This sermon is a personal and more than usually opinionated view of the Trinity. I hope what I think may strike a constructive chord with some of you and that those who disagree may find in that disagreement a refining of their own view. I hope we can all agree that there can be many mansions in ideas as big as the Trinity.
So, my difficulties with the Trinity are not the usual ones of reconciling three distinct things or persons as also one and the same thing; we do that all the time when we attribute different qualities to one object. It’s perhaps a bit harder when the object is a person, but another problem I have with conventional wisdom about the Trinity is just that emphasis on persons- but I will come on to that.
The basic idea of three being one has a certain mystical complexity and while being scarcely numerate, even I can see a sort of mathematical beauty in triangulation which is well exemplified in Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity which appeared on the weekly newsletter. My only difficulty with that beautiful painting is why one should ever have thought Abraham’s three angelic visitors should have anything to do with the Trinity beyond the mundane fact that there were three of them.
If I were a properly trained theologian, perhaps I would understand better what the “mystery” of the Most Holy Trinity means in terms of how I should live my life; as it is, I can’t help suspecting it is one of those mysteries (transubstantiation is another) which are intended to be difficult as test of faith. St John, who is certainly a theologian, illustrates this trend in having his Jesus insisting that poor Nicodemus believe six impossibilities before breakfast.
This is a little unfair to St John, who does after all tell Nicodemus that he cannot enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. This is, however, the only occurrence of the phrase in John’s Gospel and it doesn’t seem to mean the perfection of human society which I believe it does in the other Gospels where the Good News, is that we can and should, work to build such a world. St John does not seem to share that belief; the promise his Jesus brings to Nicodemus and others is of “Eternal Life”- a rather more introspective notion. It is true that in the verses following our reading this morning John does refer to this world and its sinfulness from which the escape is to believe in Jesus as the Son of God. This is, however, like being born again of water and spirit, hardly very helpful advice in the way that, for example Luke gives it in the parables of the Good Samaritan or Prodigal Son.
This mystical as opposed to practical import of Trinitarian thought, is perhaps the reason why pictures of the Trinity, at least in the Western tradition are so rare. In that tradition’s iconography the Trinity is shown unconvincingly either as an old man with a long beard somehow leaning over or holding up the crucified Christ with a dove floating about nearby, or as a Holy Family with God the Father an eminence grise in the background, and again a dove fluttering by. The truth is that the Trinity is too often uninspiring in any practical or human way, and perhaps better treated as something mystically intangible and conceptually beautiful, but not easily susceptible to figurative art, or something that might provoke us to action.
One of the reasons for this is, I suspect, too great an emphasis on the persons of the Trinity and relationships seen in implausible human terms. Particularly unhelpful, it seems to me, is seeing the central leg of the triangle as the relationship of a son to a
father. Talk of the Son of God or the Son of Man was evidently common in 1st century Jewish religious conversation but it cannot then have been taken any more literally then than we can take it now; the Jewish concept of God was far more sophisticated than, for example the Greek one, where God’s regularly manage to beget semi divine heroes. While often having superhuman powers these demi-gods do not identify with their father as Jesus does (and they get into big trouble if they try to). But the point about Jesus is surely that he has the attributes of God in his power over creation (in, for example, calming storms, healing the sick, bringing the dead back to life) and in this sense is God by showing us what God is like. But this is not in the least typical of the link between human fathers and sons or mothers and daughters- and it is also absurdly masculine weighted.
And yet without this baggage both conceptually abstract and inappropriately familial, I suggest the ideas that make up the Trinity can inspire us.
It is as the creator of the world that God is first and chiefly understood in the Hebrew scriptures and this is still true in the New Testament and now. As creator he is also the source of guidance and instruction on human behaviour. The Old Testament depicts him as the controller of geology, nature and the weather and that is the basis of his ethical authority. The world God made is Good and that goodness runs through all its manifestations and most significantly for us as the basis of human activity and so our morality.
That morality would, however, remain abstract and unfulfilled to it full potential, without human demonstration of how it works. And that is of course just what Jesus as a human being shows us, through healing and service to the ultimate sacrifice of his mortal self. So that relationship, that limb of the Trinity, is more than just helpful to us; it’s vital. But seeing it as a filial/paternal relationship does not help at all.
That vitality is reinforced by the Holy Spirit; just as it was it the spirit moving over the waters that started creation; and the voice/breath of God which organise the chaos and finally breathed life into humankind. It still does so for us but now we have seen the example of divine power in human form and come to see what it could mean to be created in the image of God, the Spirit inspires us to imitate what Jesus did and enable us to carry on that loving work ourselves. It is like a strong wind pushing us up a hill, the warm breeze that tells us Spring and new growth are on the way or the cooling draught that revives us when overheated, literally or metaphorically. It is also an unpredictable blast knocking us sideways when we least it expect it, redirecting our effort where we had not noticed or imagined the need for it. We can leave it to others to worry about whether, it proceeds from the Father and the Son or the Father alone. Amen