Sermons

Trinity Sunday
Sunday 11th June at 8am

Simon Cowling
Readings: Isaiah 6. 1-8; John 3. 1-17

I spent a good deal of my study leave in the past - something you get used to if your particular area of interest is Church history; and although the writer L. P. Hartley famously said that 'the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there', there's one respect in which that's not entirely true: Christians have always been partial to arguing amongst themselves. Today's arguments might differ in content from those of the past - for instance, in the fourth and fifth centuries, neither the ordination of women as bishops nor the moral issues in relation to the termination of life through abortion or euthanasia figured greatly in the concerns of our forebears in the faith. But they did argue - and sometimes violently - about other matters. One particular bone of contention, for well over a hundred years from AD325, was the very nature of God. During this time there eventually emerged the mature Christian teaching of God as Trinity, the great theological mystery which we celebrate and reflect on today.

My favourite remark about the Trinity comes not from a theologian but a poet. In his poem Litany, John Donne describes what he calls the 'blessed glorious Trinity' as 'Bones to Philosophy, but milk to faith'. By this, I think, he meant that attempting to understand the Trinity is less important than allowing ourselves and our faith to be nurtured by the Trinity. In the very first chapters of Genesis we see the loving purposes of God in his creation; in the Gospel narratives we see the loving purposes of God in his new creation, which he brings about through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; in the story of the first Christian Pentecost, which we heard last week, we see the loving purposes of God continue through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, gifts given first to the disciples and thereafter to all who respond to God's call. This creative energy of God, this love of God in human form and this understanding of our giftedness that is given to us through a life lived in God's Holy Spirit - these three things allow us to be drawn into the life of the threefold God who shapes our human communities in his own image.

Today's readings encourage us to begin to think about the threefold nature of God as understood in the Christian tradition. The Old Testament reading comes from the first portion (chapters 1-39) of the prophecy of Isaiah, written during the second half of the eighth century BC when the kingdom of Judah was under threat of invasion from Assyria. We hear the autobiographical account of the prophet's great vision of God, culminating in his call to be God's messenger at this time of national crisis. In relation to the theme of the day we are clearly to think of Isaiah's vision as being God the Father. Our Gospel reading from John is the richly detailed account of the encounter between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus. In these verses Jesus explains how the activity of God is mediated through his Spirit through whom we are to be spiritually born in order to enter the Kingdom of God. Then, later in the passage, Jesus speaks of himself as the Son of God, the one through whose crucifixion the world is to know salvation. Father, Son and Spirit; Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer; Love, Beloved and Lover. Instead of agonising over the theology of God as three yet one, far better to rejoice in the richness of the imagery and to live together in the unity and the love to which God calls us and which defines his very being. Amen.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay