Embracing the mystery

 

Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. It is the day that, when having the luxury of more than one preacher available, you perhaps give a little internal cheer when you’re not on the rota to preach! But it’s actually a really powerful day in the church calendar and a day which offers us so much in terms of guidance and motivation in life. 

 

But that comes with a warning and that is that God is greater than we can understand. God would not be God if that wasn’t true! St Augustine wrote as far back as the 4th century that any God which we can understand is not God… 

Having said that though, there is more than enough that we do and can know to make a sensible decision to trust God… 

There’s a good story of a young girl in school one day – the teacher approaches her and asks what she is drawing – the child replies, ‘I am drawing God’, ‘But nobody knows what God looks like’ said the teacher, to which the child replied, ‘They will in a minute !’ 

In the most simple of terms God the Father is the creator of the world, God the Son is the person we know as Jesus, who came into the world to save us from sin and to offer a direct route back to God, and God the Holy Spirit is the person who helps us from within – the Holy Spirit is God acting within us to be more like him and to do his work more effectively. 

And the recognition of God as those three persons and yet one God is hugely important as we seek to build a relationship with Him, and also as we prepare to share his message with others. 

Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity – God, three persons yet one God, is a confusing one but our lack of understanding doesn’t lessen the importance. 
John Wesley said, ‘Tell me how it is that in this room there are three candles and but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of the divine existence.’

The works of God can be hard to understand and all of us will probably struggle at times, but their complexity doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering! In the Trinity God comes close to us at every moment of our lives… 

The work of God the Father in creation is all around us. It’s so easy to take for granted the beauty of creation, but also the intricacies of it – who could imagine that from nothing beautiful flowers could grow, that grass could cover hillsides, who could imagine the rugged mountains and the beautiful seas and rivers, who could imagine a world created from nothing that could look like ours ? 

But our inability to see such beauty sometimes can lead to dangers - dangers that we will never look to care for all that is around us… and one of the great developments in recent years has been this awareness that we need to care for creation – in doing so we are taking care of something entrusted to us by God. 

And the care for God’s creation extends to caring for his people as well – all around us are brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow children of God, whether some choose to recognize it or not. Our role is not to judge, but to love – offering hopefully an example of the love of God to all people. 

Part of psalm 8 which we heard says, ‘When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them.’ 

 

In the huge expanse of creation, with the beauty of seas and mountains and people and places, God looks at each one of us, people who are valued and loved… And that surely encourages us to accept aresponsibility to recognise that, to thank him for it, and to use it and enjoy it for the benefit of all…

God the Son is perhaps the most easy part of the Trinity that we can relate to – because in Jesus we see a person – a person living in a different time and place to us, but a person who still faced life with all of its ups and downs… 

 

We can look at Jesus and see the care he took of people all around him, we can look at the way he showed compassion on those who needed it most, the way he treated those who were greedy or corrupt, the way he trusted that his work was work that had to be done, and that there was nothing that would get in the way of it – even the pain of death on the cross…

And as we look at Jesus we must always recognise that we are called to be Jesus to others –we are called to live out his life, to care as he cared, to share a message of hope just as he did with everyone – he didn’t withhold his message from those who abused him, he didn’t ignore those who ignored him, he didn’t criticise those who fell below the standards he thought were right – he saw people, and he offered them an invitation that could change their lives forever… 

 

Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans (Ch 5) begins, …since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…’ 

We are invited into a relationship with God that offers us peace, a deep peace, a lasting peace… As we look at the life of Jesus on earth we’re called to reflect on our response to his example, to his love, to his power, to his invitation… 

And then there is God the Holy Spirit. Again,thinking back to the reading from Romans it says, ‘God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that God has given us.’ The Holy Spirit is the gift of God. It is the power within us today to accomplish the work of God. The Holy Spirit is our inspiration, the Holy Spirit is the power that enables us to know that, in all things, God is always ultimately, in control… 

It’s very easy not to trust in the Spirit, to try and be too self sufficient, not wanting perhaps to trouble God with things that we think we should be able to handle; it’s easy to think we’re not really worthy to do some of the things that God is calling us to do, but God is God, and the power is God’s, not ours, if we trust.  

 

Trusting in God, we can know and feel the sort of power that moved Peter to preach at that first Pentecost, ignoring the obvious threat to his life; or the power that transformed Paul from a persecutor of the Church into a great missionary for Christ, or the power that has seen so many lives completely transformed through the centuries… 

That transforming power is still around today, and it is a power that wants to grab each one of us, and invite us to go further on a journey that is the most incredible one that we can ever take – a journey with God… 

Back to the psalm, psalm 8, quoting again part of what I quoted earlier, but continuing that, 

‘When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;  what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God, andcrowned them with glory and honour. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet…’

 

God isn’t some veiled and distant figure that we honour. God isn’t someone who controls and dictates our lives. God is the provider of gifts and inspiration and joy and love… God created this incredible world and all that is in it, but sees us and knows us and loves us, every one of us… 

 

We will be called in different ways for different roles, but the one role to which we are all called is torecognise the incredible love and power of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to accept Jesus in our lives – and to know that through the power of the Holy Spirit our lives can and will be transformed continually…. 

 

The power is God’s, but the privilege of serving God and of working with God to help change the world is offered to us… the decision to accept, or not, is ours… Amen