3rd June 2007TRINITY SUNDAY

Fr Julian Browning

Proverbs  8  :  1 - 4  &  22 – 31 ; Romans  5  :  1 – 5 ; John  16  :  12 – 15

We rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. Romans 5:2 

There's the story of a Prayer Book wedding, at which the priest forgot the name of the groom. It just wasn't written down anywhere, and he was approaching the moment when he has to say, So-and-So, wilt thou take this woman, etc. So he decided to invent part of the service, and said to the groom: In what name comest thou to this service? And the young man looked up very startled, and replied, I come unto this service in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

May be it is time for him to sort us out, instead of us trying to sort him out.

The Trinity sometimes gets in the way of the truth. We get stuck in the mathematics; three into one doesn't go. But the Trinity is supposed to point us in God's direction. This is the way God shows Himself to those who wish to share the glory of God. three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The early Christians came up with the doctrine, to try to explain how their ideas about God had changed now that Jesus Christ was in their lives. It wasn't the same as in the old days when there was one God up there, and that was all there was to it. When Jesus was raised from the dead, the apostles came to see God in Jesus. There he was, God walking the earth. When the Holy Spirit came down upon them at Pentecost, they felt God's energy in themselves as well. It seemed as if there were three Gods at work but they knew there could only be one. So after quarelling about the matter for four hundred years, they came up with the formula of Three Persons in One Substance, Three in One, One in Three.  When you start talking about God, words are not enough. 

As S. Augustine said in connection with the Trinity: Human language labours altogether under great poverty of speech. To put it another way, the Trinity points us towards the richness of God and his energy in three ways: our life in his hands, his life at our service, our lives lived for him. It isn't a matter of our words, it's a matter of God's power, creating, redeeming, enabling. The Trinity is an attempt to describe our experience, knowing God as abba, Father; seeing God in Christ, the Son; finding God within each of us as the Holy Spirit.

First there is God the Father. You and I are at one with God. God the Father is the fixed point, the one to whom we look, the one who cares for us. Like all children, we have within ourselves our Father's life, we are made in his image.

Secondly there is God the Son. God came to earth to share his life with us. Jesus is God's human face in the world. When we meet Jesus, we are meeting God's love in the world today.

Thirdly there is God the Holy Spirit. You and I are filled with the spirit of God, which lights us just as the tongues of flame lit the apostles at Pentecost. When that Spirit touches us, in any of a thousand ways, we know God as the one in our lives who makes sense of the world, who gives the world a unity, the one who brings form out of chaos, just as in the story of the Creation, the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

The Trinity is a sort of safety catch on God. But it's just a safety catch. Be prepared to go further. We have tried to define God. May be it is time for him to sort us out, instead of us trying to sort him out. Be ready for signs of the Holy Spirit in your life.  Then here on earth, we can have a taste of that glory, of that love, and of that unity, which is God in three persons, blessed Trinity.

So today we celebrate and give thanks for the doctrine, the teaching. Most Christians, singing about the Trinity, probably say to themselves: Well, why not? If God wants me to call Him three in one I'll do it, but I don't really see that it makes much difference. Well it does make a difference. Trinity is not just about Who God is, it is about how God changes our lives and changes the world. The Trinity is about the quality of God's presence in us, in the world, and the changes we can make in ourselves, in how we live, in what we do to show that we share the glory of God. We must be what He is, do what He does. Trinity tells us who God is, and so Trinity tells us what God's people can do. God the Father is the Creator, the maker of all things.  God the Son challenged sin and weakness and overcame it, and we, like the Son, are called to to persist, to be faithful, to endure, and to forgive. And then there is God the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Truth at work in the world, and we can listen to the Spirit and be led by the Spirit, so that we can call the world away from its unreal values, away from the dishonest and the superficial. Everyone moved by the Spirit is a son of God, says St.Paul. Thank God then for God the Holy Trinity, whereby our world is created anew, saved from itself, and led by God, 'because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us'.