(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “What to Do When
You Doubt”, originally shared on May 28, 2026. It was the 415th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams
of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity just seems like a mystery floating in
space. It is just the opposite. Today, we’re going to find out why.
The risk of a major
explosion is now thought to be gone, and those people have been allowed to
leave the emergency facilities set up for them and go home. But what will
happen next is still uncertain. Will people experience a blast, or a
leak?
It kind of makes
you wonder how solid the ground we are standing on is, doesn’t it? 😊
It’s kind of
appropriate, though. Because, this coming Sunday, the vast majority of churches
in the world will be marking the Sunday of The Holy Trinity in the Christian
Calendar. It’s held every year on the first Sunday after the Day of Pentecost.
It’s a good day to
be reminded that, if we said that we had figured out anything about God’s
nature ourselves, it would be a good argument that we didn’t understand
anything at all.
We are God’s
creation. God is the potter and we are the clay. All we can know about God is
what God has revealed to us.
Sally and I saw a
young attorney being interviewed on TV last Saturday who confirmed that his
company had put $8,000.00 on credit cards so that they could assist those who
had been displaced by the toxic threat to their homes.
He said that,
obviously, they didn’t have that kind of money in their budget. But, he said,
when he saw the confused anguish on the faces of those who were coming for
help, especially the children, (and he started to weep) he said that he knew
that his firm (he wept again and regained control) needed to do whatever they
could.
He was a credit to
his profession.
But where does that
desire come from? There are many, maybe most, countries in the world where
volunteering is all but unheard of. People might give money to the poor out of
obligation or to be “worthy” of “heaven”. But, why would someone work with no
expectation of any return?
Simply because it
is who we are?
I think that that
value comes from God, the Father who created us for a living
relationship with him, the Son, who gave his life for us and then took
it back again so that we can be with Him now and forever, and the Holy
Spirit, the active presence of God for good in the world. The Trinity.
Volunteerism and
service to others is the most common in countries where there is at least a
Christian cultural influence still at work.
All the good we do
comes from what God has made us to be.
And God has
revealed himself to us in three persons. How do we understand how three can be
One, or One three? We need some tools.
It’s been said that
we really only need two tools.
If it moves and it
shouldn’t: duct tape.
If it doesn’t move
and it should: WD40. Or, if you’re old school and you want it to move,
or you want it to move faster, and you don’t need those elegant aerosol cans: 3-In-One
oil.
Before we had those
fancy gasoline powered lawn mowers or the eco-friendlier electric ones, we used
our muscle-powered manual lawn mowers, and they moved efficiently with 3-in-one
oil!
When we wanted our
bicycles to fly like rockets: 3-in-1 oil.
When things got
rusty and wouldn’t move: 3-In-One oil.
Hedge clippers,
bolts, pruners, bicycle chains, locks, adjustable wrenches, almost anything
that turned and could rust was made more efficient by 3-in-1 oil.
It’s been made
since 1894, and you can still buy it. It’s one of the, if not the most,
masculine smells I know. If you could make a cologne out of it, I think that
you’d have something.
The container says
that it “Frees Rusted Parts”, “Prevents Rust”, and “Lubricates.” And yet it
comes from one 4-oz. container.
It’s just one oil:
“3-In-One!” Get it?
So, does that
make it a good way to describe the Holy Trinity? Well, sort of. But “No.”
This coming Sunday
is Holy Trinity Sunday. It’s the only Sunday in the Church year whose theme is
not an idea or an event, but a doctrine. That might sound pretty dry except for
the blood spilled, the churches divided, and the arguments that have consumed
people’s lives trying to define what “the Holy Trinity” means. So, if that
still sounds dry, maybe we need a little spiritual 3-In-One oil.
There’s nowhere in
the Bible that says, “there is a Trinity”, and yet the evidence is found
from its beginning to its end.
Sometimes all three
persons are manifest at the same place and time, as in Jesus’ baptism in Matthew
3:13-17. Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove
and rested on him, a voice spoke from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved,
with whom I am well pleased.” There is the doctrine of the Trinity: one God in
three persons each of which is fully God, all fully present.
So, how many Gods
do we believe in? One: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Wait, that’s three.
How can one be three? Or is it, “how can three be one?”
