On this Holy Trinity Sunday, you are confronted once again with this sobering reality: the Church, and you a part of it, worship one God in Three Persons—the Father, uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal; the Son, uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal; the Holy Spirit, uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal. Yet, they are not three uncreateds, incomprehensibles, and eternals, but one. This is not the kind of god that man understands (He is, after all, incomprehensible); this is not the kind of god that man creates!

Nevertheless, this is the way God revealed Himself. God says to you in His Word, “I AM, and this is how I am.” He doesn’t add the caveat, “And you must fully understand it, too.” This side of eternity, no one will fully understand it. One may try to explain it using analogies, such as triangles and shamrocks and the Kool-aid Man, but even these do not allow for full comprehension and may even border on heresy, or fully cross over that border. No, He simply says, “I AM, believe it,” then gives the faith to believe it, so you, by faith, say, “Amen. Yes, yes, it is so.”

He says, “I AM.” God reveals Himself as Trinity. Certainly, you can search the Scriptures front to back and not find that term. You won’t find God outright declaring that which was confessed this morning in the Athanasian Creed as concisely and succinctly as that, but He does reveal His triune-ness. In the beginning, God spoke and things were; “Let us make…,” God said, and it was. (cf. Genesis 1:1—2:4) And when Jesus was walking the earth with His disciples, He had said, “I and My Father are one.” (John 10:30) And, by holy inspiration, the apostle John wrote in one of his letters, “[T]here are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one,” (1 John 5:7 NKJV) having once already referred to the Son as the Word. (cf. John 1:1-14)

The catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.

I know I jumped a week ahead as you’ll confess this and the rest of the Athanasian Creed for Holy Trinity Sunday, saying in no uncertain terms that you believe in one God in three Persons, distinct yet the same God. I bring up this portion of the Athanasian Creed because today is a day set aside to acknowledge the work of one of the Persons in particular—the Holy Ghost—and when speaking of the work of the Holy Ghost, one cannot escape speaking of the work of God in three Persons; one, because He is one God always at work in all three Persons whether it is recognized or acknowledged or not; and two, because the work of the Holy Ghost is almost always behind the scenes, if you will, calling attention primarily to the Son and His work.

But on the day of Pentecost, particular attention is paid to the Holy Ghost, and His work is more overt and pointed out in the Scripture. Yet, even on this day, the purpose for which the Holy Ghost acted openly was to point to the One who was and is God-with-us and His work for your salvation.

Jesus was praying. He would soon be captured to be crucified, and He prayed. “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” He prayed for a glory unlike any other.

“And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Now it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God.”

After going before His disciples into Galilee (cf. Matthew 26:32; 28:7), and appearing to many, many people, giving them many infallible proofs of His resurrection (cf. Acts 1:3), Jesus led His disciples through Jerusalem to Bethany to be received into heaven there before them. Christ’s ascension did not happen in Galilee, which served as something of their home base during His three-year ministry, but just outside of Jerusalem. They had been there a mere 40 days previous where they had witnessed His passion, suffering, and death, and where He had risen from the dead.

I would guess that many of you have seen or heard complaints against Christians and Christianity that speak to, or speak against, the exclusivity of the faith. That is to say, those who complain are displeased with the fact that only those who believe in Jesus Christ and trust in Him for forgiveness and righteousness will be saved. They confess it to be unfathomable that a loving God would send those who deny faith in Christ to hell, or even allow it to happen. They also likely believe all people are generally good.

Unfortunately, this a world that wants to believe anything and everything, at least those things thought to be encouraging and uplifting, and especially those things which confirms deeply held biases. Seemingly contradictorily, the world is quick to accept everybody’s opinion as that person’s own truth, though that truth better not extend beyond that person’s personal space. Anything or anyone who teaches against these two ideals is denounced as intolerant and elitist. This is a society that values situational ethics and relativism over absolutes, that wants to shift blame and not accept responsibility. It’s a world that refuses to know The Way.