Homily for Trinity Sunday

 

 

Psalm 8 (p546)

John 16:12-15 (p1084)

 

In the Name…

 

Trinity Sunday.

I don’t know if the clergy or the congregations find it more terrifying!

If the Vicar is good, he knows heresy lurks on every side.

 

And the people perhaps expect to confirm that the Vicar is rather like God:

Invisible six days a week and incomprehensible on the seventh.

 

So it is tempting to wax eloquent about how difficult the doctrine of the Trinity is.

We could perhaps all nod wisely about that.

Or I could try to find another cheap joke.

 

But what I want to invite you to do today is to adore the Mystery who is God himself.

Is it not wonderful that this God is revealed to us?

Of course not completely but truly.

Just pause to think about that for a moment.

You and I can really know Almighty God the Creator of all things as he really is.

 

And who is this God?

The One God is Father, Son and Spirit.

Glory!

 

It is inexhaustible and wonderful.

But you can also teach it to a 7 year old.

 

Let’s just consider our marvellous readings for a few moments with Trinity Sunday in mind.

 

Notice the majesty of God in our Psalm.

It helpfully begins and ends with that so its hard to miss.

Yahweh, the personal living God of the Bible, is Lord of all and his name is majestic.

He is the great king – glorious above all.

 

The glory of the trooping of the colour, or the state opening of parliament, or a coronation or royal wedding are faint pictures of this all surpassing glory.

The power of the greatest human empires are weak and fleeting compared to the potency of God.

 

Think of the heavens, the skies, the glory of the sun and moon and stars.

Go and look at them today or tonight.

Get yourself when you next can to the sea or the downs or the back garden.

Look up some science about them if that’s your thing:

The temperatures, the distances.

It is all amazing beyond our comprehension.

 

Or look at the art or listen to some music which reflects on creation.

 

Isn’t the glory and beauty of it too much for you sometimes?

 

Ah, Sussex in the sunshine!

Call me a sentimental Welshman but as I walk the dog around the same block or through the same field yet again I’m often astounded by the glory of creation – and therefore by the glory of the creator.

If we lift our eyes and open our hearts, we can agree on that, I think.

 

Just look at the world, the cosmos.

What a great and powerful and good God there must be.

 

He is high and exalted.

 

But he has ordained praise from the lips of children and infants.

And even from little old you and me.

This infinite God thinks of humanity.

Thinks of us.

This God cares about us and about the last and the least.

 

This down to earth God stoops.

He loves to hear the babble of the toddler who praises him.

 

No doubt he also accepts the praise of Bishops and Professors and so on.

But he has ordained praise from little children.

 

And he has made human beings a little lower than the angels but crowned them with glory and honour.

 

Human beings too are both strangely lowly and regal.

We are flesh and blood.

And we have to sleep and eat and go to the loo.

But we can split the atom.

And write King Lear.

Or play Bach.

Or paint like da Vinci.

Well, some of us can sometimes.

Or…

Pick your art form or sphere of human endeavour.

 

We can walk on the moon – but we can’t get rid of the mud, and blood and vomit.

We are capable of great wonders and of terrible horrors.

 

Can these paradoxes be resolved?

 

The answer is YES!

In Jesus, the down to earth God.

The one whom angels worship was made a little lower than the angels.

Not that he ceased to be God, who is above all and ever to be praised.

But rather that precisely this God came down.

He who built the stars lay in a manger.

The Word was made dumb.

The Omnipotent was fragile.

 

Jesus came to share our blood, sweat and tears, whilst remaining Almighty God who fills and rules all things.

 

Jesus shows us all that God the Father is.

He is God the Son, the same being or essence or nature or substance as God the Father.

Really truly God with a capital G.

God from God.

Light from light.

True God of True God.

 

The carpenter’s son turns out to be a chip off the old block.

He is not Joseph’s son (biologically speaking), but he is by eternal generation God the Son.

All the fullness of the deity dwells in him in bodily form.

Like Father, like Son.

But not only so:

Jesus is the Same God, not just a like God.

 

These things are rightly too wonderful for us, to lofty for us to attain.

 

And that is as it should be.

A God I could comprehend would be no God at all.

I am often stupid and sinful.

Of course I cannot grasp this God.

But he reaches out to me.

 

And even better, the Spirit takes all that the Son is, who is all that the Father is, and makes them known to us.

The Three in One invite us in.

 

We can have learned chat over coffee about eternal generation and spiration or inseparable operation if that would be fun for you.

But let us be silent and adore the speaking, revealing, saving God who is over all and in us all.

 

And so to God the Father…