The Most Holy Trinity (Year A) | 31 May 2026

Introduction

My brothers and sisters, if we look closely at the scriptures today, we are being handed the ultimate roadmap of the Christian faith. It is a roadmap that takes us from a rugged mountaintop in the desert, through the messy realities of an early Christian community, and straight into the quiet, late-night conversation that changed the world forever.

When we look at our lives, it is very easy to feel overwhelmed by our own flaws, the divisions in our society, and the constant fear of judgment. We often operate under the assumption that we must be perfect before God will take notice of us. But today’s readings completely turn that human logic upside down. They reveal a profound, three-fold truth about the nature of God: He reveals His merciful heart to a stubborn people (Exodus), He gives us the divine blueprint to share that mercy in community (2 Corinthians), and He launches a radical rescue mission of pure love to save us, not to condemn us (John).

Let us step into this mystery today and look at the extraordinary character of the God we worship.

Exodus 34: 4b – 6, 8 – 9

There is a striking detail at the very beginning of our reading today. We are told that “Moses rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai.”

Think about the weight of his steps that morning. Moses isn’t climbing the mountain for a routine meeting. He is carrying two fresh tablets of stone, and he is carrying a heavy heart. Just chapters earlier, the people of Israel had hit rock bottom. While Moses was receiving the law, they were at the base of the mountain moulding a golden calf. They had broken the covenant before the ink was even dry, so to speak. Moses had smashed the first set of tablets in grief and anger.

Now, he is going back up. Imagine the anxiety. Is God going to finish them off? Is this the end of the road for Israel?

But notice what happens. God doesn’t descend in a lightning storm of execution. He descends in a cloud, stands with Moses, and does something deeply intimate: He proclaims His name.

Who God Says He Is

In the ancient Near East, a name wasn't just a label; it revealed a person's core character, their very essence. When God proclaims His own name here, it is the ultimate self-disclosure. He reveals His "heart."

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness."

When we break down these Hebrew words, the depth of God's character comes alive:

• Merciful (Racham): This word is closely tied to the Hebrew word for "womb." It is a visceral, maternal kind of compassion; a deep, protective love that a mother has for her child.

• Gracious (Chanan): This means showing favour to someone who has absolutely done nothing to earn it.

• Steadfast Love (Hesed): This is covenant love. It’s a fierce, stubborn, loyal love that refuses to let go, even when the other party walks away.

God looks at a people who have just betrayed Him, and instead of defining Himself by His anger, He defines Himself by His mercy. He essentially tells Moses, "Yes, you failed. But My capacity to love is vastly greater than your capacity to mess up."

Moses’ reaction to this revelation is beautiful. He immediately bows and worships. But then he does something incredibly honest. He doesn't try to sugarcoat the situation. He says: “Please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people, and pardon our iniquity.”

"Stiff-necked" is an agricultural metaphor. It refers to a stubborn ox that stiffens its neck muscles, refusing to let the farmer guide it left or right. It wants to go its own way, even if that way leads into a ditch.

A Story

There is a story told about a young man who bought a beautiful, historic home. He loved everything about it, except for a massive, ancient oak tree right in the middle of the front yard. It blocked the view of the house, dropped leaves everywhere, and its roots were starting to crack the driveway. He decided he was going to cut it down. He bought a chainsaw, spent days hacking away at the branches, and tried to dig out the roots. But the tree wouldn’t budge. Exhausted and frustrated, he finally called an arborist.

The arborist looked at the tree, then looked at the young man and said, "Son, you don't understand. This tree isn't just sitting on this ground. Its roots have wound themselves completely around the foundational water pipes of this entire street. If you find a way to rip this tree out, you're going to destroy the foundation of your own house, and your neighbours’ houses too. You need this tree to survive."

We are often like that young man. In our stubbornness, our "stiff-neckedness," we try to chop down the boundaries God sets for us. We think we know better. We think His laws are blocking our view or ruining our convenience. But Moses understood a vital truth: without God in their midst, the Israelites would destroy themselves. Their stubbornness meant they needed Him more, not less.

II Corinthians 13: 11 – 14

If you have ever read the Apostle Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth, you know that this was a community in deep trouble. They were divided into factions, arguing over who was the best preacher. They were taking each other to court, experiences of worship had become chaotic, and some were even questioning Paul’s authority. To put it mildly, Corinth was a messy, fractured church.

Yet, look at how Paul closes his second letter to them. He doesn't end with a final scolding or a list of threats. Instead, he gives them and us a beautiful, five-part blueprint for how to live together.

Five Commands and a Promise

Paul writes: “Rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”

Let's look closely at what these commands mean in the original language, because they are much more active than they sound at first glance:

• Aim for restoration (Katartizesthe): In Greek, this is a medical and nautical term. It was used for setting a fractured bone so it could heal properly or mending a torn fishing net so it could catch fish again. Paul isn't saying "pretend nothing is wrong." He is saying, "Do the hard, patient work of putting broken relationships back together."

• Agree with one another: This doesn't mean we have to be clones who think identically on every single issue. In the biblical sense, it means being "of the same mind" regarding our core purpose, focusing on Christ rather than our personal preferences.

• Live in peace: Peace (shalom) is not just the absence of conflict; it is the presence of wholeness, well-being, and right relationship.

Then comes the incredible promise: When you strive for these things, “the God of love and peace will be with you.” It’s a beautiful paradox. God is already present, but we experience His presence most tangibly when we actively cultivate love and peace among ourselves.

The Power of the "Holy Kiss"

Paul then tells them to “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” To our modern ears, this sounds a bit unusual, perhaps even uncomfortable! But in the ancient Roman world, this was a radical, counter-cultural act.

In the first century, society was strictly divided. Masters did not kiss slaves. Roman citizens did not kiss non-citizens. The wealthy did not kiss the poor. Men and women lived in separate social spheres. A kiss was reserved exclusively for close, biological family members.

By telling the church to greet one another with a holy kiss, Paul was saying, "When you step into the church, the world’s divisions are completely wiped out. You are a new family." Imagine a wealthy Roman merchant pulling up in a chariot, walking into a house church, and kissing a slave on the cheek as an equal brother in Christ. It was scandalous. It was powerful. It was a visible sign that the gospel changes how we treat human beings.

A Story

There is a story from the mid-20th century about a small, rural church that found itself deeply divided over a proposed building expansion. Tensions ran so high that members stopped speaking to each other in the grocery store. One Sunday, an elderly deacon named Thomas, who had been quiet throughout the arguments, stood up during the intercessions.

He didn't talk about blueprints or budgets. He simply turned to a man across the aisle with whom he had violently disagreed, walked over, extended his hand, and said, "Brother, I've let this argument put a wall between us, and I am sorry. I care more about your soul than I do about wood and brick."

The tension in the room instantly evaporated. Others followed suit. They didn't magically agree on the building plans that morning, but they remembered whose they were. They restored the family dynamic before they tried to solve the business problem.

John 3: 16 – 18

If there is one verse in the entire Bible that people recognize, even if they have never stepped foot inside a church, it is the first sentence of our gospel today: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son...”

You see it on bumper stickers, on billboards, and painted on signs at football games. It is often called "the Gospel in miniature" because it compresses the entire story of salvation into a single sentence.

But precisely because it is so familiar, we run the risk of skimming past it without letting its shocking, revolutionary truth shake our hearts. To truly understand these words, we must look at when and to whom Jesus said them. He didn't shout them to a massive, adoring crowd. He whispered them in the dark of night to a man named Nicodemus: a deeply religious leader who was searching, confused, and terrified of what others would think if they saw him with Jesus.

The Verbs of God

When we look at the mechanics of John 3:16, the meaning hinges on two powerful verbs: loved and gave.

In the original Greek, the word used for love is agape: a love that is not based on feelings, preference, or what the other person can do for you. It is a love of total self-sacrifice, a deliberate choice to seek the absolute best for the other.

And how does God show this agape? He gives. True love always expresses itself in giving. God didn't look down at our broken, messy world and simply send a message of good vibrations or a scroll of new rules. He gave a Person. He gave His only begotten Son.

But then Jesus adds a crucial clarification in verse 17, which is perhaps even more beautiful:

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Many people carry an image of God as a celestial traffic cop, hiding behind a billboard with a radar gun, just waiting for us to cross the line so He can pull us over and punish us. But Jesus completely shatters that image. God’s posture toward the world is not hostility; it is rescue. The Greek word for save is sozo, which means to heal, deliver, protect, and make whole. Jesus came not as a cosmic judge to pronounce a death sentence, but as a divine physician to bring a dying patient back to life.

The Nature of the Gift

If a doctor walks into a hospital room with a life-saving cure, the medicine only works if the patient opens their mouth and swallows it. If the patient refuses the medicine, the doctor doesn't condemn them to death; the illness does.

This is what Jesus means when He says, "whoever does not believe is condemned already." God doesn't send people to condemnation. Condemnation is simply the natural state of choosing to stay in the dark when the light has come into the room.

A Story

There is a historical story from the 19th century about a man named George Wilson. In 1830, Wilson was arrested for robbing a U.S. mail train and murdering a guard. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged. However, because of influential friends and some mitigating circumstances, the President of the United States, Andrew Jackson, issued a formal, presidential pardon for George Wilson.

When the prison wardens brought the document to Wilson, he did something unprecedented: he refused it. He said he didn't want the pardon and preferred to stay in prison and face his sentence.

The authorities were baffled. Can a person simply reject a presidential pardon? The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the final ruling, and his words were profound. He wrote:

"A pardon is a piece of paper, the value of which depends upon its acceptance by the person to whom it is tendered. If it be rejected, it is no pardon. George Wilson must hang."

George Wilson was not executed because the President hated him or because the pardon didn't exist. He died because he refused to accept the gift that would have set him free.

Conclusion

What a magnificent, breath-taking tapestry of faith we are presented with today.

We serve a God who looks at our "stiff-necked" stubbornness on Mount Sinai and responds by proclaiming His name as “merciful, gracious, and abounding in steadfast love.” We serve a God who takes our fractured, divided human relationships and wraps them in the comforting “grace of Jesus, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” And ultimately, we serve a God who looked at a dying, hurting world and refused to leave us to our own devices, instead giving His only begotten Son so that we might have eternal life.

The message of the Gospel is clear: the rescue mission is complete. The pardon has been signed. God’s posture toward you today is not a raised fist of condemnation, but open arms of mercy.

The only question left for us is how we will respond. Will we carry our broken tablets to Him in honesty? Will we do the hard work of mending the broken nets in our families and communities? Will we open our hearts to accept the gift of His love?

This week, let us stop hiding in the dark. Let us step into the brilliant light of His grace, confident that the God of love and peace is truly with us, now and forever. Amen.

We’re so glad you joined us this Sunday. We hope the homily offered you some fresh perspective. See you again next week!