The Sermon given by Alison Horncastle on 22 May, 2005.

"Thoughts on Trinity Sunday"

In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A suitable way to start a sermon on Trinity Sunday!

There’s a little-used creed in the Book of Common Prayer called the Athanasian creed. It contains these sentences:

“ we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity….For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son: and another of the Holy Ghost (the old-fashioned name for the Holy Spirit). But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one: the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son: and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate: and the Holy Ghost uncreate. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible : and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal : and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet there are not three eternals : but one eternal. As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated and one incomprehensible. ……. So the Father is God, the Son is God : and the Holy Spirit is God. And yet they are not three Gods but one God”

OK so far? It gets more complicated after that, so I won’t go on.

Today we celebrate a doctrine rather than an event. Doctrines are useful in that they draw boundaries for us. we know that if we go beyond those boundaries we take ourselves and our beliefs outside or beyond the faith of the church of Jesus Christ. But sometimes they can cause difficulty or puzzlement, and I think the Trinity falls into this category.

A number of images have been suggested as helping our understanding of the Holy Trinity. I can think of three:

• The three forms of water: ice, liquid water and steam. Useful up to a point, but when you think about it you realise that the same quantity of water can only exists in one form at time.
• Another is the way one person can play different roles –for example one woman can be a mother, a sister and a daughter. A man could be a son, a nephew, a godfather. But we tend to take only one role at a time, depending on who we are with at the time. And. we can only exist as one person not three.
• My third example is a triangle - each point connected to other three, we can label each one as Father, Son or Holy Spirit. I quite like this one, but it would need to be equilateral. And then, which point would be at the top? This example leads to a danger of creating a hierarchical Trinity, since I think most of us would want to put the point labelled ‘Father’ at the top.

So none of these will do; they are all erroneous.

Hilary of Poitiers (a 4th century bishop)said, "The error of others caused us to err in daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart." We ought to be lost in awe and wonder at God’s greatness, not trying to use contrived images to try to understand the incomprehensible.

Alright, then. We can’t explain it, so do we just give up trying to get our heads round it? Do we accept blindly and unthinkingly? Or perhaps bury the idea somewhere in the back of our mind, preferring not to wrestle with an insurmountable problem?

No I don’t think we want to follow any of those routes. Rather than trying to explain the structure or even existence of the Holy Trinity, we can look for it’s expectations of and effects on the created order. Looked at this way, it becomes not so much an intellectual conundrum as a way of helping us to appreciate how God, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, changes our lives.

We only need to read the New Testament to see how Jesus affected people’s lives. But looking at today’s gospel reading, there seemed to be something odd there, something unexpected. Did anything make you sit up and take notice? The phrase that gave me pause for thought was ‘but some doubted’, But some doubted. Not just one– some. Being a sums person, that suggest to me more than two (but less than six (or it would have said most)) – that’ between 27 and 45% of the disciples.

The disciples had been with Jesus for three years; they’d listened to his teaching, watched his healing and his miracles, spent hours and hours in his loving presence. They knew he had been crucified (some had witnessed it) and now here he was, as he had predicted, alive and with them again. Yet still they doubted. And Jesus knew he was physically about to leave them, the men he was to send out as his witnesses in the world. What was he to do? If he’d been like me he’d have wanted to tear his hair out at this point, and probably raised his voice: ‘You’ve been with me all this time. You’ve witnessed the whole thing. Yet still you doubt. Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said?’ Or he’d have wanted to just throw in the towel and call the whole idea off.

Luckily for us and for the whole of creation, Jesus is nothing like me. What he did was to include the doubters in the commission to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’. And we know, from reading the Acts of the Apostles, that these eleven men, doubters and all, did turn the world upside down in their own generation. Jesus went on affecting their lives and deepening their faith, just as he promised, even after he returned to his Father.

So there is hope for the church today, in this decline- and doubt-ridden world. Doubting is OK. Maybe we need to admit our doubts more often, make ourselves more vulnerable in the eyes of the world. Share our doubts in a doubting society. Be seen to be asking questions and searching for truth. We are, after all, merely disciples, that is, learners; we are not experts, but pilgrims on a long and exciting journey. We will never have all the answers – not in this life anyway.

One thing is certain, we can no longer use doubt as a reason for sitting back and doing nothing: we have seen that we don't need to be doubt-free in order to participate in God's ministry. Even with our doubts, we can show God's love to others. The great commission we hear in the gospel reading is for all of us, reservations and all. God recognises our limitations, and, because he loves us completely and unconditionally, has made provision for them through the power of the Trinity.

Paul tells us how the Trinity changes our lives, not as a doctrine we need to understand but as something we experience. The words of the Grace, as it is affectionately known, are very familiar to many of us. Possibly so familiar that many don’t realise they are the words of Paul.

Paul’s wish for the divided and quarrelling church in Corinth is that they should love the world as God who created it loves it; they should submit themselves completely to God’s will for the world as did God the Son and find their true identity in belonging to each other and together serving God in the communion of the Holy Spirit. I have no reason to think that he would not wish that for the church here and now, so let us finish by saying together those famous words:

‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of us’.

Amen.