TRINITY SUNDAY 2004
MOSTYN ROAD, 6 June 2004
Today
is Trinity Sunday, the day on which we celebrate all the different aspects of
God. It’s actually a very difficult day
to preach on, since it’s very easy to get bogged down in the sort of theology
which none of us understands, and which we can very easily get wrong.
The
trouble is, of course, that the concept of the Trinity is trying to explain
something that simply won’t go into words.
We are accustomed to thinking of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and
most of the time we don’t really stop and think about it. Trinity Sunday is the day we are expected to
stop and think!
The
thing is, the first half of the Christian year, which begins way back before
Christmas, is the time when we think about Jesus. We prepare for the coming of the King, in Advent, and then we
remember his birth, his being shown to the Gentiles, his presentation in the
Temple as a baby. Then we skip a few
years and remember his ministry, his arrest, death and resurrection, and his
ascension into heaven. Then we remember
the coming of the promised Holy Spirit, and today we celebrate God in all his
Godness, as someone once put it. The
second half of the year, all those Sundays after Trinity, tend to focus on
different aspects of our Christian life.
And today is the one day in the year when we are expected to stop and
think about God as Three and God as One.
And it is
difficult. It’s a concept that doesn’t
really go into words, and so whatever we say about it is going to be in some
way flawed. It took the early Church a
good 400 years to work out what it wanted to say about it, and even that is
very obscure: “That we worship one God
in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the persons nor dividing
the substance. For there is one person
of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and
such is the Holy Spirit. The Father
uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son
incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.” The whole thing incomprehensible, if you ask
me!
We have all
been to the sort of services where the preacher brings some kind of visual aid
to try to explain the Trinity – an egg, perhaps, with shell, yolk and white, or
an apple, with core, skin and flesh. Or
they talk about water – ice, steam and liquid water…. All of which are sort-of pictures, but only sort-of. Nobody really understands it. And, of course, that is as it should
be. If we could understand it, if we
knew all the ins and outs and ramifications of it, then we would be equal to
God. And it’s very good for us to know
that there are things about God we don’t really understand! It’s called, in the jargon, a “mystery”. That means something that we are never going
to understand, even after a lifetime of study.
Lots of things to do with God are mysteries, in that sense. Holy Communion, for one – we know what we
mean when we take Communion, but we also know that it may very well mean
something quite different, but equally valid, to the person standing next to
us. Or even the Atonement – none of us
really understands exactly what happened when Jesus died on the Cross, only
that some sort of change took place in the moral nature of the Universe.
Nevertheless,
for all practical purposes, we live very happily with not understanding. We synthesise some form of understanding
that suits us, and, provided we know it is not the whole story, that’s
fine. And the same applies to the
Trinity. It doesn’t matter if we don’t
really understand how God can be Three and One at the same time; what matters
is that we love and trust him, whatever!
===oo0oo===
And if you turn
to today’s readings, you will see something of the same sort of thing. In our Gospel reading, Jesus talks of himself,
the Father and the Spirit as equal: “All that belongs to the Father is
mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it
known to you.” He doesn’t have the word
“Trinity”, but it is the kind of thing he means.
And so we turn to our first reading, from
Proverbs. What is that all about, and
what relevance does it have to today?
In the
translation I used to prepare this sermon, it reads:
“The LORD brought me forth as the first of
his works,
before his deeds of old;
I
was appointed from eternity,
from the beginning, before the world began.
When there were
no oceans, I was given birth,
when there were
no springs abounding with water;”
and so on and so
forth. Wisdom, here, is personified as
female. The Greek word for Wisdom is
Sophia. And some commentators equate
Sophia, here, and in other passages, with the Holy Spirit.
Incidentally, some people
find the image of God as Sophia, Wisdom, helpful and different. It’s one of the many images of God we have,
up there alongside the Shepherd, the Rock, the Strong Tower and so on. If you don’t find it helpful, then don’t use
it, but if it is something that appeals, then do.
But that is beside the
point. Seeing God as Wisdom is a very
old tradition, but the real point is that even in the Old Testament we get
glimpses of God as having more than One Person. The Trinity might not be a Bible expression, but it is a Bible
concept.
But really, the thing about
today is that, no matter how much we don’t understand God as Three but still
One, today is a day for praising God in all his Godness. It is not really a day for deep theological
reflection, nor for self-examination, but a day for praise and wonder and love
and adoration.
So I’m going to be quiet
now, and let’s spend a few moments in silent worship before we sing our next
hymn.