Physiologus, perhaps

 

In the second century Physiologus the pelican was an icon of Christ

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
TRINITY SUNDAY (May 21^st) 1989

 

READINGS

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

 

I can do no more on Trinity Sunday than offer to you a few questions, a few thoughts, and a “so what.” The Trinity is perhaps the only Christian doctrine that is utterly distinctive. The doctrines of Creator, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the Incarnation: all of these we share with one or more other religions.

As any good Jehovah’s Witness will tell you, the word “trinity” is never mentioned in the Bible. Yet, as our reading from Romans demonstrates, the notion is clearly there. In embryonic form, certainly, but there. Paul is beginning to speak of a one in three, of a mysterious relationship between the Creator, the Son, and the Spirit who enflamed the disciples with her strength,

We are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ …

God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit

which has been given to us.

Yet if God is one, how can this be so?

Hear, oh Israel the Lord your God is One.

This is, in Jewish thought, the first of the ten Commandments. It is small wonder that Jewish people accuse us of worshipping three gods, and Muslims accuse us of claiming that God – as Spirit – slept with Mary.

We are speaking in the midst of a mystery, and speaking of a mystery. Now I see as through a dark glass. Are we speaking merely of three faces of God? God in a kind of a Fatherly mood, God in a kind of a Sonly mood, God in a kind of a Spiritly mood?

Not so.

Such a view was centuries ago dismissed as heresy, though most of us, if not all, would embrace it from time to time.

Why indeed have a Trinity?

The reason is simple. If we believe, with John and Paul and all the New Testament, that Jesus is the way in which God’s nature – God’s face on which no person could look – is revealed to the world, that Jesus must be of the same make up, the same substance as the Father.

I cannot reveal to you what it is like to be a cat because I am a human. And if, since the Ascension, it is the Spirit’s task to make known to us the nature of the Son and of the Father, then she too must be of the same makeup or substance or stuff as Father and Son. All must be one.

So for centuries, the ancient Church Fathers deliberated until they eventually came up with a formula that best maintained unity of God, as revealed in the Old Testament, while accommodating the Father, Son and Spirit language of the New Testament. We say it each time we say the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed. Shortly we shall say it again, in another form [the Creed of Athanasius was used].

Nevertheless, in the end it remains a mystery. Three is not normally one, and one is not normally three.

So why not throw it out? Why not join the Jehovah’s Witnesses who dismissed the Trinity, or the Jews or the Muslims or the Unitarians?

I believe there is one very good reason. It is the same reason as explored in my Lenten sermons. As I travelled with you through Lent, I sought to emphasise the miracle that the God of Christianity is not merely the God “out there,” the God who makes and then exits from the heavens and the earth. God, who created humanity, enters utterly into the grot and experience of human beings. God takes into his own being[1] the experience of pain, of loneliness, of death. God cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And God rises.

The fact is this: that each person’s experience of the triune God is the experience of the whole triune God. The only God we know is the God who self-reveals in Jesus Christ. We can only grasp so much, but Father, Son and Spirit, our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Comforter, are one.  God in trinity experience all of our human suffering, enter into our suffering, and offer from within us the hope that Easter, the Resurrection, is for us. For us, and for the starving, homeless, angry and bereaved people of the world. For us and for all who, like us, are flawed, tainted, imperfect.

For us.

So the Spirit now enters us to strengthen us in our knowledge of the Son who suffers for us, and to remind us of the Father who creates us.

That is the mystery. Unable to be made simple – like water, ice and steam – for God is not simple. Unable to be understood, only to be explored, believed, celebrated.

God, Father, Son, and Spirit.
God, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.
God, who suffers as we suffer.
God, who rejoices as we rejoice.

 

All shall one day be made clear, when we see no longer through a dark glass, but see God face to face.

---

[1] In 1989 I was still wrestling with adequate forms for inclusive language, including of the Trinity. I would put this differently in 2026.

that they may be one

 

If I leave my desk too long

SERMON PREACHED AT HOLY TRINITY, RINGWOOD EAST
SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION (May 5^th) 1989

 

READINGS

Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 14:23-29

 

“I have given them the glory you gave to me,
that they may be one as we are one”

What is it, this mysterious and elusive unity that Jesus prayed for before his glorification and agony on the Cross? Where is the answer to his prayer? Why are we not one?

One of my few basic understandings of things scientific is that there is a law that basically says, “if you don’t put energy into a system then it degenerates or decomposes or fragments or generally becomes a mess.”

It often seems to me to be true. If I leave a sausage in the fridge too long it becomes green and furry. If I leave an apple on my desk too long it does likewise. If I leave my desk too long without an input of energy it becomes like it is at present: an atrocious mess.

Indeed, since today is the beginning of Marriage and Family Week, one might say that the same is true of home life. Without an input of energy a marriage decomposes to a waste land, and family life degenerates to frustration, boredom, disillusionment.

It certainly appears to be true of the Church. Since our Lord made his plea for the unity of the Church it has continually splintered into fragments. The Jews and the Greeks fought bitterly within Christianity in early decades. The East and the West formalised their split in the eleventh century, but it went back centuries before that. The Reformers and the Catholics, the Anglicans and the Presbyterians, Methodists, and other Protestant groups – even today we see new division between Anglicans and so-called Continuing Anglicans. In the Pentecostal churches I witnessed bitter divisions between pre-millennialists, post-millennialists, mid-millennialists, even a-millennialists (I’ll tell you one day what they all are!).

“I have given them the glory you gave to me ,
that they may be one as we are one”

Yet it is true also that there have been signs of improvement. No longer does the Catholic school kid cross the road sneering “protty pig” as a Protestant kid walks to school. No longer does the sensible Protestant presume that all Catholics are condemned to eternal fire unless they convert.

The fruits of seventy years of ecumenical labour are easily visible. Liturgies in Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist churches are becoming increasingly similar. Our scriptures readings each Sunday around this block of East Ringwood are almost certainly the same. We are being spoken to by the same God and at last hearing the same voice.

“I have given them the glory you gave to me ,
that they may be one as we are one”

But there is so far to go. Inter-communion is as yet far off, though many of us long for the day when we may legitimately eat our Lord’s flesh and drink his blood regardless of whether the Eucharistic rite is Roman, Anglican, or Uniting. That day will come.

But we must continue to expend energy, to place our energy into the system we call the Church. I believe that now, at Ascensiontide, the message is abundantly clear. Our Lord has expended his energy in bringing us salvation. It is up to us to continue the expenditure of energy to bring about the unity for which he longs, and to bring about the proclamation of the gospel to which he has called us.

Next Sunday we shall celebrate the coming of the empowering Spirit. There is, in other words, an input of energy into the Church since the Ascension of Christ. But there is also a responsibility on our shoulders to use our energy in the service of the evangel, the gospel. Or the gospel, too, may become green and furry. Or cluttered and disorgan
ised.  Or introverted and self-serving.

“Father, I want those that you have given me
to be with me where I am
so that they may always see my glory.”

 

The Lord be with you.