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Trinity Sunday – 26th May 2024
Preached at St Mark’s Church, Newnham and Grantchester Church (Cambridge)
Readings: Isaiah 6.1-8 and John 3.1-17
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Trinity Sunday. The bane of all preacher’s ministerial lives. If you’re not aware, preachers all over the country, probably across the world, tend to have quite the flap about today, Trinity Sunday. How on earth might one explain, or at worst analogise, the Trinity without getting themselves into knots of all kinds of heresies? A God who is Three in One, Three distinct persons and yet in One whole and true unity… So, you can imagine how I am feeling today: This departing ordinand should have checked the liturgical calendar before he picked his preaching spot!
I think we have an obsession with trying to overexplain things in microscopic details. Our common attraction to rationality and logic, even science and mathematics perhaps, means we zoom in so closely to things that, of course, importantly need attention. But we forget the poetry, the imagery, the language, the mystery that comes with it. The two – the small as much as the great, the literal as well as the creative – must be held in tension. Faith is called faith because it requires some sense of grasping for that which cannot be seen, that which can only be hoped for. Graham Adams argues that ‘To have faith, then, is both to see the world as it is, which in itself requires imagination, to enter empathetically into the cracks and small spaces of a vast, fluid and diverse world … and to imagine its renewal, even its transformation’.[1] Christian faith, then, is not always an endeavour of explanation; yet, always, it should have an objective of transformation.
The most obvious sign of transformation in our Christian lives is the sacrament of baptism. As Jesus tells Nicodemus in our Gospel reading, one must be born of water and Spirit. It is not a re-birth of the flesh. Instead, our bodies become enveloped in this new birth in which the Holy Spirit will work through us and transform us, ‘paired with bodies – individual bodies, communal bodies, sacramental bodies’ – in order for us to transform others.[2] ‘She’, the Holy Spirit, Karen O’Donnell says, ‘befriends and accompanies them, coming to rest on holy places, holy people, and holy things’.[3] We become partners with God.
If you are here, baptised in water and Spirit, then you are part of this call to transformation – you are one of those holy people on which God rests. You are one of those who can live into God’s imagination, one of those who ought to enter empathetically into the cracks and small spaces, one of those who ought to seek the renewal and transformation of this place, this community, this world in which we live for the better. That is our calling as Christians; not for a life of stagnation, but of dynamism and drive towards justice. We, as Christians, are sent. And, if you are here today, and you have not been baptised or confirmed, but wonder what this might mean for you, then know that you are also invited. You are God’s creation and, therefore, you are God’s beloved. You are also called to be sent.
The Trinity encapsulates this ‘sending’ movement, what theologians call the ‘processions’ of God. God the Father sends the Son to save the world, and God the Son sends the Holy Spirit to God’s people. Whilst remaining wholly and truly One, God sends Godself distinctively and yet not separately – God proceeds Godself through each Person of the Trinity. And it might be argued that no more needs to be explained of this. It is, in itself, a mystery… a Triune, Trinitarian Mystery. That is what God is. It is this Mystery that our Christian witness exists in response to.
And these processions, these sending movements, are characterised by Love. A movement in which God gives Godself without expecting anything back. This Love only occurs through relationship. God is not God outside of the Trinity, for that would be outside of Godself. Neither are we are who we are without our Creator. The Creator is only Creator because of creation. But, if we are not careful, thinking of The Trinity in this processional way can allude to some sense of hierarchy: that the Father is the most important priority because He begets the Son, and that the Son has the power to send the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit only exists because of what has come before… that is where we would start getting into heresy! Instead, Catholic feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson says ‘At the heart of the holy mystery is not monarchy but community; not an absolute ruler, but a threefold koinonia’ – a fellowship.[4] If the Trinity, the God which we worship, is a Triune God of fellowship and community, and a God who freely gives and receives Oneself, then we as Christians – testifiers of God’s work, models of Christ’s love – have a lot to learn.
In our reading from Isaiah today, the prophet sees and experiences the Almighty God. The thresholds shake. Angels fly above him. ‘The whole earth is full of [God’s] glory’. The majesty is immeasurable. It starts to point towards this image I have been painting, that God is beyond our rational explanations and the descriptions of our limited Western languages. And yet, at the end of this passage, God asks a question: ‘Whom Shall I Send?’ And Isaiah boldly replies: ‘Here am I; send me!’
The ‘sending’ that exists within the Trinity also invites us. Here, Isaiah responds to God’s call to be sent. Similarly, Christ commissions his disciples to go out to every nation and make disciples of God’s people. Likewise, at Pentecost, we remembered that the Holy Spirit breathes Her love, guidance, and spiritual gifts onto those first followers of Jesus as they go to proclaim of Christ’s redeeming work. We, too, are caught up in this sending. We, too, are called by God to be sent out.
Returning to our Gospel passage, Nicodemus asks ‘But how can these things be?’ We might perhaps be pondering this same question as I have talked rather deeply about the nature of God as Three in One on this Trinity Sunday. There’s been no Trinitarian analogies from me (that might get me caught out by one of our esteemed theologians and clergy team!). There’s been none of my usual funny stories that allude to something of the theme I am talking about. There has just been God revealed in scripture, and God as understood in most Christian theologies.
In reply to Nicodemus, Jesus replies:
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
That is the Gospel. That God sends Godself for us to be saved, not wasted; to live, and not be damned; to be love and loved, and not be lost. We are saved through Christ, in the sending of God’s Son and God’s Holy Spirit through Whose redeeming work we can offer the gift of transformed lives to others.
Sometimes that seems like a mystery. Why me? Why should I be saved? Why should I be loved? Why should I be transformed? Why should I be sent? How am I worthy?! And yet that is the ineffable, unfathomable mystery of God, who is One in Three and Three in One. You are precious, you are loved, each and every one of you in God’s creation… especially.
That needs no more explanation. No more words from me. All that it needs is you and God. An open heart to be transformed, to know and feel God’s love, and to see the work of Christ in your life and in the lives of those around you. As the Holy Spirit blows through all you are going through at the moment, all you are struggling to do, all those emotions that are weighing you down, all those things that have become a burden, everything you hope for, may you remember to keep your heart, and your mind, and your body, and your soul open to the unexplainable, the indescribable, the incomprehensible Mystery. For this God, the Triune Mystery, is fellowship, is community, is Love in its purest form. That God who Created you; Redeems you; Sustains you. The Trinity.
It will never make sense. And that, my friends, is why it is so awesomely beautiful.
Amen.
[1] Graham Adams, God the Child: Small, Weak and Curious Subversions (SCM Press, 2024), p. 159.
[2] Karen O’Donnell, ‘The Transformation of the Ordinary’ (preached at the Sermon for Westcott House, 2024) <https://karenodonnell.org.uk/research-papers/pentecost>.
[3] O’Donnell.
[4] Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, 25th Anniversary Edn (The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2017), p. 228.
Will Rose-Moore 
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