Welcome to Trinity Sunday. Today is the one Sunday in the year when in 15 minutes I explain to you a highly complicated doctrine.
Its actually not that difficult.
It starts with baby steps – with seeing from the beginning of creation a plurality in God – the Hebrew word Elohim – translated God – that’s a plural word – like Cherubim as opposed to Cherub. A plural word.
Then God says “Let us make people in our own image”. Us. Our.
So we hold to the singleness of God. That God is one. And yet there is this threeness about God.
‘Go and Baptise’ said Jesus ‘in the Name of’, singular, Name of – not in the names of –
the Hebrew for The Name – by the way – is Ha Shem – and its used still today by Jews as a short hand word for God. They just say ‘The Name’. Ha Shem.
Anyway here’s this Jewish man, Jesus and He is telling us to Baptise others in The Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
So there you are. One substance, three persons. One God, Father Son and Holy Spirit.
We see the Revelation of the Son solidly in the incarnation of Jesus – in His life and death, His sacrifice and Ascension.
*And we see the Revelation of the Holy Spirit- Lord the Giver of Life – as we say in our Nicene Creed – the Holy Spirit – at all sorts of moments throughout our Scriptures culminating in the fulfilled promise of Pentecost as the Spirit of Jesus is poured out on all people.
How does it all work? – ah well that’s a mystery.
But not a mystery in the sense that that’s a Cop Out.
?Why is the Sky blue, – some of you might be able to answer that one
How do you explain why the Strait of Hormuz is closed?
That is a mystery to me but it doesn’t stop me praying
Can anyone explain to me how soap works?
(No but I can show you!!)
Professor Hanna Fry tells me that soap has a molecule in it – at one end of this molecule there’s something that likes oily things, and at the other end something that likes watery things. So when Soap comes up against your dirty dishes it knows what to do.
Most of you don’t care. You just know it works so you get on with it.
Quite likely very few of you can explain how a car works. That is an utter mystery to me.
You know that when I say “Cars are a mystery to me” – that that’s really just me being lazy. I could go and read books, learn to be a mechanic and all that.
But I am happy to pay Mark some money and have him sort it out.
I do know that if he comes to me and says ‘Well that oil leak, that’s a mystery’ then I know I’m in trouble.
If I describe my wife as a Mystery … (I might get a cheap laugh out of that) but by it – actually I mean that even though I’ve known her for *cough* years that I know that there is still more wonderful things to learn about her.
*So when I call God, the Holy Trinity, a mystery, that’s not me saying ‘You can’t know anything about God’, that’s me saying that ‘God is endlessly knowable’.
So that’s our first challenge – to discover that God is endlessly knowable.
So we keep growing and learning more about God. We do that in prayer and study and Home Groups, Alpha, and Scripture and worship and … life – in how we live and love and serve each other – we are the Church, the Body of Christ.
Somehow or other we are caught up in the middle of this Trinitarian God.
The God who’s love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
The God who reveals Himself through the Burning Bush, the Prophets, through Jesus – who promises that He, Jesus will go to heaven and send another like Jesus, one who will come alongside and be with you and in you, and this Comforter will be the Holy Spirit.
Jesus concludes His point saying My Father and I we will come and make our home in you.
So we find that we are caught up inside of this Trinity.
No wonder that lots of preachers like to use the word Dance.
We’re discovering that God is bigger that we are, than our brains are, God is bigger than our language is –
and bigger than our world
and bigger than our problems and worries are.
And that’s a comfort.
We worship a Big God. Not a pocket size simple deity.
And we discover that this God cares for us
We’re reminded in our readings today that God is love.
St John in his letters is keen for us to know that God is love.
Not the way that I am quite tall, quite fat – that’s the sort of thing is a part of who I currently am. I’ve not always been this tall or this fat.
But with God we discover that Love is the essence and the core of who and what God is.
God is Love.
But I cannot conceive of Love as a Thing, as a Noun.
I can see Love as an action.
So you might think of Love as requiring the Giver of Love – but now you need the Receiver of Love – and now you need the Gift of Love, love itself.
But I don’t know that I would limit it to seeing only the Father as the Giver and so on – because it seems to me that in this dance of the Trinity that we see in Scripture that each Person of the Trinity is Giving love, Receiving Love and being the Love.
I rather like that as Jesus comes to Ascend that there are all these disciples and some of them worshipped Jesus. That really is quite the wow moment.
For a group that were so very committed to the 10 Commandments and the Law to only worship the Lord your God, – but here they are worshipping Jesus.
You and I we take that for granted. Not so unlike me not feeling the need to explain how a car works.
But we also read that some doubted. I love that.
Here’s the honesty of Scripture.
Thank you Matthew for being so honest and not airbrushing stuff out. Thank you Holy Spirit for giving Matthew that nudge to be that honest.
What were they doubting – Is this really Jesus? What’s really going on here? We don’t know what their doubts were – I suspect that our doubts would be similar but different.
And I would love to ask them if, having seen Jesus ascend, whether their doubts have changed at all?!
Or maybe they’re struggling with ‘Are we allowed to worship Jesus?’
In the last book of the bible, Revelation, Saint John finds himself in front of an Angel and he’s so overwhelmed by this moment that he falls down to worship the Angel
and the Angel corrects him saying ‘No, don’t do that, I’m just an Angel’.
But here Jesus is not saying ‘No don’t do that’.
Instead Jesus receives their worship, and quite right.
But there are those who are doubting. There will be times in your life when Doubt will raise its voice in your life. Don’t worry about it. Acknowledge it.
Speak it out.
It could be the sort of doubt that is cured by an answer -= maybe, who knows? Does this Bus go to Brighton? That sort of doubt is easily sorted.
But there are other doubts that I’m afraid you will have to live with and struggle through.
Please do not do this alone.
I love that Jesus doesn’t tell the Doubters to go away – Get yourselves sorted and come back when you’re on the right page.
He also doesn’t go round each one and check in with them.
Instead Jesus says: GO! Go and make disciples. Yes you have doubts. These will come and go in different measures throughout your lives.
So take your faith and your questions and your struggles and Go, Go and Baptise and Teach and Make Disciples.
I am keen for you to go and make Disciples. But an important part of that is that you yourself are growing as a Disciple. We have so much to learn.
And I learn so much off you – in head and heart knowledge, in how we live and love and serve each other.
Here’s the challenge of the Trinity – as we discover there’s so much more to God to grow in to.
Here’s the call for us to be disciples
as we also encourage others in the faith.
And Here’s the Comfort of the Trinity – remembering that God the Holy Trinity is bigger than our worries – so we may come to God in prayer and tears with faith and hope. And we may come with struggles and doubts.
And know that God is all good with holding us in that messy faith.
So allow yourself, in worship, in the sacrament, through the Church family,
to join in with this dance of God the Holy Trinity – and so may – The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.