Trinity Sunday 2016
Anslow, Rolleston & Tutbury
Proverbs 8.1-4,22-31, Psalm 8,
Romans 5.1-5, John 16.12-15
Athanasius Creed – the opening
section
Whosoever will be saved,
before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; Which faith
except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish
everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in
Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the
substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and
another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as the
Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. The Father uncreated,
the Son uncreated, and the Holy Spirit uncreated. The Father incomprehensible,
the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible.
Yet not very comprehensible...
The Creed of Athanasius is
certainly one way of attempting to explain the mystery of the Trinity.
However, I would not
recommend you commit this to memory just in case someone asks you to explain
the Trinity.
You might be better to
follow an example of my daughter Tabitha who works as Cabin Crew for
Monarch. One time during a short break on
a flight, a colleague asked about the Trinity. Tabitha looked around the galley
and pointed out a steaming kettle, an ice bucket and a bottle of water – all of
which are H2o, water.
There have been many ways
of trying to explain the Trinity – St Patrick of course famously used a
three-leafed shamrock.
Each metaphor helps a
little yet at some point breaks down as most metaphors do, especially when
trying to use words to convey something about the mysterious working of the
Divine Godhead.
I want to come back in a
moment to offer one metaphor that will give me an opportunity to tell you a
little about who I am and what my role is in the diocese.
First, however I want to
point some obvious aspects about God and the Trinity that we sometimes forget.
The first disciples of
Jesus were good solid first century Jews. Good first century Jews who had grown
up since childhood repeating the Shema, the prayer of the Jewish nation.
"Hear, O Israel: the LORD is our God, the LORD is One."
They would have grown up
know the Ten Commandments and in particular note the first two…
“I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You
shall have no other gods before Me.
2 “You shall not make for
yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you
shall not bow down to them nor serve them.
Now listen to this verse
from Luke 24.52 ‘Then they worshiped him (Jesus) and returned to Jerusalem
with great joy.’
Then from John’s Gospel
and Thomas’s encounter…
John 20.28 Thomas said, “My
Lord and my God”
Today we are perhaps so
used to hearing people say ‘O my God’ all the time we have forgotten what an
astonishing phrase this was and equally amazing that they should worship Jesus
when in every fibre of their being God alone was to be worshiped.
We have to remember that
the Trinity – which combines two words Tri Unity – was not an idea the
disciples made up.
Nor is it, as someone once
said, a second century sermon illustration that has long past its sell by date.
It was first and foremost
an experience – an experience that the disciples tried explain.
As they looked at their Scriptures,
they began to see the truth behind the experience. None more so than Paul, whom
we can almost see in his letters discovering more and more about the God as
Trinity in the Scriptures.
The testimony to the
Trinity goes right back to the very first book, the Book of Genesis.
We pick this up in the
passage from Proverbs we heard this morning. This is Lady Wisdom as the handmaid
of God and working as co-creator of the universe. (Lady Wisdom’s opposite
number is Mistress Folly)
Note also in the Genesis
account of creation that the language is plural – ‘Let us make man in our own
image.’
I want to come back to
this very important point later as well.
However, I did say that I
wanted to speak a little about myself as a metaphor for the Trinity.
First, we need to get our
‘what’ and ‘who’ clear in our minds.
In Islam, we have the 99
beautiful names for God or Allah.
The Exceedingly Merciful, the
King, The Sovereign, The Holy, The Divine, The Pure, The Purifier, The Peace,
The Source of Peace and Safety.
Now these are beautiful
names and tell us what God is but do
not tell us who God is.
And I hope you are now
beginning to hear Moses and his encounter with God at the burning bush – ‘who
are you’ – ‘I am who I am’
Also Jesus when he asks
the disciple ‘who do men say that I am.’
So, let me ask you what am
I?
I hope you answer the same
as for yourself – a human.
Therefore, what I am is a
human.
But who am I?
What is it that makes me
unique and different from everyone who has ever lived or ever will live?
My person-hood – what makes
me me.
Sharing the same name but
a different Gordon Banks from the one who defended England’s goal in the 1966
World Cup.
Therefore, I am one human
being, a what, and one person, a who.
God is the Divine Being,
the what, with three persons – the who.
These solid Jewish
disciple experience God in Jesus as a who – ‘who do men say that I am’ – then,
as we were celebrating last week they discover an experience the Holy Spirit,
God now living in and through them enabling them to do extraordinary things.
Note that in our Gospel
reading when Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit he says ‘he will bring glory; he
will speak the truth.’
(Do not let the use of the
masculine detract you from seeing the personal pronoun)
So, let me share something about who I am and see if another metaphor might help us
understand just a little bit more about the Trinity.
(Remembering metaphors do
break down)
So who am I?
Well I am a Church Army
Officer currently ministering as the Stafford Episcopal Area Mission and Growth
Partner in the Diocese of Lichfield.
I became a Christian at
the age of 24 on the 1st January 1975. In August 1978, I began work
at a Church Army Holiday and Conference Centre in Victoria London and was the
Warden/Manger for five years. During that time, I met and then married my
lovely wife Jane in 1982.
