05/27/2026
May 31, 2026
Sunday Sermon
The Trinity
Matthew 28:16-20
Plattsmouth and Mynard Liberty UMCs
A ridiculous story made the rounds years ago. Most of you have heard the story, but I wonder if you have caught its religious significance.
It is about a pilot and three passengers--a boy scout, a priest, and an atomic scientist--and a plane that develops engine trouble in mid-flight.
The pilot rushes back to the passenger compartment and exclaims, “The plane is going down! The plane is going down! We only have three parachutes, and there are four of us!”
Then the pilot adds, “I have a family waiting for me at home. I must survive!” With that, the pilot grabs one of the parachutes and jumps out of the plane.
At this point, the atomic scientist jumps to his feet and declares, “I am the smartest man in the world. It would be a great tragedy if my life was snuffed out!” With that, he also grabs a parachute and exits the plane.
With an alarmed look on his face, the priest says to the Boy Scout, “My son, I have no family. I am ready to meet my Maker. You are still young with much ahead of you. You take the last parachute.”
With this, the Boy Scout interrupts the priest, “Relax, Father. Don’t say any more. We’re all right.”
The priest asks, “How in the world can you say that we are all right?”
The Boy Scout replies, “The reason we’re all right is that the world’s smartest man just jumped out of the plane wearing my knapsack!”
Silly joke, but there is an important lesson to be derived from it. Metaphorically, there are many smart people today, successful people, affluent people who are jumping out of airplanes wearing knapsacks instead of parachutes.
That is, they are reaching for ideas and philosophies that are very appealing, but those ideas and philosophies will not save them. Those ideas are knapsacks, NOT parachutes. In other words, people today need something they can believe in, and many are looking in the wrong places.
Today is Trinity Sunday. This is a day that has been celebrated in the Christian church since the 10th century. It is on this occasion that pastors and preachers around the world address the subject of the triune God. The doctrine of the Trinity is NOT a philosophy. It is a TRUTH! A REALITY!
The Trinity explains in a very elemental way what God has revealed to us about the Divine Nature of God. We Christians affirm the Trinity, not as an explanation of God, but simply as a way of describing what we know about God. To describe the tip of the iceberg above the water is not to describe the entire iceberg. To describe the Divine God as only Father is incomplete.
The idea of the Trinity is not emphatically or empirically stated as a doctrine in the scriptures. Yet, by implication, it is stated many times. The early Christians soon discovered that they simply could not speak of God without speaking of the three ways in which he had revealed Godself to them. This does not mean that there are three Gods. One God, three essences!
It means that there is one God who has shown himself in three ways: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Let’s look at these this morning:
First, we affirm God the Father. Ninety-six percent of all Americans, believe in the existence of a God in some form or another. The real question is what kind of a God?
According to Thomas Jefferson, for example, God was like a big cosmic watchmaker. God created the universe and wound it up and let it go. The world is now in the process of simply letting itself run down. Jefferson believed God has completely detached himself from his creation.
Others, like the philosopher Nietche, say that there indeed once was a God, but that God is now dead. They say that the God of the universe so completely poured himself into the person of Jesus Christ that when Jesus died on the cross, God died, too.
These views are foreign to Christianity. We affirm that the same God who molded the universe also cares about what happens in our life.
Indeed, God is actively and mysteriously involved in helping to shape the events of your life.
When we refer to the first person of the Trinity as Father it says something about what God is like. In fact, Jesus referred to God not only as Father but as Abba, which is the Hebrew word meaning Daddy.
Can you imagine referring to the creator of an endless universe, the creator of countless solar systems as Daddy?
It is easy to think of God as the omnipotent, holy Other, righteous, all-powerful, Creator, judge. If our Christian understanding of the nature of God is to be correct, then we must also learn to think of God as our kind, sympathetic, understanding, compassionate, gentle, and loving Father, or our Abba, Daddy.
The Bible also refers to God a mother hen gathering her chicks, as a Shepherd gathering the flock, as an Eagle protecting her young.
To be sure there are stern images of God in the Old and New Testaments, even in the Gospels themselves. But the love of God is the major emphasis, which runs throughout the Bible. The message of persistent love heals the broken heart and challenges the disobedient heart.
