Colourful Dreamer

I am away for the next two Sundays. So I am not preaching this Sunday - Trinity Sunday. Which is sad. I like trinity Sunday and wrestling with what difference the trinity makes. My deep suspicion is that most Christians are not Trinitarian, or even monotheisitic. We slide into being tritheisitc, believing in God, the Son and Holy Spirit.  Trinitarian theology is faith in God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And it grew out of peoples shared experience of God,  and helped them both make sense of that experience and find ways to live in response to that shared experience. For me that means that in the gospels we meet the Eternal Word (Son) who comes among us in Jesus. In his life, teaching, death and resurrection we are shown God the Father. We meet the character of the Father - Source of All Being - a character of love, generosity,  and mercy. And just as the risen Jesus breathed the Spirit into his followers, so the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ breathes ...

This sermon can be listened to here  G ate Pa – 19th June 2022, 13 th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C Readings: First Reading:              Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Psalm:                         Psalm 100 Second Reading:        Gal 3:23-29                 Gospel:                          Luke 8:26-39                          What I want to say: Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday. One Sunday a year to think about the Trinity, and then put it back on the shelf for another year. One important aspect of The trinity is the relationship be...

Last week some of us struggled to keep up with St. Patrick once he gave up on his bad analogies. What he said was, "The Trinity is a mystery which cannot be comprehended by human reason but is understood only through faith and is best confessed in the words of the Athanasian Creed, which states that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the Persons nor dividing the substance, that we are compelled by the Christian truth to confess that each distinct Person is God and Lord, and that the deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coequal in majesty." (St. Patrick's Bad Analogies - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw ) Whew! For many, one of the important features of traditional Trinitarian theology is the relationship between the three persons. I wonder what words we might use to describe this relationship. For me words like mutuality, love, generosity, and compassion come to mind. I am invited to be o...

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 : ...

Happy Trinity Sunday. This day is a gift. It is a day where we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the awe and wonder at the mystery of God who is three in one. It is a day to acknowledge we don’t have all the answers and to learn humility. It is a day to repent of our desire to explain and control God, and instead to have our minds blown by the omnipotence and awesomeness of God. A few years ago, Archbishop Phillip wrote that “(h)owever difficult it might be, to speak of God as Trinity is to speak a wonderful truth, for the Trinity speaks to us of a God who is no distant, remote, isolate monad, but rather proclaims an experience of God who in essence is relational. God as Trinity is God in communion, three in one. Inter-dependence, mutuality, loving in communion are all expressions which flow from our knowledge of God as three in one. St. Augustine of Hippo described the Trinity as “the lover, the beloved and the love between them”. The doctrine of the Trinity was not developed as a...

This sermon can be listened to here Gate Pa – 20th June 2021 – 12 th Sunday in Ordinary Time Readings: Psalm                          Psalm 133                   First Reading:               1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 10-16    Second Reading:          2 Corinthians 6:1-13               Gospel:                          Mark 4:35-41                         ...