Second Sunday after Pentecost (A-Proper 6)
June 18, 2017
Text: Matt. 9:35-10:8
Guest Preacher: The Rev. Timothy Rossow - Lutherans in Africa
http://lutheransinafrica.com/
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
The Holy Trinity
The Holy Trinity (A)
June 11, 2017
Text: Matt. 28:16-20
“Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the
undivided Unity. Let us give glory to
him because he has shown his mercy to us” (Liturgical Text for Holy
Trinity). Our God, in His essence, is a
glorious and profound mystery, not for us to comprehend, but to worship and
adore in reverence and awe. One God, who
is three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Three Persons, who are one God, of one divine essence. In our confession of this God, we dare
neither confuse the Persons, nor divide the Substance. We can only say what God has said of Himself. Beyond that, we must put a finger to our
lips, neither adding nor subtracting from His self-revelation. And we dare never think we have it all
figured out, the Tri-Unity of God. It
doesn’t work mathematically, at least not to our fallen understanding. Three is One, and One is Three. It doesn’t even work grammatically. We speak of Him as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We speak of Them as one God. That’s the
point. He is beyond our reason and
comprehension. Dr. Luther says, “It is
not the function of reason to inquire in what manner the Person differs from
the Deity itself; not even the angels understand this mystery.”[1] No, we cannot figure Him out. No, we cannot master Him. He is God, and we are not. He tells us what we need to know of Him, and
no more. Our speculation is
useless. He is who He is. “I AM
WHO I AM,” is His Name (Ex. 3:14; ESV).
And no other is who He is. We
fall on our knees before the glory of His majesty. “Holy,
Holy, Holy,” we sing, as we bow before Him with angels and archangels and
all the company of heaven.
But
He does not leave Himself inaccessible and unknown to us. He comes to us in the flesh of His Son,
conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, the
Christ, our Savior. If you want to know
God, you look upon Jesus. Apart from
Jesus, you cannot know God. Jesus is the
self-revelation and the self-giving of God.
God the Son, the Second Person of the incomprehensible Trinity, became a
man, took on our flesh, made Himself one with us. “For
in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). And what does our God reveal of Himself in
the Person of Jesus? He reveals His
profound love to save us. He reveals His
compassion, His determination to rescue us from death and the devil, to forgive
our sins. He will do Himself to death to
make this our reality, to reconcile us to Himself. If you want to know God, and particularly how
He is toward you, look at Jesus on the cross.
That is who God is. That
is God for you.
But
this God for you doesn’t do you any good unless you know about Him. Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ, after His
victorious resurrection from the dead and prior to His ascension into heaven,
provided His Church with the means of making disciples, those who walk in the
discipline, the teaching, of Christ. “Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations,” He says in our text, and He bids us make disciples in a very
specific way: “baptizing them in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to
observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20). He does not give the Church a slick new
program for growth. He does not command
the Church to be innovative or winsome to the world. Here’s what you do, Church of God, to make
disciples. Holy Baptism: water joined to
God’s Word and Name for the forgiveness of sins. You place the Triune Name of God on the
disciple: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And then you teach. You teach the
Word of Jesus. And you don’t just teach
the stuff you like. You don’t get to
avoid teaching the stuff that isn’t politically correct. And you don’t get to avoid topics that are
incomprehensible, like the teaching on the Holy Trinity. No, what does Jesus say? Teach them “to observe all that I have
commanded you,” the whole counsel of God.
Now,
baptizing and teaching, these always go together. You dare not separate the two. For infants and young children, we baptize
them first because they cannot intellectually understand the teaching. As sinners, they need Jesus, and Baptism
gives them Jesus, and gives them faith to believe in Him. But then the rest of their lives we teach
them. That is why Sunday School and
Catechism class are absolutely imperative for raising your children in the
faith, and your own teaching them at home by Scripture readings and devotions
and prayers are vital. And make sure
they are here in the Divine Service. Use
the cry room, sure, if you want to. But
I’m telling you now, if you ever decide the children are going to go somewhere
else during the Sunday morning service, to a nursery or “children’s church,” or
whatever, I will preach against it every Sunday until you run me out. They need to be here. And we can put up with a little noise for the
sake of teaching our little ones how to sit and listen, and how this is
precisely for them. Jesus has something
to say about this when His disciples try to keep the little children away. He is indignant with them, and what does He
say to them? “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder
them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). We should always rejoice to hear the children
in this congregation, because that means they’re here and they’re listening and
learning and being fed by the Savior.
And that’s the future of our Church.
