Trinity Sunday 2019

This sermon is very like that of three years ago, but a few differences.

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!

There are all sort of illustrations you can use to try to get a mental image of what it’s all about.

Look, for instance, at what happens when you join two hydrogen atoms to one oxygen one –

you get H₂O.

Di-hydrogen monoxide!

Which, I am sure you realise, can be ice –

a solid, good for cooling drinks or injuries, for preserving food, or for skating on.

Or it can be water –

a liquid, making up most of our bodies, good for drinking, sustaining all life.

Or it can be steam –

a gas, good for removing creases from our clothes or for cooking vegetables. Ice, water, steam, all very different from each other, but all, still, H₂O.

It’s an illustration.

It happens to be my favourite one, but there are plenty of others.

D, on the same subject, once brought in three tins of soup –

lentil, mushroom and tomato –

well, it might not have been exactly those, but something like that –

all tasting very different but all soup.

Some people like thinking of an egg,

which has the shell, the white, and the yolk....

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, Lady 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 Lady 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.

Peter and Paul

Another "Golden Oldie"

Our readings today are about two very different men, both of whom were leaders of the very early church, and both of whom had made appallingly bad starts!

To take them in chronological order, first of all there was Peter.

Simon, as his original name was –

Peter was basically a nickname Jesus gave him.

It means stone or rock;

if Jesus had been speaking English, he might have nicknamed him “Rock” or “Rocky”.

“You're Rock, and on this rock I will build my church.”

But the Greek word was “Petros”, so we know him as Peter.

Anyway, as you know, Peter was an impulsive type,

probably with a hot temper.

We probably know more about him than we know about any of the Twelve, as it is often his comments and answers that are quoted.

And, sadly, the fact that when push came to shove his courage failed him

and he pretended he didn't know Jesus.

And our Gospel reading today is all about his reinstatement.

It’s not very clear how this story fits in with the rest of John’s Gospel, which seemed to come to an end after last week’s reading.

But the writer seemed to find it necessary to add this additional story.

The disciples have gone back to Galilee after the Resurrection,

and have gone fishing.

I suppose they must have thought that it was all over,

not realising how much their lives were going to change.

And although the other gospel-writers tell us that Peter had seen the risen Lord, he still seems to have had trouble forgiving himself for the denials.

So when he realises that it is Jesus on the lake shore, he grabs his tunic –

he will have been working naked in the boat –

and swims to shore.

And they all have breakfast together, and then Jesus turns to Peter.

You can imagine, can't you, that Peter's heart started beating rather faster than usual.

Now, part of the whole point of this story doesn't actually work in English, because we only have one word for love, which we use for loving anything from God down to strawberries, including our spouse, our children, our best friends and the writings of Jane Austen!

But the Greeks had several different words for love.

There was eros, which was erotic love, the love between a man and a woman;

then there was storge, which was affection, family love, the love between parents and children.

Then, and these are the two words that are relevant to us here, there was philia, which is friendship, comradeship, and agape, a word only found in the New Testament, which means God's love.

And when Jesus says to Peter “Do you love me?” he uses the word agape.

Do you love me with God's love.

And Peter can't quite manage to say that, and so in his reply he uses philia.

“Yes, Lord, you know I'm your friend”.

And Jesus commissions him to “Feed my lambs.”

This happens again.

“Do you love me with God's love?”

“Lord, you know I'm your friend!”

“So take care of my sheep.”

And then the third time.

Well, that's logical, there were three denials, so perhaps three reinstatements.

But this time it is different:

“Simon, son of John, are you my friend?”

Peter doesn't quite know what to answer.

“Lord, you know everything;

you know whether I'm your friend or not!”

And Jesus tells him, again, to feed His sheep.

And comments that he will die a martyr's death, but instructs him to “Follow Me!”

And, we are told, Peter did follow Jesus.

We know he was in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came,

and it was he who preached so powerfully that day that three thousand people were converted.

We know he was imprisoned, and miraculously released from prison;

there is that wonderful scene where he goes and knocks on the door of the safe house,

interrupting the prayer-meeting that has been called for the sole purpose of praying for him,

and the girl who answers the door is so shocked she leaves him standing there while she goes and tells the others, and they don't believe her!

Quite the funniest scene in the Bible, I think.

Anyway, we know that Peter ended up in Rome, and, sadly, tradition tells us that he was crucified upside-down, which those who wrote down John's gospel would have known, which is arguably why it was mentioned.

But the point is, he was completely and utterly forgiven and reinstated, and God used him beyond his wildest dreams.

And so to St Paul.

Now Paul, at that stage known as Saul, also needed a special touch from God.

He couldn't have been more different from Peter, though.

