Trinity Sunday is the most difficult Sunday to preach without sounding really academic and doctrinal and theological, which I won’t do because I end up confusing myself, let alone everyone else. I could have avoided it altogether and preached on the wonderful psalm 8 we heard this morning. But we have been talking about the Trinity in some way or another ever since Easter, so this morning I will avoid doctrine and try to talk about the trinity in a very practical way.
In some ways I’d rather begin by saying nothing, for a sermon about the Trinity is a sermon about God’s own self. When we get over our compulsion to do a lot of talking and explaining about God – and even to set doctrinal tests – we come to realise that our first and best response before God is simply to stand in wonder and awe of his love for us. Or, as the Orthodox Church puts it, to stand with the mind in the heart before God.
Back in the day in the Church of England, on Trinity Sunday they would sing the Athanasian Creed in procession around the church. The Athanasian Creed is one of 3 in our Prayer Books, the other two are the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed which we say during Holy Communion Services. The creeds are all about the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Creeds are a bit like policy statements. They contain – in summarised form – what the Church believes about God who creates, redeems, and gives us life; God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Of course, there is much more that we could and do say about God, but in the context of worship, just as all the components of our services point to something much more, so too, do the Creeds. What we have here is, at the very least, a window into the vision of God. At best, the window may be enlarged into a doorway, through which we enter to partake very fully of that vision.
I think many of the problems that may face the western Church are problems of vision, a failure of vision. Now I don’t mean vision in the business or marketing sense, gosh, every part of the church has a vision statement.
But I think it’s a different sort of failure of vision in a more literal sense. It’s a failure of vision to truly see the unlimited resources of energy and love to which the believer has access, when the [triune] life of God is felt as power. Which is what we’ve been talking about since Easter. A failure to see the very fulness of God.
When we talk about power, especially in an age when power is frequently used to control and bully people, we need to be clear about what we mean by power. The sort of power which comes from an understanding of the Trinity as a symbol for pilgrims who know no limits to their hopes of endurance, discovery, and enjoyment.
The Westminster Catechism teaches that the job of all of humanity is simply to glorify and enjoy God. Enjoy God. Can we understand what that beautiful phrase means I wonder?
That, it seems to me is what God is about – and who God is for us. God is very much for us!
We get a glimpse through the window of worship together and our entry through the door into a fuller participation in the vision of God, we may gain a practical and practising insight into the living mystery which is the creating, redeeming and sanctifying God among us now.
Actions speak louder than words. The words which we profess must have some way of showing themselves in our lives. Our vision of God, and our resulting human action, are inseparable. Prayer and action go together. A rediscovery of the necessary unity between contemplation and action, the mystical and the prophetic, is almost certainly the central need of modern Western Christianity. We need a vision of God which resources us for action in the world, not one which keeps us immune from the world.
On this feast of the Holy Trinity, we recall that the creating, redeeming and life-giving power of God are not static. They are active. The creative, redeeming, and sanctifying power of God which we know in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are fully accessible to us now. All that is required, is that we consent to enter into this life of God. And this is made all the easier because God is already reaching out to welcome us. All the work has been done for us to lead lives of mission that are based on enjoying what God has already done. There is no greater adventure than being a Christian in the already-here Kingdom of God.
The Trinity is a symbol for pilgrims who know no limits to their hopes of endurance, discovery, and enjoyment. We are called to share in God’s creativity, in God’s own enduring. Every aspect of God’s creation endures, and we can share in creating that durability for our lives, our ministries, and our parish family.
We make discoveries of ourselves through our life in God. We are not yet complete as God’s creation until the day of our final breath, when we enter into the fullness of the inheritance prepared for us. The discoveries we make along the way, personally and as a faith community, prepare us for our fullest discovery of God, and eventually beyond the limitations of time and space.
Despite my initial reluctance to say anything about God’s very self, on this feast of the Holy Trinity there is something we can say, without tangling ourselves up in doctrinal puzzles over which some may wish to run a heresy check. What we can say about God – from the standpoint of the lived experience of faith – is how we know God the Trinity through three things I think - Holiness, Humility and Hospitality.
By holiness, which we also have spoken a lot about since Easter, I don’t mean some other-worldly piety which is unrelated to ordinary human experience. Holiness is inextricably linked to our creation by God in God’s image and likeness, and to our place within the whole of God’s creation. All that God created is good, and our response to that goodness in creation is one of reverence toward each other and to the earth itself. It is becoming more and more evident that reverence for humanity is the central need of our time, with really damaging consequences whenever this is disregarded. Our response to God’s holiness is to respond to all that God offers us in the work of restoring our broken likeness to God, reassured that despite our seemingly endless capacity to get it wrong, we cannot erase the image of God in us, whose creation we are.
Humility is another way in which and by which we know God and participate in God’s life. Even more than that: humility is a feature of God – of God who became human; took on human flesh and became one of us. Jesus told us that he is the way, the truth, and the life. We discover the truth of ourselves through humility. By humility I don’t mean the putting-ourselves-down kind of false humility. I mean that humility is living in the truth of who God created us to be; as beings created in the image and likeness of God, and of not living as if we are either greater or less than that.
And hospitality: the third way I am suggesting through which we participate in the life of God; God the Holy Trinity. A wonderful Christian, long dead, called Benedict, says that we are to welcome those who come among us as if they were Christ himself. Hospitality flows on from humility. If we have a true sense of who we are – rather than either an inflated sense or an undervalued sense – we will be open to love and to grace received from God, and we will be open to giving love to others and to being gracious in our welcome of others. Hospitality simply means there is room in my life for you; there is room in this church for you; there is room in this society for you; there is room in this place for you.
In the world of time, and in this meeting of time with the vision of the eternal, may we come to know God; creating, redeeming, giving life. May we participate in God’s creation, redemption and bringing to fullness. May we commit ourselves to life in God. May we rejoice in the life into which we were baptised; the life of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.