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Unraveling the Trinity

Posted by on Sunday, May 31st, 2026 in Minister, News

Watch Sermon Video Here:

https://youtu.be/3m1Fc3RRv5Y

Hespeler, May 31, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Trinity Sunday
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

Today is known in Christian tradition as Trinity Sunday. And I would like us to realize for a moment how unique that is among the festivals of the Christian church. All of the other major festivals celebrate events in the life of Jesus or of the early church. Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birth. Easter, his death and resurrection. Pentecost, as I hope you picked up last week, the birthday of the church.

But today, we don’t celebrate an event, but rather a doctrine – a teaching of the church. It is not even a doctrine you can find in the Bible itself, but rather something that the church only figured out some 300 years after the time of Jesus.

A Logic Puzzle

 So, I’m at a bit of a loss here today. I want to talk about the Trinity. I do think it is an important doctrine. But I’m not exactly sure how to do that. I know that a lot of the time, when we talk about the Trinity in the church, we approach it as a kind of logic puzzle. We figure that our task, when we talk or teach about the Trinity, is to help people make sense of it.

And that is, of course, a huge challenge because, at its core, the Trinity doesn’t make logical sense. The idea of the Trinity is that there is one God, and that God is known in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We further say that the three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are all God. But we also affirm that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit and that the Spirit is not the Father.

And that, my friends, does not make much sense. And maybe it shouldn’t, because the nature of God is supposed to be beyond our human understanding.

Trying to Make it Make Sense

But what do we do when we talk about the Trinity? We try to make it make sense. We use various images to explain it. St. Patrick famously used a Shamrock with its three leaves as a picture of the Trinity. Sometimes people talk about how water can exist in three different states: solid, liquid and gas. These images may be nice to contemplate, but they certainly don't present a complete or accurate picture of the Trinity which is far beyond all physical objects.

These attempts to picture the Trinity leave us with the impression that that is what we’re supposed to do with the doctrine – that we are supposed to understand it. It makes us think that if we can just get our minds bent enough out of shape to get them around this idea of God, even for an instant of time, we will have mastered this thing called the Christian faith.

Problems With This Approach

It also creates a problem for many honest Christians who can’t get their minds around this concept. Many will often conclude that, since they cannot make sense of it, they are incapable of having faith. Such people may give up on Christianity altogether.

But the Christian faith is not a logic problem. It is not an exercise in screwing yourself up to believe impossible things. The Christian faith is a journey of trust in connection with a God that we cannot fully understand.

So, my question today is what am I supposed to say to you about the Trinity, other than that it is okay if it doesn’t make logical sense to you?

Trinity Is Not in the Bible

Well, let me go back to something that I said a moment ago but that I did not dwell on. I said that the Trinity is not in the Bible. That may have been a surprise to you, but virtually all churches agree that it is true.

Now, the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are all in the Bible. It references all of them and their activities, and it even says some important things about how they relate to one another. But you will not find in the Scriptures any clear statement of their unity or triplicity. But there is a connection between what is in the Bible and the later doctrine.

So, how did we get from what the Bible said in the first century to the doctrine that the church finally agreed to over three centuries later?

How the Christians Experienced God

Well, the Bible is, above all, a record of human beings who experienced God and passed those experiences down until someone eventually wrote about them.

And those early Christians experienced God in many and various ways. They experienced God in Jesus of Nazareth. They experienced God in him during his life, and then even more powerfully in encounters with the risen Christ. They didn’t necessarily understand how they had experienced God in this person. They didn’t know how such a thing could be. But that failure to understand how didn’t really bother them. All they knew was that Jesus had presented God to them in a unique way.

And, in the same way, the early church absolutely experienced the presence of God through the Holy Spirit. This was particularly true when they gathered and worshipped together and supported one another.

Somehow, it was plain to them that when they gathered like that, there was a presence among them that they could not explain. Somehow, the whole of the group was bigger than just the sum of its parts. Even more important, they knew that this presence was divine. But again, they didn’t particularly concern themselves with how this could be. They just knew what they had experienced.

Encounter with Greek Philosophy

So, it all started with their experience of God. And as it spread throughout the Roman Empire, the church took the stories of those experiences with it. But the church was now spreading through a very different culture than the one it had started in, a culture that had been shaped by Greek Philosophy.

And Greek Philosophy was not happy with just experiencing things. It had to analyze and categorize. It had to explain everything. And so there was a great clash of ideas that went on for centuries as the Greek philosophical mind tried to make logical sense of the church’s experience of God. It did not succeed because the human mind cannot truly comprehend the nature of God. But it did eventually manage to grapple with it enough to agree to the doctrine of the Trinity.

It was a remarkable achievement. The Trinity, with its internal contradictions and paradoxes, can almost take us to a state of mind where we feel like we just might be able to grasp the nature of God. But it has also left us with the impression that our job as believers is to understand and explain God and it is not. Our job is what it has always been: to encounter the unknowable God.

Setting That Aside

So, on this Trinity Sunday, I would propose that we set aside logic and reason. Put away the shamrocks, the liquid, the solid and the gas and whatever other ways that people have tried to explain it and let us go back to where it all started.

Our reading this morning from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians is the oldest written text that refers to what would come to be called the Trinity. This letter was written, after all, before any of the gospels. Paul was just writing a letter to one of the churches that he had founded, trying to help them sort through their many problems.

As he came to the end of the letter, he was looking for a way to sign off that would be meaningful to them. And so, he wrote, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

Those are almost certainly the first words referring to the three persons of the Trinity ever written. But Paul isn’t trying to explain the Trinity, is he? He isn’t offering a doctrine. He is giving a blessing to the people of the church – a blessing based on their experience of God.

Living Out the Blessing

That is where it all started. And that blessing, I would suggest, is what really matters. I don’t really care if someone can explain the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. That is not what proves to me that you are a faithful Christian. What matters is that you are living out “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.”

So here is my question for you on this Trinity Sunday. Have you experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? Jesus is himself the personification of this essential nature of God.

The Grace of Our Lord Jesus

If you have experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, then you know that you are forgiven and that you do not need to torture yourself over your regrets, your failures or your shortcomings. You can accept that you are enough.

If you have experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, then grace will also become a part of the way that you look at the world. When you are wronged by someone, you may certainly speak up and demand that justice be done for the sake of all, but you will also not carry around resentment that weighs you down. You will not contribute to creating future pain by demanding vengeance.

If you have experienced the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, then you will not be scandalized by the thought that someone you disagree with or that you struggle with, or who has a lifestyle that you do not understand, can still be accepted by God. You will learn to appreciate even such people in the name of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Love of God

And what about the love of God? The love that is in view in this verse is the kind of love of a father at its best that existed in that ancient world. This is a father who knows how to take care of his children. This is a father who can love them for who they are and yet also can love the potential of who they could be.

 If you have experienced the love of God, then you know that you are accepted for who you are. You know that you have a God who is committed to love you and to keep all of the promises that have been made to you. If you have experienced the love of God, you know that you have worth because of the God who loves you.

The Communion of the Spirit

And that brings us, finally, to the communion of the Holy Spirit. The word that is translated here as communion is a very important word in the New Testament. It can be translated in various ways. It means fellowship. It means sharing, participation and partnership. So, what does it mean to experience the communion of the Holy Spirit? It actually has less to do with feeling some kind of mystical presence and more about living in community with your fellow believers.

So, how do you experience the communion of the Holy Spirit? You experience it by learning to trust the people in your church in practical ways. We experience it by supporting one another when we face challenges or problems. We experience it when we can courageously share our own struggles, needs and fears with one another. Experiencing the communion of the Holy Spirit is what makes us a church community. It is what empowers us to work together as a team to share God’s love with the world.

It is Christians who know these things who are faithful believers. They don’t have to be able to explain using Greek philosophy or logic what the Trinity is because they are living it. That is the true foundation of being a trinitarian Christian.

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The Three W’s of a Successful Church

Posted by on Sunday, May 17th, 2026 in Minister, News

Watch the sermon video here:

https://youtu.be/mXNGzGue9Xw

Hespeler, May 17, 2026 © Scott McAndless – Seventh Sunday of Easter
Acts 1:3-14, Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35, 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11, John 17:1-11

The Christian church is one of the most successful organizations in the history of the world. From a handful of people – small enough that they could almost all be listed by name in our reading this morning from the Book of Acts – it grew over the next several centuries to become the dominant institution of the Western world and ultimately to dominate the globe.

And sure, in our own day, some of that dominance has fallen off. Apart from some significant exceptions, the church in North America is not experiencing overall growth these days. But it has been quite a run.

Going Back to Where it Started

And if it has fallen off a bit, maybe it is time to go back to where it all started. In our reading this morning, the author of the Book of Acts is telling us that story. He is describing the events that were foundational for the church, that set it up to become all that it was meant to be.

Next week, on Pentecost, we will celebrate the birthday of the church and how, with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it came into being. But today, let’s look at the foundational advice that Jesus and others gave to the church to set them up so that they could hit the ground running.

I see three pieces of advice in this passage – advice that is just as relevant today as when this book was written. I call them the three W’s. And I hope that you will leave with all three of them on your hearts as you meditate on what God is calling our church to do today.

Finding Success

Our world has some very clear ideas about success and how it is supposed to be achieved. Endless books have been written about how to were up your organization for it. And these books focus on things like structure and strategy. It often comes down to having a clear mission and making sure that everything in your organization is built around reaching those goals.

So, I guess that is where we should start. Surely the first thing that Jesus gave to the church had to be an excellent strategy and a clear mission statement.

But is that what we see in our reading this morning? Not exactly. After spending 40 days with his followers and giving them all the proof that they needed that he was alive and had conquered death for them, he finally gathered them together to tell them what the next step in the plan was.

Wait

So, this is it, right, the big strategy session. We’re going to get the inside scoop on how the church is supposed to set itself up to gain power and influence people. That is how you succeed in this life, isn’t it?

So, what does Jesus do? “He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”

Let me ask you, does that seem like the kind of winning strategy that brings you success in our world? Where are the instructions to set up committees and programs? Where are the organizing principles and the grand mission statements and visioning exercises? Most of all, where is the budget? We all know that you can’t get anything done without a budget!

Contrary to Worldly Wisdom

This goes against everything we are taught about how organizations thrive. We want to get ready, to plan and prepare. We assume that the only way to get ahead in this world is to get busy. What kind of plan starts with wait?

But that is exactly what Jesus says to do. And that, for the most part, is what the first Christians do. It says that they “were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” Their main activity was wait.

What are we to take away from this as we seek to build a strong church? Should we just disband all of our committees, scrap our mission statements and hold endless prayer meetings?

Well, not exactly. I do believe that there is a place for all these things. Having the right kind of structures in place does help you to be ready when whatever you are waiting for actually shows up.

Maintaining Structures

But it is also true that the church has a long history of pouring so much energy and time into setting up and maintaining our structures that we can miss hearing what God is telling us to do.

Every church has tendencies to do this in their own way. I have often seen how Presbyterians do it. Every year, for example, the Presbyterian Church gathers at a General Assembly with representatives coming from across the country.

The purpose of these assemblies, at its core, is to listen to what God is saying to the church. In the Reformed Church, we believe that when the church gathers in this way and when we pray, the Holy Spirit speaks to the church. And I know that that does happen; I have been there sometimes when the Spirit speaks to the church, and it is quite moving.

But when we do meet like that, there is also always a lot of business to do. There are budgets to be approved, committees to form and policies to put in place. And it is always a temptation to let all of that business absorb our attention. We become totally focused on it. And then, when we leave, we congratulate ourselves on having a good assembly if we have dealt with all the business efficiently.

And that is what we do at all levels in the church. We pour our attention and effort into organization, policies and meetings and congratulate ourselves for setting ourselves up for success. This first instruction of Jesus to wait on God’s Spirit gives us an important corrective to that tendency.

Trust in our Structures

Even more troubling, we tend to put our trust in those organizational efforts. Having proper policies and committee structures makes us feel confident that we are building a secure future. But Jesus doesn’t want us to trust in our efforts, does he? He wants us to trust in God, and so Jesus teaches us to wait.

So, the first W is wait. Now let’s turn to the next piece of advice that Jesus gives us. Surely the next thing that we need for success is a good marketing strategy. If we want our churches to grow as the early church grew from its humble beginnings, we obviously need to have some kind of plan to get the word out.

Marketing the Message

And of course, our modern world stands ready with all kinds of expertise in that area. So much of the world around us is geared towards getting out exactly those kinds of messages. We are all surrounded every single day with so much advertising and marketing that we often don’t even realize that it is being fed to us.

And we certainly see churches jumping wholeheartedly into this effort, engaging in multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns such as, for example, the “He Gets Us” campaign that placed $20 million ads in four of the most recent Super Bowls.

And even churches that have nowhere near that kind of money to throw around (like Canadian Presbyterian churches) still feel like they need to invest whatever effort and money they can into things like social media campaigns and even hire consultants to get their message out.

Jesus’ Communication Plan

So, what is the advice that Jesus gives us for this essential part of the plan? Well, here is what he says to the disciples: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

This brings us to the second W for a successful church: witness. Witnessing is a communication strategy, but it is not one that we usually associate with big marketing campaigns, is it? It is more associated with trials and law courts.

Based on Our Experiences

But here is the key thing about witnessing that I think that Jesus is pointing to. Witnesses can only speak about what they have experienced themselves. They have to speak authentically because that is the only thing that can give their message meaning.

That is, in many ways, the very opposite of a slick marketing campaign, which depends on form and style, not on people just being themselves.

What does that mean for the church as it spreads its message today? It doesn’t mean that we can have no communication strategies or that we cannot think and plan about how we want to use things like social media.

Honesty and Authenticity

But it is an important reminder that any message we put out to the world has to be honest and authentic. The church can’t just take polls and give people the message that they want to hear. We need to speak from the heart about what we have experienced of Jesus. That is what Jesus calls the church to do, and it remains the foundation of our success to this day.

So, first we are to wait. Secondly, we are to witness. What is the third W? That is not something that Jesus himself says, but something that is said just after he leaves.

Watching Heaven

Jesus ascends into heaven. The immediate presence of Jesus is being transformed into a more spiritual presence. But then something remarkable happens. “While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.”

What were the disciples doing at that moment? They were watching – gazing up toward heaven. And that is an attitude that the Christian church has often adopted throughout the centuries.

We fix all of our attention and energy on heaven and particularly on getting there someday when we die. For many people, that has become the entire point of the Christian faith – that it is only about getting a ticket to heaven.

Why Watch?

Now, the promise of an afterlife is real; I do not mean to suggest in any way that it isn’t. But I would say that when it becomes the sole focus of our faith, we have a problem. And so it is that two angels come to the disciples as they stand there and say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”

This is an important warning about the first W. The first W was a command to wait – to wait on God and on the action of the Holy Spirit. But this makes it quite clear that our waiting should not be focused on another world or on a life after death. We are to wait on God for this world – wait on God who will show us where to go and how to bear witness to our experience of Jesus in this world.

In God’s Hands

What comes after this life, we can simply trust that that is in God’s hands. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority,” Jesus says to the disciples. And the two angels agree when they say, “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

The message is clear. God will take care of all of that and you can confidently leave that in God’s loving hands. But you are here now and you all have some things to do.

And what have you got to do? If you leave today without knowing that, then I will have failed in my job today.

Wait, Witness

You are called to wait on God. You are to be ready to respond to the opportunities to show God’s love in this world that God places before you. You are to wait, expecting that God’s Spirit will lead.

And you are called to witness. You are to be ready to share from your own heart what you have experienced of your Lord Jesus whenever the opportunity arises. And you are to do that in Jerusalem (that is, where you are). You are to do it in Judea and Samaria (that is, where you have some influence). And you are to do it to the ends of the earth (that is, wherever God might send you).

Why Are You Watching?

And every so often, you need to check yourself and ask why you are wasting your time watching heaven. Your heavenly destiny is in the hands of your heavenly Father, and you can trust God for it.

So, will you remember them? Will you ponder them this week? Wait, witness and why are you watching heaven?

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