Fearsome Threesome

May 31, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

When we baptize a baby or adult, we cite the triune God: “We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

These words are from Matthew 28:19: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

This is why use this triune formula whenever we baptize or pray. Jesus etched the phrase permanently in our ecclesial lexicon. 

We might conclude that the concept of God in three persons was understood and proclaimed by Christians in the earliest days of the church. We might also conclude that the first Christians were routinely using the formulation every time they baptized someone.

But New Testament scholars who get paid to notice such things point out that the Father-Son-Holy Spirit phrase appears nowhere else in the New Testament.

“It’s a reminder that it took time for the church to learn to speak and confess in a trinitarian way, and even longer for a formal declaration of ‘the Trinity’ to emerge,” writes Matt Skinner, professor of New Testament of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, but noting the gradual process cautions us against trying to find too much precision in the New Testament’s ways of relating (or uniting) Jesus to God and to the church’s experience of Holy Spirit power.”

So the early church had to take some time to develop the model of the Trinity to describe God. If we modern Christians have difficulty grasping the Trinity, it’s good to know the early Christians were slow to perfect the idea. It took some figuring out.

When was the last time you had to explain the Trinity to someone?

We’ve heard the sermons. The Trinity is the way we describe the three basic components of our relationship to God: creator, God the redeemer, God the advocate.

For 17 centuries, preachers have been devising ways to explain the Trinity to simple-minded heathens. St. Patrick, with no snakes to drive out of Ireland in the fifth century, is said to have used the three-leafed shamrock to explain the Trinity to locals. If so, he didn’t write about it, nor did anyone else until about 1726, so the legend appears to be as false as the analogy is weak.

If shamrocks don’t work, there is the classic cliché about the various roles we play in life. For example, I am a father, I am a son, I am a spouse – three different roles that call for three distinct presentations. Yet these roles do not require a trifurcation into three distinct Persons. The analogy doesn’t really help us understand the nature of the Holy Trinity.  God in three persons? Why not one God with three personalities? That might work if all three personalities were spirit, but one is flesh. One is tempted to ask the question in the form of a haiku (which, I admit, are more fun to write than to read):

Can corporeal
blend incorporeally
as one in the same?

That’s where the concept becomes a conundrum, and because there are no instruments with which to take God’s true measure, the enigma deepens.

The Trinitarian paradigm was formalized in the year 325 of the common era when the newly Christianized Emperor Constantine called the bishops of the church to Nicaea to hash out some common understanding of what all Christians should believe.

I often wonder what it must have been like for the bishops to work under the watchful but not always comprehending eyes of the most powerful autocrat in the world, a military man with no background in theology. We’ve seen throughout history that theological naïfs like Constantine can be dangerous if they think God has called them to special purposes. Did Constantine aver that as soon as the bible was canonized, “It will be my favorite book”? Did the bishops press Constantine to testify about his faith? And did the Emperor respond, “It’s personal, I really don’t want to get into that.”

Be that as it may, when Matthew wrote about the gathering of Jesus and the disciples on the mountain, Constantine was still about 220 years in the future. 

The scene in Matthew 28 is Jesus’ farewell address traditionally called the “Great Commission” because he gave them their marching orders.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Mt 28:18-19)

The word “obey” seems arbitrary and even a bit harsh, and history has shown that some Christian missionaries overdid it when they set out to make disciples. In many cases the missionaries who demanded obedience not to Jesus but to themselves. Columbus converted indigenous peoples of the Americas and demanded their submission as slaves. Missionaries were appalled by the innocent nakedness of Pacific islanders and demanded they cover themselves with itchy European clothing, thus bestowing upon them with the “gift of shame.” Baptist missionaries to Native Americans in North America also demanded their charges dress like whites but also required them to stop speaking their own languages and to give up artifacts of their culture that the missionaries regarded as satanic, including drums.

“If the authority that Matthew 28 talks about is interpreted as an authority to dominate, to reign, to subjugate, then the goal of Christian discipleship is to conquer the world for Christ,” writes New Testament Professor Osvaldo Vena. “This way of understanding the mission of the church reflects a patriarchal and imperialist model that characterized the conquest of America as well as the missionary enterprise of the 19th and 20th centuries.

On the contrary, when Jesus calls upon his disciples to “obey,” he says it in a context that turns obedience from a duty into a sacred opportunity. We are called to obey “everything I have commanded you.”

“Baptizing (disciples) with the Trinitarian formula implies their incorporation into a community that acknowledges and confesses a relational Godhead,” writes Professor Vena. 

What has Jesus commanded us?

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” (John 13:34)

Matthew, in his rendition of the Sermon on the Mount, specifies the ones who have Jesus’ special attention. (Mt 5:3-13)

The poor in spirit.

Those who mourn.

The meek.

The seekers of righteousness.

The merciful.

The poor in heart.

The peacemakers.

The persecuted.

The reviled.

Jesus reached out to all persons during his earthly ministry. He cured the sick. He sought justice for the poor. He welcomed foreigners, thieving tax collectors, prostitutes, Roman officers, even Pharisees, even Judas, into his life. And he loved them all.

The resurrected Jesus, given all authority over heaven and earth by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, calls upon us to make disciples and teach them to obey his teaching:

To love ourselves. To love all people, regardless of their rank or nationality. To seek justice for the persecuted, regardless of their immigration status, sexual orientation, religion, or race. To feed the hungry poor. To rule justly. To make peace. To love your enemy. To nourish and protect children.

In our frightening, chaotic, divided society, it’s hard to imagine that such commands could get any traction. There’s no evidence in media or anywhere online that anyone is really interested in obeying everything Jesus commanded us.

That is certainly an indictment on ourselves and on our church because the commands are coming from the highest authority in the universe: the Triune God.

On Trinity Sunday we remind ourselves that we cannot live without that authority or the love that authority commands.

A poet who calls herself Sharon offers this prayer:

Holy Spirit, Father, Son,
How can I declare your name?
Ever-living three-in-one?

God, besides whom, there is none.
Rock of Waters, fount of flame,
Holy Spirit, Father, Son.

Guarantee of all to come,
Kinsman in our temporal frame,
Ever-living three-on-one.

Advocate, whose love has won,
King, whose crown you rightly claim,
Holy Spirit, Father, Son.

Good and true in all you’ve done,
Age to age you are the same,
Ever-living three-on-one.

Western shores to rising sun,
All will celebrate your fame,
Holy Spirit, Father, Son,
Ever-living three-on-one.

Selah.