Scripture: Proverbs 8:1-4; John 16:12-15; Matthew 28:16-20; Luke 6:20
Because God is Triune, Jesus has the power to save and the Spirit draws us into the eternal love of Father and Son — so we must let go of control and our habit of sorting people, and be sent in the Great Commission to all.
Illustrations: mountain-spring-source-flow-creek, barton-springs-source, fire-spark-flame-light, fire-light-heat, warm-room-from-cold, lover-beloved-love, pesky-in-law, hero-of-your-own-movie, cafeteria-table-sorting, military-commission-verb
June 15, 2025
Trinity Sunday
Wisdom’s Call
Proverbs 8:1-4
John 16:12-15
Does not wisdom call and understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all who live. - Proverbs 8:1-4
“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16:12-15
There are not a lot of mountain springs in Texas. They exist, but they are hard to locate. It is especially hard to locate the source. It’s hard to locate the source of Barton Springs; where that water comes up. We got the pool, we got the creek, but what is the precise location of the source of the water? One of my true joys of hiking in mountains is when you come across a mountain stream and you can follow it to its source. You have the source of the water, you have the flow the water, and you have the creek. These three things; they’re all the same thing. If you take one away, the other two cease to exist. If you take away the flow, there isn’t a source and the water disappears. If you take away the creek, the water dissipates and there is no flow. If you take away the source, there is no flow, no creek. This is one of the ways the early church talked about the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father is the source, God the Son is the creek, and God the Spirit is the flow, the connection between the Father and the Son, between the source and the creek. The Son being the visible expression of the Father and the flow of water being what comes from the Father and the Son, or the procession. You may be more or less familiar with the concept of the Trinity. Yet it is not a marginal thing. Without the Trinity, the Christian faith has nothing left. Without the Trinity, Christ has no power to save us. The Holy Spirit has no presence with us. The deeper we look into the Trinity, the deeper our faith can be, As well, the Trinity can be a stumbling block for some. This three in one God, some Jews and Muslims called Christians Tritheists, saying that we believe in three gods.
I don’t think this is the time to go into an intellectual deep dive into the metaphysics of the Trinity, but the message for today from the words of Jesus is that God is for us in Jesus Christ and with us, in the Holy Spirit. God the Father, the Creator, is for us, in Jesus Christ, and with us, in the Holy Spirit. All three are one God, not three parts. All three have power and unity.
We can come close to understanding the Trinity through analogy. I already mentioned the analogy of water. Source, flow, and creek. All these analogies eventually break down, but they help us to align ourselves and to reflect in the direction of the truth about God. There is also an analogy of fire.
The analogy of fire is that there is the spark, the flame, and the light. Take away the light. There is no fire. Take away the spark. There is no fire. Take away the flames. There is no fire. The spark is not the flame. The flame is not the light. The light is not the spark, and yet they are all three fire. God the Father is the spark. God the Son is the flame God. The Spirit is the light by which we receive the Son and the Father. You can also make an analogy with fire and light and heat. God the Father is the fire. God the Son is the light. God the Holy Spirit is the heat. Many times, we feel the Holy Spirit as much as see it. We feel the heat of God’s presence. We can feel the warmth because this is the nature of who God is.
Have you ever been cold to your bones and you step into a warm room. You move close to a fire place. You feel the warmth. Your fears dissipate. You relax. You are safe. This is the presence of God when the eyes of our mind become open to spiritual realities.
Another analogy for today has to do with love. The lover, the beloved and the love between the lover and the beloved. The lover is God the Father. The beloved is God the Son and the love between them is the Holy Spirit. The life of faith is being drawn up and included into the love between Father and the Son. This is what is offered in the Christian life.
We have all these analogies, but what does it have to do with me, pastor Wilson? It has everything to do with you. If Jesus is not God, Jesus has no power to save us. Without Trinity, Jesus has no power, he has no authority. Without Trinity, Jesus is a nice teacher. He gave some good morals. Maybe that’s what you’re looking for in faith. Maybe you wanna raise your family in the right way, looking for some good morals, and there’s nothing more to it. You live in the right community, you think the right things, you vote for the right people, and it will all turn out alright.
In this world, we still keep God at a distance, like a pesky in-law. Maybe they come to town and buy dinner and are nice for a few days, but you need your space.
