This year I am not following the Trinity Sunday readings; here is a sermon on Trinity Sunday from a few years ago. Looking back in my files, the only one where I have specifically looked at the Trinity.
Trinity Sunday, and I could have read a whole range of theological books on the doctrine of the trinity and attempted to explain it to you. I could have given you the history of the historical debates on how the doctrine of the trinity was arrived at, but it doesn’t necessarily help us to understand the nature of God, and that is what the doctrine of the trinity tries to do – explain the nature of God. If you are interested in the technicalities or history of the doctrine, I’ll lend you some books. One of the resources I read this week likened the trinity to the internet – you don’t have to understand it for it to be useful! There are some scholars who disagree.
God doesn’t appear the same all the time. In one story we hear of God speaking and the world is created. Then we have Jesus crying over Jerusalem Paul writes of the prison being opened. There is the One who died on the cross. Even in our own life, God interacts with us in a variety of ways. How do we know each of these is God, and how do we understand a God who can speak the world into existence and show the depth of love by being executed.
Hopefully for each of us here, God is not only a concept, something we think about, but God is part of our experience. God is a being with whom we are in relationship. Faith is not agreeing with a set of statements, faith is living in relationship with God.
Trinity helps us to see more of a picture of how God relates to us. When Ian and I go on holidays, we often take a jigsaw puzzle or two. Ian is the jigsaw whiz in our house. When you are putting a jigsaw together, you get a more complete picture as the pieces go on the board. Even without the picture on the box, you can have good guess at what the final picture will look like as the puzzle progresses, but you can’t see the detail, and sometimes there are surprises as you complete the picture. A bit like on Spicks and Specks when they show part of a record album cover, and you have to guess the missing bit.
When we think about God, there are a number of different aspects of God that we might think of. In the service today there have been a lot of different words used about God and naming God: One who made everything well, life-giving Word, Spirit who formed, Giver of grace, Lord, wise, forgiving, caring, holy, playing, loving God, Strong mother God, God who created, warm father God, Prince of peace, old aching God, Spirit of truth and many more. One that stands out for me is never fully known. Because that is very much my experience of God. I am continually being challenged and sometimes surprised at the ways on which God relates to me. The lengths to which God goes to get in touch with me.
I think we can never fully understand or describe what God is like. We can attempt, using the limitations of language, to express our understanding of God from our relationship with God. But that doesn’t mean that that is all there is to God.
There are some advantages to God relating to us in a myriad of ways. Because we are all different, there is always a way for us to relate to God, and it makes it harder for us to avoid God. Remember when children are small and they leave notes all over the house with what they want for Christmas or birthday – well God is like that, notes all over the place about love and grace, forgiveness and peace.
This doesn’t mean that God can be anything we want. The trinity is interdependent. That is Jesus is not independent of the Father, and the Spirit is not independent of Jesus.
One thing the trinity attempts to explain is the interrelationship between the three – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or creator, redeemer and sanctifier, or any number of other combinations that you might come up with. There are some people outside the Christian Church who suggest that we are not monotheists – people worshipping one God; but tritheists, people worshipping three Gods. As Christians we understand that God is three and one, at the same time. This is not a mathematical oneness, but a living unity – diverse and dynamic. It has been described as a dance.
The main point here is that there is a relationship within the Godhead, a dynamic, diverse relationship. A relationship of love. God is love in action, it was out of love that God became incarnate, became human. God is love in action and we are invited to be included in this vibrant, loving relationship. We don’t have to pass a test, or have an annual appraisal. This is being swept up by the love of God into the relationship of the trinity and the community.
Have you ever been at a party where someone has started a conga line ? and people join in, they are part of the dance, expressing their joy in community with each other.
The power of the trinity for Christians is the freedom to live in community, with each other and God. Not in a hierarchy, or a moral vacuum, but in communion with the living God, whose very being is relationship. God is relationship. And so as Christians we live in relationship with God, and by implication with each other. [1]
One of the implications of the doctrine of the trinity is non-hierarchical relationships; living in community, being co-equals, even when gifted differently; none of the ways in which God relates to us being more important than others. At various times, some images of God, or ways of thinking about God will be more important to us, individually, but that doesn’t mean they are more important. One of the traps Christians can fall into is taking one part of the trinity out of the relationship. If we see God the Father, as God, and leave out the Son and the Spirit, we can live as if God is distant, or only interested in a particular ethnic or religious group. Elevating the Father, can also lead to a lack of awareness of sin and therefore no need for forgiveness, salvation or transformation for individuals or society. ([2])
Where the main object of devotion is Jesus, we can have a religion of pious devotion, where salvation is in the next life and there is little or no effort in overcoming oppression or poverty in this life. ([3]) This type of religion can also be authoritarian as the words or deeds of Jesus become codified rather than living as part of a Trinitarian faith. ([4]) Worshipping the Spirit, without the Father and Jesus tends to elevate the experience of the believer above all else. Here the Spirit is disconnected from God and Jesus.([5])
Trinitarian faith helps us to see God more fully, and to see ourselves more fully. As we worship God in trinity, in relationship, we can be aware of our sin, and our need for forgiveness and transformation. we can be aware of our tendency towards individualism and our need to live in community with God and each other. We can be aware of the injustice around us and work with God to transform society.
We celebrate communion this morning, and this too has Trinitarian aspects. We remember the Israelites being liberated from bondage in Egypt
A quote: “God loves in freedom, lives in community and wills creatures to live in community. God is self-sharing, other-regarding, community-forming love.”[6]
As Christians, we have a Trinitarian faith. That means we are included in the love relationship that is God, a relationship that leads to community and allows us to live in freedom.
