READINGS: Ps 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15
SERMON Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
It was a mystery.
And he had been puzzling over it for near on 30 years.
He had written thousands upon thousands of words
and yet, none of them felt adequate.
All of them fell short of the mark.
How do you describe the indescribable?
How do you try to comprehend the incomprehensible?
It was a daunting task;
It was madness:
a work that could never be completed in a single lifetime.
It was a mystery, a puzzle, an enigma.
One day, as he walked on the beach,
his mind overwhelmed by the immensity of the task,
he saw a young child playing.
As he watched, the child dug a small hole,
then ran to the water’s edge with a shell in hand.
Gently, carefully, the child filled the shell with water
and tiptoed back across the sand.
The shell was upturned, and water trickled into the hole;
the child then went back to the water’s edge.
The great thinker watched, as again, and again,
the child with the tiny shell
moved between the water’s edge and the hole,
collecting, carrying, pouring.
Walking up to the child, he smiled.
‘What are you doing, little one?’ he asked.
The child looked up at him with a solemn face and replied:
‘I'm trying to pour the ocean into this hole.’
The great thinker considered the child’s answer for a moment and responded gently:
‘But the ocean is vast. What makes you think that you can empty
the immense ocean into this tiny hole, with just a small shell?’
The child continued to look solemnly at the great thinker and then,
in a strange and otherworldly voice said:
‘And what makes you think that you can comprehend
the immensity of God with your tiny human mind.’
And with that, the child vanished leaving the great thinker alone
on that empty beach, looking at a tiny hole in which sea water
seeped into damp sand...
Today we celebrate, and reflect upon, mystery:
a mystery that the Church has puzzled over for near on 2 000 years.
There have been thousands of words written -
including the thousands written by the great thinker we heard about in the story -
the 5th century African theologian Augustine -
and while the story of Augustine’s strange beach encounter may be mere legend....
in this second decade of the 21st century
we are still none the wiser about the mystery he was pondering.
Words are not enough;
all of them fall far short of the mark
as we try to describe the indescribable,
and comprehend the incomprehensible:
the mystery and immensity of God,
Father
Son
and Holy Spirit -
one God
in three persons...
...blessed Trinity.
It is a mystery,
this business of the Trinity
yet, every year, for near-on 2 000 years,
church communities have listened as preachers have used
a variety of examples to try and come close to explaining the inexplicable:
God, like a shamrock - three leaves but one stem
God, like water in 3 forms: water, steam, ice...but still water
God, like an egg: shell, yolk, white...
All of these okay, but yet, not quite right.
It’s a tough job...
so perhaps we should just stick to the words of the Athenasian Creed -
you can almost hear the writers sighing and shrugging as they wrote:
God the Father: incomprehensible
God the Son: incomprehensible
God the Holy Spirit: incomprehensible.
But is mystery necessarily a bad thing?
And will we cope if we haven’t got the answer
to every single question this side of heaven?
I suspect... yes.
And I also suspect, from scripture, that we don’t get to know the whole shebang
this side of heaven anyway:
Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, notes
‘for now we know in part: then we shall see, face to face.’
Personally, I kinda like the anticipation, and of knowing there’s a whole lot more to come.
So, if we don’t get to unravel the whole mystery
of who God is and what this matter of the Trinity is about,
where might we go from here?
If we explore God as Trinity within the context
of love and belonging and relationship,
- concepts that are a little more easy to get our heads around -
how might that affect the way in which we live our lives?
In a small nod to ecumenism: the 1982 communion liturgy of the
Scottish Episcopal Church, paraphrasing the 1st Letter of John,
states that:
‘God is love and we are God’s children.
There is no room for fear in love.
We love, because God loved us first.’
For me, this gets to the heart of the matter:
relationships of love -
God is love...
and, our response to that love.
In the 16th century, the Russian artist Andrei Rublev
tried to paint his understanding of the Trinity:
Father, Son, and Spirit.
It’s the picture you have in front of you
on your order of service, and also given out with your order,
which I’d invite you to take out and have a look at now...
Rublev was very much trying to demonstrate this sense of God
living in harmonious and perfect community.
This sense of unity within the relationship of each of the figures
is indicated by the way their heads incline one to the other,
almost making an outline of a circle.
