United in the Trinity

The local youth are spending too much time in the billiard parlor. That's going to lead to bad habits of smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and reading dime novels. It will lead to bad language like "swell" and "so's your old man." It will lead to loitering, missing school, and mocking public officials.

Harold Hill starts to influence the townsfolk by singing, "Ya got trouble ... Right here in River City! With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Pool!"

Harold Hill starts this moral panic out of thin air. He wants to scare parents into buying band instruments from him. There's a lot of division in River City. The School Board is constantly bickering until they start singing in a Barbershop Quartet. The old ladies don't like the young, pretty librarian. The mayor doesn't like his daughter's boyfriend or the idea of a boys' band.

St. Paul didn't need to create any division in the Corinthian congregation. There was plenty there. Read Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Christians to hear him tell the story. Paul begins his letter by writing, "I ask that you all express the same view and not have any divisions among you, but that you be joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment" (1 Corinthians 1:10). In the Corinthian church, the people were divided over their favorite pastor; some were boasting of their acceptance of sin; some were bringing lawsuits against other Christians; others were partaking of the Lord's Table on Sunday after eating at the table of demons on Saturday; some were boasting about their spiritual gifts; and others were trying to discredit Paul and his gifts. Their church was filled with disorder and division. These problems caused the church to be splintered and hostile. Paul could very easily have written in one of his letters, "Ya got trouble ... Right here in Corinth City!"

Paul knew that Jesus desired for his Church to be unified. So, as Christ's called apostle, he worked to lead God's people to repent and forgive one another. Paul spoke strongly and lovingly about the work of Satan among them, begging them to leave their wicked ways and to unite around God's truths.

Paul could not accomplish this unity on his own. That's why he closed his second letter to the Corinthians with this threefold blessing: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Corinthians 13:14).

Disunity and division aren't limited to Corinth or River City. There's plenty of disunity and division in America. People are divided over politics of Left or Right. They're divided over issues like immigration, Iran, and data centers. Wyoming residents are divided over Colorado residents. Well, not really. It seems Wyomingites are united that Coloradans should stay in their own state. 😊

Christians can be divided in the church. It can be divisions over long-range vision, worship times, budget items, color of carpeting, and so much more.

Jesus once prayed that God's people would be as close and unified as the closeness and unity of the Triune God. Jesus wants his followers to be as one just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. Jesus prayed, "May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I am in you. May they also be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me" (John 17:21).

Unfortunately, that's not what we experience in our churches, homes, or nation. Among God's people there's bickering, quarreling, and dissension. There's trouble right here in America ... in Casper ... in our church. We need this same threefold blessing spoken over us. We need to be united in the Trinity.

St. Paul was writing to Christians who had all kinds of issues within their congregation. They were slow in forgiving their offending brother. They were disorderly in their worship. They had been consumed with the sexual sins of their culture. They tended to fracture into factions instead of being united around the gospel.

Paul blessed them, "The grace of our Lord Jesus ... be with you all." They desired this grace. They needed this grace. They cherished this grace.

We, too, need this grace. Are we 21st century Christians really any different from those 1st century Christians? The times and locations have changed ... but the sin and sinners have not changed. We still deal with sexual sins in our culture and in our own bodies. We are slow to confront sin and equally slow to offer forgiveness. We easily splint into factions and cliques at home, at work, in school, and even in church.

We need to repent of all these sins. We desire grace. We need grace. We cherish grace.

What is grace? Grace is God's undeserved love. Shelley and I have noticed there don't seem to be mosquitoes in Casper. I'm guessing it's because of the high winds and lack of humidity. I don't know, I'm not an entomologist. But we're grateful! Where we lived in Wisconsin, it seemed there were enough mosquitoes to drain your veins like tiny vampires. What do you do with a miserable mosquito? You squash it under your hand. If you didn't get it in time, there's going to be a bit of blood with the mosquito corpse.

God has every right to squash us like mosquitoes under his righteous right hand. We are just as guilty of drawing blood from Jesus as were Pontius Pilate, the Roman soldiers, and the Jewish religious leaders. The blood of Jesus is on us and on our children. It was us and our sins that drew blood when we slapped Jesus with the high priest's hand, when we tore his back with the soldier's scourge, when we nailed his hands and feet to the Roman cross, and when we pierced his side with the spear. We are worse than bloodsucking insects for we know better. We are worse than bloodsucking insects for we have drawn blood and killed the Son of God.

