Trinity Sunday 2011
Trinity Sunday is a day often made up of a great deal of confusion – the Trinity is never the easiest doctrine to try and explain to people – there can be lots of complicated explanations and many people will try and use symbols as an explanation – it reminds me a little bit of a football match played one night. As the teams were playing the lights went out, and they called on an electrician to sort out the problem – he tried hard but failed, and then another man came forward who said that he knew what to do.
Somehow he managed to communicate to some of the crowd to wave an arm in the air – still nothing happened, so he got some more people to do the same and this time asked them all to wave both arms in the air – as they did this the lights suddenly came back on proving the old Chinese proverb that ‘many hands make lights work’ !
Anyway that’s quite irrelevant for this morning, and you may very well wonder what I’m talking about, but that sense of confusion and mystery is particularly appropriate for Trinity Sunday.
Trinity Sunday is the day when we reflect on the person of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the 3 parts of one God. This week I was chatting to someone and it was commented that much of what we say and do in Churches makes little sense to many people, sometimes inside the Church, but certainly outside, and this actually immediately acts as a barrier stopping people from finding more either about Church, or even more importantly, about the Christian faith.
Someone once said that the Trinity is best understood when we realise we don’t understand it, and that is certainly true – continued mention of the Trinity without any explanation of relevance will surely drive even the most keen enquirer away ! Misunderstandings can be embarrassing, hurtful and ultimately lead to disillusionment.
As I think about embarrassing misunderstandings I remember taking my daughter to a cricket match where Glamorgan were playing one day. It was during the time when Viv Richards, the great West Indian batsman, was playing for Glamorgan, although he wasn’t playing on that particular day – To be honest it wasn’t her idea of fun, and to try and occupy her happily, or at least keep her quiet, I suggested she should get autographs and told her to get the people who were dressed in white clothes.
A little later as she’d happily got quite a few names in her book, I pointed to Viv Richards who was sitting fairly close to us in a tracksuit. I told her to go and get his autograph because he was famous to which she replied loudly, and in full earshot of Viv himself, ‘But I only want the white ones !’ (For those who don’t know Viv Richards is a very traditional West Indian colour !)
I cringed for a few moments before explaining to those around me what she meant, and that she was not being fanatically racist, and so this became nothing more than an embarrassing interlude, but confusion can be much more damaging than that, and when questioned over the Doctrine of the Trinity we must have some sort of answer about our understanding of it, and its relevance for us.
And so I will make a brief effort to offer some thoughts about it this morning… Someone once described the Trinity as Something beyond, Something among us, and Something within us.
The something beyond is of course God the Father – the Father who created the world and all that is in it… The many arguments over the exact method of creation as well as all of the mysteries about the world around us, and the nature of people and so on, continue to remind us of the difficulties of understanding God, and whilst it is essential for us to keep questioning and to keep trying to broaden our knowledge of God, and thereby deepening our relationship with Him, we must also accept that there will be times when God is beyond our understanding, more powerful and greater than anything we can ever hope to explain or perhaps even imagine.
The something among us represents Jesus – God the Son who came to live amongst us and provides us today with our most inspirational example of how to live. As a human he faced every trial that we can face, he stood up for the rights of those in need, he argued with the corrupt, he laughed, he cried, he suffered, he died, and then he rose again, an act which underlined his promise of new and eternal life for all who put their trust in him.
The third element of this saying is something within us. Last week we celebrated the Feast of Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit was given as a gift to the early followers, and that gift today lives in the hearts and minds of all true followers of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the conscience within us, the spur that drives us on, the strength that helps us to cope with anything thrown at us, the compassion that offers to be there for anyone in need, the wisdom that we find when we’re stuck for words of praise or proclamation…
There is no doubt at all that the Trinity is confusing, but it is not irrelevant – every part of God is active in our lives as we seek to live those lives as he intends. God the Father is pushing us to care for his creation, to look at the vastness and the wonder of the world, and realise that we are stewards on behalf of God himself caring for that world.
In Jesus, God the Son, we are reminded of the tremendous love that God has for each one of us, the love that allowed Jesus to come and live amongst us, to be badly treated, to suffer, to die. And as well as the love, we see in Jesus an example of how to live and how to care – to see God and to understand his personality and his will for each one of us, we must see Jesus.
And then in the Holy Spirit we seek and receive the strength to live as God wants us to live. And that is a life of praise and worship of him certainly, and it is a life of proclamation as we seek to tell others of his love for them, but it is also a life that we enjoy. So often, as I’ve said before, people have a wrong perception of Christians as dull and miserable, sadly sometimes they’re not disappointed, but the Bible instead talks of fullness of life – in other words lives of joy and contentment, lives of true peace and hope even in the darkest moments.
