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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!
St Paul said it better, in our first reading. ‘We have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ,’ and a little later in the same
paragraph, ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through
the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.’ St Paul may not have
known the expression “The Holy Trinity, but he certainly was aware
of the concept!
The illustration I gave
earlier of steam, liquid water, and ice all being H2O but
all different from each other and with different purposes, is just
that. An illustration. It happens to be my favourite one, but I
could have brought in three tins of soup – lentil, mushroom and
tomato, say – all tasting very different but all soup. Or perhaps
I could have mentioned Wesley's favourite illustration: he lit three candles, but there was only one light. They are all 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!
And 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.” Like St Paul, He doesn’t have the word “Trinity”,
but it is the kind of thing He means.
And
in the reading from Proverbs, which I chose not to use, we are
reminded of Wisdom.
“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 the whole Godness of God. 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.
