Trinity Sunday 2018 Fr. Michael Cawthon

So often we get caught up in the moment, as we become too busy to really see what we see and really hear what we hear.

The busyness of life pushes us more and more, until we are living for the purpose of simply keeping up, with all of the demands of this life.

Sometimes we should slow down, setting the pressures of this world aside, and reflect upon the most important thing in our life:

our relationship with God.

I will use the church calendar for this reflection.

Six months ago, we entered into the season of Advent.

And we learn from the last verse of the Gospel reading that God people were lost and confused,

for they had made His “house of prayer – into a den of thieves.”

The Jewish church was in need of a new direction for it was very sick.

Thus we see angel’s appearing, an angel Gabriel;

was sent to Mary with the Annunciation and also to Joseph.

The same angel earlier had visited Mary’s cousin Elizabeth’s husband Zacharias, the mother and father of John the Baptist.

The plan is revealed for the Salvation of Mankind, “as The Holy Ghost would come upon Mary

and “the holy thing which shall be born…shall be called the Son of God.

Thus born was Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.

His life we trace from the Christmas Season,

through the Season of Epiphany, into the Season of Lent.

We walked his Passion with him and stood in shock as His Blood streamed into the dirt as He was crucified

on that day we call Good Friday.

Three days later we rise with Him on that Glorious Easter morning singing as many Alleluia’s, as we can fit into a single verse,

in praise of our Saviour, now risen.

We walked forty days with him

until He ascended into the Heavens,

now sitting on the right hand of God;

but, before ascending, he promises not to leave us comfortless,

and He tells us of the coming of the Holy Ghost.

Last week we celebrated, as the church received the Holy Spirit,

when tongues of fire descended upon each of the Apostles heads.

This very brief summary reveals to us the Love of God for His creation.

God loves us so much that He Himself prophesized in Genesis 3:15 His plan for our salvation,

From which He proceeds to execute His divine plan for our salvation.

So, stories and doctrines of an angry God demanding some type of “human justice” for the harm and damages inflicted upon him,

could not be further from the truth.

He sent the only Begotten not out of anger – demanding justice, but out of Love – a love consisting of forgiveness and patience.

When we experience God we experience an unconditional Love, and it is the greatest demonstration of Love that this world will ever see.

He came for you because He Loves you and desires that you return to your original goodness,

returning not out of fear and threats, but of your total Love for Him;

God’s wrath is toward sin…He hates it.

He despises the sin which has inflicted His creation.

As a surgeon is wrathful towards cancer, or any disease, and despises it it so much that he cuts it out of the patient’s body.

So too Christ, as a physician, removes and destroys the sins of our soul:

“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takest away the sin of the world.”

His Love is for you, and His hatred is for what sin has done to you.

His Love is pure, He comes for you:

“For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son.”

Come to Him out of your Love for Him.

To do otherwise; to come for any other reason or not to come, is dangerous as failure will come in your walk of faith.

As soon as Satan finds you – and oh, he will find you;

he will test over and over again your commitment to Christ.

And if you stand upon anything other than your total love of Christ,

then you will slip, and you will slide, and eventually fall.

It is the strength of your Love for Christ, and not anything else, that will keep you strong and determined as you continue your walk with Christ.

My brothers and sisters: your salvation is too important to rest upon doctrines based upon human understanding

or legal type understanding of human or civil justice,

for God’s Love is above any legal condition or any form of human justice.

Just as God Love is above our sins, so is His Love above any justice as defined or understood by man.

This day is called Trinity Sunday.

Sermons will be preached about the Trinity and how to understand its nature and or reason.

Instead of preaching “The Lord is One” and yet is of three persons:

allow me to simply explain its significance.

A Church Father Hippolytus (170 AD to 235 AD), was a champion in the debate of the three persons of the Trinity, as he said:

First quoting Jesus as He gives The Great Commission of the Church in Matt 28:19 

“Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

“and by this, He showed that whoever omits any one of these three, fails in glorifying God perfectly.

For it is through the Trinity that the God is completely glorified.  For the Father willed, the Son did, and the Spirit manifested.”

By denying the Trinity one denies the full revelation of Almighty God

as revealed to us by the Holy Scripture itself.

The revelation of God is revealed by the working of God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, all working in unison and in perfect Love.

As we sung the Gradual today, as John Apple reminded us in the bulletin today, we repeated the words of St. Patrick:

I bind unto myself the Name, The strong name of the Trinity;

by the invocation of the same, The Three in One, and One in Three.”

No other religion in the world receives the full revelation of God’s Plan for man’s Salvation,

for no other accepts, or hears, the revelation of the total and complete God: The Father, and the son, and the Holy Ghost.

That is why Christ’s Church honors the Holy Trinity today…

We will remain in the Season of the Trinity for the next six months as the Holy Trinity,

day by day, week by week, and month by month will teaches and lead us through His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

In worship, in studies, and within our lives –

God slowly but surely leads us through a sanctification process,

a process of setting us apart for the service of God, as established by His Church during its two thousand year history.

This process is nothing new as it was instituted by Christ Church;

for indeed it is only through Him that we may obtain our Salvation – our eternal life with him.

Since that day which the tongues of fire landed upon each of the Apostles, the Church has been guided through the working of the Holy Trinity.

In a few moments – I want you to observe as I will “call down” the Holy Trinity:

Asking the Father, to “Bless and Sanctify, with thy Word and Spirit, these creatures of bread and wine…

In other words: I will ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine, and to make them the Body and Blood of Christ.

Proof of the Trinity is in the fact that it is Christ who tells us during the consecration:

“This is my body, this is my blood.”

So, let us approach God together; for it is only within the Name of The Trinity that we can:

touch Him more perfectly and truly,

For it is within the name of the Trinity that we can:

grasp what we can no longer touch

and believe what we can no longer see.

The hour cometh, and now is….