Sermon at Saint Margaret’s Anglican Church, Budapest (2026.05.31)Trinity Sunday, Year A

Isaiah 40.12-17, 27-31; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13.11-13; Matthew 28.16-20

On this First Sunday after Pentecost – traditionally known as Trinity Sunday – we celebrate two mysteries: the mystery of the Holy Trinity, one God yet three persons, as well as the sacrament (lit. “mystery”) of baptism. And as I spent time pondering these two questions this week – the nature of baptism and the nature of God – I came to realise that they are more connected to each other than I initially expected. In fact, love sits at the heart of both.

In a few short minutes, as Ahad and Dorna enter the waters of baptism, we are going to experience one of the most beautiful, profound, and sacred moments in a person’s life.

The symbolism is dense and multi-layered:

Repentance and Forgiveness – being cleansed of the pollution of sin.

Exodus from slavery to sin into freedom in Christ, like Israel crossing the Red Sea

Death and rebirth

oDying to all human efforts outside of God to achieve our own security, happiness, and fulfilment. Instead of living for ourselves, we choose to submit ourselves to Jesus as Lord

oDying to our old sinful human nature and being born again, a new creation

oFurthermore, by sharing in Christ’s death, we also share in his resurrection life

Entering a new family, the holy people of God.

oThe culmination of a spiritual journey toward Christ, and the beginning of a new journey as part of the body of Christ

oA betrothal that will one day culminate in the Great Wedding Feast of heaven

Borrowing from St Augustine’s understanding of sacraments as “visible words” in which God is preaching a visual sermon to our physical senses, the Book of Common Prayer defines sacraments as, “An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”

Fundamentally, the sacrament of baptism marks the grace we receive in being made new, washed clean of all our sin, being transformed from the inside-out. It marks an inflection point in a person’s life, a new beginning, a death to the default mode of being self-focused and learning to become other-focused.

There is a profundity in the last words we hear from Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19-20).

While it is natural to include some teaching before baptism, like going through Alpha with Ahad and Dorna these past couple months, Jesus indicates that baptism is the beginning of the journey, not the destination. We will spend the rest of our lives learning to obey everything that Jesus has commanded us. Even those of us who are doing the teaching…

Why does it take that long to learn? Because the core-curriculum is relearning how to love. Self-centredness has infected even our love, and we are called to re-learn how to love as Christ has loved us – to love selflessly, self-sacrificially as opposed to selfishly.

Technically speaking, selfish love is an oxymoron, a distortion of the nature of love which inherently seeks the good of the other, not the self. And here is where these two mysteries of baptism and God converge, because God is love. Perfect love. His love is what our imperfect love ultimately reflects.

The love we find in God is hard to understand, let alone explain. God created us, and yet chose to love us, even though we are incomparably lesser beings than he. Not only that, but God continues to love us, even when we reject him, rebel against him, choose to love idols and all manner of false gods, and do things that harm not only the created order he entrusted to our care, but wound other people that he created and loves.

On top of that, to rescue us from our prison of selfishness and sin, God put aside his rightful place in heaven and took on human flesh in the person of Jesus, making himself vulnerable to the very people he created, allowing himself to be betrayed, mocked, beaten and even crucified.

If you think about, God had no need to create us in the first place, let alone redeem us after we rebelled against him. “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Ps 8:4). Or as Isaiah puts it, “Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as dust on the scales” (Is 40:15).

God could have simply abandoned us or gone “no contact”. But God is love, and his love desires our good, even if it comes at enormous personal cost to him.

The question I pondered this week was “why?”. Why is this kind of love at the heart of the universe? Why is the nature of God’s love self-sacrificial, other-centred?

Somehow the nature of God as Trinity, the One God who has three inter-related persons, is itself a reflection of this divine love. The Father loves and glorifies the Son. The Son loves and glorifies the Father. And the Holy Spirit participates in this communion of love, while simultaneously also drawing us into it!

Ultimately, the whole thing is a mystery and there is no answer to the question of why God is the way he his, or why his love is the way it is. If we could understand God – if the finite could understand the infinite – God would not be God. As his creatures, all we can do is worship him, praising our Creator who loves us, even though we don’t deserve it.

Today, Ahad and Dorna enter the waters of baptism. They are being welcomed into the body of Christ, into the life of the Triune God – a community of self-giving love. And that same invitation is extended to every one of us: to leave behind the old life of self-centredness and learn, day by day, to love as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have loved us. While it is a mystery that we will never understand, we are invited to be increasingly remade into the image of God.