That’s who God is. That’s who we are. - Holy Trinity Sunday
Author: Pastor Scott Schul
May 31, 2026
Holy Trinity Sunday is one of those
festivals on the church calendar that can cause a lot of apprehension. The people sitting in the pews worry they’ll
be smothered in incomprehensible theological lingo that leaves everyone dazed
and confused rather than faith-filled and edified. Preachers are just as wary about this day,
because nearly anything we dare to say about the Holy Trinity is about one
whisker away from heresy. It’s very tempting
to just preach something warm and fluffy on the psalm.
So with all these cautions in mind,
here at the outset I want to lay out a simple roadmap of just two things I hope
this sermon accomplishes today. First,
we’ll explore what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity reveals to us about God. And then we’ll conclude by considering what
the doctrine of the Holy Trinity reveals about us. That’s not too ambitious, right?
So let’s start with what the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity reveals about God. I love this quote from the ELCA’s 1979 Manual
on the Liturgy. It observes that the
Festival of the Holy Trinity “celebrates not so much a doctrine as the mystery of God.”1 There’s a lot of
wisdom in that statement because it focuses us on the mystery which is inherent
in the Trinity. That word “mystery”
rightly acknowledges that there is a very limited amount we can
confidently say we understand about the Trinity.
For some, that admission will be disappointing. After all, one dominant aspect of the human
condition from the very start, beginning with the story of Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden, has been humanity’s desire to be on the same level as God, with
the same knowledge and understanding, and equivalent power and control. Daily we all struggle to comply with the
First Commandment and to let God be God, and to surrender to the reality that
we are something less than God.
That’s why the disciples wavered in
our Gospel lesson. I don’t think they
doubted Jesus as much as they doubted their own ability to
fulfill the calling he was giving them. Jesus freed his followers from the burden of believing they had to be
saviors of the world or even of themselves. Today, I’m here to free you from that same burden. Look, our culture often idolizes
independence and self-sufficiency. I’m
not telling you to be lazy or passive about your life, or to just leave
everything to fate, but we all know there’s a line where we try to be everything, decide everything, and control everything to such an
extent that we crowd God out of our life. So relax your shoulders. Unclench
your fists. Exhale. You aren’t alone and you don’t have to do it
all. You already have a Savior. The mystery of the Holy Trinity invites us to
wholly put our trust and faith in God, not ourselves.
So what can we say about the
Holy Trinity? First, it’s not just a
clever theory dreamed up by a medieval monk. It’s a term describing something we repeatedly see in both the Old and
New Testaments. Our God, the Holy
Trinity, is three persons in one God. For
example, consider, today’s First Lesson, the Genesis creation story. There, God speaks of “us” rather than just
“me” as the six creative periods unfold. This is reaffirmed in the first verse of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word” (Jesus).
Similarly, notice in the Second Lesson
how Paul speaks of “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and
the communion of the Holy Spirit” – three persons in one God, a Biblical
statement so important that each Sunday the pastor greets the congregation with
those very words, after the Hymn of the Day. And if all that’s not enough for you, no less an authority than Jesus
himself invokes the Triune God in today’s Gospel lesson. There are countless other examples in
scripture too.
One God, three persons, who are coequal (meaning neither person is subservient to the other or lacking in power
relative to other) and coeternal (meaning that the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit have no beginning time and no ending date). And yes, I’m aware that Jesus was born at a
fixed time and place to a human mother, Mary, but that pertains to his human nature, not his divine nature as a person of the Holy Trinity.
So I pause here, mindful that even Martin
Luther, a man who was rarely willing to stop digging at a puzzle, concluded
that the Holy Trinity is “unfathomable” and warned that it’s “a most perilous
undertaking to wish to search into” it any further. So let’s take his wise counsel to heart and rest
contentedly in the blessed mystery of the Holy Trinity.2 Let’s pivot to our second and final
question. What does the Holy Trinity
reveal about us?
Let’s begin with the astonishing
truth that we are made in the image of God. That’s not a pious wish or syrupy-sweet sentiment. It’s straight out of the creation story,
Genesis 1, today’s first lesson. It
means there’s something of God’s nature, God’s character, that’s
hardwired into us. We bear the image of
God. Now, combine this with two things
we know about God. First, God is love. That isn’t drawn from a sappy Hallmark
card. That’s comes from the New
Testament, the letter we call 1 John. God is love. And so we, being
created in the image of God, are likewise love. Oh sure that love has become a little rusty and deformed because of sin,
but a buffing of grace and the polish of forgiveness reveals that, deep down,
we eternally remain created in the image of God. We too are love!
Let’s add one final ingredient to
the recipe. If we’ve learned anything today
about the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God, it’s that God’s very being
is a relationship. God’s nature
is relational. And so we too,
having been created in the image of God, were intended for relationship
and created for relationship. To
be fully and authentically human is to be in relationship with one another and with all of God’s blessed creation.
And so on a day that can be a
little heady, a little intellectually overwhelming, and maybe more than a
little confusing, I don’t want you to leave worship today with your mind foggy
with thoughts of trying to parse, understand, or explain God as Holy
Trinity. What I want you to take away
from Holy Trinity Sunday is that we were all made in the image of God, and so we
are created to be in loving relationship with one another. That’s easy to understand in theory, but I
know it can be hard to live out in practice.
So it’s my prayer, my wish,
that every time you hear the phrase “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” in worship
or read it in the Bible, it reminds you that you were created in God’s image, and
therefore made to be in loving relationship with humanity and all of
creation. Every time in worship you see
a pastor make the sign of the cross or you make the sign of the cross on
yourself, I want it to remind you that you were created in God’s image, and
therefore made to be in loving relationship with humanity and all of
creation. In our congregation we are
surrounded with further examples of how we live this out, like the video
cameras which enable us to include people who can’t physically be here with us in
worship; the hearing assist units which allow people with hearing difficulties
to fully participate in worship; and our new Prayground, which extends loving
hospitality to families with small children so they can be fully present with
us in worship.
Friends, many forces in this world want
to tear us apart by convincing us we’re better off in our private silos, safely
insulated from the messiness of being in community. Don’t give in to that fear. Instead, each day, but especially on
Holy Trinity Sunday, remember and celebrate that we were created in God’s
image, made to be in loving relationship with humanity and all of
creation. That’s who God is. That’s who we are. Amen.
© 2026 Rev. Scott E. Schul, all rights reserved
Citations:
1 Lutheran Book of Worship Manual on the Liturgy, © 1979 Augsburg
Pub. House, p. 27.
2 What Luther Says, compiled by Ewald M. Plass, ©1959
Concordia Publishing House, p. 1387.
Gospel
Text: Matthew 28:16-20
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which
Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped
him, but they doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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 20 and teaching
them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you
always, to the end of the age.”
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