Trinity – An Invitation to Awe and Humility
You can listen to this sermon here
Gate Pa – Trinity Sunday in Easter- Year C - 2022
Psalm Psalm: 8
At its origins and at its best the
doctrine of the Trinity is an invitation to join those early Christians
reflecting both on our experience of God the Father in the Risen Son, made
known in the Holy Spirit, and the story of Jesus and the whole of scripture and
how that makes visible the ongoing presence of God in our midst and in our
world. We are invited to respond with awe and humility to the invitation to be
immersed in the relationship of love that is at the heart of God.
What I want
to happen:
• How
might we talk about the Trinity and its importance to our lives of faith?
The Sermon
1. Introduction:
Some years ago, after I had preached an
awesome sermon on the Trinity, one of those listening asked “did it matter if
we understand Trinity?”
At one level the answer is no. In many ways
you don’t need understand technical constructs of a theology of Trinity, although
I find it helpful to try and get my head around it.
But at another level the answer is, “o my
goodness me yes.” Because how we conceive of God, how we construct our
understanding of God, affects how we see ourselves in relation to God, how we
see others, and how we live our lives in God.
So who do you understand the Trinity? I invite you to turn to your neighbour and talk about your understanding of God, three in one, and it’s importance in your life?
2. Pastoral not
doctrinal
So here are some thoughts about the Trinity.
When we talk about Trinity, we might sometimes
wonder why anyone came up with it. What was the point?
We forget that this grew out of the experience of early
church who were seeking to make sense of their experience of God while holding
true to what their scriptures said about God; both the Hebrew scriptures and
the series of letters and stories about Jesus and early church that we now call
the New Testament. It grew slowly as people struggled with who God is and how
to live lives of faith. It wasn’t developed by people divorced from everyday
life, but by people at the centre of the life of the church.
In John’s gospel , Jesus talks about the Spirit
glorifying him, as he did today in the passage we read. When John uses the word
“glory”, he means making visible the presence of God. Glory is making visible
the presence of God. The question for the early church was “How is God made
visible in our experience of the crucified and risen Jesus and how does that
shape our life as a church?” Big questions.
They were a lot less concerned about getting the
right answers, which is what it can feel like today. They were more concerned about
the deep pastoral need within their persecuted church
-
struggling to make sense of their faith
-
and why life was so tough
-
and how to respond to it all.
I was reminded this week that In Jesus we are
grafted into the people of Israel. Israel is the name given to Jacob after he
had spent the night wrestling with the angel. It means “one who struggles with God.”
For us as Christians we might modify that to say that we struggle with the God revealed in the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. So, the questions around the Trinity were not seen as a problem to be solved, but as part of our eternal wrestling with the nature of God.
3.
Manifestation of Love
One way to understand the Trinity is as a
manifestation of God’s love for us, and an invitation to see ourselves embraced
by that love.
I have in the past talked about St Augustine of
Hippo and his writing on the Trinity. In on the Trinity he said that in the
story of Jesus we are given a picture of what God is like. He talks about how,
in Jesus, we are reminded that we are made in the image of God most holy, omnipotent
creator of all, and what it means for us to be fully human. In the Spirit we
are given the means to meditate on this story, to be changed by this story, so
that we might experience the risen Christ
o present in the world
today
o present in our
neighbour
o present in our church
family
o present in our own
lives and hearts
As we meditate on this story, we come to know God as
a communion of Love
-
God the Lover
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God the Beloved
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God of Love
As we meditate on this story we hear the invitation
to join this communion. That is what we are doing here in this service. It is
what we do every time we take communion, responding to this invitation, being
invited to grow in trust in this God.
The word we translate as believe in New Testament
and Creeds is really about trust. I wonder how that changes the creeds for us
We trust in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is,
seen and unseen.
There is no need to understand. There is no need to
fully agree with how this God is described. We are simply asked to trust
4. Invitation
So I wonder how you respond to all that? Maybe with some
confusion. That is fine. We are being invited into a mystery. For me all this
evokes humility
-
I don’t have all the answers
-
Don’t have God down pat
Instead, I hear the invitation to meditate on the
story of Jesus. And I do that to anchor our lives in God’s love, delight in God
with awe and wonder, living in the communion of love. And to trust
How do you respond?
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