we celebrate today because it is the same love of God that enables us to have love for one another, and which commissions us to tell others of the redemption, sanctification, renewal and joy of fellowship that the Lord has accomplished for us. As Trinity season begins, we enter a season of practical holiness in which we focus on living out the great story of our redemption. Let us meditate on God our Father’s holy love and may it transform us into the likeness of His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, through the power of His most Holy Spirit. Amen.
