Readings: Isaiah 6. 1-8 Psalm 29, Romans 8. 12-17, John 3. 1-17
Two friends are sitting by a Spanish roadside on the way to Madrid eating a picnic and drinking Manchegan wine. One of them is a Catholic priest, the other is a Communist mayor. The mayor asks the priest to explain the Trinity and he does so by reference to the bottles of wine. There are three bottles but one wine – same substance, same vintage, when you partake of one you partake of all three. The mayor finds the Holy Spirit especially difficult to grasp; but the priest replies, that they weren’t satisfied with two bottles – the third gave them the extra spark of life they both needed. But then the priest lapses into a depressed silence. Eventually he confesses that he has committed a terrible heresy. The third bottle is only a half bottle – he has misrepresented the Holy Spirit, he has sinned against the Holy Spirit. The Mayor cheers him up by getting another whole bottle and promises that he will forget the mistake and remember only the three full bottles, when he thinks about the Trinity.
Monsignor Quixote, in Graham Greene’s novel of that name, is not alone in finding the Trinity difficult to explain. What is the relationship between the three and why is that so important? We are of course baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We are blessed in the name of the Trinity at the end of every service to which we come. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about Christianity is this doctrine of the Trinity. It is certainly what Jews and Muslims find most difficult to understand about us. And yet what does it mean to any of us? What difference does it make to us?
Though the Scriptures don’t fully explain or define the Trinity, one way of seeing the Trinity might go something like this. God contemplates himself. God we might say forms an idea of himself, what John calls the Word. ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.’ God shares his idea of himself with us in Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s idea of himself in human form. And the Father and the son rejoice in each other. Their delight wells up and overflows, and that is the Holy Spirit.* The Spirit enables us to share in the delight and the love which the Father and the Son have in each other.
The important thing about the Trinity is not so much numbers as relationship; not the figures or persons of the Trinity but the love between them, that is what is important for us. We ponder the Trinity in order to understand something of the love in which God invites us to join through our human community in the Church. We are to look to the divine relationship as a model for redeemed human relationships, however far we know we shall fall short in our loving.
The problem in talking about the Trinity always seems to arise in one of two ways. Either you over-emphasise the unity or oneness of the Trinity. In this way the three figures become just three masks for the one God. On the other hand you can over-emphasise the threeness, as though God is really three distinct figures each acting in their own way and with their own responsibilities. The first is a misunderstanding of community, the other misunderstands individuality.
And the same problem arises in every human setting, in the family, at work, in a society or a Christian congregation. Some will want to promote a corporate consciousness; they will for ever be talking about togetherness and agreement. They will clinch an argument with the words, ‘The Bible says this,’ or ‘The Church says that.’ In this way we might begin to fear that we shall lose all sense of who we are as individuals, not valued for ourselves but only for what we do to keep the community or family together.
Others will want to stress freedom of choice, the importance of personal initiative, the protection of the rights of the individual. They emphasise the right of each person to do or think what they like as long as it does no harm, so much so that all sense of community and common purpose and mutual dependence begins to disintegrate.
All human communities and personal relationships have to work at being in communion. In doctrinal terms we call this co-inherence; that is integration rather than absorption, communion without loss of identity. Talking about the Trinity is not of course of itself going to answer our problems with community and individuality, but such talk may at least help us to pray. That is why a frequent reading for today is Isaiah’s vision of God while he was praying in the Temple.’Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ Isaiah’s vision enables him to feel forgiven and to offer himself to do God’s work, ‘Here I am send me’. But that forgiveness and that calling begin with a sense of God’s glory. To believe that we are called into the love shared by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit means believing that there is a place for our humanity in the glory of God. And that is what we have to believe if we are going to be able to pray.
A Broadmoor prisoner once described this kind of prayer as ‘washing my face on the inside.’ In this way I might learn to love myself and my neighbour as myself as members of the divine and glorious community without which none of us can learn to live or to love. Amen