Trinity Sunday 15 Jun 25
Readings: Proverbs 8: 1-4: 8:22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5: 1-5; John 16: 12-15
Canon Rosalind Brown is a former Canon Librarian of Durham Cathedral and has written some lovely hymns, too. Quite a few years ago, she was guest speaker at a Clergy Summer School at The Southport School. In her notes for today she tells of a tiny stone church in Northumberland in northern England, reached by a narrow, wooded lane. She writes that nothing prepares you for what you see inside on an overcast day (not an unusual occurrence in Northumberland, I have to say). The dark nave is effectively invisible, and your eyes are drawn to a beautifully lit tiny apse. “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts” is inscribed above the gold altar frontal. She writes that the church is a window into the Trinity, because the only appropriate response is to worship, to join the angels’ cry “Holy, Holy, Holy”[1]
It’s Trinity Sunday! The day supposedly when clergy faced with the daunting task of preaching about the Trinity take a break and arrange a guest preacher – anyone seen Valerie this morning? Trinity: One God in three persons is the central mystery of our faith. But as St. Augustine warned 1600 years ago, “There is no subject where error is more dangerous, research more laborious, and discovery more fruitful than the oneness of the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”[2]
Preachers may (or should) rightly feel unequal to explaining the Trinity. I think this his little verse puts the preacher’s dilemma nicely:
I wanted to study the Trinity
For my PhD in divinity.
But my little grey cells
Were unable to delve
The mysteries of triune infinity.
You’ve probably heard from the pulpit quite a few analogies in an effort to explain the Trinity in simple language, and I must admit I’ve used one or two as well, but they are all inadequate. Here are a few, and why they don’t really work:
1. Trinity is like water. Water can be a solid (ice), liquid, and vapour (steam), and yet all three forms are still water. Likewise, God manifests Godself in three different ways in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Or Trinity is like a man or woman; he/she can be a husband/wife, a father/mother and an employee.
Sabellianism (named after Sabellius, a third century priest and theologian) taught that God is one person that manifests Himself as either the Father, or the Son, or the Spirit (one god, one person with three different manifestations instead of one God, three persons) and the Nicene Creed was developed in part to counter this.
2. Trinity is like the sun; God the Father is the sun; the Holy Spirit and the Son are represented by the heat and light.
Arianism (named after Arius, also a third century priest) believes that the Son and the Spirit are created entities (like the heat and light) and therefore subordinate to the Father. It caused significant rifts in the early church. The Council of Nicea was called in an attempt to resolve the conflicts. In the end, Gregory of Nazianzus, who along with Basil of Caesara and Gregory of Nyssa tidied the whole thing up said “My inclination is to avoid all assemblies of bishops, because I have never seen any council come to a good end, nor turn out to be a solution of evils. On the contrary, it usually increases them.”
3. Trinity is like an egg which has a shell, an egg white and a yolk with all parts making up the egg, and much like how all three make up the egg itself, so does each member of the Trinity. Similarly, the trinity is like an apple that has skin, flesh and a core. All the parts are uniquely different, but they are all one apple. Or the Trinity is like a three-leaf clover – the three leaves make up the three-leaf clover together.
Partialism (also from around the same time as the other two) taught that Father, Son and Holy Spirit together are components of the one God. Each of the persons of the Trinity is only part God, only becoming fully God when they come together.
Are there any good analogies about Trinity? I don’t think so. No human language or categories or constructs can ever fully talk about God. We cannot make God in our own image. We simply let God be God – to come before God “in reverence and awe.” The whole focus of Trinity Sunday really is not how to understand the Trinity – who among us can? The focus should be on how we can live lives following to example of God the Trinity. although this is very important) but to live and follow the example of God the Trinity. Today’s readings can help us. Rosalind Brown comments that the Gospel readings in recent weeks have emphasized abiding in Christ[3], and thus, in Christ, being in relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Through abiding in Christ, humanity shares the life of God, not becoming God, but being drawn into the life that the Son shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit. There is a Greek word for this which I won’t bore you with, but one way of understanding it is through the language of dance - an eternal dance of the Father, Son, and Spirit sharing mutual love, honour, happiness, joy, and respect, and living an eternal relationship of self-giving. In Christ, we’re invited to join in the dance. “Dance, then, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the dance said he; and I’ll lead you all wherever you may be, and I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.”[4]
In the reading from Proverbs, God acting through Holy Wisdom calls us wherever she may find us – on the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads, by the city gates, by the portal – the entrance to the temple – and so finding, we’re invited to find life abundantly in the life of God. Paul in writing to the Romans affirms that it is through Jesus Christ that we have access to God’s love and grace and can proclaim our hope of sharing in God’s glory, experiencing – sometimes through suffering – that God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. John’s Gospel speaks of Jesus’ message continued through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, reflecting his message and values. The Holy Spirit’s gifts are not found primarily in speaking in tongues and Pentecostal drama but in living in the way of Jesus, welcoming, embracing, healing, and nurturing.[5]
Trinity Sunday is a celebration of an eternal relationship (or dance) of love mutual love, honour, happiness, joy, respect, and self-giving which distinguishes us as Christians – we alone hold to the trinity as a way of speaking about God. Therefore, if we live the Trinity, people should be able to see there is something different, something joyful about us in everything we do. For example, right where we are now, the welcome that people experience on coming to church should be different, special, joyful reflecting the joy of relationship that is at the heart of the Trinity.
As we celebrate the gift of the Trinity today, can we together re-kindle the vision of being a welcoming community of faith, inspired by the relationship that is the Trinity to be open-hearted, joyful and loving in our relationships with everyone – not just those we meet here this morning, but with everyone we shall meet each and every day.
The Reverend Bill Crossman
[1] Fresh From the Word Rosalind Brown Canterbury Press, Norwich UK 2016 p308
[2] https://joeyechano.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/trinity-sunday-gods-unfathomable-love. The examples of analogies below are also drawn from this
[3] e.g John 17: 20-26 – Seventh Sunday of Easter Year C
[4] Together in Song No242
[5] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2016/05/the-adventurous-lectionary-trinity-sunday-may-22-2016/
© The Reverend Bill Crossman