He was born a Roman citizen in the city of Tarsus.

He was well-educated, and had probably gone to university,

contrasting with Peter, who, it is thought, only had the basic education that all Jewish boys of his time and class would have had.

He was a Pharisee, the most learned and holy of the Jewish religious leaders of the day.

And, like so many Pharisees, he felt totally threatened by this new religious movement that was springing up, almost unstoppably.

It was, he thought, complete nonsense, and not only that, it was blasphemy!

He set himself to hunt down and kill as many believers as he could.

But God had other ideas, and grabbed Saul on his way to Damascus.

And we all know what happened then –

he was blind for three days, and then a very brave man called Ananias came and laid hands on him,

whereupon he could see again, and then,

after some time out for prayer and study,

he became the apostle to the Gentiles, so-called, and arguably the greatest influence on Christianity ever.

He had a knack for putting the great truths about God and about Jesus into words, and even today, we study his letters very seriously.

He started off by persecuting believers, but in the end, God used him beyond his wildest dreams!

So you see the common link between these two men:

one an uneducated provincial fisherman,

the other a suave and sophisticated Pharisee, and a Roman citizen, to boot.

Peter knew how dreadfully he had sinned;

Paul thought he was in the right.

But they both needed a touch from God, they both needed explicit forgiveness,

they both needed to know that they were loved, no matter what they had done.

And they both responded.

If this had just been a story of how God spoke to two different men in two different ways, that would be one thing.

It would be a fabulous story in its own right.

It would show us that we, too, no matter how dreadful we are,

no matter how prone to screw things up,

we too could be loved and forgiven and reinstated.

And this is, of course, true. We are human.

We screw up –

that, after all, is what sin is, when you come down to it –

the human propensity to screw things up.

Which we all do in our own particular ways.

It doesn't actually matter how we mess up –

we all mess up in different ways,

and sometimes we all mess up in the same way.

It is part of being human.

God's forgiveness is constant and unremitting –

all we have to do is to receive it.

There is no more forgiveness for a mass murderer

than there is for you or for me.

And there is no less forgiveness, either.

It is offered to us all, everybody,

even the worst sort of person you can possibly imagine.

No nonsense about God hating this group of people, or that group of people.

He doesn't.

He loves them, and offers forgiveness to them as and where they need it,

just as he does to you,

and just as he does to me.

But, as I implied, that isn't quite the end of the story.

It would have been a wonderful story, even if we had never heard of Peter or of Paul again.

There are one or two marvellous stories in Acts that we don't know how they came out –

I'm thinking here of Cornelius and the Ethiopian treasury official;

both men became Christians,

one through Peter's ministry and one through Philip's,

but we are not told what became of them.

We don't know what became of the slave Onesimus, either;

the one who had to return home to Philemon,

bearing with him a letter from Paul asking Philemon to receive him as a brother in Christ.

But we do know what happened to Peter and to Paul.

They both responded to God's forgiveness.

They received it.

They offered themselves to Christ's service and, through their ministry, millions of people down the centuries have come to know and love the Lord Jesus.

Of course, they were exceptional.

We know their stories, just as we know the stories of John Wesley,

of people like Dwight L Moody, or David Livingstone,

Eric Liddell or Billy Graham.

But there are countless thousands of men and women whose stories we don't know,

who received God's forgiveness,

offered themselves to His service,

and through whose ministry many millions of men and women came to know and love the Lord.

Some of them went to live and work somewhere else,

but many of them lived out a life of quiet service exactly where they were.

Some of them, sadly, were imprisoned or even put to death for their faith,

but many died in their own beds.

And you see where this is going, don't you?

Now, I know as well as you do that this is where we all start to wriggle and to feel all hot and bothered,

and reckon we can't possibly be doing enough in Christ's service,

or that we are a rotten witness to his love and forgiveness.

But that isn't really what it's about.

For a start, we are told that when the Holy Spirit comes,

we will be witnesses to Christ –

not that we ought to be, or we must be, but that we will be!

And I know that many of you are doing all you can to serve the Lord exactly where you are, and I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job of it, too.

But maybe it never occurred to you to offer.

Maybe you accepted Jesus' forgiveness, and promised to be his person, and rather left it at that.

That's fine, of course, but what if you're missing out?

You see, the giving and offering isn't all on our side –

how could it be?

And when we offer ourselves to Christ's service, you wouldn't believe –

or perhaps you already know –

the wonderful gifts He gives to help you do whatever is is you're asked to do.

I know that sometimes people have even wondered if God could possibly be calling them to do whatever it is,

as they want to do it so badly that it might be just their own wants!

But, you see, God wouldn't call you to do something you would hate, would he?

