TITLE: “Outside In”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this morning is from the Gospel lesson just read from John chapter 3 as follows: Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

How do you come to know another person? What does it mean to say that you know someone really well? Or perhaps thinking about it differently, why are you friends with someone? Why did you marry your spouse? Why do you hang around the people you hang around with at school or at work? It’s not just randomly put together. You don’t just reach into a hat and pull the name out of the person you are going to marry, or who you play softball with, or whatever else it is that you do in your spare time. For each person that you befriend, you have to base that friendship upon something. Maybe it is common interest. Maybe your politics or your religion matches closely. It could even be as silly as liking the same sports teams, of all things.

To put it another way, you befriend other people because of what they do. You can’t peer into their soul and know their deepest desires when you first meet them. Rather, you have to see what they do and what they say to you. Will they help you when you need help? Will they stand by you if you are attacked? Will they be honest with you if you’re making a bad decision or doing something dumb? Will they listen when you need them, and talk when you need them? Perhaps even most importantly, will they bring you to Jesus, the friend of sinners?

Who we have relationships with is really based not on what is inside, but on what is outside, on how they act and behave, how they talk and listen. In short, we know who people are by what they do. At least in part.

Now what, you may be asking, does this have to do with Trinity Sunday? This has everything to do with Trinity Sunday. For you see, this is just as true when it comes to God and His work in our lives as it is for our relationship to other people. Just a few minutes ago we confessed the Athanasian Creed, one of the ancient creeds of the church that confesses who God is and what He does for us. We confess this creed every Trinity Sunday. It is not an easy creed to confess. Why? Well, first of all, it’s long. Our American attention span is usually good for about, say, the Nicene Creed. Anything much longer than that, and it requires really effort to concentrate and stay engaged. But also it uses a lot of language that we simply don’t use very often. Begotten. Uncreated. Incomprehensible. Coeternal. Even a word like subsisting is hardly common talk for us, is it?

So if this language is rather obscure and even difficult for us to understand, why do we use it? Keep it simple, we might say. In fact, we could say that about a lot of things in the church. Why use words like Justification, sanctification, or even a word like Trinity is pretty hard to grasp, isn’t it?

These words, though, do not come out of thin air. They are old words, words that generations and generations of Christians have used to confess the one, holy, Christian and apostolic faith. They are words that describe God’s relationship to us and our relationship to Him in Christ. They are words that may take a lifetime to understand, and yet are richer each time we hear them. But we go through the effort of hearing and confessing these words because of what God does.

Think of it this way. Many of you are married here, and all of you have parents. When a couple pledges their life together in holy matrimony, do you think they really know what they are getting into? Call me skeptical, but I don’t think they do. As often as not, they haven’t a clue about the ride they are in for throughout their lives. So how do they come to the point of making such outrageous claims of lifelong loyalty and faithfulness toward one another? They make these claims because of what the other person has done for them. In a word, they do it because of love. Love for each other. Love that transcends feelings and will actually delve into the muck and mess of life. Maybe they don’t know everything about each other, I guarantee they don’t. But somehow, by God’s grace, they love each other, and that love is based not on reading each other hearts, but on reading each others lives. What they do for each other reveals who they are. So when we go to weddings, as this is the wedding and anniversary season after all, we hear these words and know that they don’t even understand them, and yet, strangely enough, they are true.

So now think back to our Gospel for today from John chapter three. There we hear the most famous bible passage of them all: For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish, but might have eternal life (John 3:16). When God loves, it means action. It means sending His Son. It means death and humiliation. It means pain and suffering. It means everything. So when God says to you by the power of His Holy Spirit, I forgive your sins, those are no longer just words that we hear. They are reality, because those words have a lifetime of God’s giving behind them. Those words have the blood of God Himself dripping from them, so that you might have eternal life.

We don’t know God from the inside. I can’t peer into His heart or know His secret will, any more than you can. But this Trinity Sunday, we confess and cling to the God on the outside. We cling to the God who reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We confess these words which we can barely understand, like a child trying to say stethoscope. But we confess them nonetheless. Why? We confess them because of who He is, and what He has done for us in His Son.

That, dear friends, is the mystery of the Christian faith. It is a mystery because I cannot possibly understand everything. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true, or that it is completely and utterly unknowable. It is a mystery because I do not comprehend it right now. As St. Paul so rightly said, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgment and His ways past finding out!”

In the Athanasian Creed, we confess the following: And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. Notice the verb there. We worship one God. It doesn’t say we understand, it doesn’t say we grasp completely, it doesn’t say we know fully the one God. It says we worship one God. That is to say, we receive from God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. For that is what worship is all about. That is why we praise His Holy Name. He has done all of these great and wonderful things for you, out of the depth of the riches of His love. You do not know the inner workings of the Holy Trinity. But what we know is that Jesus loves you, that He died for you, and that you can trust Him for everything. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting. Amen.