Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; Romans 5.1-5; John 16.12-15
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given us your
servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge
the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the divine
majesty to worship the Unity: keep us steadfast in this faith, that
we may evermore be defended from all adversities; through Jesus
Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the
unity of the Holy Spriit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
IF YOU go up a narrow, wooded lane, off a B-road in
Northumberland, you find a tiny stone church, which was built in
1107. Nothing prepares you for what you see inside on an overcast
day, when the dark nave is effectively invisible, and your eyes are
drawn to the beautifully lit, tiny apse.
"Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts" is inscribed above the
gold altar frontal, below a starry ceiling. Old Bewick Church is a
window into the Trinity, because the only appropriate response is
to worship, to join the angels' cry: "Holy, holy, holy."
Sadly, many preachers dread Trinity Sunday, feeling (rightly)
unequal to the task of explaining the Trinity. But the Trinity is
not a concept to be explained intellectually: the Holy Trinity is
God to be worshipped. The worshipping approach to Trinity Sunday
yields something far richer and more wonderful than attempts at
explanation using inadequate illustrations.
Gospel readings in recent weeks have emphasised abiding in
Christ, and thus, in him, our relationship with God the Father and
God the Holy Spirit. The Orthodox Churches emphasise this through
their understanding of the divinisation of humanity in Christ, who
has taken his humanity into the life of the Godhead.
Through abiding in Christ, humanity shares the life of God, not
becoming God, but being drawn into the life that the Son shares
with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Greek word is
perichoresis, and one way to understand it is through the
language of the dance of God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
respond to one another in love. In Christ, we are bidden to join
the dance: in George Herbert's famous words, "Love bade me
welcome."
This invitation to participation is a lovely frame for
reflection on Trinity Sunday's readings. Jesus's words about the
life of God into which his disciples were being drawn continue with
his assurance that his departure from them was but the doorway to a
new beginning. The Holy Spirit would guide them and glorify Jesus
to them.
In Proverbs, Wisdom calls us wherever she can waylay us - on
mountains, roadsides, by city gates, by the entrance to the Temple
- calling us to find her, and thus find life and favour from the
Lord.
Paul reiterates that it is through Jesus Christ that we have
access to the grace in which we stand, and can boast of our hope of
sharing the glory of God, experiencing (sometimes through
suffering) that God's love is poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Our worship of God as Trinity flows from who God is, and it is
enabled by the joyful miracle of our relationship with God through
Jesus Christ. We call God "Father" only because Jesus called him
"Father". Always, always, Trinity is about the life and love of
God, and the invitation, indeed bidding, to participate.
Today's collect is strong on doctrine, as the Church needs to
be, because within that frame of orthodox belief we are liberated
to worship. In the fourth century, faced with the Arian heresy,
which denied the divinity of Christ and thus that there are three
Persons in one God, the Church not only developed its Creeds, but
concluded its prayers and hymns with a Trinitarian ascription.
In the century after that, the Athanasian Creed expounded the
doctrine of the Trinity more fully, while retaining a realm of
mystery in its language, as it tried to give voice to wonders
beyond human comprehension: "And the Catholick faith is this: that
we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither
confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance." The salient
word is "worship", and no wonder this creed ends with the
Gloria.
If Pentecost is about language's transcending human constraints
to proclaim the wonders of God, Trinity is about the limits of
language to express our worship. The collect uses language of glory
and majesty to call us to worship, and Old Bewick Church proclaims
"Holy, holy, holy" as the adoring response.
So, on Trinity Sunday, hymns such as Reginald Heber's "Holy,
holy, holy" and John Mason's "How shall I sing that Majesty"
express our response, when language surrenders to transcendence: we
are called to be "lost in wonder, love and praise".