Holy Trinity Sunday is a strange, yet wonderful day in the Church Year. Most special Sundays, feasts, or festivals commemorate a significant event in the life of our Lord or the history of God’s people, but not so today. Today is about a specific and well-defined doctrine of the Church. It is a day when the Church lets out its inner nerd, where the categories and technical language of our history are reexamined and championed yet again. And when you focus on a teaching of the Church, you cannot help but recall the heresies or false teachings which brought this teaching to the fore. For that is the usual pattern of things. The articulation of the true faith is put forth in response to a false teaching. Therefore, we confess again the words of the Athanasian Creed, with its rhythmic patterns and careful language, which, again, grew from a need to defend the faith against false teaching, teachings specifically about the nature of our God and the divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

To focus on a teaching, then, is to deal with tension, with opposition. To say and confess how this creed is faithful and true is to say that what is in opposition to such a teaching is false. So, it should come as no surprise that our Gospel reading today, from John 8, finds us in the midst of turmoil and conflict. It begins with the Jewish leaders saying to our Lord, “Are we not right in saying that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?” Now, that is not very nice. But to be fair, Jesus had just finished saying they were of their father, the Devil, and cannot abide by the truth. Standing on the truth is the source of the tension. It is the cause of the hostility.

This whole exchange with Jesus devolves from uneasiness to downright physical violence. Verbal shots are fired back and forth, and our Lord proclaims the true nature of His identity. It all comes to a head at the end of our text when we read, “So, they picked up stones to throw at Him,” after Jesus says to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Their response is to try and kill Him. They do not want to debate with Him, or even to shame Him in front of His followers, but to silence Him forever. This is because they get it. They understand who He is claiming to be, and they see it as the height of blasphemy. This man is asserting He is God.

But let us take a moment and think through what our Lord is saying in this exchange. The first upsetting thing He says to His detractors is, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My Word, he will never see death.” Now, what is Jesus claiming? To keep His Word, to treasure His Word and hold it sacred means death will not win out over you. So, does that mean the disciples did not die, that the faithful are somehow immortal? We know this is not the case because we have stories of their martyrdom. As a result, His opposition replies to Him, saying, “Are You greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do You make Yourself out to be?” If You claim to have something that turns back death, who do You make Yourself out to be? That is a good question. That is the question.

We echo this in our own funeral liturgy even now. We quote from a later section in John’s Gospel at the end of the funeral service. The pastor says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die” (John 11:25-26). I always found it bizarre that standing there next to a casket I am saying, “Whoever believes in Me will never die,” for death is staring all of us in the face. Therefore, our Lord must mean something else. He must be talking not about temporal death but eternal death, not about the grief of the tomb but the infinite grief of the weeping and gnashing of teeth. He invites us to see the victory of His coming as extending beyond this age into the world to come.

At this point, our Lord makes an astonishing statement in this morning’s text, one that guides and comforts the Church to this very day. He says, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad.” He is making bold claims about His identity, and they push back against it, but Jesus doubles-down. Abraham rejoices to see His day. How is that possible? What did Abraham see? Most think this is most likely a combination of the birth of Isaac and his sacrifice on the mountain. These great moments of God’s provision and His promises, a blessing for the offspring of Abraham and a substitution for the sacrifice of his son. These were types of images that pointed to the Christ coming in human flesh. Abraham worshiped God and rejoiced in God’s coming to him, and now He has come to us all in the person and work of our Lord.

So, the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” And as we said before, they understand what this means. Upon hearing this, they seek to put Him to death. Claiming He was before Abraham was to declare He is God Himself. Jesus says He is the God who visited Abraham, the God who spared His son Issac, the God who delivered His people from Egypt, the God who promised a land flowing with milk and honey, the God who commanded the building of the Tabernacle and the place where He would meet His own people in grace and mercy, the God who established the sacrifices and the preaching of the Word, the God who refused to abandon His children but came to them over and over again to turn them from their sin and back to His promises of life and salvation.

Our Lord Jesus claimed to be God, and the Athanasian Creed goes to great lengths to confess this truth. The people, though, want to stone Him, for if He is God, then we must pay attention to His Word. And it is this very Word which He says will be our victory over eternal death. Everything comes crashing down on the question of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. To confess the Holy Trinity, to confess the work of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is to confess that our Lord is God eternal, faithfully doing the work His Father has given Him and is received and embraced by us only through the power of the Spirit. God is on the move. God is at work, for you, for your salvation, so you might know today that you have been given the gift of eternal life.

This is our confidence and joy. This is why we continue to confess the truth of the Holy Trinity. Whether it is the ancient, technical language of the faithful in the Athanasian Creed, or the strange saying at funerals today, this is the hope and simple assurance of the people of God. The eternal God has come for you. He died for your sins and rose for your victory from the grave. For your assurance He has declared that you are forgiven all of your sins.