“Power in Paradox”
Original sermon given on Sunday, June 15, 2025 written and delivered by Pastor Jeff Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Watch the sermon live.
“Power in Paradox”
John 16.12-15
John 16.12-15
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Three individual players, yet one single performance. Three musical lines weaving their sounds beautifully together, sometimes one heard louder, but then backing off and yielding to another. All the time in this Threeness of three instruments, one unified piece of music is heard. Both diversity and unity are necessary for the beauty and power of the performance.
Preachers are warned not to use analogies when explaining the doctrine of the Holy Trinity because inevitably you’ll drive off into one heretical ditch or the other. I can’t resist the music analogy today because on Friday, when I was supposed to be writing my sermon on the Holy Trinity, a few of us went to a noon concert down at Fourth Presbyterian. The amazing performance of Brahms and Schubert was by the Renoir Trio (I’m glad it was a trio and not a quartet otherwise my Trinity sermon might never have been written!)
You might recall the name, Renoir Trio, as they’ve played a couple of benefit concerts for us here at FSP to support our Community Meals program. Listening to the trio, I was moved by this truth: each individual part played is indeed independent, distinct, its own thing as it were. Yet the three are powerless, even meaningless unless orchestrated together in a unified whole. Threeness-Oneness, Diversity-Unity makes amazing music.
It's just an analogy, and analogies are like eggs — if you push them too far, they’ll break (which of course, is also an analogy). But perhaps the three individual sounds of a violin, cello, and piano woven inseparably together in a single composition can at least serve as an entry point into the truth of the nature of God.
There is only one God, but God is revealed in three distinct persons. On the one hand, Christians are not Tri theists — you know, we pared down the Roman and Greek pantheon to a manageable three (easier to keep track of them that way). No. But on the other hand nor does the Bible teach that there’s only one person who just functions in three different ways. Sometimes he acts as a father, other times like a son, other times like the Spirit. No, this would be to deny the distinction of the three individual persons. To work the analogy, this heresy would be like one musician first playing the violin, then setting it down and picking up the cello, and then the piano. It’s just one guy, but he plays three different parts. No, this also is not the teaching on the Trinity (nor a very pleasing performance of Brahms, by the way).
Rather, the mysterious, paradoxical biblical teaching is that there is one God revealed in three distinct persons. United in essence — Father, Son and Spirit all fully, equally God, but distinct in their relations.
We need to go no further than this morning’s gospel lesson from John 16 to see that this is the teaching of Holy Scripture. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the scriptures are unintelligible without the teaching of the Trinity, One God, three persons.
Our Lord Jesus in John 16 clearly speaks to his disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit, who will glorify the Son. And Jesus speaks separately of the Father, who has given all things to him. So, three distinct persons are revealed here: God the Father is truth; God the Son embodied that truth when he walked among us; and God the Holy Spirit guides us, leads us into this truth. And yet, there are not three truths: these three are united eternally as one God.
Nor is this teaching on the Holy Trinity just some thing that some white guys made up in 325 A.D. or so (please don’t believe everything you watch on Youtube). Although over the centuries, the church has learned to articulate this mystery in clear ways in response to false teachings, this three-in-one one-in-three truth about the nature of God is found throughout scripture and was the confession of the Christian faith from the very beginning.
But so what? Even if we could fully understand it, which we can’t, what difference does it make anyway? It makes all the difference in this world… and beyond this world. I’m here to tell you there’s Power in the Paradox, Meaning in the Mystery.
In the first place, Trinity Sunday is a reminder of the wholly otherness of the God we worship. If you could understand God, he wouldn’t be God, right? You can’t stick an infinite God into your finite brain; nor put him in a spreadsheet or a flowchart; nor track him on your phone like your Uber picking you up after church or the next train on the Red Line at Clark and Division. (Look, here he is, let’s hurry up and go meet him.) No, the one Holy Eternal Trinity is the ground of all being, so infinitely beyond us as to inspire the greatest awe and wonder, and to elicit the greatest praise. To resolve the paradox, to solve the mystery would give us a God of our own making, our own choosing, and our own destruction.
Ultimately, a God you can fit in your brain is the only God this world can offer, and the God of all false religions. This is a God that I want on my terms; who shows up according to my schedule; who I can manipulate, cajole or convince to give me what I think I need when I think I need it; who folds nicely in my back pocket; or fits neatly in my human reason. Great! Got him figured out. Stick him away until I’m ready for him again.
That’s not the God we worship today, nor the God who confronts us today, nor a God worthy of anyone’s worship. Today’s a day to submit ourselves to something higher, holier, more powerful, more beautiful, more good, but also which upends our old ways. An eternal music beyond anything we could write or sing or play.
And yet, we’re also bid this morning to enter into it, to play along with it, so to speak. The other aspect of the power of the paradox, the meaning of the mystery, is that this Holy Trinity has made himself known to us, for us, for our wholeness and salvation. Eternal truth and goodness and love exist beyond us, but despite our fallen and rebellious humanity, they did not abandon us. The Father has sent the Son into our disjoined and dissonant world. The eternal Son took upon our flesh and blood, redeeming our lost humanity. The Holy Spirit walks alongside us, moves within us as the Body of Christ, gives us meaning and purpose. So, the One God so far beyond us, as high as the heavens are above the earth, is as close to us as our own breath. The God beyond all praising draws near to me, comforts me, loves me, holds me, promises me grace and salvation.
When we pray to this God, invoke his presence, are baptized into this name, we are brought into fellowship with the true God. This is the power in the paradox, the meaning in the mystery. That the God beyond us is the one who is for us… and within us for the life of the world.
Martin Luther’s small catechism simply and beautifully conveys the meaning of the Biblical teaching on the Holy Trinity. For him, the point of confessing the creed wasn’t so much to analyze the notes on the page, but rather to let it sing and play throughout your life.
I’d like to close this morning, in prayer to the Holy Trinity, using Luther’s words.
Let us pray:
God the Father Creator of the whole universe, beyond my reason and understanding, I praise you that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
God the Son, embodiment of sacrificial love, I praise you that you have redeemed me a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sin, from death and from the power of the devil.
God the Holy Spirit, creator, consoler, and sustainer of faith, I praise you that you have called me by the gospel, enlightened me with your gifts, sanctified and kept me in Jesus Christ in the one true faith…
Holy Blessed and Eternal Trinity beyond our understanding but revealed to us this morning in word and sacrament, draw us into the music of your mystery.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.