Then
there are those who come to faith as adults by the hearing of the Word. These we teach and then baptize. And then we teach them some more for the rest
of their life. The order of it isn’t the
important part (although we should never unduly delay Holy Baptism, even for
adults), but that the two always go together.
Baptism is the new birth from above, from the Holy Spirit, and the
teaching and learning of God’s Word is the life of the baptized, those washed
at the font. They are inseparable. And by these God-given Means of Grace,
Baptism and teaching, the Holy Spirit makes disciples for Himself. Of all nations. That means everybody. Young and old (are infants not part of the
“all nations” we are to baptize and teach?), male and female, rich and poor,
from every nation, tribe, people, and tongue.
We saw this last week in the Pentecost event. The Spirit blew through and the apostles were
preaching in the languages of all the people in the miraculous gift of
tongues. The Gospel is for all.
Which
means the Gospel is for you. You see,
this is the glorious truth of this Day, the Feast of the Holy Trinity. This God, who is incomprehensible, almighty,
all seeing, all knowing, immutable, eternal, omnipresent, faithful, holy, good…
This God has made Himself known to you in Jesus and His Word. That’s incredible. It’s unbelievable, until the Holy Spirit
gives you the faith to the believe it.
This God is for you. This God loves
you. This God gave His Son into death for you, to make you His own. You don’t know everything about Him, nor does
He owe you an explanation of everything about Him. But you know
Him. You know Him in Jesus, and you know
Him intimately. He is your God. You are His, and He is yours. His Name is on you. His Word is in you, in your ears and in your
mind, in your heart and in your soul.
You are Baptized. You have been
taught and you are ever learning more and more of Him. You are precious to Him and loved. He made Himself one with you in the Person of
Jesus. He came down to you in the
flesh. He comes down to you, and makes
you one with Him, baptizing you into Christ and feeding you with His body and
blood. You cannot know everything about
Him, but you can and do know Him.
Now
we should say a couple of things about the parts of the Athanasian Creed that
always bother everybody. First of all,
the word “catholic” does not mean Roman
Catholic. You’re just going to have to
get that out of your mind. “Catholic”
means literally “according to the whole,” as in according to the whole teaching
of Christ believed and taught in His whole Church, as He commanded in our Holy
Gospel this morning, “teaching them to
observe all that I have commanded you.”
We are good catholics, beloved.
Don’t let our Roman friends have all the good stuff.
We
also get all hot and bothered about the idea that whoever desires to be saved
must hold this catholic faith, namely, what we confess in this Creed about the
Trinity and the Person of Christ. What
about all those nice people who say they’re Christians, but don’t teach the
Trinity like we do? There are some
strains of Pentecostalism, including some very prominent TV evangelists, like
T.D. Jakes just to name and example, who do not confess the Trinity in Unity
and Unity in Trinity, One God, Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. They say there is one God, who
was the Father, then came as the Son, and now works as the Holy Spirit. It’s an ancient heresy called modalism. Beloved, it isn’t nice to say, but these do
not worship the same God you do. They
are not Christians. And what about those
nice people who say that Jesus is a god, but not the same god as the
father. He’s a really good man, so good,
in fact, that he can be called god, but he’s not really god. That’s the Jehovah’s witnesses. They are a newer version of the ancient
heresy called Arianism, against which this Creed was written. The Mormons, likewise, deny that Father, Son,
and Spirit are one God. We say this in
love, but what else can you say? They do
not believe in the one true God. They
are not Christians. And love doesn’t
shirk the responsibility to say hard things like that. If you do not love your neighbor, let them go
on in their demonic deception and so perish eternally. If you love them, confess the one true God to
them, the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, and Jesus Christ who is God
and man in one Person, who died for your sins and has been raised from the
dead. Love does the hard things.
Finally,
there is this bit that especially bothers the Lutherans about those who have
done good entering into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal
fire. No, this is not a teaching of works righteousness,
beloved. This is simply Matthew 25 and
the sheep and the goats. Those who are
in Christ, you who are baptized and believe in Him, have been forgiven all your
sins, all your evil works. And you’ve
been given credit for all Jesus’ good works.
And all your own works have been washed by His blood. So you enter eternal life. But those who do not believe in Him have only
their own works to rely on, and those works have not been made holy by Jesus’
blood. They are still in their
sins. They go to eternal fire.
If
this Creed makes you uncomfortable, good.
Repent of fashioning your own gods and your own religion. Then rejoice.
God is for you. He loves
you. He has given Himself to you in
Christ. Your sins are forgiven. His Name is on you and you know Him. “Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the
undivided Unity. Let us give glory to
him because he has shown his mercy to us.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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