Trinity – An Invitation to Awe and Humility

You can listen to this sermon here

Gate Pa –  Trinity Sunday in Easter- Year C - 2022

Readings:
Psalm                          Psalm: 8                                                                     
First Reading:             Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31                                    
Second Reading:         Romans 5:1-5    
Gospel:                       John 16:12-15

What I want to say:

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

-         God the Beloved

-         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?

 

For those who want to really get down with the ins and outs of Trinity, you can do worse than watching  St. Patrick's Bad Analogies by LutheranSatire

 

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