The Comfort of the Holy Trinity in Times of Trouble

Grace, mercy and peace be with you, from God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

Today we’re going to talk about the comfort we receive from the Holy Trinity, especially in troubling and turbulent times. 

Our sermons on Trinity Sundays tend to be more theologically challenging, but as we’ll see, this can also be very comforting.

Because God is Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He can comfort us in ways He couldn’t if he wasn’t Triune. But if God wouldn’t be Triune, He wouldn’t be God. But he is Triune, and therefore, He is God.

This is kind of hard to wrap your mind around, but there’s comfort in knowing that God is so extraordinary and entirely unique like this.

He’s the only one who’s Triune: people aren’t triune; angels aren’t triune; devils and demons aren’t triune; plants and animals aren’t triune; only God is Triune. 

And because of that, there are things that only God can do. He can bless us in ways that He wouldn’t be able to if He wasn’t Triune. Most of all, because God is Triune, He can save us.

To put it into the Biblical language of the Catechism, because God is Triune He can create us, redeem us, and sanctify us. Every good thing God does for us, comes from His being Triune.

Take creation, for example, the gift of life itself: if God wasn’t Triune, we couldn’t have been created in His image. Because if God would not be Triune there would be no Holy Spirit, so God couldn’t have breathed His Spirit into the man He had formed, to make Him a living being, in His own image, with an immortal soul. 

We wouldn’t have been created with an eternal soul if God were not Triune. But because He is, we were made in His holy image, with a soul to live forever.

If God wasn’t Triune, He couldn’t have saved us after we fell into sin. There would be no Son for the Father to send to become one of us to keep the law for us, and to die and rise to win our forgiveness.

And again, if God were not the Holy Spirit, He couldn’t come to us through Baptism to live in our spirit, giving us the power to believe and receive the salvation Jesus won for us, and helping us to better love God and each another.

In light of this, we can see that we owe everything to God being Triune; without it we wouldn’t be saved, we wouldn’t believe; we wouldn’t even be alive. 

So while the doctrine of the Trinity is extremely deep and, as we said, difficult to wrap your mind around, it’s also very comforting and empowering. 

It’s amazing how the three persons of God have worked in concert to make us and save us -- and even today, to comfort and bless us.

And that’s why we glorify the Holy Trinity on this festival Sunday; we celebrate this most profound truth in heaven and on earth and in the universe, this eternal mystery on which our lives and salvation depend, that God is three in one.  

Because this truth is so great and so comforting, let us be resolute in our belief in this great doctrine. Let us avoid the temptation, as seems to be the human tendency, to try to simplify and explain away the mystery of the Holy Trinity. 

When we do, we end up misrepresenting God, and undermining the Gospel.  

Trying to explain away the mystery of the Holy Trinity typically leads to one of three mistakes. 

One dire mistake is atheism, just deny God’s existence all together. But then you have none of His eternal blessings; you miss out on all the joy and comfort God has to give to the world.

A second dire mistake is to portray God as just one person, as is done in Judaism and Islam. 

As we said, because God is three in one, one God in three persons, He’s able to save us. But if you believe that God is only one person, then you think He’s not capable of saving anyone, and people have to save themselves through their good works, which is something no one has ever been able to do. This just leaves us struggling and defeated. 

And it dishonors God to think or teach that He’s not able or willing to save us: He is! So much so that He gave his life for us, and rose for us!

A third dire mistake that can happen when we try to explain away the mystery of the Holy Trinity is polytheism, the belief that there are many gods, which is taught in Hinduism and New Age. 

If you just have a bunch of lesser gods, none of them possessing all the attributes and qualities of God, none of them almighty and all powerful, then none of them can save the world. 

So once again, the teaching becomes that people have to save themselves by living a good life, or as in the Hindu teaching of reincarnation, many good lives, multiple lifetimes, thousands, even millions of lifetimes. 

This keeps people from the one and only way of salvation which is through God’s one and only Son; and it denies people the comfort of knowing that, as the Gospel promises, the moment we believe in Christ we’re saved; we don’t have to keep trying to get it right. We trust in Jesus to save us; He got it right the first time. 

So considering the dire consequences of denying or ignoring truth of the Holy Trinity, let us joyfully embrace this amazing truth, from which comes the saving Gospel. 

And let us gladly share it with a world that needs the blessings and comfort that only a Triune God can give, especially during these troubling times, with viruses, and violence, and all kinds of uncertainties all around us.

It seems like the bad news just keeps coming these days, although we did have a bit of good news Friday, in the May jobs report. To the surprise of most economists, unemployment numbers went down. We thank God for that, but we know that over time, there will be good job reports, and bad reports. 

Because God is Triune we will always have the Good News of God’s grace for us to live by, even and especially during troubling times, even when it seems like all the news is bad news.

This is a turbulent time in most of our large cities, with protests and unrest, and in some cases violence. But because the Father sent His Son to reconcile the world to God, and to one another, we have hope for peace during this time of tension.

The Gospel can open our eyes and calm our hearts, to talk and listen to each other, so that together, we can find a solution for the good of all.

Because God is our Father, He watches over us from above, and protects us during turbulent times, in body, but especially, in soul. 

Viruses may harm and infect this body, but not this soul. As a baptized child of God, your soul is under His personal protection. You’ve heard of a body guard; our God is a soul guard. 

He gives medical resources to help heal the body for a time, but He gives the Gospel to heal the soul for eternity. 

Because God is the Son, and has become incarnate, one of us, He empathizes with us. He understands our troubles in a personal way. As Isaiah says, He bore our diseases and carried our pains. 

He won our forgiveness. Now He’s a brother walking beside us, to help and befriend us. 

Because God is the Holy Spirit, He can live within us, to comfort us from within, giving us the inner strength we need to face every challenge in this world with faith and hope and love and courage. 

The Biblical teaching of the Holy Trinity is profound beyond anything we can fully understand, but it’s also supremely comforting.  

In Heaven, we’ll understand it better, and be even more in awe of our extraordinary God. 

To see God in three persons in Heaven will be amazing. I don’t know what that will look like; I can’t imagine; we’ll just have to wait and see and be amazed. 

Until then, may His Gospel comfort you at all times, especially times of trouble, and may His peace, which passes understanding, guard your heart and mind, in Christ Jesus, our amazing Lord. Amen.