Sometimes they are
all just described and sometimes just one person is present, but all three are
present in that one.
<sigh!> It’s
a mystery, but not in the sense that it can be solved by us, but in the
sense that it can only be revealed to us by God.
All three persons of
the Trinity are in play when this happens in the Gospel reading for this coming
Sunday, in Matthew 28:16-20,
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain
to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but
some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and
on earth has been given to me. 19 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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Jesus says that his
disciples should, “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.”
How many Gods do we
believe in? One. And Jesus lists three with one name. His disciples are to in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Trinity. One
God.
If someone were to
ask what our true self was, we might say it is our spirit, or our soul,
or our heart, or our personality, but in the time that the Bible was written it
was in a name.
God does not have a
name because human beings knowing God’s name would be to know God’s true self.
And that is just inconceivable.
Baptizing in the
“name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” means to do so in
the true reality, the true self of God.
So, does this
make who the Trinity is any clearer? No.
Martin Luther, the
16th century Church reformer, once said, “To try to deny the Trinity is to
endanger your salvation. To try to comprehend the Trinity is to endanger your
sanity.”
Is your
sanity feeling a bit endangered yet?
I’d say it’s pretty
much impossible to describe the Holy Trinity without slipping into heresy.
The whole idea of heresy brings to mind the bad old days of torture, war, and
hypocrisy, right? Yet it also points to a time when the truth mattered,
when it was literally a matter of life and death, not just for this world, but
for eternity.
The Apostles Creed
and the Nicene Creed that are central to the Christian faith, that ended much
of the Church’s fighting over doctrine by setting down the central things that
the Bible teaches, are both based on the structure of the Trinity. The
Athanasian Creed, a third creed, is very long and rarely used in public
worship, but it has some of the best language focused on the meaning of the
Holy Trinity.
Remember St.
Nicholas, the guy called Santa Claus in many cultures. He wears a red robe
because St. Nicholas was a bishop when the Nicene Creed was being written. The
essence of the Christian faith was being decided and things got so heated that
good old Santa Clause, St. Nicholas, is alleged to have smacked another bishop,
Arius, over his heretical beliefs regarding the Trinity.
Muslim evangelists
in Christian areas sometimes accuse Christians of believing in three gods, not
one.
But would God be
the one true God if God were easily understood by human beings? No.
Our Bible reading
from Matthew 28 for today describes one of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances
to his disciples. It says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some
doubted.” (?!)
First of
all, how could they doubt him? They had seen him do miracles! They had seen
him die. They had seen him dead. They had seen his side pierced
with a spear and the water from the by-then separated plasma flow out. They had
seen his burial, and he had appeared to them on the evening of
the third day.
Second, some
doubted, yet they worshiped him. How could that be, and what does it
tell us about sharing the gospel in an increasingly secular age?
Here are four
things to do when you doubt:
1. Be consistent.
I encourage people to be consistent in their doubting and to question
their doubts as well. To doubt their doubts.
2. Look at the evidence.
Look to the
historical record, the thousands of manuscripts, the testimony of eyewitnesses,
the primary sources within and outside of the Bible, written and checked by
people at the time. Look at the witness of Christians for 2,000 years!
Look mostly to God,
one God in three persons. Father who made you and from whom you know when you
are estranged, Son who you know is missing when fear and guilt define your
small partial life without Him, and the Holy Spirit, who makes you a part of
the Christian Community, the Body of Christ.
3. Look to your Christian community.
Pastor Will Willimon is a Methodist pastor who tells the story of a
young woman who was a member of a congregation that he served who made an
appointment to see him during the week. She came by his office and said that
she had been struggling with her faith and that she was leaving the church.
And the next Sunday she was back at worship. And the Sunday after that.
And the Sunday after that.
Finally, Pastor Willimon asked if she could stop by his office again,
and she agreed. Pastor Willimon said, “Aren’t you the same person who came by
and said that she no longer had faith and wouldn’t be coming to worship
anymore?” She smiled and said, “Yes.” “Well then, I’m happy to see you, but
could you tell me what happened?”
“Well,” she answered, “It came to me that sometimes, if you can’t
believe for yourself, you have to be with people who will believe for you.”
That’s the nature of Christian community. No one can believe for us
literally, but a community can support our faith and confidence with theirs
when we are weak.
