Trinity Sunday 2016  22 May+

I am not a theologian. I am a Christian believer. Trinity Sunday gives us the opportunity  to re-affirm what we believe about the Trinity.  So far as I know this is the only major Christian festival that celebrates a Christian doctrine  -  a belief - as opposed to an event, such as Christmas, Easter, Palm Sunday or Whitsun..  
The Holy Trinity is not, I confess, an easy concept to grasp for a lay man.  But we are in good company.   Even St. Augustine of Hippo ( a North African of the 4[th] century)  said he did not understand it.   I have read that another more modern theologian explained the doctrine of the Trinity as " like describing ballet to an oyster"  
I had thought of dipping into the Athanasian Creed , that wonderfully convoluted explanation of the Trinity in the Book of Common Prayer which speaks of the  " Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible and affirms that " there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated; but one uncreated and one incomprehensible. "    But I was warned off it by local theologians. Not for amateurs ! 

The Trinity is more familiar to us and rather more comprehensible I feel, in the words of the Nicene Creed:   We believe in one God; we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ who by the power of the Holy Spirit came down from Heaven and was made man. 
Better still we get a steer from the Catechism, I find. Where after the Articles of Belief it says: 
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth .....The question is then  put:
What do  you chiefly learn in these Articles of Belief? 
 First I learn to believe in God the Father who has made me and all the world.
 Second, in God the son who has redeemed me;
 Third, in God the Holy Ghost who sanctifies me and all the elect people of God
That to my mind is a good deal simpler than wrestling  -  fun though it is  -  with Quicunque Vult.  Because as a Christian I do believe that God made us and our world, God loves us and has a plan for our lives. 
 The first pillar of the Three in One is God.  
Actually I find God is pretty comprehensible. In the Old Testament.  He walks in the Garden of Eden and speaks to Adam & Eve.  In our reading today  he speaks to Moses from that burning bush causing Moses to hide his face for he was afraid to look at God.   
God calls Samuel three times in the night and gives him a pretty grim message for Eli. 
God appears to Solomon, the new King of Israel, in a dream to ask what he wants and Solomon asks for an understanding mind and God gives him it.    
 And In that that inspiring Chapter 6 of Isaiah God in the year that King Uzziah died,  appeared to the prophet, as the text has it " high and lifted up and his train filled the temple"  and then  in Isiah's words, God says " Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said  " Here am I send me ! "   
 A short punchy statement that speaks to the heart  about our relationship with God that has inspired many great men and women over the ages.  
That to my mind is a good deal simpler than Quicunque Vult.  Because as a Christian I do believe that God made us and our world, God loves us and has a plan for our lives. 
The second pillar of the Trinity is God the Son.  Jesus our Saviour, our teacher and intermediary with God.  
Our reading  this morning brings us with Jesus to the end of St. Matthew's Gospel with what has become known as the Great Commission.  The commandment of Jesus to his disciples to go out to preach, making  disciples of all nations in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.    
This is a new development to an earlier commission by Jesus in the same Gospel, where he tells the disciples to confine their preaching specifically to Jews, the lost sheep of the House of Israel. 
This is the seed that Jesus planted in the minds of his eleven disciples that eventually over the following centuries spread Christianity across the known world. 
As one commentator put it, this tiny book ( St. Matthew's Gospel)  has changed more lives than any other printed work.  To many people St. Matthew is the Gospel  and it has shaped whole civilizations. 
But in this modern age we are bound to ask  "is it true?"    Did, as Matthew tells us, a Virgin really conceive and give birth to a baby boy in Bethlehem ?   Did wise men guided, by a star,  come to worship him;  Did he grow up to be able to walk on water, perform miracles and found the Church?  
These are all reasonable questions that someone, say,  coming to Christianity for the first time might ask.   But they will lead us into pointless negativism.  Our educated,  modern, minds will decide that no one ever walked on water, that corpses do not come to life and that Virgins do not conceive. 
It is not a newspaper story or a television documentary  to which one applies rational test of veracity.  Before applying those kinds of rational analysis,  imagine the chapters that describe the trial and Crucifixion of Christ set to Bach's music in the St. Matthew Passion.  Think about the millions of people who have recited  -  in all kinds of differing situations  -  the prayer set our in Chapter 6 of this Gospel that begins   "Our Father".  Think about the paintings that depict the Bible stories so graphically. 
Think of the women of Argentina who in the face of intimidation  "Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted". 
A book of power and passion.  A new religion being from the old  -  Judaism.
As one commentator I read put it, when putting together these thought,  the Matthew Gospel  is about Jesus as seen through the lens of a particular  group  -  Christians  -  and a particular faith somewhere in the Mediterranean world about 80 or 90 years after the death of Jesus. 
It is a gospel that reflects the gap between the orthodox Jews, criticising Jesus for example for healing a man on the Sabbath,  and the followers of St. Paul who wanted to leave the synagogue, get out and take the faith around the world. As commanded by Jesus.
So God ( pillar one)  made the world and all that therein is and Jesus ( pillar 2)  represents the message of love and salvation that has gone around the world, and guides Christian lives.   He interprets God to us. What we know about God comes from his son.  No man comes to the Father except through me he said. 
 He is God's gatekeeper, as it were.    eaven HhH
The third pillar is the Holy Ghost: as I see it ( subject to what a theologian might say) that is the spirit that directs us and makes it possible for us to travel towards God in our prayers.   "Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire............."   So when we pray as ordinary Christians we are trying to get in touch with God.  And, as C S Lewis, I think, put it,  what prompts us to pray is also God, God inside us. 
The Holy Spirit, that we celebrated last Sunday at Pentecost, is then the  inspiration for us to work for God. And we only have to look around our history to see that inspiration.  John Wesley, William Booth, Christina Noble and her street children in Vietnam and Stephen Sutton. 
These four, picked at random, were inspired by Christian ideals of love and compassion, inspired ( whether they knew of not I do not know)  by the Holy Spirit.
Trinity Sunday is then the opportunity to reflect on these three Articles  of  Christian belief and to pray God that he will in the words of our Collect to-day   "keep us steadfast in our faith ".  
It's a day to think about our lives and what they mean for us  and those around us.  
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying : whom shall I send and who will go for us ?  Then I said : Here am I :  send me " . 
Holy Spirit , take our minds and think through them
Take our mouths and speak through them
Take our hearts and set them on fire. 

Amen 