God bestows love despite what we have done; a love given that was not earned; a love that came despite our resistance.
God’s love that healed when sickness pervades our soul; a love that to this day recovers, restores, and heals.
The prophet Jeremiah caught the true message of our religion when he heard God say to him, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
One final word on this subject. It is a misconception among some Christians and scholars who say that when Christ came to earth God somehow changed. Where God had been stern and judgmental, they say, God now became loving and compassionate. This is a misinterpretation.
The fact is that God is unchanging. God’s divine purpose has always been one of redemption and love. There was nothing wrong with the law that God gave to Moses and the Jews.
Making the law more important than the Gospel is problematic. The very reason of creation itself is that God is a God of overflowing love. The result of that love is life itself.
Secondly, we affirm a belief in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. God took on human form. God became incarnate in the flesh and lived among us.
Jesus Christ suffered the same trials that we suffer, experienced the same feelings that we experience. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Jesus was God incarnate. However, Jesus never drew attention to himself. Jesus always pointed to God and praised God to the highest heaven.
Jesus is quoted in Mark 10 as asking, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone!” It was the human Jesus questioning the divine.
Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and theologian told a story of a prince who wanted to find a maiden suitable to be his queen. One day while running an errand in the local village for his father, the prince passed through a poor section of the village.
As he glanced out the windows of the carriage his eyes fell upon a beautiful peasant maiden. During the ensuing days he often passed by the young lady and soon fell in love. But he had a problem. How would he seek her hand?
He could order her to marry him. But even a prince wants his bride to marry him freely and voluntarily and not through coercion. He could put on his most splendid uniform and arrive at her door in a carriage.
The carriage would be drawn by six white horses. If the prince did this, he would never be certain that the maiden loved him or was simply overwhelmed by the splendor. The prince came up with another solution.
The prince would give up his robes, move into the village, entering not with a crown but in peasant garb. He would live among the people, share their interests and concerns, and talk their language. He would live just as the beautiful maiden lived. The prince carried out his plan.
In time the maiden grew to love him for who he was and loved him because the prince had first loved her.
This very simple, almost childlike story, written by one of the most brilliant minds of our time explains what we Christians mean by the incarnation. GOD CAME DOWN AND LIVED AMONG US.
We should be glad that this happened for two reasons: One, it shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is with us, that God is on our side, and that God loves us.
Secondly, it gives us a firsthand view of what the mind of God is really like. When people ask what God is like, we as Christians point to the person of Jesus Christ. God is incomprehensible. But in Jesus Christ this incomprehensible God makes Gods self knowable.
We get a glimpse of God’s glory. In the person of Jesus, we are told that God—the mysterious Other—who created the stars and the universe, is willing to go all the way, even to a cross, so that every single person may be redeemed. That’s what God is like. That’s the God we believe in when we say we believe in Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate, God in the flesh.
Finally, we affirm a belief in the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? In the Korean Creed we say, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, God present with us for guidance, for comfort and for strength.”
The Modern Affirmation words it: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the divine presence in our lives, whereby we are kept in perpetual remembrance of the truth of Christ and find strength and help in time of need.”
Put it another way. The Holy Spirit is the infinite become intimate. It is the Beyond that is Within. It is the realization of the presence of the Living God. The Holy Spirit is God’s Spirit poured out on all people at Pentecost.
I would simply like to close with this thought on the Trinity.
It perhaps might help us to understand the Doctrine of the Trinity better if we word it this way: God the Father who is for us, God the Son who is with us, and God the Holy Spirit who is within us.
Someone once asked Mrs. Albert Einstein if she understood her husband’s theory of relativity. “No,”, she said, “but I know my husband.”
We cannot begin to fathom the incomprehensible mysteries of God, but that does not mean that we cannot know God. NO!
God made God’s Self known in God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, God Incarnate. God continues to come to us via the Holy Spirit. That is the essence of the Doctrine of the Trinity.
Thus, through the teachings and witness of Jesus, and the outpouring of God’s Spirit—the Holy Spirit—we can know God intimately and personally.
Amen.