And so what if it did end badly?

Look at a young lawyer, in a country far from here, who was thrown into prison for his faith, which led him to stand up for what he believed was right against the government of the day.

He left his country when he was released from prison –

and to this day he will tell you that it was knowing his Bible as well as he did that helped him stay sane while he was in it –

you may have known him, for some years ago he was a local vicar and now he is the Archbishop of York!

I'm rather waffling now, so I'll shut up.

But I do just want to leave this with you:

Perhaps, today, you just needed to be reminded that God loves and forgives you, whoever you are and whatever you have done.

But it maybe you need to think:

have you ever offered yourself to God's service as Peter did, as Paul did, as so many down the years have?

And is God, perhaps, calling you to something new?

Amen.

Thomas Gives Permission

I did preach during Lent, on Palm Sunday, but the service was substantially the same as the one I led three years ago, so didn't bother uploading it, and there was no recording.

For this week, the text is pretty much the same as my "usual" Thomas sermon, but I'm uploading it again to make it easier to find.  

 

Today is one of those rare Sundays when we have the same Gospel reading every year;

the story of Thomas.

Doubting Thomas, we call him in the West, which is really rather unfair of us, as if it were the only thing about him that mattered!

This story, of course, begins on the evening of the Resurrection.
According to John's account –

and yes, it does differ a little from some of the other accounts, as he puts in far more detail –
the first person to have seen the risen Jesus was Mary Magdalene.
She had gone to the tomb very early,
and found that it was empty.
And while she was weeping quietly in the garden,
Jesus had come to her and reassured her.
Peter and John had also seen the empty tomb,
but had not yet met with the risen Jesus,
and the account isn't terribly clear as to whether or not they realised what had happened.

Anyway, that evening the disciples are together,
and Jesus comes to them, as we heard read.
He reassures them,
and reminds them of some of his earlier teachings,
and then, apparently, disappears again.

But Thomas isn't there.
We aren't told whether he hadn't yet arrived
or whether he had just left the room for a few moments,
gone to the loo, or to buy a meal for everyone,

or something similar.
But whatever, he misses Jesus.
And, of course,
he doesn't believe a word of it.
The others are setting him up.
Or it was a hallucination.
Or something.
But it couldn't possibly be true.
And for a whole week he goes round muttering,

while the others are rejoicing.
Goodness, he must have been cross and miserable,
and the others must have been so frustrated that they couldn't help him.

And then Jesus is there again,
with a special word of reassurance,
just for Thomas.

He gets his side out, showing the wound.

Perhaps Thomas would care to touch it?

This isn't ectoplasm,
it's proper flesh.

Thomas can take Jesus' hand again,
just as before.
And Thomas bows down in awe and worship.

So what can we learn from the story of Thomas?
I personally find the story a very liberating one.
From Thomas,
I learn that I have
permission to wait,
permission to doubt,

and permission to change my mind.

Firstly, then,

Thomas tells us we have permission to wait.

That sounds odd,
but don't forget it was a whole week until Jesus put him out of his misery.
It must have been a pretty endless time,
feeling sure that his friends had got it wrong,
wondering who was going mad,
them or him.
But Thomas put up with it.
He didn't abandon his friends,
he didn't run off and do something different.
Instead, he stayed with them and put up with the pain and confusion and bewilderment,
and ultimately Jesus put everything right.

The Lectionary celebrates this every year on this Sunday;

it is the anniversary of the day when Jesus came to Thomas and put it all right for him.

A whole week, though.

Imagine that.

It must have felt like an eternity of doubt,

of confusion,

of bafflement.

The others were all totally convinced they’d seen Jesus,

and as far as Thomas was concerned, they’d all run quite mad.

So often we want things now.
If we are unwell, or grieving,
we want instant healing –
we want the confusion to be resolved.
What was that old prayer:
"God, give me patience, and I want it now!"

At the moment I’m trying to get used to missing my father, who died a few weeks ago.

I’d love to stop minding so much, but I know really I need to go through this process in order to come to terms with his death.

And I also know that it will take just exactly as long as it takes.

I can’t hurry the process;

I can’t feel better just because people want me to;

or even just because I want to!

These things take their own time, and there is not a lot we can do about it.
Nevertheless, we don't like to experience bad feelings, obviously,
and we want them to go away.

Now.
We also don't like to watch someone else experiencing bad feelings.
We might try to deny their feelings,
telling them they don't feel like that.
Or we might try to tell them they are wrong or wicked to have those feelings.

I’ve heard people say that if we have asked for healing,

we should then proceed to deny we feel ill!

When you are grieving the loss of a loved one, I'm told that after a few weeks people start expecting you to be “over it”.

