At one point during a football game, the coach called one of his 7-year-old players aside and asked, “Do you understand what cooperation is? What a team is? The little boy nodded in the affirmative.

  “Do you understand that what matters is not whether we win or lose, but how we play together as a team?” The little boy nodded yes.

“So,” the coach continued, “I’m sure you understand, that when a penalty is called, you shouldn’t argue, curse, attack the referee, or call him bad names?” Again the little boy nodded.

  He continued, “And when I call you off the field so that another boy gets a chance to play, it’s not good sportsmanship to call your coach a bad name either, is it?” Again the little boy nodded.

  “Good,” said the coach. “Now please go over there and explain all that to your mother.”

 

   We all need things explained at times and as Christians on Trinity Sunday need to try to understand the importance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

 

John 3: “If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”

 

   In today's Gospel lesson we have Jesus talking with a respected member of the Jewish council who has a hard time understanding what our Lord was telling him.

 

  People often have a hard time understanding the “big picture” and we are often not able to understand “heavenly things”.

 

   This doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not something recently invented by any church. It comes to us right from the Bible.

 

  Our Lord told His disciples to “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”.

 

  Notice He said name and not names.

 

  In the Triune God we have three distinct persons in one divine being.

 

   God the Father is the creator of all things and our preserver.

 

   Our Heavenly Father cares for each of us. Through sin however, man separated himself from God and nothing man by himself could do could bring man to the level of righteousness which God demands for that separation to end.

 

 

   God the Son Jesus Christ came in the flesh to be that perfect sacrifice that would reconcile man to God.

 

   Through His death on the cross “the Lamb of God” took mankind's sin away. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness even so must the Son of Man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

 

   God the Holy Ghost is that comforter that Christ promised to his disciples.

 

   The Holy Spirit's work is mysterious to us, but we know that the Third Person of the Holy Trinity richly blesses the Church and its members.

 

Beginning with our baptism, when we are “born again”, the Holy Ghost assists Christians in ways we may not be fully aware of now, but helps us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven where we then will.

 

   We Christians then worship the Holy Trinity. God the Father the creator and preserver, God the Son our Savior, and God the Holy Ghost the life giving Spirit.

 

  This doctrine is a glorious revelation of the true and living God. Our God who helps us in our life here on earth and assures us of the unending joys of heaven with Him.

The Lord be with you

 

Let us pray

 

O Lord God Almighty, Eternal, Immortal, Invisible,the mysteries of whose being are unsearchable: Accept, we beseech thee, our praises for the revelation which thou hast made of thyself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons, and one God; and mercifully grant, that ever holding fast this faith, we may magnify thy glorious Name; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen