Trinity Sunday

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’ !

It really isn’t a tremendously relevant joke for today except that it perhaps highlights the fact that we need sometimes to just trust in God. This was certainly the case for the Israelites in our reading from the prophet Isaiah (40:12-17,27-31).

The Israelites were rather depressed – they felt abandoned by God and basically cast adrift from society. Isaiah wrote to them reminding them of God’s power – God knew everything about his creation. The Israelites couldn’t measure the weight of a mountain or work out the amount of water in the sea, but God knew it.

To God the nations were just a tiny part of his creation and yet, he knew and understood them all. This was the God who never abandons his people – the God who gives power to the weak and strengthens the powerless.

Isaiah is telling the people that God’s plans are ongoing – he has never abandoned them and never would, but there was a time for patience and ‘those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.’

It is a plea to trust God – and it’s a plea which is tremendously relevant today. Often we hear of church communities battling just to keep going,of congregations struggling through age or lack of money, but Isaiah’s message remains ‘stand firm and be patient – God is in control.’

One of the challenges facing the church today is change – most people don’t like change, but it’s inevitable – the church today, as the world today is a very different place from what it was even relatively recently.

Did you know that it was not until 1850 that our world reached the one billion population mark? But by 1930 we reached two billion, and it took only thirty more years for the world's population to reach three billion. We have now arrived at seven billion !

And did you know that until 1800 the top speed was twenty miles an hour as people traveled on horseback. With the arrival of the railways, almost overnight it jumped to 100 miles per hour. By 1952 the first passenger jet could travel 500 miles an hour. By 1979 the Concorde cruised at more than 1,200 miles an hour.

Change has been enormous in the world and to believe that many of our churches can look and act as they did 50 years ago is not realistic. And change can seem very good as well -  A man had lived out in the country all his life and one day went to a city where he saw a lift for the first time – he watched as an old, haggard woman hobbled on, and the doors closed. A few minutes later the doors opened and a young, attractive woman marched smartly off. The father hollered to his youngest son, "Billy, go and get your mother."

But anyway back to change, and there are certain unchanging principles that the church must be built on. That reading from Isaiah reminds us that we can trust God – he is in control, and he knows all about us, and loves us and wants to strengthen and inspire us.

The Church must always be positive because we’re not in control ourselves – but we’re in God’s care, and that will never let us down.

And apart from trust we learn another lesson from these readings today and that is to be a united and loving church. Churches are notorious places for moans and groans and gossiping and talking behind one another’s backs, and it seems it’s always been this way.

Paul, when writing his second letter to the Corinthians (13:11-13) is appealing for the church to get together and to live in peace, so that it may be God’s love that shines out from the church and not anything else. Paul wrote some 2000 years ago, but his message remains as crucial now as it was then.

The Church is a family united under God – a family that will be very different and will not always agree with each other, but a family bound together by the most powerful love imaginable – the love of God.

And it is that love that Jesus appeals to us to go out and proclaim through our words and our actions in the gospel reading (Matt. 28:16-20). The‘great commission’ as Jesus’ words have become known was an instruction to his early followers and to every follower since to go out and share the gospel message.

And yet proclamation, speaking out about our faith, sharing good news with others is not something we find easy. There’s a story about a church treasurer who was ecstatic one day. “Look at this,” he yelled.

“We just got a cheque here for £200,000.”

“Who is it from?” asked the minister.
“Oh. Wait a minute,” said the treasurer, taking another look at the cheque. “It says, ‘You will notice that I have not signed the cheque, since I wish to remain anonymous.’”

Knowing Jesus is a gift worth far more than money can ever bring, and yet we so often choose to be quietly anonymous in our faith. We will justify it by saying that faith is a private thing, we will justify it by saying how we live is what’s really important, we will justify it by saying that we’re not good enough, that we won’t be able to say the right words, we will justify it in all kinds of ways….  But we can’t keep good news to ourselves, Jesus never gave us that option, and good news needs to be celebrated.

And that’s how it was with Jesus and his disciples. These men,commissioned by Jesus, were not scholars, they weren’t even particularly Godly in the traditional sense. They were normal workers, fisherman, tax collectors and so on, who responded to an incredible call.

The rabbis of Jesus’ time sat and taught, but Jesus was a very different kind of teacher. He used words certainly, very powerfully, but he also went about doing things - not just talking about good news, but actually being good news.

And as he continued this work, with his disciples there with him, he commissioned them to join him. And so these disciples were sent out. They’d talked with Jesus, they’d watched Jesus, but now they had to go and be Jesus.  

They were chosen, they were called… and we are chosen and we are called to be the church today. A church concerned with sharing the unchanging message of God’s love and salvation with all.  

And so on this Trinity Sunday we give thanks to God the Father, for creation and for our part within it. We give thanks to God the Son for his work of salvation for us completed by the cross and his resurrection, and we give thanks for the Holy Spirit, and pray that we may be filled with that Spirit, so that with knowledge, faith, courage, joy and love we may share God’s transforming love and peace everywhere. AMEN