Let me start off deliberately on the wrong foot with pet peeve. Even as our service-book and hymnbook, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, was being introduced, I noted a prevailing tendency in many if not most of the liturgies to substitute, as an option, the word “Trinity” for the phrase, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” I protested that Christians do not worship a dogma, but rather invoke the name of the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nowhere in the Bible is the word “Trinity” used to describe or to name God. While the dogma of the Trinity aptly sums up the truth of the church’s lived experience, its liturgical foundations, and its theological reflection on the one God as revealed in Holy Scripture, it is an inappropriate and inadequate substitute for God’s proper name, which is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, especially if that substitute is being used deliberately as a circumlocution.

Now to most people I’m sure all this appears to be just so much quibbling about details most of us are not that concerned about anyway. In point of fact, the distinction makes all the difference in the world. It is the difference between a shorthand term, Trinity, that can be used like an empty sack to be filled with whatever our whims and ideologies dictate; and a name given to us in Scripture—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That name tells a certain story, of the God who reveals himself in specific ways to a particular people, the God who reveals his identity and power to the whole world through an obscure and peculiar nation, and in the person and promise of their crucified and risen Messiah. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not a concept; it is a name, a name that is also an historical narrative. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit tells the story of the one true God, the God of Israel, who has identified and revealed himself through time and in history, from the moment of creation to history’s fulfillment at the last day.

The Trinity is usually described as an impenetrable mystery, an insoluble puzzle, a confusing concept. But that’s really not the case. The Trinity tells a story, the story of God with his people, in which Jesus is the central character. The history of Israel, and their life with their God, an experience that is recapitulated in Jesus’ own life, teaching and death, is the arena of God’s revelation of himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, who born at a specific place and time, and who died under the jurisdiction of Pontius Pilate—a life and a death that can be plotted on a calendar--the same Jesus who was put to death for claiming to be the king of the Jews, he is the reason for the Trinity. That God has identified himself with this man’s life and in his death is what the Trinity is all about. The Trinity, therefore, is God’s own story as God has revealed and identified himself in and through Israel and the man Jesus. This Jesus, who belongs to a certain people, embodies their history with God. Thus when we want to describe God, we don’t just tick off certain characteristics, like loving or powerful, because those can be nothing more than projections of human characteristics; rather we must point to certain events that occurred in the history of a particular people, e.g., God is whoever or whatever freed Israel from her Egyptian bondage, or God is whoever or whatever raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. God, therefore, is love because he has been faithful to Israel, and God is powerful because in Christ God has defeated death. Apart from the story of this people, whom Jesus represents and embodies, we don’t really know God. Or as Luther said more strongly, “Apart from the man Jesus, there is no God or Godhead at all.”

In and through Jesus, moreover, all human history unfolds. If Jesus identifies who God is, and if in Jesus God’s relationship to his people Israel is recapitulated and embodied, then it is also in Jesus that God’s relationship with all humanity is played out. Jesus is not only Israel personified, but he is also the new humanity personified, the new humanity that is perfected and raised to new life with God.

Jesus with his people, Israel and the church, is thus both the new Israel and the new humanity. All human history from creation to the new creation is embodied in him. This means that it is through the prism of God’s dealings with Israel culminating with the death and resurrection of Israel’s crucified Messiah that human history from beginning to end finds its purpose and meaning. It is toward the risen Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, that all human history is moving. Jesus is the beginning and the end, and thus the focal point, of the human story. In him we have access to the Creator of all that exists, to the Holy One of Israel, whom Jesus invoked as his heavenly Father, and to whom Jesus invites his followers to pray as Jesus taught them. In Christ we are brought into a special relationship with the One who promised that his people would be a light to the nations and through whom in the person of his only-begotten Son this God would be the Savior of the world. It is also in and through the Son that the future opens up, and we are permitted to look ahead, beyond ourselves and our little block of time, toward the end and fulfillment of God’s good creation, toward the final judgment and glorious fulfillment of God’s unfolding history with Israel and the church, a story that is guided and directed at every moment and despite appearances by the Holy Spirit. In and through Christ, in other words, we identify and we worship the one who was and who is and who is to come, the Son, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is one God, now and forever. In Christ we have the end and purpose of creation and thus of all human history, from its beginnings in God’s Word to its final fulfillment in God’s Word made flesh. Thus Jesus’ statement as recorded in John’s gospel is a Trinitarian statement, “before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), as is his declaration in the book of Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 21:6). Note especially what Jesus says to us today in our gospel reading: “[The Spirit of truth] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine” (John 16:14-15). When confronted by the living Christ, what other God could there possibly be but the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

One thing should be apparent, even if nothing else is: when we deal with the Trinity, not only are we are dealing with the very heart and deepest reality of God, and of our experience and relationship with God as the people of God, but we are also dealing with the creation’s end and goal, the perfection and fulfillment of the human story.

What is the Trinity? Don’t be afraid to ask; the Trinity is your friend. You don’t need a theological tome to find out what it’s all about, just listen to the words of the Great Thanksgiving that moves from creation to God’s new creation, a story concentrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that brings with it the presence and promise of the sustaining and life-giving power of the Holy Spirit who will preserve the church in all truth and guide humanity toward its goal at the end and fulfillment of God’s time. To the one God, the Holy One of Israel, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all honor and glory, now and forever.

-Amen-