Biblical text – John 3.1-17
May I speak in the name of the Holy & Blessed Trinity, One God in three persons.
Last week I was listening to my favourite preaching preparation podcast when one of the presenters said regarding preaching on Trinity Sunday, just preach about God. God is Trinity, so if you preach about God, you will be preaching about the Trinity. His comment was, of course, tongue in cheek, but he makes an interesting point.
The German theologian, Karl Rahner, has said that;
Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere ‘monotheists’. We must be willing to admit that should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.1
Rahner contends that Christians are not really affected by the doctrine of the Trinity, that we can go on quite nicely without it. Our scriptures speak of God as Creator, as the Eternal Word incarnate in humanity, as life-giving, energising Spirit. Jesus speaks about God his Father who has sent him and who will send the Holy Spirit. So, how do we begin to understand the doctrine of One God in Three persons, and what difference does that make to this community of St Matthew’s?
The doctrine of the Trinity developed as the early church tried to understand how the God they met in Jesus, and the God sent to them in the Holy Spirit could be the same God they had always known through the Hebrew Scriptures. It was not so much a tricky theological conundrum to keep academics busy on quiet afternoons, but instead, an attempt to express the way in which they experienced God.
Our experience of the Triune God is deeply historical, deeply personal, and deeply connected to a vision of the future. The things we have believed across the centuries continue to shape our modern understanding of God and the ways in which we worship.
Think of the debates about slavery, or the ordination of women, the re-marriage of divorcees, or the acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. Who we are and what we experience affects where we stand on each of these issues. How we understand God’s plans for our future, and how we envisage our own roles in that future, will determine the response we make to each of these things.
Recently I heard a wonderful summary of what the Trinity means.
In 3 persons God stepped out of eternity & into human history to interrupt the course we have set for ourselves. Through the power of the spirit Jesus is incarnate and through the Spirit Jesus remains with us.2
We experience God in real life, in our own flesh and blood and in the sharing of Christ’s body and blood. To enter the kingdom of heaven we must be born anew, entering into the relationship that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Understanding what this means is not as important as experiencing what it means. The difference that it makes to believe in a Triune God is not an intellectual one, but a lived experience of being a part of the relationship that sustains all creation.
As we are continually born anew into the self-giving love of the Triune God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we experience God’s goodness and grace. That experience teaches us how to extend goodness and grace to others. We are made in the image of the Triune God and that means that, when we are true to ourselves, we are true to the image of God; God who is relationship.
A faith that is truly Trinitarian is inherently relational; based on the flow of love that is God. We are created to be in relationship with each other and with God who is in God’s very nature, a relationship of love.
As we worship this God, the way we see the world is changed. We see that God forgives us, so we forgive others. We receive God’s grace, so we are gracious to others. We experience our ongoing transformation and new birth as we experience God’s vision and possibilities for making all creation whole.
Rowan Williams puts it like this;
The doctrines of Christ and of the Trinity can seem remarkably remote and theoretical to most people these days; what we seem to forget is that they were designed in order not only to tell us the truth about God but to make us live that truth. They are invitations, ways of passing on Jesus’ invitation to be changed, to repent and trust him, to walk with him.
This means, of course, that another difference it makes to worship a Trinitarian God is that we are called to a radical change in our vision and in our way of being so that we see relationship as foundational to who we are called to be. We are invited to change, repentance, trust.
This is a difficult frustrating way to live. It was this kind of living that led Jesus to the cross, because a God who is by nature relationship could only remain in loving connection, even when that meant death. That is the way of life to which our relational God calls us and which our world desperately needs.
May you be shaped by the love of the Triune God. Amen.