Reasons for Optimism - A Sermon for the Festival of the Holy Trinity

Feast of the Holy Trinity, June 4^th, A+D 2023
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches
Custer and Hill City, South Dakota
Reasons for Optimism – The Holy Trinity

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. 

   You have great reasons for optimism.  Almighty God Himself is the reason you should be optimistic. 

    Who is the Creator and Ruler of the Cosmos?  What is He like, and what is
His disposition toward us?  These questions are at the heart of Holy Trinity Sunday.  We have heard the account of God’s creation of everything, including us.  And we have heard about God’s creation or launching of His Church, both Jesus commissioning the Eleven Apostles to build her by baptizing and teaching, and from Peter preaching at Pentecost, kind of the coming out birthday party of the Church.  All of these accounts reveal an all-powerful God who is for us.  So you and I have every reason to be optimistic.   

    But are you optimistic?  It’s no newsflash to observe that we are not living in very optimistic days.  We should be optimistic, but I certainly get why this seems hard.  For all the benefits of the digital age, we have known for some
time that it comes with a cost, an isolating, mind-and-soul-numbing cost. 

Now serious thinkers are worried that Artificial Intelligence, computer neural networks that can in some sense think and learn and make choices, well, some are truly worried they could turn on us.  SkyNet and Terminator come to life.  

    I don’t know what to think about AI.  But it's clear that society is fraying at the edges.  Our collective human response to the recent pandemic revealed many weaknesses and fractures in our cultures and communities.  Our politics is abysmal.  The loosening of sexual mores and changes in the family were all touted to be good for us, freeing and empowering.  But the results are the opposite.  Finding healthy, lasting relationship is harder than ever.  Unsurprisingly, the Christian Church, which both supports traditional families and is supported by traditional families, is also in numerical decline.  I could go on, and on, about reasons for pessimism.

    Following along in the way of the world, Christians, and sad to say, Christian pastors don’t tend to be very optimistic these days.  I am certainly not immune to glum thoughts and defeatism.  Because, after all, we are not living in optimistic days. 

    But that’s garbage.  That’s a lie from Hell.  We have every reason to be optimistic.  Rejoice in the Lord always, says the Apostle Paul, who suffered stonings and persecution, arrests and slander, throughout his missionary career.  Paul said “rejoice in the Lord always,” (Philippians 4:4) because it’s true.  In the Lord, in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is joy, for you.  When we get depressed about how things are going in our world, when we lose our hope and our optimism, it is not because things are worse than ever.  They could be, but Christian optimism is not based in this world, in this life.  Never has been.  When we lose our optimism, it’s because we are looking to the wrong places, we are fixing our eyes on things that are passing away.  Those things have no power to give lasting hope.  

 So, this morning, a few rock solid reasons for optimism, for us to fix our eyes upon. 

 1^st Reason for Optimism:  In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  And God said, let us make man, male and female, in our image, in our likeness.  You have value, you have the potential of a joy-filled existence, now and forever and ever, because the Creator went out of His way to make you, in His own image.  You, for all your warts and weirdness, for all the things you’d like to change about yourself, you are God’s favorite.  Along with 8 billion others, you are why God decided to create. 

 2^nd Reason for Optimism:  The Son of God, the 2^nd person of the Holy Trinity, became a man, a human being, in order to die for you, washing away all your sins.  The joy of being God’s creature will not get us all the way to eternal optimism, because we messed it all up.  Christian optimism is not some pollyanna, rainbows-and-unicorns unrealistic fantasy world.  The wonderful mystery of being created in God’s image breaks down as a source of confident optimism, because we are natural rebels, poor miserable sinners, subject to the chaos and death that our sin brought into God’s very good creation. 

    But our evil was not and is not greater than God’s love.  The curse of death is not more powerful than God’s will to live with us.  And so, Jesus came.  This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave Jesus as the atoning sacrifice to wash away all our sin. (1 John 4:10)  Fix your eyes on that!    

3^rd Reason for Optimism:      Jesus, dead and gone on Friday afternoon, rose from the dead on Sunday morning, destroying the power of death to hold Him, and by extension, to hold us.  Jesus rose, appeared to His followers, ascended into heaven, and rules over all things, proving that God’s crazy plan to save sinners has worked.  No matter how messed up this world gets, you are reconciled to God, you have a loving heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ.   

  4^th Reason for Optimism:      Jesus is with you, right now.  He has given you His Holy Spirit in your Baptism, who keeps you with Jesus by faith, that trust of the heart created and maintained by the proclamation of Christ’s story.  Jesus is with His Apostles and the Church they built, ever with us, in and through the Apostles’ teaching, to the end of the age.  Jesus hosts you at His table, feeding you with the medicine of immortality, strengthening you to live optimistically, and to love others, as you have been loved.     

    So, no matter what, you are winning, in and through Jesus Christ.  

   Christian optimism is a strange optimism, to be sure.  For outwardly we suffer, we struggle, we are all dying.  But in reality, Christians have the only true optimism.  All the other reasons for hope, the food at the grocery store, the wonder of the information age, your pickup truck that lets you escape into the mountains, the comfort of your own bed and your own pillow, all these lack staying power.  You can and should receive them with thankfulness, as gifts from God.  But they will not sustain your optimism.  Only Jesus, and the Three-in-One and One-in-Three God that He reveals, can do that.    

    You are free to live optimistically, because God is for you and with you.  And optimistic Christians are free to infect others with their hope and confidence, by loving others, and by sharing the reason for our optimism.  By telling the mighty works of Jesus.  By proclaiming the truth about man and about God. 

    The world seems more and more to be working overtime to beat us Christians down.  And this is truly a 5^th reason for optimism.  For the persecution of Christ’s Church is a sign of His Final Coming.  Chaos in the world is a sign of the End, when the victory of Christ and His Christians will be fully and finally revealed.  We don’t get to know dates.  But the world’s opposition to Christ and His Church is a reminder that the new heavens and the new earth are drawing closer.  And that will be wonderful.  Fully wonderful. 

   And, it’s already yours.  Because “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-8)  By your faith connection to Jesus, you already are sitting with God in glory.  This is God’s promise, and your reality, in Christ Jesus your Savior. 

   The world loves to ridicule the Church and Christians, seeking to drive all optimism from our souls.  But they are the foolish ones.  Opposing God is a losing proposition, eternally losing.  But you are not fools, you are made wise in Christ Jesus.  So you are free to be optimistic, and love the world by letting it show, in your words and in your deeds.  The world needs your optimism.  And there is more than enough optimism in Jesus for everyone. 

   So you can rejoice, smile, expect great things, even in the midst of difficult things, even in the midst of tears.  Because God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is truly with you.  You can’t lose.  Even if in the world’s judgment, your life is filled with great troubles, you have eternal optimism, hope and joy to spare, even enough to share,

  in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.