Sermon 6/16/2019 “God is love, and love wins!”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection at Immanuel Chapel, Virginia Theological Seminary
Text: John 16:12-15
Day: Trinity Sunday, Year C
Today is called Trinity Sunday. On this day in the Episcopal Church, my duty as your preacher is to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, to explain how God is one but three—how God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet one. Perhaps my more challenging job is to convince you that this doctrine really matters, that your very life depends on you believing in the triune nature of God.
I know! Perhaps (if you will indulge my sense of humor just a bit) this is our entrance question when we die and arrive at the proverbial “pearly gates.” St. Peter will greet us warmly and invite us to enter, but only if we successfully share our belief in the triune nature of God. So, listen up, my fellow mortals; our final exam is coming!
Here’s my answer: “because God is love, and love wins.” That’s it; we could stop there, and St. Peter would let us in. But I know you will feel, well, cheated in a way. You will want me to show my work, so to speak, to describe the steps that get us from “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit” to “because God is love.” So, we will start in the only place we can in relation to God, before the beginning. Actually, before OUR beginning.
According to St. Augustine, the nature of God demands God not be alone. This is because God is love and love needs a subject AND an object, Augustine reasoned, someone to love and someone to be loved. Isn’t love meaningless without an object of love? God was all there was. But God wasn’t really alone; God was both the one who loved, and God also was the recipient of love. But God wasn’t even two, because God was also the energy that flowed between and among them in this sharing of love. This energy flow of love—pure love—also was God. This was a complete God community: one, yet three.
This is not by OUR FINITE mathematics, you understand, but God-math. (This part is for you brainy logic-loving people; the rest of you can tune out a moment.) Love is infinite. So, adding three infinities together equals, what, “THREE INFINITIES?” No, any number plus infinity equals infinity. In INFINITY MATH, one infinity plus one infinity plus one infinity equals one infinity. Does your head hurt yet, your eyes glaze over? Apparently, when love is involved, there are new addition rules, new math rules.
All right, the infinity math lesson is over. Because, from this infinite love, our three-but-one God created everyone and everything that is. Why? Because God is love. And God so loved the world he had created—so loved and loves each of us beyond measure—that he sent his love in a new way into the world he had created. We call this manifestation of God’s love with us “his only Son, Christ Jesus.”
The very first Christians, the ones who knew Christ Jesus in person, were sure he was divine, were sure he was God. What they weren’t so sure of was whether he was human. Today we are sure Jesus was human and wonder whether he really was God. But, make no mistake, he was both human and God, both at the same time—infinite love.
Christ Jesus died for us—love wins! But, when Christ Jesus departed Earth, HE loved this world so much—loved us all so much—he sent the energy of God that flowed from God’s love to be with us. Not being bound by space and time in the same way flesh is, this Spirit of God is with each of us, leading us into all God-truth. And what is God-truth? Just this: God is love, and the key to life itself is love, here and throughout all time. Love wins again!
That’s all there is to the doctrine of the Trinity: God is love, and “love wins.”
But you already knew that God is love, and that love wins. Here’s the reason, the serious reason, why this subject is so important that our church devotes one Sunday each year to explaining the Trinity. Our well-being here in this life depends on us accepting this doctrine:
- God created us, loves us, and offers a relationship with us. If we didn’t know about God the Creator, we would think WE are the CREATOR, think WE are the highest power in the universe. This is not a path to psychological health. We need to know there is a God and we are not God, and that there is a higher power than us who loves us no matter what.
- Jesus of Nazareth was God’s Son, the Christ, who came to be with us. If we didn’t know this, we might come to believe we had been created and abandoned by a “launch and leave” type of God or even that we were just here due to random evolution over millions of years—a mere accident. What’s more, we need to know that Christ Jesus was God’s ONLY Son. Otherwise, would think ANY OLD DESPOT who was able to accumulate power might convince us HE is God-with-us, God-on-Earth, God’s OTHER OFFSPRING. OH, NO… Christ Jesus is God’s ONLY SON.
- The Holy Spirit works to unite us in love, to make us one. Without believing in and inviting the Holy Spirit to work in and through us, without the Holy Spirit leading us deeper and deeper into the truth of love, we would lock ourselves away from each other and turn our backs on the only infinite force in the universe worthy of life. When left to our own moral compass, we humans don’t have a great track record of choosing a healthy path.
So, that’s my answer this day: God is Father, and God is Son, and God is Holy Spirit and yet God is one, all “because God is love and love wins.” And we need this answer because our psychological well-being—if not our eternal future—depends on our acceptance of it.
