by Sharon Marr
(Based on Matt 28:16-20)
I read, somewhere on the wonderful world wide web, that a preacher of many years’ experience said, “Trinity Sunday was the one day in the year when you invite a visiting preacher along … it’s not an easy thing to try and explain!” But I promised to preach and you promised to support so let us reflect together.
Today we begin the ‘season after Pentecost’. We Christians affirm our faith in God as the sovereign Lord of all creation who has done a new and gracious work in Jesus Christ and who continues to be active in the world through the power of the Holy Spirit. In brief, we confess the triune identity of God.
If you’re like me, you’ve heard many well-meaning but inadequate attempts to explain the Triune God: “Oh, well, the Trinity is sort of like water! You know, liquid, vapour, and ice? Three phases, one entity? The Trinity is like that.” Or, “Think of a tree! The roots, the trunk, and the branches. Three parts, one tree. Or an egg. The shell, the egg white, and the yolk.” Or (courtesy of John Wesley), “three candles in a room, one light by which to read.” Do any of these thoughts help? For me, not really, because I find when I consider deeply these attempts at explanation, the mystery still remains. The truth is, the doctrine of the Trinity does not attempt to explain God. It only explains to us in a very basic way what God has revealed to us about himself … so far. So we Christians affirm the Trinity, not as an explanation of God, but simply as a way of describing what we know about Him.
A story is told of St Augustine, who wanted so much to understand this mystery and to be able to explain it logically. One day he was walking along the sea shore, reflecting on this, when he saw a little child all alone on the shore. The child made a hole in the sand, ran to the sea with a little cup, filled her cup, came and poured it into the hole she had made in the sand. Back and forth she went to the sea, filled her cup and came and poured it into the hole. Augustine went up to her and asked, “Child, what are doing?” and she replied, “I am trying to empty the sea into this hole.”
“How do you think,” Augustine asked her, “that you can empty this immense sea into this tiny hole and with this tiny cup?”
To which she replied, “And you, how do you suppose that with that, your small head, you can comprehend the immensity of God?”
With that the child disappeared.
I feel in good company with St. Augustine. Such is the immensity and mystery of God, sometimes it is overwhelming, especially when trying to put it in simple words. If it were simple to understand, when I type in ‘books on Holy Trinity’ into Google I wouldn’t come up with 18 million suggestions from many who have attempted to put it into simple words! However, in a book I read a while ago, called Faith Seeking Understanding, Daniel Migliore says, “To protect the unity of God’s being, the governing rule is, ‘All of the acts of the triune God in the world are indivisible.’ Hence the Father does not act alone in the work of creation, or the Son alone in the work of redemption, or the Spirit alone in the work of blessing. Every act of God is the act of one triune God.”
I can understand this and test this by reading my Bible. For example I can see the Trinity at work in the first verses in Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And also in the first verse of John’s Gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
From the earliest centuries of the church, the triune being of God has been recognized as a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend. We should acknowledge that intellectual and spiritual humility are called for whenever we think about God – there is a great risk of projecting onto God what we wish God might be like, and the bible tells us that: Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then [eventually] we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Today we heard Jesus saying to us through the Scriptures, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Is our response to this call, “Here I am, send me”? Or do we say, I am sorry God I can’t possibly do that as I have not quite come to grips with the doctrines of my faith, in particular, this Trinity thing? Or, do we take heart in another quote from Augustine: “Seek not to understand, that you may believe, but believe, that you may understand.” And armed with the faith we have … go forth as Jesus commands, to love and serve.
To be honest, I don’t even understand electricity! Most of it remains a mystery to me also. But I do know that when I turn on the switch, light appears, my oven goes, my computer opens the world to me and, armed with these facilities, even though I don’t understand how I get them, I can use them. So, the fact that this Trinity mystery gives me such cause for thought shouldn’t amaze me!
Our friend Joy Cowley, expressing her understanding of this mystery in Gloria, gets straight to the heart:
Glorious are you, Mystery of Life,
essence of all creation.
You are the symphony of stars and planets.
You are the music of the atoms within us.
You are the dawn on mountain peaks,
the moonlight on evening seas.
Forest and farm, the rush of the city,
everything is embraced in your love.
Glorious are you, O Jesus Christ,
Cosmic love in human flesh.
You graced the smallness of time and place
to teach us to dance to the music.
You walk on our seas and heal in our streets.
You make your home in our lives,
revealing that cross and resurrection
are one on the road to freedom.
Glorious are you, O Spirit of Truth,
wisdom and breath of our being.
You are the wind that sweeps our senses.
You are the fire that burns in our hearts.
You are the needle of the inner compass,
always pointing to true North,
guiding us on the sacred dance
into the Mystery of Life.
The understanding of this Mystery is not necessary for us to live out the teachings and commands of our sovereign gracious God who has come into the world in Jesus Christ, and continues the work of renewal and transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit. But a willing heart is, and so armed with the promise that Jesus will be with us always, may we go into this week and beyond, our lives reflecting the transformative beauty of the Triune God.
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