After five years, I
entered training to become a Church Army Officer at the College, which was then in Blackheath.
I was Commissioned as a
Church Army Officer and as an Accredited Lay Evangelist in the Church of
England at Southwark Cathedral on the 24th June 1986. (30 years)
I have served in Luton, in
Prudhoe just outside Newcastle upon Tyne, in Cornwall, in Sussex and came to
this area in January 2015.
My current role really
does what it says on the tin – I walk alongside priests and people as a partner
in mission and growth. I have a particular brief to help parishes formulate
their Mission Action Plans. I also offer to help parish in Vacancies. I also seek to provide resources and present ideas alongside training and preaching.
In short, it is to help
the people of God to be the people of God and to pick up something ABC Justin
Welby said recently, ‘the Church has two main functions; to worship God and to
make disciples, everything else is decoration.’
Therefore, I am a Church
Army Officer.
I also have two older
brothers. One lives in Shaw Lancashire, and another brother who lives in Woking.
I am also father to three
children, Daniel, Tabitha and Joe. Daniel lives with his wife and two daughters
in St Austell, Cornwall. Tabitha lives in Crawley
when working and with us when she is down from flying for the winter. Our
youngest son, Joe has recently moved from Cornwall and now lives in Bristol.
And the metaphor for the Trinity?
Well I am a Church Army
Officer, I am a younger brother and I am a father.
Yet, although the way I
operate in these three roles is different, I remain as one.
Let me take you back
to the creation account and the Trinity.
I remember one time when a
group of us from the Church Army was speaking at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park
London. I was speaking about how God had created us and how he loved us. A
heckler shouted out, so why did God create us?
Now that is a very good
question and I do not recall having anything like a good response then.
If God was singular why
would he create, was it because he was bored or just because he fancied some company?
However, if we take the
experience of the Trinity, if we begin to open ourselves up to the possibility,
if we began to notice the Divine Dance of the Trinity singing creation into
being we will see a community of love and loves creates because that is the
very nature and essence of love.
The
Eastern Orthodox Church refer to this using the Greek word “perichoresis”
that comes from two Greek words, peri, which means “around” (periscope) and chorea,
which means “dance.” (Chorus Line)
Before all else there was
Divine Community of Love out of which creation was brought into being.
Moreover, we are called to
be image bearers of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Image bearers of that
Divine Community of love that always seeks to create.
A community of love that
says to those around them; people may label you as a ‘what’ – a drunk, a drug
addict, a waste of time, old, infirmed, disabled, homeless, nasty, sexually
immoral – but we as image bearers of God are going to look at you and embrace
you a ‘who’ – with a name and a precious person hood.
One for whom Jesus came
and lived, died and rose again so that we might know God – and know God not as ‘what’
but as a ‘who’ – know God as Jesus, know God as Holy Spirit, who as we read in
Revelation 3.20 says ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears
my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they
with me.’
In very many of the
Churches in the Diocese of Chichester where I was Diocesan Evangelist for nine
years there are picture of Rublev’s Icon of the Hospitality of Abraham,
sometimes referred to as the Icon of the Trinity.
It is from the story from
Genesis 18.1-15 when Abraham and Sarah give hospitality to three strangers.
(Yet another echo of the Trinity)
In the icon, there are the
three characters and yet in the front there is space that appears to be beckoning
us to come and sit down and be part of the feast of the Trinity.
We are invited into the
Trinitarian Community of Love – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We are called to be image
bearers of the Divine Community of Love.
We are commissioned to go
into all the nations, to make disciples and baptize them in the name of the
Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Okay, so you may not be to
explain the Trinity any better than Athanasius – but I hope you can speak of your
experience.
Your experience of knowing
the Father’s love and care, know that in Jesus, ‘we do not have a high priest
who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was
tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin.…’ Hebrews 4.14 and know
the power and the person of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Abraham offered his three
guests every hospitality – are you willing this morning to open the door of
your heart and life and invite God in?
‘Here I am! I stand at the
door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and
eat with that person, and they with me.’
I still do not full
understand the Trinity and I do not know if I am able to explain it any better
than when I stood up at Speakers Corner all those years ago.
However, what I do know is
that the church, as a Community of Faith is called to reflect the Divine
Trinity of Love and invite people into that community, offering them every
hospitality so that they might taste and see that the Lord is good, so that
they might join in the Divine Dance.
I would also remind you that
you have your own Trinitarian metaphor…
Three Churches, Anslow,
Rolleston and Tutbury and one Benefice, united in one common purpose and
vocation yet each expressing this common goal, purpose and vision in their own
unique way.
Among the three churches,
you will discover that you are equipped for the task God calls you to fulfill. Your
task however, is to learn how to share those gifts and skills across the one Benefice
and not hold them just for yourselves in your individual parishes.. A community
of co-creative love – imaging the Holy Trinity.
We read in Ephesians
4.11-13…Christ himself gave the apostles,
the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people
for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all
reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become
mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Brothers and sisters – are
you ready to dance and invite others to join you!
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