4. Act.
This week’s Gospel passage seems to just brush off the doubt of some of
the disciples and ends with a
commission. In fact, the whole Gospel of Matthew ends with what Bible interpreters
have long called, “The Great Commission”, and it starts with “Go…”
God tells all of us
to “Go…”, and most of us won’t have to go far.
Each of us has a
story of how we became a Christian or why we remain a Christian and it is most
meaningful to the children, the friends, and the family who are the closest to
us. How does the doctrine of the Trinity help us be more effective evangelists
to them for new life in Jesus?
The doctrine of the
Holy Trinity can only come from the outside of us, revealed to us by God. It is
a powerhouse that bursts into our sinful life, cut off from God, with the Good
News, and it projects us out into the world in response.
We
are like the men in an ice-fishing shack fishing downstream.
I
grew up in Wisconsin and the sports caster on the TV channel from Green Bay, I
think it was WFRV (for Fox River Valley) used to close his Friday night
broadcasts with a funny story sent in by one of his viewers.
One Friday, he told about a group of guys who had gone out ice-fishing.
For the uninitiated, ice fishing means going out onto a frozen river or
lake, chopping a hole in the ice, and dropping a fishing line in there. Or, if
you are a little more affluent, and you have confidence in the thickness of the
ice, and you have a truck and some time on your hands, you haul a shack out
there and bore a hole with your auger, drop an automatic fish-bite notification
system in the water, and then drink and play cards with your buddies all day.
The guy who sent in the story had all the equipment, but he was actually
there to fish, and he brought his black labrador retriever along for company.
At
some point, the ice fisherman got a bite. And it was a big one! He fought that
fish, and he finally pulled it through the hole in the ice and into the shack.
As he was removing the hook, though, the fish flopped around and fell down
through the hole and back into the water.
The dog, though, being a retriever, saw the prey escape and dove into
the water after it.
The owner was shocked and waited for the dog to come back, and waited
and waited, but the dog didn’t come back.
Meanwhile, there were a bunch of guys who had been drinking and playing
cards all day in their ice-fishing shack downstream. They had gotten themselves
pretty hammered when, all of a sudden, “Woosh!”, the black lab saw a little
open water above him, and came flying up through the hole and into the shack,
shaking the water off of his back!
The sportscaster said that those guys sobered up pretty quick!
That’s the way the
Trinity works. The Trinity, like that black lab, bursts into our sinful world
from the outside, wakes us up in faith, baptizes us, and compels action!
Why is the Holy
Trinity important? Well, I think that we would agree that it’s important both
to understand what we believe and to know that the things we believe are true.
And, practically speaking, what we believe about the Trinity in the abstract
has a major effect on how we actually relate to God.
For example,
sometimes, you’ll hear people say “I love Jesus. He’s so accepting and
forgiving, so non-judgmental. But I have hard time with the God of the Old
Testament. He seems so judgmental, so intolerant, and so punishing. And the
Holy Spirit? I don’t get that at all!”
The thing about the
Trinity is that they are exactly the same. God the Son is God the Father is God
the Holy Spirit is God the Son, and ‘round and ‘round.
The Trinity is like
3-In-One oil. When our hearts are hard against God, God will penetrate our
resistance and set us free. When the rust of sin has kept us from being what we
were created to be, God has given God’s self on the cross so that we have what
we were created to have in a living relationship with the one, true living God
and receive the forgiveness that only God can give. When we need protection
from the corrosion of sin, death, and the power of the devil, and we repent and
open our heart to receive God, God abides with us and nothing will take
us away from God.
But God isn’t three
oils making one oil, or three purposes accomplished in the same thing, or three
solutions to similar problems. God is One, One in three persons, each fully
God. We know this because it has been revealed to us through God’s Word. Is
that clear? No.
If we could
understand the reality of God, it wouldn’t be God. All we can know is what God
has revealed to us, and God has revealed God in the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit.
Firefighters and
numerous public agencies have been trying to prevent a toxic disaster in Garden
Grove and the surrounding area since last week.
Our world has been
in a toxic rebellion against God since the beginning of time, and we human
beings made it that way. God came to put us right, and one day he will
return to put all things right forever. Meanwhile, God is at work for
good among us. God is the revelation of God to God’s creation.
One God in three persons. The Holy Trinity.
