Sermon Text, Sucking Out the Venom:

Well, welcome everyone to Holy Trinity Sunday, 2024. Tomorrow you can start taking down all the decorations that you put up for this special day in the church year. You did put up decorations, didn’t you? I know the children have been counting down the days in joyful anticipation of this day. I can hear them now, “Mommy, how many days is it until Trinity Sunday?”  It is an exciting time. I hope each of you got what you wanted for Trinity Sunday.

This is the last day we will sing all the Trinity carols that we have been enjoying for the past month. Some of you are already saying, “Why we can’t we keep the Trinity spirit around all year long.”

Oh, you didn’t give Trinity presents this year? You didn’t decorate your home? What do you mean you didn’t even know it was Trinity Sunday until you looked at the bulletin this morning?

K., I’ll have to accept the fact that Trinity Sunday isn’t a very big event in the average Christian’s life. Did you know that Trinity Sunday isn’t much fun for preachers, either? Each year, on the Sunday after Pentecost, we might feel the pressure of explaining the unexplainable-- God, in three persons, blessed Trinity.

So, I’m going to have us warm up with something I do understand very well.  And that’s a camp song about the Trinity.  With Lutheroad just around the corner, it’s time for a camp song.  Goes like this:   “I love the Father, I love God’s only son.  I love the Spirit.  I love the 3 in 1.  God has created me, redeemed and sanctified.  Praise God (4 x total)”

Nice job, everybody.   You are solid on that song!  What no pastor, youth director, or parent ever feels totally solid on is explaining our Trinitarian God.  Perhaps, we can ask God why the bible doesn’t offer us specific scripture to explain precisely how to understand the Trinity.  The term Trinity is never mentioned in Scripture!   Yes, Mathew ends with the Great Commission, with Jesus instructing that his followers are to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   Jesus, in our gospel today from John, talks about the power of God’s Spirit.  And the Holy Spirit is a key actor for Mark and Luke in Jesus’ baptism.  You’ll remember how we enjoyed a whole Lenten series on Fruitful Living, a transformative life within the fruits of the Holy Spirit as described in Galatians.   So, while God the Father, Son, and Spirit are clearly key characters in Scripture, Scripture never refers directly to the Holy Trinity per se and gives us instructions as to how we are to precisely understand this 3 in 1 God, for our own benefit and guidance for interacting with people of other faith.

Pastors throughout centuries have offered a plethora of illustrations, but the perfect one is elusive.  To wonderful effect, St. Patrick used the 3-leafed shamrock to teach the Trinity in Ireland.  But many point out, you can pull off one leaf and it seems the other 2 leaves aren’t affected much.  I like the suggestion of a three-braid ponytail.   Each braid so interwoven with the other, it's hard to affect one without the compromising the other two.  But in this example, like the clover, there is no difference in purpose among the 3 features.

One pastor caused commotion when he took an egg, held it over the children’s heads and got ready to crack it.  But, the egg had been hard boiled.  Avoiding the gooey mess initially feared, the kids were shown by the pastor the 3 parts of one egg—the shell, the yoke, and the albumin.

I guess I’m more taken with the Swiss Army Knife.  One instrument, but multiple tools.   A measure, a knife, a screwdriver each offer special contribution to the flourishing of a project.   An illustration I heard this week, from Richard Rohr, uses the beautiful image of a dance troupe.  Three dancers engaged with one another in something beautiful. While perhaps moving or leaping at different times, doing so as part of one dance.  Maybe one being spun or tossed in the air by the others—unique but interdependent.

Well, friends, while we could explore ad infinitum best Trinity illustrations, let me share my key take away:  Relationship!  The Trinity teaches us the very essence of God is Father, Son, and Spirit in relationship. The very essence of God, of love, of life is Relationships.  And since we’re created in the image of God, relationships and interconnection with God and each other are key to our healthy functioning.  And it’s why it really pains Christians to hear data about rising isolation, loneliness and disconnection in our culture.

John 3.16 from our gospel today, which Luther called the gospel within the gospel, shows the Dance of the Trinity’s outreach to us so well:   For God the Father so loved the world, that the Son was sent, so that whosoever believes, trusts, and connects to Jesus (and Luther in his explanation of the Creed drives home the point that it’s the Spirit who equips us with the ability and opportunity to believe and trust), will not die, but have rich, hopeful, interconnected life.  Father, Son, Spirit—dancing together to bring life into the world and help us dance with God.

For the balance of our time, let’s dig into what Jesus’s John 3.16 message, actually moving to his comment immediately prior to this one.  Verses 14 and 15:    ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

On Wednesday, it was my turn to lead the vivacious afternoon bible study.  The group asked to go back to the beginning, literally, and move through Genesis. So, there we were, confronted with the snake, the serpent.  The whisperer, the tempter, that unleashes the dark, self-centered, and fearful side of Adam and Eve’s free will.   We only covered a few chapters of Genesis, but we were reminded that despite a loving God who invites us to co-create with God and patiently keeps calling us into relationship, we humans keep making rebellious, damaging decisions.  Adam and Eve choose the snake’s suggestions over God’s goodness, Cain kills Abel, as soon as they’re out of the ark Noah and his family sin again, when humans discover how to build, they build towers to their own glory, and the resulting Babel symbolizes the dis-unity between humans and with God.

Well, you know the next section of Genesis.  Along comes Joseph and his brothers who only stop murdering Joseph amid an opportunity to make a few bucks by selling him as a slave instead. Fast forward to Egypt, where Joseph’s descendants are now slaves and God raises up Moses to lead the people.  But even headed toward the Promised Land, humans are rebellious.  And the snakes find them again.   They’re cursing God and Moses for even taking them out of Egypt, when things get worse:  people start dying when poisonous serpents in the area start biting the intruders.

I don’t know about you, but even as an adult, there is something creepy about seeing a snake.  In my back yard last week, I discovered this.   I showed the bible study as a little warm up for the Genesis story and admitted that even though it was dead skin from shedding, my heart rate jumped a bit just looking at it.   A little more rattling was realizing after it happened that my dog Breezy disturbed this snake who slithered and then swam away.   I know it’s not likely, but I need to bone up on my emergency plan in case my dog or a family member is bit by a snake resulting in the flow of venomous poison within my system.

But we realize and confess, don’t we, that we humans do indeed have a poisonous venom flowing within our bloodlines and each of us.   The stories of Genesis make that clear.  The headlines today make that clear.   Each of us and collectively as a culture, are in bondage to sin and we cannot free ourselves.  We’ve been bit and the poison of pride, consumerism, self-centeredness, rage, and fear flow within us, steering us away from life into death.

In the desert, God answered the cries of the people.  He instructed Moses to create a bronze serpent and lift it up high on a pole, so that whoever in an act of trust looked upon the Lord’s gift, would experience healing.   Shout out to Nathan Kipker, a friend of mine, who just received his M.D last weekend.   Fascinating that Nathan and all other doctors are presented with what as a symbol of the healing profession?   Yes, two serpents on a pole.

How powerful that Jesus uses this saving event in Israel’s history as an analogy for the saving gift he will offer the whole world.   For Jesus knows about the poison that flows within us.  And in love, friendship, and passion for each of us, Jesus goes to Jerusalem, where a pole awaits.  Sometimes in movies we see that if someone is bitten by a snake, the hero is willing to suck out the venom, risking their own life.   In Jesus’ case, he is willing to suck out and neutralize ultimately all of our poisonous sin.  Symbolically, he becomes the serpent of Genesis and Moses’ story, because upon Jesus, ALL our sin is laid.   And on that Roman cross, upon that pole, Jesus is lifted up to die in our place.  So that all who might see Jesus would live!

On Wednesday evening, at the conclusion of watching Episodes 3 and 4 of Season 4 of the Chosen, many of us had tears in our eyes.  Because the scene depicted Jesus’ pivot from Galilee to Jerusalem, where Jesus knows death awaits him.  His life will be pressed and crushed out of him, and Jesus the human is fearful and greatly stressed.  But out of LOVE for his friends and all of God’s children, he knows the new life his gift can offer, so he's willing to endure.

That’s why Jesus says what he says in John 3.16.  And the fantastic verse 17 that often gets overshadowed by 16:  ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The church at large must accept some of the fault, but too many in today’s world do indeed think that God is about condemning our world, and each of us.  So let us, lean into the joyful Pentecost commission, to bless the world and let our neighbors know about a God who Dances.  And wants to dance with each of them, not in condemnation, but of saving relationship.  In a dance of joy and life.

In the name of our Triune God, Amen.