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It's a funny thing how being asked to preach on Trinity Sunday strikes a note of dread!
It is said that the monks of Fountains Abbey used to gather every Sunday in the Chapter House to hear a sermon from the Abbott - except, except on Trinity Sunday, owing to the difficulty of the subject!
Obviously the Abbott Of Fountains Abbey didn't have a muggins of a Lay Reader to delegate to!
But no! I'm grateful to John for the opportunity and the challenge.
I take it as a compliment to be let loose with the Trinity!
I was thinking about the subject, and wondering what I could say that would be helpful, when help arrived!
Our son, Stephen, who is just finishing at theological college, has written a very thoughtful assignment on the Trinity, and some of the thoughts this morning come from that.
Thank you, Stephen!
You never know when and how your children will become useful!
And my first point comes straight from Stephen's assignment. I quote:
"The doctrine of the Trinity is not merely an awkward and problematic doctrine, to be consigned to annual treatment by a reluctant preacher on Trinity Sunday. It is not a doctrine to be reserved for optional contemplation by only the most committed and enthusiastic disciples.
It is rather at the very heart of every believer's story of salvation. It is because God is triune that we are able to tell of how God made us, met us, redeems us, and empowers us."
That's exactly it! We can treat the doctrine of the Trinity as something very abstruse and deep, a theological problem to be wrestled with, a theory to be considered. "The Holy Trinity incomprehensible" as the old creed says.
Or we can just accept it as a description of how God is.
We don't need to understand the complexities of it.
We do need to experience the reality of it.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not a problem to be solved.
It is a description to be experienced.
All similes of the Trinity are inadequate, but to put it very simply:
I knew my Dad as a father - who read me stories, and cracked jokes, and helped me to build a tree house, and said prayers with me at bedtime.
I also knew my Dad as a missionary and Bible translator, who worked long hours at his battered old typewriter, in his little mud-walled, thatched-roof office, often working late into the night by lamplight.
I also knew my dad as a clergyman, a canon of Nairobi Cathedral, wearing his robes, and installed with much pomp and ceremony in his cathedral stall.
Now in each of these roles he was like a different person. They were different faces of my father.
But as a child I didn't need to understand how and why.
That's just how he was, and I appreciated him in each role.
I loved him. I respected him. I was grateful to him. I was proud if him.
We know God, and we experience God, in different ways and in His different roles.
And that's what is important - not trying to understand Him, so much as allowing ourselves to experience Him.
To quote Stephen again:
"The wonderful truth is that the Trinity is not simply a dogma to be believed, but a reality of the Christian life."
"God, the Father Creator, revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, won our redemption, and daily regenerates us through His Holy Spirit."
That is how we experience God.
That is what makes Him real to us, and not just a remote celestial Being.
1. And so it is that we experience Him first as Creator FATHER.
We look at the fantastically beautiful world around us,
- at bursting flower buds
- at mountain ranges
- at the stars in the sky
and we know that our Father God made it for us to enjoy.
We look at ourselves, and we echo the words of the Psalmist:
"You, Father, created my inmost being.
You knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Your works are wonderful, I know that full well." (Psalm 139: 13,14)
God says: "I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty" (2 Cor 6:18)
Time and again the Bible reminds us of the Father's love and faithfulness. Some people find this image of God the Father hard, because their experience of fatherhood has been a negative one.
They may not have had a father,
Or maybe he walked out on the family,
Or was violent or abusive. Often drunk or unfaithful.
Or very stern and remote.
To such a person the word "father" has bad connotations.
That is not the sort of father that our Heavenly Father is to us.
As we read about Him in the Bible, He is an infinitely loving, endlessly patient, overwhelmingly generous Father.
Is that not our experience of Him?
As we experience God in our lives, don't we want to cry out "Abba! Father!"
Don't we love to pray "Our Father, Who art in heaven .."
We know within us that He is our Father, and we are His children.
It is our experience of God.
Just one face of God.
2. Then there is the face of God that we see in JESUS the SON.
Jesus is God reaching out to us.
Jesus is God come to meet us.
Jesus is God living among us.
"Immanuel" - God with us.
Born as a human baby in a squalid, smelly stable.
Brought up in a carpenter's shop, learning to hammer and saw, and to make chairs and tables.
With fingers that got cut and bled and blistered.
He came among us as one of us.
In Jesus we see the human face of God.
In Jesus we meet God reaching out to us.
Not a God that we have to go searching for, but rather a God Who came searching for us.
I quote Stephen again:
"God is a God Who does not wait for us as we struggle fruitlessly to reach Him in His perfection.
Rather, casting aside majesty and dignity, He is One Who, with pierced hands, stretches out to reach us in our pain and failure."
As we consider Jesus,
- the baby in the stable
- the boy in the carpenter's shop
- the teacher, the healer, wandering the hills of Galilee
- the broken, bleeding body on the cross
- the risen Lord on the lake shore
As we consider Jesus, we have to decide
- was He just a good man, good but deluded?
- was His death on the cross a heroic but tragic gesture?
- or was He, as He claimed to be, God?
If, as all the evidence suggests, He was indeed God, reconciling us to Himself, then this is a face of God we must recognise.
Jesus was God making Himself vulnerable. God taking on Himself the sins of the world. God coming to our rescue. The same God, but another face of God.
So, God the Father, God the Son, and:
3. God the HOLY SPIRIT.
Once again I quote the blessed Stephen!
"The Trinity not only affirms that through Jesus the Son there is humanity within God.
It also affirms that through the Holy Spirit there is God within humanity."
Jesus is "God with us."
The Holy Spirit is "God within us."
- the power of God, the breath of God, the fire of God, the dove of God.
- God present within us, giving us faith, changing us, comforting us, convicting us, teaching us.
- Enabling fruit to grow on the barren branches of our lives - that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control - all that fruit which is the evidence of God within us
- Also the Holy Spirit giving us gifts which enable us to live the Christian life, and build the church - wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophecy, tongues, teaching, administration, helping.
The Holy Spirit is God making our faith real, God living and working within and through us. Without Him in our lives our faith is theoretical, and academic and worthless.
So, let's go back to the beginning.
We can theorise and wrestle with the doctrine of the Trinity, and then, when we think we have understood it, work out from there.
OR, we can begin where we are, and describe our experience of God.
As Stephen said in that quote I read at the start:
"The Trinity is at the very heart of every believer's story."
So what is my story? What is yours?
My story is of a heavenly Father Who, I have discovered, made me, and loves me with an everlasting love, and Who made a wonderful world for me to enjoy.
My story is of Jesus, Who is my Saviour, my Lord and my Friend; the One Who turned my life around.
My story is of the Holy Spirit, Who, by His grace, God has given to help me, inadequate and pathetic as I am, to live the Christian life.
So do I believe in 3 Gods?
No! These are all the faces of one God.
If I deny the Trinity, and say I can't or don't believe in it, then I am denying Jesus as Lord.
I am denying the Holy Spirit.
But I can't deny them. Because I know them to be real.
So to conclude,
The Holy Trinity is:
God above me
God beside me
God within me.
The Holy Trinity is:
God outside time
God in time
God for all time
The Trinity is God complete.
Anything less is not the God Who has revealed Himself to us,
Not the God we know and love.
And perhaps that is really all we need to know!
David Webster
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