Date: 30^th May 2010 (Trinity)

Preacher: Chris Green

Churches: Rodney Stoke (combined benefice service)

Readings and psalm:

Proverbs 8, 104, 22-31

Psalm 8

Romans 5, 105

John 16, 12-15

May I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is Trinity Sunday. I count it a great privilege to be preaching today to the ‘trinity’ of churches in this Benefice. This is after all one of the great festivals of the Church. It concludes the journey of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. These events can now been seen in a uniquely Christian perspective: the God we worship has three aspects, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while remaining one- three persons, one God.

But... we would not be honest with ourselves if we did not admit that there is a problem. We find the Trinity difficult. It seems to come from a bygone era, using ideas and language in a strange way. As David Jenkins once drily remarked, “The doctrine of the Trinity is not so hard to understand once you realise that ‘three’ doesn’t mean three, ‘one’ doesn’t mean one and ‘person’ doesn’t mean person”.

The doctrine as we have it was set down in the first few centuries AD. It was in place at the council of Nicea in 325, but goes back at least to Tertullian, over a century before, who coined the term ‘trinitas’. Part of its function was to exclude rival theologies- thereafter termed ‘heresies’.

One particularly influential heretic was Arius, born around 255 AD. He held that Jesus was a created being, not co-eternal with the Father, so questioning Jesus’ divinity. At one stage Athanasius (of the Athanasian creed) and Arius debated whether Christ was of the same substance as the Father (Greek: homoousios) or of like substance (homoiousios), words which in Greek are separated by a single letter, iota (hence the terma ‘iota of difference’). It was in this and similar debates that the doctrine was forged.

Where you may ask did such ideas spring from, when Trinity is not even mentioned in the Bible? Well strangely enough it is precisely to the Bible that I believe we must go to refresh the meaning of Trinity for ourselves. And we might start with this morning’s readings.

Our Old Testament reading shows the Hebrews talking of God’s wisdom as a person (female, incidentally). Wisdom was with God from the beginning- ‘rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the human race’. This reminds us of John’s Gospel- ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’. It also helps us to see that we are using metaphor and poetry when we personify aspects of God, not precise philisophical terms.

In our second reading, we find Paul using Trinitarian terms to communicate with the Church at Rome. ‘We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,... God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’. He is using this language, not to define the nature of God, but to explain how we can relate to God- ‘through our Lord Jesus Christ- through the Holy Spirit’.

But perhaps the greatest of the proto-Trinitarian writings are to be found in chapters 13 to 17 of John’s gospel. These are set between the Last Supper and Jesus’ arrest, and are often called the ‘farewell discourses’. We have heard a number of passages from these chapters over the last few Sundays, including today. He says ‘I shall not leave you as orphans, I shall come to you’, talking of the Spirit. He also says ‘I and the Father are one’. He is preparing his disciples for his absence; and in so doing, also points us towards ideas of the Trinity.

I recently re-read these discourses after reading a chapter of a theology textbook on the Trinity, and I must say, I struggled to relate the two. In theology of the Trinity, humanity hardly seems to be involved- the three persons are self-sufficient, perfect. Consequently the Trinity easily becomes a philosphical puzzle, remote from our lives.

But in the farewell discourses, we have something much more personal, even intimate. And it involves the disciples... and us!

In one passage, Jesus says to them ‘I no longer call you servants, I call you friends – for everything I have learned from the Father, I have made known to you’. Friendship is a two-way thing. Jesus is telling his disciples that he needs them, not just they him.

And again- “Before long, the world will not see me any more, but you will see me... On that day you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” This draws us in, too- if Christ is in us, and he is in the Father, then we, too, are in the Father.

And Jesus gives the disciples a new commandment- ‘love one another’. Why? Because if we love others, God enters us through his Spirit. As John’s first epistle says, God is love, and whoever lives in love, lives in God. In loving, we are becoming sons and daughters of God, following Jesus’ example. For this reason Christianity can never be just a private thing, between the individual and God. We must recognise God’s incarnation in each other.

The other week Nikki and I went to an Abba tribute evening at Draycott memorial hall. Many people had gone to great lengths with their 1980s costumes, and danced enthusiastically to the band. We had not dressed up and felt rather out of place, awkward spectators. But finally Nikki persuades me to take to the floor, and then the whole experience changed. However poorly prepared we were, however badly I danced, we had become part of the occasion, and (for a moment or two at least), part of the music, and the evening.

Approaching the Trinity is a little like this. We may observe from outside, feel that it is a strange thing from a bygone era. But we must lose our inhibitions and join in the dance, completing the circle of Jesus ‘I in my Father, you in me, and I in you’. The Trinity is not just an over-compicated theological way of describing God. It is an invitation to join in, to enter into the mystery of God’s very nature.

So let us pray, in words from Janet Morley.

O God our mystery, you bring us to life, call us to freedom, and move between us with love.

May we so participate in the dance of your trinity, that our lives may resonate with you, now and for ever, Amen.