The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill preaches a sermon on Matthew 28:16\u201320, \u201cBlessed Trinity\u201d. The Marsh Chapel Choir performs \u201cTibi laus a 4\u201d by Orlando di Lasso and “Father All-holy” by Charles Wood.<\/p>\n
Bulletin<\/a><\/p>\nWatch<\/h2>\n<\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Listen<\/h2>\n<div id=\"buzzsprout-player-19287934\"><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/www.buzzsprout.com\/2221453\/episodes\/19287934-blessed-trinity-may-31st-2026.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-19287934&player=small\" type=\"text\/javascript\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Sermon Text<\/h2>\n<p>Blessed Trinity<br \/>\nLectionary Texts (Genesis 1, 2 Corinthians 13, Matthew 28)<br \/>\nMay 31, 2026<br \/>\nMarsh Chapel<br \/>\nRobert Allan Hill<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\nEternal Father strong to save,<br \/>\nWhose arm hath bound the restless wave<br \/>\nWho bidd\u2019st the mighy ocean deep<br \/>\nIts own appointed limits keep<br \/>\nO hear us when we cry to Thee<br \/>\nFor those in peril on the sea<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fFor this Sunday our lessons evoke a Triune God, God in three persons, blessed Trinity.\u202f \u202fSome find God readily and quickly in Nature. Genesis speaks to you. Some find God readily and quickly in order. Corinthians speaks to you. Some find God readily and quickly in worship. Matthew speaks to you.<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202f\u202f\u202fFather, Son, Spirit.\u202f \u202fThese are choice, endlessly lovely passages, any one of which, and any verse from any one of which should deserve our full preaching attention and acclamation.\u202f\u202fLet us honor and remember them.<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fThe Christian doctrine of Trinity is of course a deeply mysterious matter, out of reach of most of us most of the time.\u202f\u202fHow can God be, both one and three?\u202f \u202fFaith we must guess involves more than math.\u202f\u202fNot less than math, but more than math.\u202f\u202fIf nothing else, about the Trinity, we remember this:\u202f\u202fGod is relational, on this teaching.\u202f\u202fAt the heart of the divine there is relationship, of First to Second to Third to Second to First.\u202f\u202fThis is what the early church found in Jesus:\u202fthe God to whom Jesus prayed, the God who guided and inspired Jesus, and the God in Jesus.\u202f\u202fThis is what the early church found in the Scripture, including ours today. This is what the early church found in Life:\u202f\u202fthe rush of creativity, the joy of love, the breath of spirit.\u202f\u202fIn our Gospel today, the Scripture goes even further, in a way giving privilege, at least here, to Spirit that guides into truth.\u202f\u202fOnce the creation has emerged; once redemption has been offered; then it is a matter of spirit, Spirit, wind, breath, gusting Spirit of God.<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fWe preach and pray at the crossroads of faith and culture.\u202f\u202fThis is true for every congregation, pulpit and place, but especially and keenly so right now, in America, and at Marsh Chapel.\u202f\u202fIn a new, perhaps conflicted way, across the country, we may be listening this summer for words of grace, out of our holy scripture, out of our traditions, out of our sacred history, and wondering, hoping, perhaps doubting but still hoping, that these as preached may help us make some sense of what is becoming of us, as a people and as a country, in our time. And what is becoming of us, as a people and a country, in our culture? And what has become of us, in the last ten years, as a people and as a country?<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fYou are good people of faith. On Sunday, as Christian people, you come together in church to worship God, to find a way through the next six days or six months or six years, to live a faithful life in an unfaithful culture. You desire a faith amenable to culture, and a culture amenable to faith.\u202f\u202fFor what good is a baptized cleansing if we are simply thrown back into the mire? Personal and social holiness are married to one another.\u202f\u202fLoving faith expects loving culture.<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\nFor all the attention we\u2014rightly\u2014give to politics and economics, it is really the cultural realities that have most impact on individual lives, over time.\u202f \u202fWhen an 8 year old bursts through the back door, crying, saying that her school friend will be deported, hers is a culturally inflicted wound; when an 87 year old woman, in a nursing home, rues the collapse of her life long party, and surveys its demise and damages with the word \u2018dismaying\u2019, hers is a cultural assessment; when a leader, given to insulting all about him (as my Dad said, \u2018its one thing to be tough, but its another to be mean\u2019), we suffer a cultural decline; when only 24% of 17-24 year olds are eligible to seek admission into armed forces (the other 76% ineligible due to obesity, lack of a high school diploma, drug use, criminal record, failure of physical exam or other), here we trace cultural influence;\u202f\u202fwhen forms of worship, meant for enchantment, give way over multiple generations to a pseudo-worship aimed at entertainment, we face a cultural deficit; in short, when a culture, like ours,\u202f\u202fhas a mirror held up to it, and the image is more appalling than appealing, then some among us may begin to return to, revert to, a reconsideration of our more ancient repositories of wisdom:\u202fscripture, history, thought, and scrutinized experience.\u202f\u202fToday, Genesis and Corinthians and Matthew. In an age of broad cultural malaise, some may gird the loins and toughen up and come to church and faith, to seek more steadily the reassurance, peace, insight, and resolve to be found in moments of truth, goodness, beauty\u2014and ordered worship. Those in the pulpits across this country have our work cut out for us this year, as we have keenly for the last ten years.\u202f And we are not getting a passing grade yet. Here is one measure. The courts get a B. The press gets a C. The congress gets a D. But civil society\u2014very much including the churches and our pulpits\u2014is lower still. For all the work done, we have plenty more to do, weekday and Sunday, and Sunday by Sunday. \u202fHow shall we invoke and evoke faith fit for culture and culture fit for faith?\u202f\u202fHow will we address incivility in a civil way?\u202f\u202fHow do we oppose demagoguery with a respect for democracy?\u202f\u202fHow do we contrast buffoonery with beauty?\u202f\u202fHow does one supplant cultural disorder with liturgical order?\u202f\u202fHow do we combat fear with faith?\u202f\u202fWe have our work cut out for us. And yes, we have plenty of work to do. <\/p>\n<p>Thank goodness we are not alone!\u202f\u202fBlessed Trinity blesses us, especially as Trinity leans to Spirit.<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202fHear good news. There is a self-correcting Spirit of Truth loose in the Universe, leading us.\u202f \u202f<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fPaul\u2019s Epistle to the Corinthians is one of the great high peaks of the New Testament.\u202f\u202fIt is about a whole new life, a new creation.\u202f\u202fIn fact, it is one of the highest peaks in the whole range, a Mount Everest of the Bible.\u202f\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fAfter Paul had been converted to Christ, he spent 17 years in unremarkable, quiet ministry.\u202f\u202fWe know nothing of these two decades spent in Arabia.\u202f\u202fAll the letters we have of Paul come from a later decade.\u202f\u202fPaul was converted to Christ, as he says earlier, \u201cby apocalypse\u201d.\u202f\u202fChrist revealed himself to Paul.\u202f\u202fThus, for Paul, the authority in Christ, is not finally in the Scripture, nor in traditions, nor in reason, nor in experience.\u202f\u202fChrist captured Paul through none of these, but rather through revelation, the apocalypse of God.\u202f \u202f<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fThere is a singular, awesome freedom in the way Paul understands Christ, including in the Corinthian letters.\u202f\u202fWe have yet, I believe, in the church that bears His name, to acknowledge in full that freedom.<br \/>\n\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fAfter these 17 years, Paul went up to Jerusalem to meet with the pillars of the church.\u202f\u202fCan you picture the moment?\u202f\u202fAll in one room:\u202f\u202fPaul, Peter, Andrew, James, John, Titus, Barnabas.\u202f\u202fAnd in that room there was argument, real and hard difference.\u202f\u202fPaul preached the cross of Christ to unreligious people, and they heard.\u202f\u202fWhat would the Jerusalem elders say?\u202f\u202fJesus was a Jew and had been circumcised.\u202f\u202fSo also were all the first Christians, including Paul himself.\u202f\u202fBut God had done something astounding.\u202f\u202fIt was the Gentiles, not the Jews, who fervently believed the Good News. Should these unreligious children of God be brought back into the Covenant of Circumcision?\u202f\u202fNo, they all agreed, no.\u202f\u202fGod had done something new.\u202f\u202fSo, Peter went to the circumcised, and Paul went to the uncircumcised.\u202f\u202fPeter went to the Jews, and Paul to the Gentiles.\u202f\u202fThey agreed to disagree, agreeably.\u202f\u202fAnd the meeting ended and it was settled. As Paul writes, today, they \u2018put things in order\u2019. They put things in order.<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fIn this passage, Paul points to a clue, as well, to one of our great arguments today.\u202f\u202fHere, your identity is not to be inferred not only from creation\u2026.but from new creation!\u202f\u202f<br \/>\nSo, my teacher, J L Martyn:\u202f\u202f\u201cPaul uses an argument explicitly based on creation, drawing certain conclusions from the \u201cthings God has made\u201d in \u201cthe creation of the cosmos\u201d. In effect, Paul says in this passage that God\u2019s identity and the true identity of human beings can both be inferred not just from creation, but from new creation.\u202f<br \/>\n\u201cWhat a different argument lies before us (in Paul). Here the basis is explicitly not (only) creation, but rather the new creation in which the building blocks of the old creation are declared to be non-existent. It is Christ and the community of those incorporated into him who lie beyond religious distinctions…Baptism is a participation both in Christ\u2019s death and in his life; for genuine, eschatological life commences when one is taken into the community of the new creation, in which unity in God\u2019s Christ has replaced religious-ethnic differentiation. In a word, religious and ethnic differentiations and that which underlies them\u2014the Law\u2014 are identified in effect as the \u201cold things\u201d that have now \u201cpassed away\u201d, giving place to the new creation (2 Cor 5:17).\u201d (Martyn, in passim,\u202fAnchor Bible Commentary:\u202f\u202fGalatians). <\/p>\n<p>In other words, we are called to honor and love each other, in a way that mirrors both creation and new creation. <\/p>\n<p>God is calling into existence a new community of faith working through love.\u202f\u202fThere is your identity.\u202f\u202fNot just what is natural but what is heavenly about us forms our primary identity.\u202f\u202fThat is, the Bible itself, opens the way for an understanding of identity that is not just nature or creation, but new creation.\u202f\u202fThis is the community of faith working through love.\u202f\u202fHere, there is a place where God may be doing something new, revealing something new.\u202f\u202f\u202fGod is doing something new, which includes all in the community of faith working through love.\u202f<br \/>\nWill you come to worship, and work in a community of faith working through love? Will you?<br \/>\nFriends, even in a time of outrageous cultural and political decline, even in the summer of 2026, there is the possibility of something new, something better, something lastingly good. God can bring good out of evil. God can bring good even out of nightmare that is America, 2026.<br \/>\n\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f\u202f \u202fThis morning we worship on Trinity Sunday.\u202f\u202fThe Triune God summons us to relationship and complexity and courage to seek the truth.\u202f\u202fThe Spirit of God leads us into all truth:\u202f\u202fCome Trinity Sunday we recall that there is, by God\u2019s triune grace, a self-correcting spirit of Truth loose in the universe. If you love Jesus, and especially if you love the Bible, then you may just find courage not only to defend a moral life in a post-moral culture, but also to preserve freedom for those who have found a whole new life, and so are very harbingers of the new creation. <\/p>\n<p>To conclude, think of Franklin Roosevelt, as a young man, losing his legs, his mobility, his strength, right in the heart of his moment, his leadership, his life. But he not only continued, he prevailed. He prevailed. He not only prevailed, he soared. He soared. Creation gave way to new creation. He drew on God in three persons, blessed Trinity.\u202f \u202fAnd his very favorite hymn is the one we sing today: <\/p>\n<p>O Trinity of love and power<br \/>\nThy children shield in danger\u2019s hour<br \/>\nFrom rock and tempest, fire and foe<br \/>\nProtect them where so er they go<br \/>\nThus evermore shall rise to thee<br \/>\nGlad hymns of praise from land and sea. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill preaches a sermon on Matthew 28:16\u201320, \u201cBlessed Trinity\u201d. The Marsh Chapel Choir performs \u201cTibi laus a 4\u201d by Orlando di Lasso and “Father All-holy” by Charles Wood. Bulletin Watch Listen Sermon Text Blessed Trinity Lectionary Texts (Genesis 1, 2 Corinthians 13, Matthew 28) May 31, 2026 Marsh Chapel Robert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2636,"template":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermons-services\/2635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermons-services"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermons-services"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermons-services\/2635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2756,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermons-services\/2635\/revisions\/2756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/chapel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}