The Trinity is rightly called a mystery, but the purposes of God and his personality are defined in the Trinity – the creator of the world, of you and I, the Saviour of all and the person that gives us the strength and the inspiration to live the lives he wants us to live, and be the people he wants us to be.
This is the mystery that he invites us to enter. AMEN
Somehow he managed to communicate to some of the crowd to wave an arm in the air – still nothing happened, so he got some more people to do the same and this time asked them all to wave both arms in the air – as they did this the lights suddenly came back on proving the old Chinese proverb that ‘many hands make lights work’ !
Anyway that’s quite irrelevant for this morning, and you may very well wonder what I’m talking about, but that sense of confusion and mystery is particularly appropriate for Trinity Sunday.
Trinity Sunday is the day when we reflect on the person of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the 3 parts of one God. This week I was chatting to someone and it was commented that much of what we say and do in Churches makes little sense to many people, sometimes inside the Church, but certainly outside, and this actually immediately acts as a barrier stopping people from finding more either about Church, or even more importantly, about the Christian faith.
Someone once said that the Trinity is best understood when we realise we don’t understand it, and that is certainly true – continued mention of the Trinity without any explanation of relevance will surely drive even the most keen enquirer away ! Misunderstandings can be embarrassing, hurtful and ultimately lead to disillusionment.
As I think about embarrassing misunderstandings I remember taking my daughter to a cricket match where Glamorgan were playing one day. It was during the time when Viv Richards, the great West Indian batsman, was playing for Glamorgan, although he wasn’t playing on that particular day – To be honest it wasn’t her idea of fun, and to try and occupy her happily, or at least keep her quiet, I suggested she should get autographs and told her to get the people who were dressed in white clothes.
A little later as she’d happily got quite a few names in her book, I pointed to Viv Richards who was sitting fairly close to us in a tracksuit. I told her to go and get his autograph because he was famous to which she replied loudly, and in full earshot of Viv himself, ‘But I only want the white ones !’ (For those who don’t know Viv Richards is a very traditional West Indian colour !)
I cringed for a few moments before explaining to those around me what she meant, and that she was not being fanatically racist, and so this became nothing more than an embarrassing interlude, but confusion can be much more damaging than that, and when questioned over the Doctrine of the Trinity we must have some sort of answer about our understanding of it, and its relevance for us.
And so I will make a brief effort to offer some thoughts about it this morning… Someone once described the Trinity as Something beyond, Something among us, and Something within us.
The something beyond is of course God the Father – the Father who created the world and all that is in it… The many arguments over the exact method of creation as well as all of the mysteries about the world around us, and the nature of people and so on, continue to remind us of the difficulties of understanding God, and whilst it is essential for us to keep questioning and to keep trying to broaden our knowledge of God, and thereby deepening our relationship with Him, we must also accept that there will be times when God is beyond our understanding, more powerful and greater than anything we can ever hope to explain or perhaps even imagine.
The something among us represents Jesus – God the Son who came to live amongst us and provides us today with our most inspirational example of how to live. As a human he faced every trial that we can face, he stood up for the rights of those in need, he argued with the corrupt, he laughed, he cried, he suffered, he died, and then he rose again, an act which underlined his promise of new and eternal life for all who put their trust in him.
The third element of this saying is something within us. Last week we celebrated the Feast of Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit was given as a gift to the early followers, and that gift today lives in the hearts and minds of all true followers of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the conscience within us, the spur that drives us on, the strength that helps us to cope with anything thrown at us, the compassion that offers to be there for anyone in need, the wisdom that we find when we’re stuck for words of praise or proclamation…
There is no doubt at all that the Trinity is confusing, but it is not irrelevant – every part of God is active in our lives as we seek to live those lives as he intends. God the Father is pushing us to care for his creation, to look at the vastness and the wonder of the world, and realise that we are stewards on behalf of God himself caring for that world.
In Jesus, God the Son, we are reminded of the tremendous love that God has for each one of us, the love that allowed Jesus to come and live amongst us, to be badly treated, to suffer, to die. And as well as the love, we see in Jesus an example of how to live and how to care – to see God and to understand his personality and his will for each one of us, we must see Jesus.
And then in the Holy Spirit we seek and receive the strength to live as God wants us to live. And that is a life of praise and worship of him certainly, and it is a life of proclamation as we seek to tell others of his love for them, but it is also a life that we enjoy. So often, as I’ve said before, people have a wrong perception of Christians as dull and miserable, sadly sometimes they’re not disappointed, but the Bible instead talks of fullness of life – in other words lives of joy and contentment, lives of true peace and hope even in the darkest moments.
The Trinity is rightly called a mystery, but the purposes of God and his personality are defined in the Trinity – the creator of the world, of you and I, the Saviour of all and the person that gives us the strength and the inspiration to live the lives he wants us to live, and be the people he wants us to be.
This is the mystery that he invites us to enter. AMEN
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