According to the liturgical calendar, today is Trinity Sunday. On a Sunday like this, we get to reflect on who God is. As history has proven, finding an answer to the question “who is God” has proven difficult. The Creeds define God as being one in substance but at the same time three persons. The first verse of our opening hymn declares:
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning
our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
At least since the fourth century, the majority of Christians have affirmed that definition of God’s nature, even if we still struggle to make sense of our confession. So, if you don’t completely understand the ins and outs of the Trinity, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Nevertheless, together with the majority of Christians throughout history, we proclaim that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This morning, we have heard a reading from the fifth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul wants us to know that since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus. Or, we might want to go with the way the Common English Bible translates the opening line of our reading: “Since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” If we go with the Common English Bible version, peace with God comes not through our faith but the faithfulness of Jesus. I think that makes a lot of sense. But not only do we experience peace with God through Jesus’ faithfulness, we have hope because God has poured out God’s love in us through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
If we read this passage through a Trinitarian lens, perhaps we will see a Trinitarian pattern. Of course, Paul doesn’t provide us with an explicit Trinitarian formula, nor is this the point of the passage.
What Paul does here is develop his understanding of how Jesus’ faithfulness makes us righteous and enables us to experience peace with God. In making his argument about experiencing God’s peace, Paul points to several qualities that come to us through our relationship with God through Jesus, and in the Spirit dwells within us. These qualities that lead to peace with God include endurance in times of suffering, which produces character, which produces hope, and which is rooted in God’s love. These are the gifts of God we celebrate today. While it’s easy to miss the word about suffering in this passage, when Paul talks about our relationship with God, he wants us to know that even as Jesus suffered, we may also experience suffering. However, suffering is not the final word, because suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which offers us hope.
Since Paul begins by speaking about experiencing peace with God, we might want to consider what Paul has in mind when he speaks of peace. Is peace a nice, quiet spot in a grassy meadow where we can take a nap? That’s called “peace and quiet?” That kind of peace is welcome, but too often it’s fleeting. We need to remember that Paul not only speaks of peace with God, he recognizes that suffering can be part of our life experience. It’s clear from his letters and from the Book of Acts that Paul experienced his share of suffering, but that didn’t deter him. So, rather than dwell on suffering, he speaks of endurance and character. I’ve noticed that character is in short supply in our world, starting at the top.
Now, sometimes we speak of peace of mind, which happens when we have a clear conscience. That’s a good thing because it goes along with character. However, I’m not sure that this is what Paul has in mind.
Of course, peace can be the absence of war, and Paul lived in an empire that offered the Mediterranean world the Pax Romana. However, Rome’s peace came with a heavy price. People across the empire exchanged freedom for stability. Even Rome’s peace was fleeting; that’s because history has shown us that the kind of peace that involves an absence of war is rare. When one war ends, another one starts. All we have to do is look around at what is happening in the world. There are the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and over the last few days, we’ve witnessed the exchange of fire between Israel and Iran. It looks like the United States will get pulled into this conflict. We shouldn’t forget the divide that exists in our own country, which feels like we’re at war with each other.
While I strongly embrace the call for peace, both external and internal, I think Paul speaks here of a deeper kind of peace that is not determined by our circumstances. This kind of peace surpasses our understanding and is a gift of God received by faith that reconciles us to God. Every other form of peace is rooted in this act of reconciliation, rooted in Jesus’ death and resurrection.
In Paul’s view of things, God has proven God’s love for us through Jesus’ faithfulness that led to his death on the cross even though we are still sinners (Rom 5:8). What this means is that while we often put up barriers to keep God at bay, God is at work breaking down the barriers that separate us from God and one another. When God breaks down these barriers, we can experience God’s peace, hope, and love.
The good news is that while Paul can speak of God’s wrath, ultimately the God we meet in Scripture isn’t an angry, distant, judgmental supreme being who is out to get us. Instead, the God we meet in scripture and who is present to us through the Holy Spirit is passionate, committed, caring, and loving. This is the God who made a covenant with Abraham, promising that God would bless the nations through his descendants. This same God covenanted with Moses, through whom God delivered Israel from slavery and bound it together as a nation. This same God is known to us through Jesus, whose life, death, and resurrection remind us that God’s love is ever present. This is the God who walks with us when we experience the pain and suffering that builds character through endurance.
Theologian Jürgen Moltmann calls the God we meet in the New Testament the "Crucified God," because this is the God we meet on the cross. Therefore, it is in the shadow of this cross that we encounter the Prince of Peace. It is in this encounter, as we grow in character through endurance, that we experience hope. Hope does not disappoint.
I want to step back for a moment to what Paul has to say about suffering and how it leads to endurance and character. We must reject the idea that suffering is an expression of divine judgment. Too often in life, the guilty get off easy while the innocent suffer. That’s often the way it is with war, including all the wars that are taking place right now. The innocent victims of war, who too often are children, are called “collateral damage.” So, let us be careful with how we speak of suffering, because not all suffering is the same.
God doesn’t promise us a life without suffering. Disasters strike, people get sick, and we wonder where God is at, as we go through these difficult times. We may wonder why God doesn’t do something to prevent a plane filled with passengers from crashing. Unfortunately, there aren’t any easy answers to these questions. However, we have this promise that God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit so that we might experience hope no matter our circumstances.
The good news is that we have been made right with God because of Jesus’ faithfulness, which leads to peace with God along with hope. According to biblical scholar Beverly Gaventa, the kind of hope Paul has in mind is different from “the flabby and trivial hopes for pleasant weather or a hearty supper. ‘Hope’ for Paul is not the equivalent of desire or wish. To the contrary, hope refers to confidence, trust, conviction. The ‘hope of sharing the glory of God’ is Christian certainty that God's glory will be shared with all. [Gaventa, Texts for Preaching, C, (WJK, 1993), 357.]
All of this is due to the fact that, as the Book of Hebrews reveals, we have a high priest who has been tested in every way like us and yet does not sin (Hebrews 4:14-15). In embracing Jesus, who has been tested in all things, we find peace with God.
As for what this asks of us, peace with God ultimately leads to transformed lives, so that we might stand before God as righteous. When it comes to being righteous before God, Kathleen Norris writes that Scripture consistently defines righteousness "as a willingness to care for the most vulnerable people in a culture, characterized in ancient Israel as orphans, widows, resident aliens, and the poor." [Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, (NY: Riverhead Books, 1998), 96]. So, if we’re at peace with God, then we will live lives full of compassion and grace.
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
Tyrone Community Presbyterian Church
Tyrone, Michigan
Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2025
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