Trinity Sunday. 2nd June 2013
Luke 7:1-10.
Today I want to talk a little bit about relationship: what does it mean to be in relationship with other people? And for us, as Christians, is there something special to think about in terms of relationship, with God and with each other?
Well, to explore this I want to tell you a little story about my week.
We get Love Film at our house, and every couple of weeks we get a DVD through the post. This week the film was the new Muppets movie; so, a little light-hearted entertainment. I won’t give away the plot details, but the general gist is that the Muppets all get back together for a final show. Of course, it’s a film for children, but I was struck with how much emphasis there was on relationships of all different types; friendships and siblings, work colleagues and, of course, that greatest of love stories, Kermit and Miss Piggy.
On a complete aside, my wife’s family have some long-standing friends, the Rev’d Peter Fish and his wife. Well, Peter went to school with the creator of the Muppets, Jim Henson, and Peter was the inspiration for the character of Fozzie Bear. When I first met him, I had that feeling that we’d met somewhere before, and when I found this fact out it all began to make sense. So there you go, my claim to fame: I’ve met the real Fozzie Bear. Miss Piggy was based on a girl in their class that used to chase them down the road.
Anyway, back to the sermon. Watching this movie, I started to reflect a bit on the importance of relationships, and how it’s important to teach children how relationships of different types work, and how much effort goes into keeping relationships healthy.
Human beings are naturally social; we form communities and build relationships from the minute we are born. To be human is to be in relationships of some form.
Now I can see you asking yourselves, ‘what’s this got to do with Trinity Sunday?’. Good question.
There is a certain tradition that takes place on Trinity Sunday, and that is to get the curate to do the sermon. It is something of a rite of passage for the newly ordained to test whether the curate can adequately explain one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith, hopefully in a way that doesn’t leave the congregation completely confused, or worse, with an incorrect understanding of the Trinity.
Well, this tradition is well known at theological colleges, so I’ve spent the past few years making sure that I attend Trinity Sunday services and take careful notes of what the preacher says.
I’ve heard all sorts of different ways of trying to explain the Trinity. Some are quite useful; a few are not useful at all; all are more or less wrong. This is because the mystery of the Trinity is one of those things that the human mind cannot quite get itself around. It’s a bit like trying to imagine what eternity is like, or trying to picture space as a never-ending expanse: our minds instinctively shy away from it – we try to put boundaries on something that is unlimited.
So when we talk about the Trinity we often, and very naturally, try to create an image of God that seems comfortable: God is like a three-leafed clover, three and yet one; God is like a person who is a sister, a mother and a daughter all at the same time, it just depends on who you ask – three aspects of one person. But when we use analogies like this, we actually lose something of the Trinitarian mystery. Because actually I think that one of the best ways to talk about the Trinity is in terms of relationship.
If there is one thing that we can say about the Trinity, it is that God’s very being is in some way relational. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are relational to each other. This is what Jesus is trying to explain in today’s Gospel reading: all that the Father has belongs to Jesus, and all that Jesus has belongs to Holy Spirit. All that they are is shared together in the purest of relationships.
As Christians, we are called to be part of that Divine relationship. That is why when we are Baptised, we are done so in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. All three are important because we are now in relationship with all of God: not just the Son only, or the Holy Spirit only, but with the entirety of God.
I’m probably committing all sorts of heresy talking about the Divine Nature in the same breath as the Muppets, but actually the film’s focus on the importance of relationships, and of maintaining healthy relationships, is a really fundamental thing for humans to grasp. We learn that to maintain healthy relationships we have to take time to be with people, spending what is often called ‘quality time’ with those around us.
We, as Christians, need to make sure that we maintain a healthy relationship with God. That means spending time with God; and that can be done in many ways. It could be in private prayer; it could be in public worship; it could be reading the Bible, or acts of charity. It is in this spending time with God that we actually begin to encounter the mystery of the Trinity: sometimes we find ourselves focusing on Jesus, particularly when we engage with other people; sometimes we encounter the Holy Spirit, especially in times of worship and prayer; and sometimes we encounter the Father, especially in the beauty of Creation.
I don’t think we can ever ‘solve’ the mystery of the Trinity, but we can experience it in our on-going relationship with God.
Amen.
Rev’d Phil Morton.