No wonder people hide their feelings, and when asked, meaningfully, “How are you?”

they just say, “Fine, thanks” and don’t talk about it, even to people who would listen.

It is hideous horribly difficult to watch someone else suffer,
and we develop these strategies of coping so that their suffering doesn't rub off on us.
Also, of course, we don't like to have negative feelings because somehow we think we are failing as Christians when we do.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s gone to Church in a bad mood but with a sweet smile pasted on,

and a “Fine, thanks!” in response to anybody who asks how we are.

We don’t like to admit we aren’t feeling wonderful –

in fact, we may even have been told, as I have in my time, that it’s a sin to feel less than one hundred percent on top of the world one hundred percent of the time!

And certainly a sin to admit it!

I think one of the things the story of Thomas gives us is permission to have bad feelings.
Permission to feel confused, or angry, or bereaved, or muddled, or ill, or craving, or whatever.

Permission to wait to feel better, to allow it to take its time.

Thomas also tells us we have permission to be wrong, and to doubt.
Thomas was wrong.
He thought that Jesus had not been raised.
But it wasn't the end of the world that he thought so.

All too often, I think that if I am wrong,
if I am mistaken,
if I make a nonsense of something,
it is the end of the world.
I confuse making a mistake with a deliberate sin,
and think that God and others will condemn me for it.
But no,
look what happened to Thomas.
Far from being condemned,
Jesus comes to him specially to prove he is alive.
To show Thomas that the others hadn't gone totally mad.
Jesus was extra specially kind to Thomas.

It is encouraging, isn’t it?

We’re allowed to doubt –

it’s not the end of the world if we find something difficult to believe!

So often we try to suppress our doubts,

to pretend that we believe everything we’re supposed to believe,

all “our doctrines”,

feeling that if we wonder for one minute we’ll be condemned.

Or maybe our experience of Christ’s love is so very different from that of our neighbour’s that we wonder if it’s really valid at all.

The thing is, when that sort of thing happens,

when we suddenly wonder whether our faith is all a big nothing,

or when we wonder if we’ve got it right,

then the story of Thomas tells us not to worry.

As the prophet Isaiah tells us,

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left,

your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying,

‘This is the way; walk in it.’”

“This is the way; walk in it.”

It’s okay to experiment with our faith,

with our expression of our faith,

and even, sometimes, with our whole lifestyle.

After all, if our faith doesn’t actually affect the way we live, it’s not much good –

but maybe we have allowed it to affect us to the point that the only people we know are Christians,

maybe even Christians who think exactly the same way we do?

The point is, if we get it wrong, Jesus will come to us, as he came to Thomas, and help us get back on track.

The Good Shepherd doesn’t hesitate to put on his Barbour and Wellies and go to find us if we get ourselves a bit lost.

So Thomas gives me permission to feel awful and

permission to make mistakes and to doubt.

But it would be wrong to leave it at that,

without looking briefly at the third permission Thomas gives us,

and that is to change our minds.

The thing is, Thomas was mistaken when he believed that Jesus had not risen from the dead.

Okay, fine.

But as soon as Jesus showed him he was wrong,

he changed his mind.

He fell down and worshipped the risen Jesus.

He felt ghastly for the whole week between Jesus' appearing to the rest of them, and Jesus appearing to him.

And that's okay.

But when Jesus did appear,

he forgot all about feeling ghastly,

he didn't get cross and go "Where were you?" or anything like that.

He just fell down and worshipped the risen Lord.

It doesn't matter if we feel awful for any reason.

It doesn’t matter if we get it wrong.

What does matter, though,

is if we are given the opportunity to correct ourselves,

or to put things right,

and we fail to take it.

Thomas didn't do that.

Thomas admitted he was wrong,

and he fell down and worshipped the risen Lord.

When we are shown, as Thomas was,

that we have made a mistake,

the thing to do is to put it right.

They do say that the person who never made a mistake never made anything, and that's very true.

But the point is, it is only by correcting our mistakes that we can make progress.

If we stay stubbornly convinced that we are right, and everybody else is wrong, we won't get anywhere.

We won't be freed to go on with Jesus.

Thomas is supposed to have gone on to found the Church in India.

He couldn't have done that if he had gone on being convinced he was right and everybody else was wrong.

He admitted he had been wrong,

and thus was free to put it behind him and go on with Jesus.

Are you able to do this?

Are you able to wait for clarification when things seem to have gone wrong?

Can you wait, trusting God that you will feel better in due course?

Can you live with your doubts and confusion,

perhaps opening the door to becoming a bigger person through them?

And can you put it all behind you and say, with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” Amen.