Trinity Sunday

May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all this morning….(please sit down)

Trinity Sunday brings the opportunity once again to consider the mystery at the heart of our faith.

In a nutshell The Doctrine of the Trinity is:

· God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

· Each person is fully God.

· There is only one God.

Over the last few weeks while I’ve been researching I’ve noticed how often we repeat this conviction within our liturgy it seems to be the glue that binds us together as a community & I’ve been discovering that even the most eminent preachers don’t find it easy to explain the Trinity. Apparently at theological college they tell you that Trinity Sunday is a good Sunday to invite the Bishop to preach, but today you’ve got me!

The benediction known as ‘The Grace’ has been called the most explicitly Trinitarian formula in all of Paul's writings. The word "trinity" never appears in the Bible. But as a result of Trinitarian expressions such as this one, in which there is a distinction made between the three persons of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the early church began to develop a doctrine of the trinity which understood that while we worship only one God, that God is, by nature and by the way we experience Him, three in one. Jesus had already apparently instigated the Trinity by sending his followers out to ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,’

We could spend all day unpacking the meaning of the trinity, but I just want to share some of my thoughts with you.

Today we remember who God is, Father Son and Holy Spirit. This is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian and yet it is very difficult to believe that God can be one and three. It is a credit to the church through the centuries that it has lived with an understanding of God which is bigger than human reasoning and not tried to adapt the idea of God to be more like us. Of course it is beyond human understanding, God is a mystery to us and it would be remarkable if we were able to capture God within the confines of mere human intellect. This would certainly miss the point, the Christian teaching of the Trinity is not an explanation of God it is a description of what we know about God, albeit at odds with logic as we know it.

Now I am a simple person, I look on things at face value; I need to understand at my own level. Until I started researching this topic I didn’t really have much trouble with the concept of the Trinity. I can look any of us here to explain what I mean. Take Stanley: he’s a priest, a husband, & father but he is just one person. To me this is a simple but clear explanation of the 3 aspects of the person of God; I had no idea that I was a heretic! This theory is apparently ‘non-Trinitarian’ what a minefield, and the analogy of the states of H2O: water, steam & ice is also heretical! (sorry!)

If we look at the Christian art and sculptures of our Celtic ancestors they seem to have taken every opportunity to celebrate the Trinity, no worries for them about the 'difficulty' of the concept!

Human beings are visual creatures. We like to use symbols and drawings to help us understand and remember things. Many symbols that Christians have used through the centuries to represent this idea that God is three persons yet one being decorate our Chrismon tree in St Peter’s. (Show a selection of shapes from Chrismon tree)

Legend has it that St Patrick used a trefoil or 3 leaved clover as an illustration, perhaps if he were here today he might use a Jaffa Cake..

A Jaffa Cake is made of biscuit, jam and chocolate.

· If one part is missing, it is not a Jaffa Cake.

· Biscuit missing, you have orange chocolate.

· Jam missing, you have a chocolate biscuit.

· Chocolate missing, you have a jam tart.

Same with the Trinity, all three persons need to be there for God to be complete.

If that's too hard to contemplate or too near a heresy for you, just enjoy the Jaffa Cakes with your coffee!

All of this goes to show just how difficult it is for us adequately to express such difficult divine concepts. Fortunately its not just up to us. The Holy Spirit is here to point and guide us towards truth.

Thankfully most Christians are not people who understand a load of facts about God. We are people who reach out and discover God for ourselves. Only when we open our lives to God and discover that He is real will our hearts and minds be opened to his presence around and within us.

If you ever wanted proof of the truth of Christianity then the doctrine of the Trinity is it. Which human being would ever invent a religion which didn’t make sense?! Christians have always struggled, trying to piece together the information which God has given us. Fortunately being a Christian is about belonging as much as understanding, faith rather than facts. Our faith is contagious as we see and experience Christ in others.

In our Gospel reading today Jesus explains about needing to be spiritually reborn. The spirit is as mysterious and impossible to see as the wind. Yet, like the wind, the work of the Spirit –though invisible- is real its effects can be seen & felt. But to trying to pinpoint its position is as impossible as trying to catch the wind– and as misguided as Nicodemus’ looking for signs.

Of course, there are times in our lives when we feel the power of God’s Spirit at work more strongly than others. And it is important to remember those times. But we must take care not to limit the work of the Spirit to a few high points in our lives.

The witness of the early church is that new life in the Spirit is given to a person at baptism. Yet the fulfilment of that baptism is a lifelong journey for us as individuals but more importantly as a community.

Being a Christian is about belonging as much as believing; we share in our faith with others. We do not become Christians because we suddenly understand the Trinity. Most new converts are slowly attracted to God through fellowship & by example and research has shown that most people belong to a church long before they truly believe.. This has important implications for us as a church because what we should be seeking to encourage is belonging, enabling people to share fellowship and to feel a part of the church the body of Christ.

In other words faith comes first, and then we have to try to understand it. If we all look at our own experience I imagine you are all similar to me: I believed before I began to understand. Moreover nobody fully understands, if theologians disagree so much, if different traditions of Christianity disagree so much what hope have we got?! If Christianity is about our love of God and more importantly about God’s love for us – and the expression of that love through the three persons of the Trinity - then it is open to all, free at the point of delivery: This is our hope and sure foundation!
That doesn't mean that we stop trying to understand. As Christians we believe some things very powerfully, other things we believe less strongly but we think that they are important. Some things we believe because somebody has told us about them and some things we believe because we know, in here. I believe the Trinity expresses something which we just know - in here.

So let’s greet and encourage each other showing that we are all brothers & sisters in the one family of the triune God by sharing together in the Grace saying to each other with our eyes open and looking at each other:

May the Grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore….. Amen