1<\/sup><\/em>Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2<\/sup>He came to Jesus by night and said to him, \u201cRabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.\u201d 3<\/sup>Jesus answered him, \u201cVery truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.\u201d 4<\/sup>Nicodemus said to him, \u201cHow can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother\u2019s womb and be born?\u201d 5<\/sup>Jesus answered, \u201cVery truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6<\/sup>What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7<\/sup>Do not be astonished that I said to you, \u2018You must be born from above.\u2019 8<\/sup>The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.\u201d 9<\/sup>Nicodemus said to him, \u201cHow can these things be?\u201d 10<\/sup>Jesus answered him, \u201cAre you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n Welcome on this Trinity Sunday, the day when we celebrate our identity as belonging to God the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n Yesterday I was up in Bethel, Connecticut, for the graveside service of a father and son, who died this past year within a few months of each other. As you can imagine, it was a pretty difficult and somber affair, but having known the family for a while, I knew they had chosen this weekend because of the pair\u2019s famous Memorial Day cookouts, the father and son alike loving to grill burgers and steaks and have people over, to gather the family and invite over all their friends to just be together. And that\u2019s what they did after the service, with the next generation now appointed as grill masters, they gathered to mourn, to laugh, to celebrate, to remember, to reconnect, and to be together. As humans we are made for this kind of deep connection, this deep relationship, we are made to love each other, we are made to be in communion with one another, and we feel the pain and the grief when that same communion is broken. And this is why our celebration today of God as a Trinity, as a deep community of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is not just about some abstract ancient doctrine, but rather a recognition of who God is as a community of love, and so who we are made to be, because we\u2019re made in his image. Today we recognize that the Trinity is the basis of everything, that the Trinity is the loving heart of life itself.<\/p>\n The Prophet Isaiah in our first lesson tells us about his vision of the Lord God as Trinity. The night the king died, when everything was falling apart, Isaiah says, \u201cI saw the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.\u201d To come before a living God, to realize there is a God who is all-powerful, and majestic beyond understanding and holy like a devouring fire is a terrifying thing! Seraphs, fiery angels, surrounded him, covering their eyes before the glory of God, and they cry out, 3 times, \u201cHoly, Holy Holy is the Lord!\u201d At this three-fold praise, the massive temple building shook and the house filled with smoke, and Isaiah, ready to duck and cover says, \u201cHoly\u2026 Smokes,\u201d \u201cO\u2026 No,\u201d \u201cWoe is me.\u201d \u201cI am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.\u201d Maybe we can relate\u2014the closer we get to God, the more we try and live in faith towards him and love towards one another, the more we recognize our own sins, our own stains which we can usually ignore somehow stand out more vivid in his brightness, our own unworthiness becomes more painful before the only worthy One. And so yes, our lips are unclean, but also our hands, and our hearts. All the ways we have not loved him with our whole hearts, nor our neighbors as ourselves. All the ways we have degraded the image of God in ourselves and in others. All our living as if we ourselves are God, our deadly bondage to the unholy Trinity of me, myself, and I. Oh no, we say, woe is me.<\/p>\n The first lesson of Trinity Sunday is that there is a God, and that it\u2019s not me or you. And yet look what this God does\u2014one of his angels takes a live coal from the heavenly altar with a pair of tongs, and touches Isaiah\u2019s mouth with it. Burning, sizzling, cleansing Isaiah\u2014and burning, sizzling, cleansing you! \u201cNow this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed, he says, your sin is blotted out.\u201d Yes, before the glory of God we are not worthy, but God is a God who gives and makes us worthy\u2014\u201cyour guilt has departed,\u201d says the Lord, \u201cyour sin is blotted out. You are forgiven.\u201d This is what God specializes in\u2014forgiving you and me who don\u2019t deserve it, opening a future to you and me who are trapped in our pasts, sopping up and blotting out our sins by the blood of his Son, we are made right, we are made worthy, we are made to belong to him! But then, a voice from God himself\u201c\u2014Whom shall I send and who will go for us?\u201d<\/p>\n Who will go for us, <\/em>did you catch that? Us, plural, we\u2014God is a we, God is an us, from the beginning God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and from the beginning he makes worthy we who aren\u2019t. \u201cWho will go for us\u201d God asks? \u201cHere am I,\u201d says Isaiah. \u201cSend me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho will go for us?\u201d This is God\u2019s call, the call of the Holy Trinity, to you and me. 159 years ago there were a few families of German immigrants in New Haven who began meeting on the second floor above an Orange St storefront for worship, their faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was strong, they needed to meet and worship. They heard that call from God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: \u201cwho will go for us?\u201d And today, through it all, through all the ups and downs, we\u2019re still here in the heart of New Haven, listening to that call, gathered together by him, sent out into our neighborhood and city in his power, knowing that the Community of Love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is still the basis of life, 159 years later we are still proclaiming to all people the forgiving, eternal life of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a community, a life, a family that we share in through God\u2019s Word and Sacrament. \u201cWho will go for us?\u201d God asks again today\u2014Well, \u201cHere we are,\u201d we say again today, \u201chere we are, send me!\u201d<\/p>\n We can go, we can be sent, because we know from John chapter 3 today how much God has loved you and me\u2014that he gave his only Son, he gave<\/em> his only Son, the Holy and Blessed Trinity has opened itself to you and me, made space for you and me, sacrificed its life for you and me\u2014He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. God gave, and keeps on giving, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, ceaselessly giving, blessing, loving, sustaining, and holding you and me and this whole world, so that by faith we might share in that Eternal Life God has from the beginning as Trinity, so that even when we die we shall not perish, but have eternal life.<\/p>\n God so loved, that he gave. And now he gives again. At the Communion rail here in a moment, God gives you his Son, gives you all he has, his broken and risen body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins, so that you may have eternal life, God gives you all he has in the power of the Holy Spirit, so that you and I can go out, made a part of the family of the Holy Trinity, adopted into the unending love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so that now we can go out and give ourselves, give our lives, invest our lives, lay down our lives for our families, our children, our church, our neighbors, those in need\u2014God so loved that he gave, and so we will give too, but first we must receive. Here circled around the altar we share in that great feast of the Holy Trinity, the celebration of their love that is at the heart of the universe, a feast of the Father who so loved you that he gave, a feasting upon Christ, in the power of the Spirit, a feast that is for you and me, no burgers or steaks here, but still a feast of love that lasts forever, that is stronger than death, and that one day we will share in glory with our loved ones and all the saints.<\/p>\n So Happy Trinity Sunday, and thanks be to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n And the Peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n The Rev. Dr. Ryan Mills<\/p>\n New Haven, Connecticut<\/p>\n Pastor@TrinityLutheranNH.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Holy Trinity | May 26, 2024 | John 3:1-17 | Ryan D. Mills | 1Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus by night and said to him, \u201cRabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,157,853,108,110,223,349,3,109,212,395],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-19940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-johannes","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-3-chapter-3-johannes","category-kasus","category-nt","category-predigten","category-ryan-mills","category-trinitatis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19941,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19940\/revisions\/19941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19940"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=19940"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=19940"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=19940"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=19940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n11<\/sup>\u201cVery truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12<\/sup>If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13<\/sup>No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14<\/sup>And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15<\/sup>that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
\n16<\/sup>\u201cFor God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
\n17<\/sup>\u201cIndeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.\u201d<\/em>(John 3:1-17, NRSV).<\/em><\/p>\n