Sermons

Trinity Sunday
Sunday 30 May 2010 at 8am and 10am

Diane Flynn

Readings: Proverbs 8 v1-4,22-31, John 16 v12-15

Relationships.

It seems a long-time since Lent and Easter and the celebration of the Resurrection. We've moved along Eastertide and then celebrated Pentecost last Sunday - celebrating the Holy Spirit in our lives and that of the Church.

Today is Trinity Sunday and we start the long Church Season of Ordinary Time/Common Time, which will last until the Autumn.
And you see, very good training for any curate, especially a Deacon, is to have the opportunity to preach on Trinity Sunday
- so I'm going to try to explain something about the Trinity today. And I say the word try quite deliberately, because that's all any of us can do, because it is totally impossible to fully explain God - we are only human and we only can glimpse a tiny part of how to understand anything about God and the mystery of the Trinity.

Trinity is the Church's attempt to describe God as 3 persons. Three persons but still one God.

The word itself does not actually come from the bible at all - it is not even mentioned there, but in the bible is the basis of the church teachings (or doctrines) on the Trinity.

What we are trying to say when we speak about the Trinity is that we think we have some understanding about God in relation to these three ways:

Firstly as Father - his wideness, his enormity, his hugeness, and Him as creator of us and of all things.

Secondly as Son, when we believe that God became flesh as Jesus and came amongst us - the incarnation - God coming to be with us.

And then, thirdly as Spirit, which is how we sometimes sense God - by warmth, feelings, thoughts - His power and His strength, helping us in our lives.

Their relationship together is sometimes known as perichoresis - joining, interconnected, a dancing together, all in relationship together - All 3 persons - and what is at the heart of all of it is the giving and receiving of love. The Bible gives us a lot of information about their relationship - in the way Jesus talks of the love of his Father, God saying at Jesus baptism - this is my son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased and the way the Spirit is spoken of by Jesus - a lot of glimpses of their relationship with each other.
And their relationship - the Trinity for each other, their giving and receiving of love within it, can, and is, shared also by Gods Church and all of us as Christians - we can share in that relationship

This is known as Rublevs Icon of the Trinity, painted around 1410 - it depicts the three angels who visited Abram, but it is also interpreted as an icon of the Trinity - the three persons of the Trinity and it can take the viewer into the Mystery of the Trinity.
Why I like this image so much is because they are sat around the table nearly forming a circle but their circle is actually left open, there's a gap, a space at the front, a space in their group - and that gap is for us - its where WE can join in the relationship with the three there - its their invitation to us to join them, to sit with them, to be with them.

And that's interesting isn't it, because we are all very different in how we connect to God - some people connect to all three persons of the Trinity, some to maybe one more than the other. How people have a connection with God is different for all of us.

I had never really reflected on this at all until my training - how I connected to the Trinity. I initially came to faith through a relationship with Jesus and gradually over time came to see how I connected with God as Creator, when I realised I had a great connection to his Creation around me - particularly the sea and particularly as the Creator of my children. I then realised I had had experiences of his Spirit giving me great strength and power in certain times in my life. These were different experiences of how I had connected to the 3 persons of the Trinity and I reflected on these, which was a good spiritual exercise for me - to see how I had made connections with different parts of the trinity at different parts of my life, because it added to my spirituality and led me to new paths of discovery, enriching my faith.

I would encourage us all to look at our faith journey and reflect on our own relationship with the persons of the trinity
- do we have a relationship with one of the persons of the Trinity or with all 3?

Which part of the trinity do we connect to more?
Sometimes they are all mixed into one and we can't tell, but I would encourage us to take time to reflect on our own relationship with the persons of the Trinity -
It can help us to identify faith experiences in our life where we may have connected to one of the Trinity more and we can reflect on how that altered or changed or increased our experience of God and our faith
And it can give us an insight into different ways to connect to God in the future.

I learnt from my reflection that I connected to God the Father as my Creator quite a lot by being near the sea and so I make time to be at the sea as it feeds my relationship with God.
We can all use our past experiences to see how they can help us connect to the Trinity in the future.

So from Rublevs Icon - an image of the Trinity, to our Worship and how we experience the Trinity within it. We all, in some way, connect to the Trinity and join in that circle when we come and celebrate the Weekly Eucharist - The whole service, whether BCP or CW is an invitation to share in the relationship with the Trinity. And the Eucharist is a wealth of our Church tradition and understanding of the Trinity.

We start by coming to be in the presence of God, to worship God the Father and Creator of us, we come to say sorry to him, he forgives us - our Creator forgives us always. We sing or say the Gloria praising Him and listening to His word.

The creed affirms our belief in the Trinity - the creeds coming from the early church and Church fathers who attempted to define what all Christians were meaning and they eventually agreed on the words that we still use today - a declaration of what we mean by God as three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Sometimes we are so used to saying the words of the creed that the actual significance can completely pass us by.

The Eucharist takes us to then be in the presence of Jesus - as we take bread and wine and realise His presence with us
And then we ask for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and into the Church to give us Gods power and strength to go out and live with the Trinity every day in our world.

The whole Eucharist is a weekly reminder of the Trinity and again, can show us how we may connect to different persons of the Trinity within it, how our relationship with the Trinity can be strengthened every single week.

So, reflecting on our faith experiences and how we have connected to the Persons of the Trinity. And reflecting on our Eucharist and how that can help us connect to the Persons of the Trinity.

Lets remember the Trinity is all a relationship of love - Gods way of giving us a glimpse of how we can connect with Him, build a relationship with Him.

A Relationship of love - and we surely must be thankful for that blessing.

I end with Paul's Trinitarian prayer from Corinthians:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore Amen

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay