We’ve travelled through the Easter Season, lamented and celebrated; prayed using the Thy Kingdom Come initiative from Ascension, and celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit just a week ago at Pentecost, and today is Trinity Sunday. A time to think afresh about our faith and how we live that out in the knowledge of a wonderful but complex God.
Over the years I recall many a Trinity Sunday sermon where the mystery of the Holy Trinity was explained using an analogy. There’s the egg – with the shell, yolk, and white – all three making the one. Or the comparison of water, steam and ice – there was even one that used three different colours of plasticine! But these do an incredible disservice to the mystery that is our Godhead, the three in one. three aspects of one God.
In our gospel reading we hear the disciples going to Galilee, this is the first time since Jesus’ arrest that the disciples are back together – imagine the excitement, the noise, the surprise as they see the risen Jesus!
Their coming back together as a group of friends, who at many times showed love and empathy for each other, enables Jesus to commission them together, sending them out to do his work. This imperfect, uncertain gaggle, probably not much different to us – but tasked to go out, to share the love and camaraderie of God the Trinity with others, just as we are today.
But what work does he ask the disciples and us to do? He asks us ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ – just as we sang in our hymn ‘God in three persons, blessed Trinity’ – we need to remember that our faith isn’t based on any one of these, but on the three that come together to make the one true God.
This also seems to confirm that baptism – being washed clean, blessed and taking on the qualities and attributes of the three – is not only central to our faith, but also central to the making and growing of disciples!
So where might we start, to help us consider and recognise what the Trinity means to us, to our faith and in our lives today?
Each of us might have a very distinct view of the three – we might have a favoured way of praying using a particular name – Dear Father; Lord Jesus; or come Holy Spirit, which probably shows that we are thinking in terms of the Trinity!
Three aspects of God, coming together in harmony models relationship, communion, unity in difference and ultimately love and trust. We were created to participate in, and share, the life of the Holy Trinity.
From the beginning of creation humankind was made in the image of our creator God. Genesis 1:26 says: ‘Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’’ – Our likeness. We were created from this pattern and it is the basis of our lives. The Trinitarian life is three equal persons, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each one dwelling in the other by virtue of an unceasing movement of mutual love. A genuine confession of faith in the Triune God can only be made when we show mutual love to one another. Is this how we live out our lives?
Every Sunday that we are in church, we stand up and renew our faith when we say the creed, stating that we believe in the oneness of God AND in the three unique aspects of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When we say those words in a few minutes, consider them afresh – let them wash through you and think about how each aspect of God plays out in your daily life.
Each time we walk into church we pass by a copy of that very famous picture of Rublev’s trinity welcoming us here to St John’s. It is based on the story of the three that visit Abraham in the heat of the day as he sits at the entrance to his tent, a normal day that turned out to be extraordinary as Abraham and Sarah went above and beyond to show love and hospitality.
When we look at that picture, we see three virtually identical figures, with identical expressions, distinct but together, only their robes are different colours as they sit in a circle, showing unity and oneness. But at the table there is an empty seat – a seat for you and me, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’, ‘For we, too, are his offspring.’ We too are his offspring! – that’s taken from Acts, and how important is that to remember? We too are his little children, born of the Trinity.
In today’s gospel we heard that reinforced, when after commissioning the disciples, Jesus said – ‘Remember I am with you always’. I think the Message version of the Bible puts it beautifully when it says: ‘I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” We are born of the Trinity and live our lives saturated in it as we walk with God.
It should be our natural environment and pervade all we do. We can open ourselves up and trust and rely on that promise as we go out in the strength of God – what might we dare to do knowing that God is by our side?
Do we not owe it to God to answer his call to try new things, to put ourselves out there in the danger zone as we trust implicitly and aim to grow his kingdom?
However, there will be times when we feel that God is absent – times when we doubt, and Jesus knew of our fallibility – could this be why he used the word ‘remember’ before he told us he would stay with us? The gospel clearly states that some doubted – we are human, and doubt will seep in; but it’s about risking ourselves totally for God because we are held by the Trinity, and every aspect of God wants us to thrive as his children.
God is beyond words, explanation, or understanding. The mystery of the Holy Trinity will always be with us, and whilst it is beyond our understanding, that shouldn’t stop us from seeking it and knowing when we experience it.
Gregory of Nazianzus, a bishop in the fourth century, said, “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendour of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one.” When we are tempted to split the one into three and pay too much attention to one over another, we must be reminded that where God is, all of God is – the Trinity whose likeness we are made in, and who will remain by our sides to the end of the age.
Amen
Service: Reverend Rebecca Yates –3rd June 2023
Referenced Scripture: Matthew 28:16-end