Sermon for the 4th of June - Trinity Sunday

Once again, it’s Trinity Sunday and we return to reflecting on one of our most mystical and confusing doctrines of the church – God is one and God is three. And I have to confess that this is my favourite of the Christian doctrines – partly because it is a mystery and reminds us that we can not ever really explain or understand God, and partly, because what it does tell us about God, I find beautiful and inspiring.
Let me start with the mystery….as Debie Thomas writes…

“The Trinity…. is a great and holy mystery, and [our] first job is to stand in humility before it.  To explore the nature of God's selfhood is to come to the end of what human language can illuminate.  It is to become speechless.”

“All we can do is …..acknowledge that the truth of God will always confront, convict, and remake us, even as it soothes and affirms us.    

And so we begin with the humble acknowledgement that we are out of our depth.”

For however many ways we come up with to explain the Trinity, they all fall short, and whilst some are better than others, none are able to do this Doctrine justice.

But I’d like to suggest that this is ok – even a good thing. Do we really think we should be able to put God in a neat little box, explain everything? I hope not!

Leaving space for the unexplainable, for the unknowable, for the power that is far greater than we can ever fathom, is, I would suggest, essential for a healthy faith.

Ken Storck captures this in his poem entitled The Holy Trinity…

“It is Holy Trinity Sunday.
Time to dust off the Dogmatics.
Speak of God as H-2-0:
water with three parts –
mist, liquid, ice.

Or a three leaf clover will do
to disclose the Three-In-One.

Why do we bother with
images, icons, projections of God
worthy to be shattered
by the mystery unsolved?

How dare we define the Divine,
Domesticate the Godhead?

Go ahead: Draw your pictures,
Colour your triangles,
Speak of the Three-In-One,
And the One-In-Three.

Use the Athanasian Creed litmus test
Of Father / Son / Spirit.
But all the while do not trust
The limit of language,
The confinement of metaphor,
The simplicity of simile.

The Ancients knew
One could not be
In the presence of the living God
And live.

Moses beholds God’s backside,
Jeremiah – God’s fingers in his mouth,
Isaiah God’s robe and a hot coal.

The Christ confined in flesh,
Spirit unmanageable,
Cosmic-Creator.

Expand do not contract God
For God is the Great Iconoclast.

And we at last
With Job
Stand in the Divine Presence
Jaws dropping
In muted wonder.”

So we stand in wonder and accept the mystery.
And at the same time, we can still understand more about God, from this doctrine. And today, I will look at 3 things, diversity, movement, and loving relationship.

1.    Diversity
Each of the persons of the Trinity is unique in some way. Each person has their own way of embodying and expressing goodness, beauty, love, and righteousness.  As Richard Rohr puts it, the Trinity affirms that “Goodness isn’t sameness…Goodness, to be goodness, needs contrast and tension, not perfect uniformity.”

The message of the Trinity is that difference is good – the Trinity models diversity and unity held together. And this is what we have the possibility of being – people who are diverse but united, people who challenge each other, but love each other, people who are true to themselves, but welcome the truth of others…

So maybe we should ask ourselves… If God can incarnate goodness through contrast and tension, why can’t we? Or why won’t we?  Why do we fear difference so much when difference lies at the very heart of God’s nature?  [Debie Thomas]

Most of us do, however, fear difference. Just look at the world today – look at the increase in nationalism, the scapegoating of refugees, the stereo typing of people of different religions, different sexuality, different skin colour. We are so often scared – scared that people who are different will take away what we value, scared that we will lose a sense of ourselves, scared that things will change.

2.    Movement
And this leads me onto my second point - movement. God is dynamic.  If God is triune, there must be movement within God. God’s self is fluid, God is flow, and, as many theologians say, God is dance.
And the bad news about this, is it means that in some ways, change is always going to be a constant in our lives – whether we like it or not. If God is dance, then fluidity and movement are inevitable.
Regardless of whether we learn to tolerate the discomfort of divine fluidity or not, we worship a God who is always on the move, always spilling over, always organic.  His coherence and his unity do not require him to be rigid. As Ken Storck says in his poem “Expand, do not contract God”.

And maybe we can follow God by trying to expand, rather than contract ourselves. We can be open to change, we can show interest in new ideas, new people, and we can learn, grow and change – not to become less of who we are, but to become a truer version of who we are, as we interact with others. Which brings me onto my final point….

3.    Loving relationship
God as Trinity, shows us that at the heart of God, there is loving relationship. And this loving relationship overflows to creation – to humankind. And we are invited to enter into this relationship with God – and with others. We can not be Christian in isolation.

The Presbyterian feminist theologian, Cynthia Holder Rich, says “We serve a God who is essentially, intimately relational…We serve a God whose relationships and relationality assist us and encourage us and call us into the relationship – with God, with each other, and with the community of all God’s creatures. This should set the stage for us to become people who can live into and live out relationships marked by love and grace.  This truth can help all who serve God to live into our vocation of those who live interdependent on one another, calling, leading, and following in the dance of ministry.”

We are created to be in community, in relationship, and to embrace each other because of, not in spite of, our differences.

The Doctrine of the Trinity shows us that we worship a God who is essentially loving relationship – challenging us, stretching us, inviting us into this divine dance of love, so that we and all those around us, can flourish, as we become more truly ourselves – together.

Ref: Debie Thomas, Kenn Storck, Cynthia Holder Rich, Richard Rohr