Trinity Sunday - 2026
Sermon for Trinity Sunday, Year A
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Rev. Andrew McLarty
I speak to you in the name of the God who is One: Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The doctrines, dogma, and theology of the church have never caused internal or external argument since Jesus wrote the New Testament two thousand years ago.
There is not one iota of truth in that statement. Infact, it was “one iota” that helped cause the Council of Nicaea in 325. The Church was arguing about the nature of Christ. Was Jesus truly God? Or was he merely the greatest of God’s creatures?
The controversy began with a priest from Alexandria named Arius. Arius believed that Christians had gone too far in speaking about Christ as divine. To protect the uniqueness and supremacy of God the Father, he taught that the Son must have been created by the Father before all ages. Christ was greater than any other being, holier than any creature, even the instrument through whom God made the world — but still not eternal in the same way the Father was eternal. As Arius would say, “There was when he was not.”
To many Christians, this seemed reasonable at first. It preserved the idea that God is one and unchanging. But others immediately sensed that something essential was being lost, like Athanasius of Alexandria, who argued that if Christ were merely a creature, albeit, highly exalted, then Christians were not truly encountering God in Christ. Salvation itself was at stake. Humanity could not be united to God by someone who was not fully God.
So in 325 CE bishops from across the Christian world to the First Council of Nicaea.
At the council, the debate narrowed around two Greek words that looked almost identical:
- homoousios — “of the same substance”
- homoiousios — “of similar substance”
Only one letter separated them: the iota.
Those supporting Arius were comfortable saying Christ was similar to the Father in essence. After all, Christ reflected God perfectly. But Athanasius and the Nicene bishops insisted that “similar” was not enough. A creature can resemble God. An angel might resemble God. But Christians worshipped Christ, prayed through Christ, and proclaimed that in Christ, God himself had entered human life. If Christ were merely similar to God, then the Church had built its faith on something less than God’s own self-giving presence.
So the council chose the stronger word: homoousios, Christ is “of one substance with the Father.” Not created. Not merely godlike. Fully and eternally divine.
The resulting creed declared that Christ was “begotten, not made.” That phrase was carefully chosen. Human beings make things different from themselves: a potter makes pottery. But begetting produces one who shares the same nature: a human begets a human. In the same way, the creed proclaimed that the Son shares fully in the being of the Father.
And yet the Church fought over it because the stakes were enormous. If Christ is merely like God, then he can show us the way to God. But if Christ is truly God, then in Christ, God himself has come among us. In Christ, God is not merely sending a message. God is giving himself.
The bishops at Nicaea decided that the little letter mattered because the truth mattered. They confessed that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.”
Today, on Trinity Sunday, we celebrate the fruit of that confession.
Now, Trinity Sunday is notorious among preachers. Every year clergy across the world wake up wondering how they are going to explain the Trinity without accidentally committing a fourth-century heresy. We reach for analogies. Water, ice, and steam. The three-leaf clover. The sun and its rays. None of them quite work.
The truth is that the Trinity is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a mystery to be entered.
The bishops in Nicea were not arguing over abstract philosophy. They were protecting our understanding of the Godhead. If Jesus is not truly God, then the cross becomes merely the sacrifice of a noble, divine man.
If Jesus is not truly God, then salvation becomes the story of humanity reaching upward toward God. But Christianity proclaims the opposite.
God reaches down to us. God comes to us. God seeks us before we seek him. God loves us before we love him.
The Trinity reveals that God’s very nature is self-giving love.
Before there was creation, before there were stars, before there were human beings, there was love. The Father loving the Son. The Son loving the Father. The Spirit proceeding to move over the waters of Creation.
Love is who God is. And that changes how we understand our own lives. If we are created in the image of this Triune God, then we are not made for isolation.
We are made for communion.
We are made for relationship.
We are made to give ourselves away in love.
That is why the Church exists.
Not simply to preserve doctrine.
Not simply to maintain a building.
Not simply to continue traditions.
The Church exists to participate in the very life of God. Every baptism which draws us in to God. Every Eucharist in which we get to participate with God. Every act of love and mercy were we reflect essence of God.
At St. Paul’s, our calling is not merely to believe in the Trinity. Our calling is to live the Trinity, to become a community shaped by the self-giving love we see in the Almighty.
And that, it turns out, is worth proclaiming, even down to a single iota.
In the name of the God who is One: Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
