Readings:
Sermon:
We have arrived at Trinity Sunday, all the colour of Lent, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost as now past and with one last flurry of liturgical white, or Gold, we enter in the Season of Trinity. Then follow 19 Sundays of Green.
But first we left with our annual challenge – the challenge of Trinity Sunday. The Trinity one of the great mysteries of our Christian Faith. God Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Indivisible, inseparable and, it can sometime feel, incomprehensible. Every attempt we make to picture the Trinity, we fall short; at some point we’re bound to cry “Heresy”. So, we are left with a Holy Mystery: God three in one and one in three.
Jesus’ words to the Disciples in John 16 resonate for me, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can bear.”
I come from an engineering background, and I like to be able to explore things, I like to be able to understand how things work. My wife will say, if I find something working, I may well take it apart to see how it works (reassembly optional).
For us to fully understand the nature of God is beyond us, we cannot take God apart, we cannot stand removed from God to examine the divine nature.
What we can do is experience God and live out what God has for us in our lives. “When the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you into all truth,” Jesus tells the disciples. In this dialog, Jesus, speaks of the inseparable nature of the Father and the Spirit and in this connects his own being into this divine dance; “All that belongs to the Father is mine”.
In Jesus’ words there is a wonderful linking of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. In Jesus ministry we have those divine moments when the Father, Son and Spirit are all active in the moment. At Jesus’ Baptism, the Spirit descending on Jesus, like a dove and the voice from heaven, “this is my Son, whom I love, in him I am well pleased”.
We have a similar interaction in the Transfiguration. (Luke 9.35) we have the voice of the Father speaking out of the cloud.
We have these moments when we see the different Persons, (Persons note, not people), Persons of the Trinity acting in concert and together. Both as one and as three.
The key, it seems to me, is for us is to accept that God is greater than our ability to comprehend and understand. We are also called to enjoy the excitement of experiencing a relationship with this God we cannot understand.
“All that belongs to the Father is mine…the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it know to you”
Over recent weeks, I have been struck by the way that God can disrupt our plans and press us to take paths as yet unknown.
Peter, called, in a vision to accept the invitation to eat with Cornelius. To change the practices of a lifetime to help that family to come into a living relationship with God.
Paul, prevented from going into Asia and compelled to change his missional plan, so that he might accept the invitation offered by Lydia in Phillippi.
What about us in the here and now, called to explore how to speak God’s truth into a turbulent and rapidly changing world.
In all of this we can struggle to fully comprehend but we can fully experience. God may be beyond our comprehension but is made known to us through the wonder of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit at work in us and those around us.
As a wise friend reminded me, “we walk into an unknown future with a known God.”
Questions:
- How would you describe the Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
- Do you see the dynamic and ever moving nature of the Trinity reflected in the life of the Church?
- Do you have an unknown future, if so, which person of the Trinity do you need to experience most in this moment?