This shows how they're bound together as one
by a common will and mutual love: love unites them.
...God as a Trinity of love.
God the Father: the one who loves
God the Son: the beloved
God the Holy Spirit: the love that flows so strongly between Father and Son,
that it takes on shape and substance of its own.
And, mirroring this, for us who are created in God’s image, we might ask:
How do we love?
Who do we love?
What is the impact of that love on others?
It is a mystery, this business of the Trinity
and yet, the overarching theme appears to be community;
to be about relationship.
While our reading from the psalms reminded us of
how majestic, how great, is our God –
and that we are in a relationship of praise
with the whole of creation as we worship God,
our other two readings both contained mentions of God
within the context of relationship –
within what we call the three persons of the Trinity...
God as Father
as Son
and as Holy Spirit.
In Romans we hear of God who poured out his love to us through the Spirit...
of God further demonstrating that love for us
in the life and death of the Son – of Jesus...
God, who, in a community of relationship as Father, Son, and Spirit
creates a reconciling relationship with us –
and calls us into community.
God, as Trinity, modelling what perfect, loving community looks like:
always giving, always looking out for the other,
and always done within the context of mutual love.
Elsewhere in scripture – the gospel of Matthew,
when Jesus sends out the disciples to tell others the message of God’s love,
he calls them to go and make other disciples and to baptise them:
in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -
again, the holy community that is God.
And the one who is baptised enters into the church -
the community of God’s people.
As God is in the perfect community of the Trinity,
so those who believe are to live within the context of community:
we do so, because we are members of Christ’s body here on earth.
This sense of relationship - of belonging to God -
and of being a part of God’s people –
and of modelling lives lived in the fullness and richness of community,
is brought out in our gospel reading from John.
Jesus says:
‘I tell you...anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.'
And then observes that the power to follow Jesus,
to do what Jesus has done,
is only given within the context of
the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit –
As Jesus goes to the Father,
and speaks for us, his brothers and sisters,
so the Spirit comes to us, enabling us to do great things...
enabling us to live lives in love,
this, because we are enfolded within the love of the community that is God –
and because we live within the community who are called together as God’s people.
Jesus, in effect, is reminding his disciples
whose they are,
and how they should live...
lives modelled on the holy and harmonious relationship
of Father, Son, and Spirit:
lives lived in grace, love, and fellowship.
And there’s an openness to love.
Our painting by Rublev has an open space at the front:
it’s as if we’re being invited in to sit at the table...
God looks outwards, not inwards -
looking out in love towards us,
towards the world.
In turn, we are to look outwards not inwards -
look in love at the wider world around us:
to welcome all people,
to demonstrate heavenly hospitality
on earth as it is in heaven:
to build communities of love -
as in the prayer of St Francis:
‘where there is hatred, sow love,
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.’
And, as we go out marching into the world and do so,
we have the promise of Jesus, who says:
‘I will be with you always, to the end of the age.’
The life of faith is a life lived within the community of God,
the community of God’s people –
we’re not called to bear our burdens, or celebrate our joys alone –
we do this together –
sharing and caring with and for each other,
just as God, as Father, Son, and Spirit
work in seamless harmony and love, and attend to one another.
The Trinity:
it’s a mystery.
One that will continue to puzzle human beings until the end of time.
Thousands of words will be added to those already written;
all trying to comprehend the incomprehensible and never really succeeding.
But in the end, what matters is this:
love:
the love of the God who dwells in perfect community;
the love of God whose love is limitless, immeasurable
and welcomes us in -
the love that creates a place at the table for all...
And, as God loves,
so we are to reflect that love because:
'we believe in God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
the Three-in-One and One-in-Three,
God in three persons,
Blessed Trinity...'
Let’s pray:
three is the magic number
calling us out of individualism
insisting on relationship:
I, to you,
we, to another;
trinity – creating relationships
until all the cosmos joins in
one to create
one to save
one to sustain
one to author
one to fight
one to enliven
one to conceive
one to die
one to resurrect
one to plan
one to act
one to explain
one's sufficient
two's company:
three's community
God of trinity:
expose our self-reliance,
break open our exclusivity,
continue your creative work
of building relationships
here, and now, among us,
your people... amen
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