I'm sure you've all heard the story of the little boy at Sunday School, busy drawing, tongue protruding, frowning in concentration. "What are you doing, Johnny?" asked his teacher. "I'm drawing a picture of God" he said. "Oh that's nice!" said the teacher. "Of course nobody actually knows what God looks like." "They will by the time I've finished!" he replied.
I wish I could say the same tonight! Trinity Sunday! Thank you, John, for inviting me to preach on Trinity Sunday - again!
How do we describe, How do we define, How do we explain, the Holy Trinity?
If you saw the film "Nuns on the Run" you will remember how Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle were 2 gangsters, on the run after a bank robbery. They take refuge in a convent, where they disguise themselves as nuns, and say they are visitors from another convent. Robbie Coltrane, or "Sister Euphemia of the Five Wounds" as he calls himself, discovers that he will be expected to give the convent schoolgirls a talk about the Holy Trinity. "What do I say? What do I tell 'em?" he asks his colleague in panic. "Oh, just say the Trinity is like a shamrock - 3 leaves in one" comes the reply. So when faced by the class of school girls, Robbie Coltrane, alias Sister Euphemia, says: "God is like a shamrock - small, green, with a stalk and split 3 ways!"
Robbie Coltrane rather missed the point of the simile. But a shamrock leaf is one attempt sometimes used to try to describe the Trinity - 3 lobes, but one leaf. Water, ice and steam are used - one substance, but 3 forms. Or a flower - shape, colour, scent - one flower, but 3 properties.
If we are searching for similes, then I prefer the functional ones. We all have different roles, different personas, in life - yet we are each just one person. I am a husband, with all that implies - friend, lover, partner. I am also a father, with a different role - carer, lawn-cricket player, clown, discipliner. I am also a doctor - a professional healer, adviser, supporter and so on. 3 completely different roles - yet one person.
I remember once taking our grandchildren to the pantomime, and there I fulfilled my grandfatherly role, by setting an example with loud "Boos!" "Look behind yous!" and "Oh yes you ares!" It so happened that a patient of mine was sitting just behind me, and when I next saw her in surgery for her check up she gave me a long look, and said:
"You know, Dr Webster, since the pantomime I shall never think of you in quite the same way again!" I'm not sure if it was a compliment or not - but she had seen me, the doctor, in a completely different role - me, the grandfather.
But is it as simple as that with the Holy Trinity - one God, 3 roles?
The Bible nowhere gives us a neat definition of the Trinity. God the Father, the Creator, is mentioned a lot.
God the Son, the Messiah, the Saviour, features a lot. God the Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, the Strengthener, is mentioned a lot. But how do the 3 relate? Are we talking of 3 Gods - as Muslims would accuse us of. Or of one God, manifested in 3 forms?
For over 300 years from New Testament times the problem was not resolved. It wasn't until the Council of Nicaea, in AD 325, that the doctrine of the Trinity was really clarified, and even then there was not full agreement. In AD 339 Athanasius stated that "Jesus was not just a part of God, nor was He a second deity, but He was, simply, God Himself." But then how and where exactly does the Holy Spirit fit in?
Augustine, in AD 400, insisted that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son equally - and that is what, in the western church, we proclaim in our creed today. But Origen set a somewhat different doctrine - namely that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father only. And that subtle difference still separates the western church, both Catholic and Protestant, from the eastern Orthodox church.
It's a difference, a barrier, taken very seriously by the Orthodox church. In order to be allowed to visit a Greek Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos my ordained brother, who was at the time a school chaplain, had to say that he was a teacher, and not reveal that he was also an Anglican priest. Women and Anglican priests - the latter being purveyors of non-kosher doctrine - are not welcome on Mount Athos. What a palaver! Does it all matter?
Well it does matter in the sense that we must never underestimate, undervalue the importance and significance and uniqueness of Jesus Christ, and of His legacy to us, the Holy Spirit.
The mystery, the amazing mystery, is that - in some way that our finite human minds find hard to grasp - God the Creator Father sent God His Saviour Son into the world to reconcile us to Himself; and bequeathed to us God the Holy Spirit, Who lives within us, and empowers us to be Christians. And it is all the activity of one God.
Back in the 1950's J.B. Phillips wrote a book called "Your God is too Small". And this is still our problem.
We can get our heads around clover leaves, and water, ice and steam and so on. But we cannot get our human minds around the nature of God. We try to, but we fail.
At the first of the recent Science and Faith lectures astronomer Tony Hewish spoke about the sheer vastness of the universe. And then of universes beyond our universe. And our imaginations soon reached their elastic limit. Yet, if we believe in a Creator Father God, all this is His doing. And we can't even begin to imagine, let alone understand, it.
So often our God is far, far too small.
So how can we possibly expect to get our heads around the mystery of the Trinity?
- the mystery of the very nature of God?
- of one God manifesting Himself in different ways?
Tony Hewish and John Polkinghorne both mentioned in their lectures photons - electromagnetic particles which, at one and the same time, can behave as both particles and as waves. They explained how a photon, a particle, can simultaneously pass through 2 separate holes at the same moment. It sounds like Alice Through the Looking Glass stuff - believing 6 impossible things before breakfast. If we find a photon difficult to conceptualise, why do we expect the nature of God to be simple?
In our Old Testament reading tonight God meets with Moses at the burning bush, and commissions him to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt. And Moses baulks at the idea. "What will I say, and who shall I say sent me?"
And God says to Moses: "I AM WHO I AM. Tell them 'I AM has sent me'."
"I AM WHO I AM" - the name that God gives to Himself
- a name full of revealed truth, but also of infinite mystery
- a name that is the ultimate in reality - eternal, unchangeable, beyond understanding.
The actual tense of the word is indeterminate. It can be translated "I WAS" or "I AM" or "I WILL BE" And, note, it is "I AM", not "WE ARE"
"I AM WHO I AM" - before the world began "I AM"
- in creation "I AM"
- on the hills of Galilee "I AM"
- on the cross "I AM"
- at Pentecost "I AM"
- in our hearts today "I AM"
In the next verse God calls Himself "The LORD", a translation of the word "YAHWEH" - which means, not "I AM", but "HE IS" - the third person.
The idea is the same.
YAHWEH - a name so sacred to the Jews that they dare not speak it.
YAHWEH - a name often rendered JEHOVAH.
So, what's in a name? Well, a lot! Your name, my name, is our identification. It's us. And God's name is His - describing Him
- telling us that He is greater than we can ever conceive
- telling us that His nature is beyond our imagination
- telling us that He is One
- telling us that he is outside our time scale.
The "I AM" that stretches through space and time.
Our God - your God, my God
- the God we meet tonight to worship
- the God we remember in the bread and wine
- the God we ask to go with us from this place
our God, is the great "I AM" "YAHWEH" "JEHOVAH" "THE LORD"
- Father , Son and Holy Spirit
- The God of Creation
- The God of the Cross and of the Empty Tomb
- The God of Pentecost - Making our world. Sustaining our world. Saving our world. Sanctifying our world.
One God. 3 Persons. A mystery and yet the ultimate reality. The "I AM" Who draws close to you and to me in love.
Jesus claimed to be what He was - the Son of God. He spoke often of His Father - "You, Father are in Me, and I in You" He prayed. He spoke of the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, ho would be with us and in us.
So Jesus spoke of the Trinity. And in our reading this evening, from John 3, He tells Nicodemus of God the Father Who so loved the world that He gave His only Son. He speaks of being "born again", by the Spirit of God.
All the elements of the Trinity are there, in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus
- the Father Who gave
- the Son Who came
- the Spirit Who brings new birth.
That boy in Sunday School took on a challenge when he decided to draw God. Yet he did it with child-like simplicity and confidence.
Perhaps we get our knickers in a twist too much over the Trinity. No, we can't draw it. We can't neatly dissect and explain it. Our God is the great "I AM", way beyond human understanding. But He is so much more understandable when we look at Him in human form, in the face of Jesus.
That's as much as our minds can grasp. As much as they need to grasp. We see Jesus Who taught us of a Father Who loved so much that He gave His only Son. We see Jesus Who Himself lived and died for us. We see Jesus Who taught us of a Holy Spirit Who would comfort and strengthen us, indwell us, and lead us into truth.
We see Jesus as representing the eternal "I AM"
- the "I AM" for you and the "I AM" for me
- meeting our needs in love
- drawing close
Through knowing Jesus, we draw close to God the Father. Through knowing Jesus, we experience the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is, for us, the "! AM" Who makes God real to us
- the face of God that we can understand and relate to
- and Who draws us into a relationship with God the Trinity.
Jesus is the door, the Way, to experiencing the fullness of God. And so tonight we come to Him, And in the bread and wine we see a glimpse of the might, and glory, and holiness, and mercy of our triune God. In the bread and wine we experience the presence of "I AM".
Because, after all, what in the end is really important is
- not knowing about God
- but knowing God
and we do that through Jesus Christ, and His Spirit within us.
David Webster
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