+Points to ponder

1. How does ‘hyper-individualism’ affect our walk of faith with Christ?
2. We are call into connection with God and with each other. What can we do as a congregation to foster that connection?
3. Read the Athanasian Creed – How does the relationship of the Holy Trinity and the work of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – bring you peace and comfort?

+Sermon Transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto each of you from God our Father and our Lord and King, Jesus the Christ. Amen.

Let us pray: Holy God, faithful and unchanging: enlarge our minds with the knowledge of Your truth, and draw us more deeply into the mystery of Your love, that we may truly worship You, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever Amen.

American author Orson Scott Card is not a fan of most modern science-fiction, despite writing many science-fiction books himself. What bothers him most is that the heroes of the books and movies are often rugged individuals, disconnected from family or friends, going about their adventures on their own. Card wonders where the hero’s husband or wife, children, siblings, and childhood friends are to be found.

It is not good for man – even a science fiction hero – to be alone. Therefore, through Jesus’ dialogue with the unbelieving Jews in our text for this Trinity Sunday,

GOD REVEALS HIS TRIUNE NATURE THAT WE MAY BE NOT “ME” BUT “WE” WITH HIM.

We prefer to be ‘Me’: Contemporary culture thrives on hyper-individuality. For instance, people are getting married later and later, if at all. In 1962, half of 21-year-olds were already married. By 2019, that was down to 8 percent.

It is not a brand-new vocabulary word, but one used more and more: ‘Sheeple,’ blending sheep and people, it is a term that has come into usage for an individual that unthinkingly ‘goes with the flow’ instead of charting his own path. Sheeple are those who have lost their individuality and just want to ‘assimilate’ – to ‘blend-in.’

Legend has it that “back in the 16th century, in a tiny village near Nuremberg, lived a family with 18 children. In order to keep food on the table for his brood, Albrecht Durer the Elder, the father and head of the household, was a goldsmith by profession and worked almost 18 hours a day at his trade and any other paying chore he could find in the neighborhood.

Despite the family strain, two of Durer's boys, Albrecht the Younger and Albert, had a dream. They both wanted to pursue their talent for art, but they knew that their father would never be financially able to send either of them to Nuremberg to study at the academy there.

After many long discussions at night in their crowded bed, the two boys finally worked out a pact. They would toss a coin. The loser would go to work in the nearby mines and, with his earnings, support his brother while he attended the academy. Then, in four years, when that brother who won the toss completed his studies, he would support the other brother at the academy, either with sales of his artwork or, if necessary, also by laboring in the mines.

They tossed a coin on a Sunday morning after church. Albrecht the Younger won the toss and went off to Nuremberg. Albert went down into the dangerous mines and, for the next four years, financed his brother, whose work at the academy was almost an immediate sensation. Albrecht's etchings, his woodcuts and his oils were far better than those of most of his professors, and by the time he graduated, he was beginning to earn considerable fees for his commissioned works.

When the young artist returned to his village, the Durer family held a festive dinner on their lawn to celebrate Albrecht's triumphant homecoming. After a long and memorable meal, punctuated with music and laughter, Albrecht rose from his honored position at the head of the table to drink a toast to his beloved brother for the years of sacrifice that had enabled Albrecht to fulfill his ambition. His closing words were, ‘And now, Albert, blessed brother of mine, now it is your turn. Now you can go to Nuremberg to pursue your dream, and I will take care of you.’

All heads turned in eager expectation to the far end of the table where Albert sat, tears streaming down his pale face, shaking his lowered head from side to side while he sobbed and repeated, over, and over, ‘No.’

Finally, Albert rose and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He glanced down the long table at the faces he loved, and then, holding his hands close to his right cheek, he said softly, ‘No, brother. I cannot go to Nuremberg. It is too late for me. Look what four years in the mines have done to my hands! The bones in every finger have been smashed at least once, and lately I have been suffering from arthritis so badly in my right hand that I cannot even hold a glass to return your toast, much less make delicate lines on parchment or canvas with a pen or a brush. No, brother, for me it is too late.’

More than [500] years have passed. By now, Albrecht Durer's hundreds of masterful portraits, pen and silver-point sketches, watercolors, charcoals, woodcuts, and copper engravings hang in every great museum in the world, but the odds are great that you, like most people, are familiar with Albrecht Durer's most famous work, ‘Praying Hands.’

Some believe that Albrecht Durer painstakingly drew his brother's abused hands with palms together and thin fingers stretched skyward in honor of his brother Albert. He called his powerful drawing simply ‘Hands,’ but the entire world almost immediately opened their hearts to his great masterpiece and renamed his tribute of love, ‘Praying Hands.’” What a beautiful reminder to us that no one ever makes it alone!

‘We’ is better than ‘Me’: It is not good to be alone. If I may further illustrate: Four hundred years ago, the English writer John Donne wrote a famous poem about individualism. You might know at least the beginning and the end, not realizing they come from the same poem. “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less ... Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

No man is an island. When one man dies, it reminds that humanity is dying. As St. Paul puts it: “For the wages of sin is death…” To be alone is, in some ways, to die.

God is not a ‘Me’: Our holy Lord does not reflect this sinful hyper-individualism. Because our sin can drive us to be “hyper-sturdy-individuals” disconnected from one another, we assume God, too, is a “hyper-sturdy-individual.” We speak of our Lord as God, Him, He, the One.

Then, on Trinity Sunday, we squish three persons into this one, sturdy individual. In some mysterious way, like the parts of an apple or a three-leaf clover or the three phases of water, our one God is also the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

But in the Garden, the Lord said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Man was created male and female. One, and yet two. In marriage, the two become, once more, one because it was not good, the Lord said, for man to be alone.

God is a ‘We’: The Father begets a Son through whom comes the Spirit. The Jews had a hard time understanding Jesus as the Son of the Father, because they could not let go of the ideas they had about God. The Muslims, too, struggle with the Tri-unity of God. “They have certainly disbelieved who say, ‘Allah is the third of three.’ And there is no god except one God.”

Thus, Jesus’ use of the Divine Name for Himself was so repulsive. How can He be the great “I Am”? But in a mysterious wonder, our Lord is in fact three persons in one divine substance. The Lord is the Father who eternally begets the Son through whom comes the Spirit. In Jesus, we see God for who He really is, just as Abraham did in his day. So, we, like Abraham, abide in Jesus’ Word.

The devil would have us be by ourselves, islands, disconnected, kept apart. The devil tells us that to be like God is to be alone. He tells us we can be free to do whatever we want, no matter the people around us. They can be safely ignored in favor of our personal choices and preferences. This is a lie. The Word of the Lord is that we know the Father through the Son, who knows the Father perfectly. This is the truth.

The Father freely sends His Son into the world to redeem us. The Son willingly gives up His life on the cross to free us. The Spirit is willingly breathed out that He might live in us. By the power of the Spirit, we keep the Father’s Word, Jesus, in us. This is what it means to have eternal life, and the promise of never tasting death. It is not good to be alone. So Jesus has made us one with His Father by the sacrifice of the cross, and by enlivening our faith by sending the Spirit into our hearts.

The hero of the Gospels, unlike heroes in so much fiction, is not alone. Jesus does not stand by Himself. He is glorified by His Father and honors Him by keeping His Word. He turns to us and invites us to hear the true promises of His Father, to know the Father through His one and only Son. Abraham knew God not merely as a “He” but as a “We.” Now we do as well, through the Word of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”