A non-Trinitarian God gives you space to be whomever you want to be. A Triune God desires to release you from sin and free you to love. Love means change. It is a change for your good, but we don’t always see change as good. If God is not Triune, sure Jesus can’t save us, but at least we are in control.
The Holy Spirit is the presence of God with us. We are included in God. The Father’s love for God, the Son. You are included in the love of the creator of the universe. You don’t need to stand on the sidelines of God’s love. You don’t need to stay in the shadows of God’s love. You don’t need to ignore God’s love until Sunday comes along or fill out your checklist of all the things you need to do before you can feel loved and accomplished in this world. The Spirit of Truth that Jesus sends in the passage I read from John 16 offers this for us. It prepares us.
On this day, God offers himself to you. Totally, not partially. The Holy Spirit is all God. It’s not just a mode of God, it’s not a part of God. It’s not an agent of God. It’s not an attaché of God or an ambassador of God. The Holy Spirit is all God and it’s all offered for us, given to us. The deeper we look into the Trinity, the deeper we find God’s love for us. The more we avoid the Trinity, the more we’re stuck with ourselves and what we like and what we want and how we wish the world would be.
All of our desires are a pale shadow next to the glory of God. We can choose to live in the shadows of self-satisfaction or humbly step forward under the light of God’s love. And God’s Trinitarian love isn’t for us to hide and keep for ourselves. In fact, we are commissioned to do something with it.
The last part of the Gospel of Matthew is known as the Great Commission.
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
We have a modern misconception of what the word commission means. We mostly hear it today with a voting commission or a transportation commission. Jesus doesn’t say, I’ve got a great commission for you. The phrase was added later. We usually use commission as a noun, but here it is a verb. The military has it a lot closer to the Gospels than most of us. When they commission officers, they use it as a verb. An officer is not appointed or passively placed. They are commissioned, they’re sent with, that’s what it means at its heart. Missio, to send, Com, with, send with. In Matthew 28, Jesus doesn’t just send, Jesus sends the disciples with a purpose and with a partner. The purpose is to go to all the people, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The partners are multiple. Partners are, first of all, each other. The Great Commission is a public pronouncement, not a private word to each of the disciples. You can’t be a Christian alone or in isolation. You need others. Where do the others come from? This is the Trinitarian key. We humans like to sort ourselves based on preferences, convenience, amiability, relative likes and dislikes. We sort ourselves constantly. Kids are more open than grownups. They play with anybody, but kids still sort themselves. And as they get older, the sorting gets trickier. People sit at different tables in the cafeteria. Grownups are constantly sorting, “who are the people that are worthy of my time?” Well, that’s a super selfish way to frame it, but I think that’s a really honest one. And at its worst, that is what church becomes. It becomes a place where we have sorted the people we like away from the people we don’t like. But there’s no space for Trinity there. There’s no space for the great Commission. Jesus does not say baptize the people you like.”When in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus says, blessed are the poor. Jesus doesn’t say blessed are the righteous poor or the undeserving poor, but the poor. There are no qualifiers. There are no qualifiers on the body of Christ. That second partner, after other people, is the Holy Spirit that draws the people together. And if we’re going to listen to the Holy Spirit, that means we need to shut down our own mechanisms of sorting. We need to let them go because they only deceive us into thinking we are doing something for our own good. If we think God is Triune, we’ve gotta let go of that false sense of control.
If we think God is not Triune, if the Holy Spirit is not God, if Jesus is not God, then sure, keep control, keep ownership over your life because Jesus doesn’t even save you in that world. You are the hero of your own movie and everyone else is a supporting character. It is a convenient lie that leads us to our own destruction. The Spirit of Truth speaks against it.
If God is triune, we are drawn into a far greater story than we could ever be a part of on our own. A story of the eternal love of the Father for the Son through the Spirit that led to the creation of everything and the redemption of everything offered to everyone. The amazing thing is that when we stop sorting, we find true freedom. We don’t need to live a life filled with the worry that we’re seeing the right people at the right times. And we’re not spending any time with the wrong kind of people, with the dirty people, with the impure people, with the unclean people. We can let that go because God is Triune. That is what Trinity is about. God and God’s self is offering all of God’s self for you and to you and with you. Receive that presence. Let go of the desire for control and let us walk together into the future God has for you. Saved. Protected. Whole. Sent.
In the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.