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Thought
for the Week Sunday 7 June – Trinity Sunday
Today is Trinity Sunday. Preaching the Trinitiy is possibly the
greatest challenge to all preachers!
So - what is the Trinity, where is it, and how do we find it? Christians believe that the Trinity is
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – Three in One and One in
Three. On the surface it may seem
plausible, but once we begin to scratch the surface then we begin to appreciate
the difficulty of understanding who or what God really is. During the 1920’s when William Ralph Inge
was Dean of St. Paul’s in London he famously addressed the congregation one
Trinity Sunday with the words: “Today we explore the mystery of the
Trinity. I do not expect to explore it
all within the time at my disposal.” Dean Inge had come to appreciate that the
Trinity is almost beyond our comprehension, and when something is beyond our
comprehension it is difficult if not impossible to explain it to others. We may attempt to explain the Trinity by
relating it to something physical, something familiar – a candle for
example. A candle has three elements –
the wax [God], the wick [Jesus] and the flame [Holy Spirit]. They are interdependent and together
produce light. In Isaiah’s vision there definitely was
light in the temple of the Lord – hence the live coal taken from the
altar. The prophet Isaiah realised
that there was more to this life than the physical reality, perhaps that’s
why he was able to recognise the Holy Spirit in his vision of God attended by
the seraphs. Seraphs, heavenly beings,
had a human body with two wings at the shoulders and four wings below the
waist. Some Christians might look for a more
robust image of the Trinity in the workplace.
One devastating consequence of the economic crisis is the increase in unemployment. For more than a decade, Christians have
been discussing the theology of work.
In 1997, the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland (CCBI)
produced the report “Unemployment and
the Future of Work” which led Professor Ian Markham to write: “…. a Christian
understanding of work should draw upon the images of work applied to the
different persons of the Trinity. The
Creator God works for six days and rests on the seventh; the Son works in redeeming
human wickedness on the cross; and the Spirit works to illuminate the
Church. No doubt from all this one
could formulate a Trinitarian account of work that stresses initiative (God
the Father), justice (God the Son) and ongoing creativity (God the Spirit).”* This is what’s so exciting and
challenging about Trinity Sunday – it’s a reminder that God is eternal – his
love for us has no beginning and no end.
Although interest in formal religion may appear to be diminishing,
there is an increasing interest in spirituality. People have a sense that there is more to
mortal life than the laws of physics and commerce, the law of the land and
rule of the jungle. Nicodemus, the devout Jew, visited Jesus
at night. We’re not told whether he chose to go at night to avoid detection
by fellow members of the Sanhedrin; the timing may have been incidental.
Night might refer to his spiritual state.
Nicodemus certainly accepted that Jesus was a gifted teacher marked
out by God, but he had a great surprise when Jesus told him that he needed to
be born again! Initially Nicodemus related to Jesus
because he was fully human and a Jew.
God showed his love for humanity by sending Jesus, his only Son, to
die for our sins. Jesus told Nicodemus quite straightforwardly that he came
from heaven so that each of us might be saved – by the power of the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God alive in each one
of us, cheering us on, checking our tendency to want to do things in our own
strength, reminding us that God truly loves each one of us and is greater
than we will ever hope to understand. Today we have begun to explore the
exciting mystery of the Trinity.
Whether we discover God in initiative, justice or ongoing creativity,
like Dean Inge, we may not expect to explore it all within the time at our
disposal. Amen. Revd June Hutchinson: Assistant Curate,
Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |