Trinity Sunday 2009
In the name of
God, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Who is God? According to the catechism at the back of our prayer book,
“God is one, yet revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – a Holy Trinity.” It
sounds so straight forward, doesn’t it? Written down in black and white it all
looks incredibly simple, until you start to think about it, and even worse, try
to explain it, and then it all becomes so very, very complex.
Today is one of those days in the Church calendar when a preacher needs
to decide whether to preach the texts or preach the feast, and given the feast
de jour there is a very definite temptation to go with the texts. Trinity
Sunday is the only Feast of the Church dedicated to a doctrine, and some have
suggested the reason for that is we did it once, saw the results and swore
never to do it again. Bottom line, the Trinity is hard.
To which some will naturally respond, ‘no it’s not’. It’s certainly
common enough. Throughout our services we’re surrounded by references to the
Trinity and for many of us ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ flows from our lips
with no problem whatsoever, to which I respond, ‘so tell me what it means’. I
am quite convinced that we need to stop at regular intervals and reflect on
those things we say so often that we no longer think about what we’re saying –
including the Trinity.
I was fortunate enough some years ago to be part of an interfaith
dialogue session between Moslems and Christians in Auckland and the major issue
the Moslems had with Christians was that we worship more than one God. We say
we don’t, of course, and trot out explanations like the one in the catechism to
prove it, but how much sense does that really make to an outsider – or an
insider for that matter? God is three but God is one might be a cute
theological construct that we take for granted, but for many it simply doesn’t
stack up and I have to say that when I look at what people do apart from what
they say, it doesn’t really stack up for many Christians either.
I listen to people’s prayers and I read the words of many song and
hymns, and I’m quite sure that whether they realise it or not they’re actually
praying to different Gods. We tell ourselves we’re not, but one of the things
I’m trying to convince people about at the moment is that what we do actually
shapes what we believe far more than what we say, and what we do really does
point to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit being three distinctly
individual beings for many of us.
Why is that? Because the Trinity is hard. Because when it really comes
down to it, we struggle to get our heads around the one God revealed as three
persons thing really works. Because we don’t understand it.
So we come up with models and metaphors to try to help us and others
understand the Trinity. Like water that can be solid, liquid and gas yet still
water, well kind of, but it can’t be all three at the same time. Or a person
who can be a Father and a Son and an Uncle or a Brother all at the same time,
but they can’t be all to any one person, even in the strangest of towns. And
the list goes on – somewhere down the line every attempt at explaining the
Trinity via a metaphor or model falls down and in fact becomes heresy as far as
orthodox Christian dogma is concerned.
So what are the alternatives? Should we abandon all hope of
understanding the Trinity, and if so why on earth did we get stuck with it in
the first place? To which I say, yes, and good question.
I need to note here that this is where my thoughts and the official
doctrines of the Church part company somewhat, so if you’re planning on
reporting me to the bishop start taking notes now.
How did we end up with the Trinity? Well, some will tell you its well
founded in scripture, although you might note that neither the word nor even
the concept appears in any of the readings we’ve heard this morning. You will
certainly find in the Bible references to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and
even a couple where they are all mentioned at once, but nowhere will you find
the word Trinity or a clear outline of the doctrine of the Trinity as we find
it today.
What we do know is that over the first four centuries of the Church
there was much argument and debate over the nature of Jesus and the
relationship between him and God and the Holy Spirit and it was from that
debate that the Trinity emerged triumphant. Even today though, right here in
Let me put it this way – if I asked you to sit down and write up some
lists of what you know and believe about God you might come up with a long list
including words like loving and healing and just and so on, or maybe different
words entirely. What if I then asked you to spend some time reading and
reflecting on what you had written, and then, having gone through all that, I
ask you to close your eyes and imagine God, what would you see?
It’s quite possible that you might see something approaching the idea of
the father, Son and Holy Spirit, but you might see something entirely
different.
Of course those coming from a traditional understanding of the Trinity
will dismiss this entirely. Their argument would be that the Trinity is
divinely inspired and that within it we are instructed on how to understand God
as God really is, while my idea just encourages you to make God look like
whatever you want God to look like. But in my own defence I don’t want to
encourage that at all. In fact, I’d suggest that if the God we imagine is
exactly like the God we want, we’re probably imagining the wrong God.
My argument is that the image of the Trinity comes out of the experiences
of God among those who developed it mingled with the understandings of God they
found in their scriptures and tradition, just as ours should. Should we be
confined to imagining God in just three ways? I don’t think so. My own
experience has been that just when I think I’ve pin God down to this or that
something comes along to un-pin God completely, so at the end of the day all of
my images and imagining will be inadequate anyway, let alone just three.
This is where I think the Trinity is actually quite helpful – because it
is so hard to understand and explain. In the Celtic tradition the Trinity is
portrayed using three interconnected rings, or a knot, with each having its own
space, but each also meeting in a single space, and its in that shared space where
the mystery of God dwells. I find that helpful – at the heart of the Trinity is
mystery and the reality that we will never fully understand or pin down God.
There is one other point about the Trinity that I think is important
even while it presents so many problems to people of other faiths and opinions.
Understanding God as not just one but three as well as one highlights one of my
key experiences of God which I find echoed loudly through the Bible and the
tradition of the Church – ultimately God can only be found in relationship. The
Trinity is itself an expression of relationship which is borne out in the
relationship between God and us and us and each other.
Which still isn’t to say that I’m willing to be restrained in my
imagining of God. So perhaps I will just leave you with that invitation. Think
about the God you have experienced and the God you have been taught about and
the God you read about in the Bible – think about all the different things that
the word God means to you – then close your eyes and imagine what that God
might look like.
May the God who is ultimately beyond all our imaginings – the God who is
both Father and Mother, Creator and Son, Nurturing Spirit and Strong Deliverer
– the God of and for us all be at the heart of all we say and do. Amen.