with some help from Romans 5.1-5
Welcome to Trinity Sunday. It is traditional for clergy to do their best to avoid preaching on Trinity Sunday. But its also traditional for a priest presiding at their first eucharist to not have to preach as well. So I’ve made a note in my diary for next year. It will be Carole’s turn!
The reason why we shy away from preaching on the Trinity is that its Rather Big. God is rather big and not easy to compact into a sermon. The Trinity is not easily explained.
It’s there in the scriptures: we find God revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Its quite unmissable but then we try to explain it. Ice water steam. 3 leaf clover. I’m a husband, a son-in-law, and a father. All of these metaphors are heresies. Some are considerably less helpful than others.
Helpfully, Richard Rohr describes the Trinity as a Mystery – but not a mystery in the unknowable sense but a mystery in the sense of being endlessly knowable.
So a small example of that could be my marriage to Lucy – there’s a lot of love, there’s some understanding, but there’s plenty of mystery still to explore. Endlessly Knowable mystery!
We’ve been looking at the Nicene Creed over this year – and there’s more to come – here in the Creed you’ll find the Father Almighty, and then the Son who is eternally begotten from the Father – and perhaps you remember Jesus praying to the Father saying ‘you Father, loved me before the creation of the world’ – John 17.24.
So now picture Nothingness. The sort of nothingness that isn’t even formless and void – before that – we find the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Son, the Father, there. Before anything, even before no-thing. And here we find that at the core of who God is is Love. God is Love.
God didn’t learn love, God is Love.
Later when someone comes up to you over coffee with a piece of cake to celebrate Carole’s priesting, and you whisper to them Did you understand anything of what James said today, I hope they will at least say -He said something about love. Love – that was probably the take home point.
I’m okay with that. God is love.
Now out of this love comes creation, comes Adam and Eve – all the way to you and me, and we are made in the image of God, so at the core of our identity, our reality, is Love.
Carole yesterday at her Priesting was asked to say a number of vows – Will you be diligent in prayer, will you strive to be an instrument of God’s peace, Will you make sure that the Vicar has a plentiful supply of Fig Rolls? I may have made that last one up. And the reply to each of these vows is By the help of God, I will. By the help of God, I will.
This is key. We are made in the image of this Trinitarian God we worship and adore. We are made to be in relationship, connected to the God of love, the God who is love.
We can do lots of loving things, for quite a while – not least because that’s who we are and how we’re made. But we also can tire and struggle with that and we need God’s love to be poured into our hearts.
And this is the promise of Romans 5. Our first reading: God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
So we live a life of love but we can only do this ‘By the help of God I will’ – we need that infilling of God’s love.
We do that by being in community, in relationship to God, to each other, in prayer, in sacrament, – don’t forget to come up to the Holy Spirit Chapel after you have received the body and blood of Jesus – come up here for some further prayer – we need this love in our lives.
This is who God is at the core of the trinity, at the core of reality. God is love.
And this is the Love that we need in our lives to live the life that God calls us to.
I find John’s Gospel the worst of all the gospels. I struggle with it. There’s so many tongue twisters. Here’s a favourite of mine – Jesus is praying – ch17.21 – His prayer is that: we may be one, Father just as you are in me and I am in you, May they also be in us,… I in them and you in me –
Fabulous.
Not easy to explain. Until you get to Trinity Sunday. So I say This is the Trinity applied in daily life – this is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit at work in their mutual co-operation – we have it in today’s Gospel reading where the Father glorifies the Son, the Spirit glorifies the Son, the Son makes known to the Spirit what needs to be revealed through the Spirit to us, and the Father sends the Spirit as the Son has asked.
OK So does that make sense now?
What you’re looking at is a dance. A finely woven beautifully choregraphed dance in which we see no Ego, no hierarchy, but a community of mutually encouraging, supporting, movement of love and joy, – and we, by Jesus’ prayer, are drawn into this divine dance.
Its not so very unlike a PCC meeting! Or any other groups of Christians working together to help and serve God – be it the Choir or Home Groups, the Coffee Rota.
But. Alas there is a But. St Paul brings up the reality of the struggle of this troublous life, the suffering.
At first he seems to be saying Suffering is good for you. It’ll put hairs on your chest, make a man out of you, that sort of thing. Suffering produces Perseverance produces Character, produces Hope.
Maybe. I’m not so sure.
Note first the invitation to the Dance- to be Justified through faith, to have Peace with God, through Jesus – to know that God’s love has been poured into your hearts.
The love of God is not poured in – after you’ve proved yourself, after you’ve gone through the suffering and shown yourself worthy. No. the Love is poured in by God’s inclusion of us in His Dance, in His life of love.
And note that its not a trickle down sort of economy, but a pouring. Surely my cup runneth over.
So I think that St Paul is saying that suffering continues to happen, but what we helps is to have that restored relationship with God through Jesus, – we need that love of God poured into our hearts – because
that’s the love that will carry us through the suffering, that’s the love that will give us strength to persevere, to change us into the person that God has made us to be – that’s the Character bit.
So yes there’s a real hope.
But the suffering. I sometimes wonder if this is worse for a Christian because we have the additional pain of looking at some aspect of life – war, famine, refugees, death and disease, and knowing that this is not how it should be.
And that makes me sad and angry, and it leaves me struggling for hope.
Where is God in the midst of this suffering.
And then I look to the Cross.
That’s where Jesus is in the midst of the suffering.
And then I look to the Holy Spirit and I find that the Spirit is at work in the midst of the people that God sends out to draw others into this divine dance, into this work of bringing peace and reconciliation.
So you see my three points today start with Love, Love at the core of reality, the core of our God, Father Son and Holy Spirit.
We see that Dance in the Trinity of love –
so that through the blood of Jesus,
through the love the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts – we find ourselves drawn into this divine dance.
And then the sending out. Because this is what it means to worship God who is Trinity. This is the God who is not a solitary ruler, a cold force, but this is the one who calls all things into a relational reality, into community.
And it is our job to invite others into this dance.
So May the Father draw us into His eternal love
May Jesus the Son shape us through his sacrifice, His life of self-giving
May the Spirit awaken us to the presence of God in each moment of life,
And teach us to live in God’s rhythm of love. Amen.
the picture i hope you can see is a carving on Mother Theresa that can be found in the Cathedral in Washington DC. She lived a live of self-giving love.