Holy Trinity Sunday 2026/ Holy Baptism

Sermon: Holy Trinity Sunday 2026/ Holy Baptism

Texts: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What a great joy it is that in this Holy Trinity Sunday, we have continued the commandment of Jesus Christ: “”All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” By baptizing Vivienne in the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God’s name continues to be with us, as Jesus said, to the end of the age. This is the great gift of baptism, the gift that Vivienne will always carry with her, the assurance that she belongs to God, and that alongside her beautiful name, she carries the name of the God that will always be with her.

And in a day like Trinity Sunday, we get to ponder that age-old question, who is God? What is the identity of this God in whose Name we are baptized? We should always begin with the humble caveat, that we can never box-in who God is. God is always beyond any category or ideology we might try to attach to him. Any God you can explain, is indeed an idol. God is free in His own-self, and completely unbound to any determination on our part. But in this same freedom of God to be what He will be, we celebrate in our Christian tradition that God also discloses, gives glimpses of what He’s about. For in the life of Jesus Christ, we receive the good news that this wild God of boundless freedom, desires that we know Him, and that we understand that our lives have their greatest meaning in Him. Thus we receive the core of His identity, in a way we can understand, that God is God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The

God who approaches us as the One who cares for us as a loving Father, the One who saves us from our waywardness into a true humanity in the Son, and the One who is the Spirit through which we are empowered to live according to God’s loving presence and will in the world.

In the triune identity of God, we have a richness we should cherish as Christians. The rich matter is not about the numbers 3 or 1. It is about the dynamic relationship that God is within Himself, and the ultimate value that relationship plays in our existence. How beautiful the prayer of Paul for the Corinthians when he wrote to them: “Be restored; listen to my appeal; agree with one another; live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you…The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” Indeed, the relational activity of the Triune God is at work in us and is what makes our lives whole. By relating to the God that is peace, our relationships then are led to the peace of God. When we relate to God’s love, we in turn are led to love others as God loves. It is the reason why we greet each other this way in our liturgy! To enter into the dynamic love and identity of the Triune God.

When we talk about identity and relationship, we are always treading into deeper waters that we might think. When we engage in getting to know someone deeply, we are always faced with a dynamic, multi-faceted being that is not tied up to any first-impression we might get. There is always a story, an experience, a reality that deepens the mystery and depth of a person. Like writing poetry, the words are vehicles of experience that can never exhaust the original event that inspired the poem in the first place. Imagine encapsuling the fullness of falling in love with someone, no word

can ever get at the full experience, but indeed the words of a love poem lead us in the direction of the feeling. Such is for any person, even more so with God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the glimpses into God’s own being for us, the poetry of His being. And thus our own lives lived in under His name, are the poems of getting to know God. And these poems have no end. They are a continuous conversation that flows into the eternity of God that we share in.

The triune essence of God indicates to us that relationship is central to us as well. We bear the name of a God who understands Himself as a loving relationship of the Father, Son and Spirit. And aren’t we, as His creation, also the unity of many relationships that make us who we are. Isn’t even our own biological make-up, the intertwining threads of persons and beings who make us the unique person that we are? Each of our faces are a whole web of relationships! And not just our DNA, but also our environments and our planet, and even the universe. Isn’t everything one big relational existence, one thing to be, has to embrace another thing. We are patterned, and are called to be patterned according to the dynamic being of the Trinity.

We don’t need to get too deep into the theological weeds here, we need to simply grasp, greet and deepen the relationship that is the ground of our being. God extends a hand to us. In the life of Jesus, we can know Him, in the inspiration of the Spirit, we can follow and be a glimpse of God to others. If we listen well to the Creation story that we heard from Genesis, it is a poem! And this poem that describes everything that exists says, that as God created every singular thing in each of the days, the animals, the plants, the celestial bodies, and these things in their uniqueness were “good” indeed. God saw that they were good. Like every one of us as individuals, God

also sees that we are “good”. But look at this tiny little detail that can be easily overlooked at the end: “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all their multitude.” So after everything is created, God takes a step back and sees everything He has made, all things working together as one cohesive whole, perhaps including you and me, all that is and ever will be, and in this intertwined relating multitude of created things and beings, God says now this was very good. Everything by its own are good in themselves, but everything in relationship is very good, meaning, even better!

Thus, beloved, this is the world that our tradition opens up to us through our baptism, a world where VERY good is not about the independent, self-reliant creature that does not need anybody. It is about the wholeness that is restored when we exist within the God who links us in relationship to the very core of existing itself, of understanding ourselves as part of a communion, and not just a singular floating object untethered to the web of relationships that makes existence possible. So next we wonder about the trinity in any context, we can think like today: what a joy it is to welcome others, as we have done with Vivienne today, to the widening community of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How very good it is to proclaim the Gospel of the One who links all of us in a rich togetherness, as He is in Himself, a manifold love that does not isolate us, but rather embraces us in our wholeness. Let us then pray: