Over the last 6 months we have walked through the story of our salvation; from God’s work in the Old Testament, through prophecies of the Messiah, to the fulfilment of those prophecies in the birth of Christ. We have walked with Christ in His ministry and followed Him to the cross, and into the tomb. We have rejoiced at His resurrection, celebrated His ascension and last week rejoiced at the gift of the Holy Spirit which gave birth to the Church. We now stand at the hinge between all of this and ordinary time. That long season where we work out how all we’ve experienced and discovered about God and our faith over the last 6 months looks over the next 6. But first we come to Trinity Sunday. The Sunday which invites us to smash the boxes which we have slotted God into over the last 6 months and to sit with the mystery.
Now you may have guessed already that I’m not going to attempt what many try, and often fail, to do on this Sunday. I’m not going to give you 3 easy analogies for the Trinity or give you a 20 minute lecture filled with words that only Theologians ever use. If I try, I will fail and I will probably end up preaching heresy, which is so easy to do in this area. If you want an explanation of what we believe about the Trinity look up the Athanasian Creed, it’s long but it covers it. But what we so often, and so easily do in our thinking about God is to divide Him up into neat little boxes, the readings this morning make it easy for us to do. The Old Testament was clearly a description about God the Father and the New Testament was about the Spirit and then the Gospel, well that’s clearly about Jesus. If we make that a bit more linear It goes something like; God the Father created everything and was the one at work in the Old Testament. Come the New Testament He sends Jesus who tells us how to live and goes about doing good and then when He leaves the Spirit comes and takes over the job and empowers the Church from Pentecost until now. It’s nice and neat and simple. But read a bit deeper and we soon realise that it’s nothing like that. At creation the Spirit hovers over the waters, and if we flick to the opening of John ‘In the beginning was the word’, God the Father speaks creation into being. The entire Trinity are at work in creation. We flick forwards through the Old Testament and whenever someone is commissioned to do anything, the Spirit is given to them. Moses, the Judges, the early Kings, the prophets. And when Jesus appears He works in the power of the Spirit and spends a lot of time away listening to His Father. In the ministry and miracles of Jesus the whole Trinity is at work. We may only ever notice that one person is working but the reality is that the whole Trinity is constantly at work, constantly agreeing and working out God’s plan. Now you may be sitting there thinking, yes, we know all this, it’s a helpful reminder maybe but we get this. But do we? Our Old Testament reading and Psalm today is not a picture of God the Father, it’s a picture of God the Holy Trinity. The awesome power and wonder, and quite frankly fear inducing image, is owned by God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Do we truly get this? How often do we say something like ‘Jesus never said anything about X’? Just because it’s not in the Gospels doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t say it. When God speaks in the Old Testament it is Jesus speaking too, when Paul or one of the other letter writers in the New Testament says something, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that word is Jesus speaking too. Do we truly get this? We need to be content to sit with the mystery, not to carve God up and slot Him into nice neat boxes of functions and roles but to be content with not fully knowing, to be content with worshipping God in the mystery of Himself. Now this isn’t to muddy the waters and blend the persons of the Trinity into one, they are three but one and one but three, see the Athanasian Creed. But the point is that when one person of the Trinity does or says anything they do so with the complete authority and agreement of the other persons. One place where we truly need to understand this is today’s Gospel. ‘For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son…’ Jesus isn’t sent unwillingly, our Lord and Saviour doesn’t come to earth having been booted out of heaven to get on with it, God the Son says to the Father ‘here I am, send me’. It’s words we heard in Isaiah this morning but they are equally applicable to the Gospel for today. Before the creation of the world, when God existed in perfect union within Himself needing nothing, when He pondered creation, He knew that to do so would be to bring rebellion and pain and rejection, and yet the Son says ‘Here I am, send me’. I don’t think the fall was a surprise to God, God wasn’t suddenly scrambling for a backup plan because it had all gone wrong, God slowly and patiently worked out His purpose in our failings, in the messiness that we created to draw us back to Him. Not in the distant future when Jesus returns or when we die, but in the here and now. God is drawing us back to himself. ‘Here I am, send me’. As we enter deeper into relationship with God we here that call. As the prophets drew closer to God, those who were in such close relationship with God that they knew His heart and followed wherever He led, they heard that cry at the heart of the Trinity ‘Here I am send me’ and they could only respond by echoing it back, Isaiah here’s that cry of God reaching out and responds by offering to reach out. Our God is a God who reaches out, who reaches out to the poor and the lost, the widowed and the orphaned, those trapped in addiction and those who look like they have everything and yet feel like they have nothing. God reaches out ‘come back to me, come and let me show you how to live, come and let me show you where the lines and boundaries lie, and you will find true freedom, come to the one who is truth and the truth will set you free. Come to me and I will make you new once more, come on, there’s room.’ Here I am, send me. As Christians we are the ones who have found this to be true, who have found truth, who have found in God true freedom, who find ourselves daily being made new. How can we not share that, how can we not share that we are forever changed, and our lives are daily being drawn up into the infinite majesty of God. When we open the Bible we’re not reading a dry lifeless ancient text. As we read the words we see the Father speaking the Word which is His Son through the inspiration of the Spirit to those writing, and as we read the Spirit opens our eyes to the depth of these words and we are drawn into the life of God. When we pray we pray in the power of the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. In prayer we are drawn into the life of God. God constantly invites us into the conversation within Himself that we may share His life. For that is why we were created, we were created for relationship with Him. The God who made the universe is drawing us into the very heart of Himself to hear His voice and live in perfect relationship with Him. As Christians, we are called to day by day be drawn deeper into the presence of God, as we daily are caught up in the conversation of the Trinity in prayer and in Scripture and in Sacrament that we too may hear that cry at the heart of God ‘Here I am, send me’. Maybe you’ve heard that cry and you’ve responded to it, you have followed where God has led you into the places He is calling out to. But does that cry sound different now, is God calling you in a different direction. Maybe you haven’t, maybe you have heard the cry but don’t know what to do with it, the task seems overwhelming, but God never sends us alone, God is already reaching out, already at work, He calls us to join Him in what He is doing and even then He has given us His Spirit to empower us for the mission. Spend some time today with God, to reassess, to listen for that cry and be willing to follow where He leads. Trinity Sunday is an invitation to smash the boxes we have put God into and instead to sit with the mystery. And as we sit with it to hear the call of God and in the stillness to reply ‘Here I am, send me’.
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AuthorAn Anglican Curate in my 20's I was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church, attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and was a member of a New Monastic Community after graduating. As such my faith has been influenced by these experiences and traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Archives
September 2022
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