But God doesn't squash us. He forgives us! He covers us with the innocent blood of his Son, Jesus Christ to pay for our sins and remove them from us. Instead of turning his righteous anger on us, Jesus absorbed his Father's anger. Instead of squashing us, God nailed his Son to the cross. That's grace! That's powerful! That's magnificent! God unites us to himself and each other through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul continues with his blessing, "The love of God ... be with you." Our love is often fickle. We love if it suits our needs. We love if we have the time. We love if it's convenient.

We may feel like we are in a loveless family. We may check social media and read all the loveless comments. We often respond with less than charitable words and actions. We need to repent of our lack of love toward God and absence of love toward those around us.

On February 10, 1970, John Baca led his army unit through intense fire to rescue a platoon in South Vietnam. After they were successful in setting up a protected firing position, Baca and his pals started to fight back. That was when a grenade was thrown into the middle of the unit. Baca covered the grenade with his helmet and then he covered the helmet with his body. ... Then the grenade exploded.

That was love. Not the smoochy-smoochy type of love people celebrate on Valentine's Day. Instead, it's the type of love we remember on Memorial Day. It's the type of love that led John Baca to receive the Medal of Honor.

It's also the kind of love that St. Paul mentions in "the love of God." It's agape love -- a self-sacrificing kind of love. The kind of love that is willing to die for friends. It's the love Jesus taught about, "No one has greater love than this: that someone lays down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). That's the kind of love John Baca had for his pals. That's the kind of love Jesus has for us.

Well, that's not quite right. Jesus has a love far greater than that of John Baca. You see, while Baca was ready to die for his friends, he was also willing to shoot at his enemies. Jesus, though, allowed his enemies to crucify him. Jesus died for his enemies. Scripture says, "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners [enemies], Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

That's love. That's agape love. The love God the Father has through Jesus Christ, his Son. We need this love. We desire this love. We cherish this love.

No matter how difficult your family life is or how divisive your workplace is or how dysfunctional our American political system is -- you have the comfort of knowing that the God of the universe loves you.

Paul completes his threefold blessing by saying, "The fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you." Fellowship involves sharing, connecting, and enjoying things in common.

The Corinthian Christians certainly needed that blessing of fellowship. One of their problems was factions within the congregation -- separate cliques standing around in holy huddles. God's work was not getting done. That's why Paul urged them, "Finally, brothers, rejoice. Set things in order. Be encouraged. Agree with one another. Be at peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you" (2 Corinthians 13:11-13).

We talked in this week's Thirsty podcast about what Paul means when he writes, "Greet one another with a holy kiss." Pastor Klusmeyer teased about "liturgical smooching." ... We're not advocating that, by the way. However you choose to demonstrate love -- a hug, handshake, or holy kiss --it reflects the type of love Jesus has for you.

When we separate into cliques, holy huddles, or factions within the church, we need to repent of our lack of fellowship. Then God's work is not getting done.

Because of the grace of Jesus Christ and the love of God, now we have fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Because of our sin, we are separated from God because a three-time holy God cannot be in the presence of sinners. But through the sacrifice and resurrection of the second person of the Trinity, we now have fellowship with the entire Trinity. We have the name of the Triune God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- placed on our heads at our Baptism.

Now that we have fellowship with God, we have fellowship with each other as God's children. We enjoy the blessings of this fellowship -- a new life in Christ, answered prayers, the comfort of forgiveness, the assurance of a life that never ends, and unity with our fellow believers.

What a blessing it is for us to enjoy fellowship from the Holy Spirit. Celebrate the fellowship when we're enjoying coffee and doughnuts after worship or breaking the binding on hymnals and Bibles or attending a car race or baseball game together.

We're planning a big fellowship event for our WELS Wyoming Youth in Casper on August 1. Our goal is to have teens from Gillette, Thermopolis, Cheyenne, Laramie, and Casper meet that Saturday downtown for a scavenger hunt, then go to the trampoline park, then have Bible study, pizza, and a movie at the church. On Sunday we'll all worship together and enjoy a potluck meal to celebrate our fellowship.

We need this fellowship in our church. We desire this fellowship with other WELS Wyoming churches. We cherish this fellowship within the Wisconsin Synod.

No matter your age, you've lived in the United States of America long enough to realize we're not really united. What really unites us anymore? It's not a common language or shared heritage or mutual political views or respective religion. There's trouble right here! There's so much in our world that divides us. Only the Triune God unites us.

Our Triune God is united. As we'll confess in the Athanasian Creed, "Within this Trinity none comes before or after; none is greater or inferior, but all three persons are coequal and coeternal, so that in every way, as stated before, all three persons are to be worshiped as one God and one God worshiped as three persons." Only a common faith, firmly rooted in the truth of Scripture, where we receive grace, love, and fellowship from our three-in-one God will create this unity. Amen.