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 ...

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...

Trinity Sunday! A gift of a Sunday. An invitation. How do we make sense of the Doctrine of the Trinity? Why even bother trying? Because both Paul and John in today’s readings say that how we understand the Triune God shapes our lifestyle. Who we understand God to be shapes how we respond to God in our everyday lives. All the earliest theologians developed their theologies, including their theology of Trinity, so that people might know God more fully as the author of all goodness and love, and that we might know that we are the object of that goodness and love. They wanted people to know that God the creator and source of all being will not give up on us no matter what we do. They wanted people to know that the Eternal Word became one of us so that we might know we are made in the image of God and become God.   And they wanted people to know that as the Spirit works in us and helps us reflect and meditate on the story of Jesus we might grow in wisdom and love, live lives of goodne...

You can listen to this sermon here Gate Pa – Trinity Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A - 2020 Readings: Psalm - Psalm 8 First Reading - Genesis 1:1 – 2:4 Second Reading - 2 Cor 13:11-13 Gospel - Matt 28:16-20 What I want to say: I want to explore how Trinity Sunday is a gift inviting us to reflect on our understanding of God and how that shapes our response to God’s actions in our lives, the world, and all creation What I want to happen: To ask, as we leave the Covid-19 restrictions, what is the gift of Trinity Sunday and who might we live that out in level one and beyond? The Sermon 1. Introduction: Happy Trinity Sunday. A lot of people are a little ambivalent about this Sunday. It is big. It is hard to talk about the Trinity. There are a lot of pages written, millions of words, and yet we are trying to describe the indescribable, the unknowable, the mystery of God....

Today is Trinity Sunday. Please keep reading. The temptation is to try to explain the Trinity, often using some of the common metaphors. For example, the “Trinity is like water, which is also ice and steam” which is modalism – and condemned as a heresy; or the famous 3 leafed clover of St. Patrick – also seen as not quite getting it. The other temptation is to ask, “so what if I don’t get how the Trinity works” and to ignore it all together. I suspect lots of us do that. I want to suggest that Trinity Sunday is a gift. It is a day where we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed and shaped by the awe, wonder and mystery of God who is three in one.   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...

This sermon can be listened to here Gate Pa –  Trinity Sunday in Easter- Year C - 2019 Readings: Psalm                          Psalm: 8                                                                      First Reading :               Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31                               ...