Sermon for Trinity Sunday. Trinity in Deed and Truth.

Psalm 8

1 Lord, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory

in the heavens.

2 Through the praise of children and infants

you have established a stronghold against your enemies,

to silence the foe and the avenger.

3 When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

5 You have made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honour.

6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

you put everything under their feet:

7 all flocks and herds,

and the animals of the wild,

8 the birds in the sky,

and the fish in the sea,

all that swim the paths of the seas.

9 Lord, our Lord,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

John 16

12 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

Psalm 147:5, says this of God,

“Great is our Lord, and mighty in power; His understanding is infinite.”

Psalm 103:15-16, says this of us,

As for man, his days are like grass;

As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.

For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

And its place remembers it no more.

Psalm 8, our first reading, describes this chasm between God and humanity, in Verses 3 – 4 asking of God,

When I consider your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars,

which you have set in place,

what is humankind that you are mindful of them,

human beings that you care for them?

That God is transcendent, and we are earth bound, is always going to make it difficult for us to understand God. The mind of God is infinite, the mind of man is finite.

We are like a figure in a landscape trying to understand the whole landscape, but only able to see that which is immediately around us. To understand completely we would have to get higher up, high enough to see the whole view, but we are, “a little lower than the angels,” and that's not high enough to fully comprehend God.

Monotheists should be humble. Jews, Christians, and Muslims, should all accept that only God can know for sure, whereas we mortals must have faith, and acknowledge our limitations, especially the limits of our wisdom. Micah 6:8 explains how that should work,

He has shown you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justly,

To love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God?

It's not that we aren't clever, and it's not that we aren't admirable. God has given us care of His creation, and a remarkable ability to care for His creation. We heard in Psalm 8 of God's plan for humankind,

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

you put everything under their feet:

all flocks and herds,

and the animals of the wild,

the birds in the sky,

and the fish in the sea,

all that swim in the paths of the seas.

Psalm 8:5 also proclaims we are, “crowned...with glory and honour.”

Did you hear that? We are glorious, and we are honourable. Surely, when we see human beings at their best we know this to be true? We are the gardener set to care for the landscape God has created, but we are a part of that creation. We are a clever monkey set to care for all God's other wondrous creatures and creations here on earth..

How are we doing with that task?

How are we doing in caring for God's good creation, and how are we doing in walking humbly with God, and with each other?

Perhaps it would help if God were not so abstract, so unknowable, so invisible? If the the King eternal, immortal, invisible, could be temporal, mortal, and visible, just like us, even if only for a while, so that we could see what God is like. Perhaps, even if he were not a King, but a servant? A life that showed what God is like, and how we are to live – that would help. If we could just sit and break bread with him?

Philippians 2:5–7, says

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

Colossians 1 also speaks of Jesus, saying,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation....For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

Jesus said to his disciples, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

As we could not see heaven from our lowly position, heaven came down to us.

The life of Jesus shows us what God is like.

The life of Jesus shows us how we can find salvation, and find a better way to live.

The life of Jesus bridges the chasm between time and eternity.

Jesus is the Word of God written in flesh and blood.

Clement of Rome, writing to the second generation of Christians, wrote this of Jesus,

“Through Him we can look up to the highest heaven and see, as in a glass, the peerless perfection of the face of God. Through Him the eyes of our hearts are opened, and our dim and clouded understanding unfolds like a flower to the light.”

The language of seeing Jesus is interesting as Clement was not an eye witness, he had heard the testimony of the first disciples, but he had not seen Jesus, yet he writes, 'Through Him we can look up to the highest heaven...' Clement is seeing Jesus through the eyes of the Disciples, through the stories they told, the stories written in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Clement was guided by the spoken testimony of the early Church, and by the written testimony of the early Church, and also by the Holy Spirit, as are all who seek to follow the Way of Christ. Jesus had promised that when he returned to God the Father, he would send the Holy Spirit to guide his disciples, saying, “...when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” The Disciples had been a handful of defeated men and women, but their testimony in both spoken and written word was enabled by the Holy Spirit. The belief that Jesus was the Christ went from being held only by an obscure Jewish heretical sect, to be preached in every nation, and believed by countless millions down the centuries, that is the work of the Holy Spirit. It must be the work of the Spirit because it is astonishing, utterly unlikely, and totally miraculous.

Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit in the same terms of unity that he spoke of his relationship to the Father, we heard from John 16 Jesus describing the Spirit, saying,

“He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.”

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work and speak as One. The Church is the outflowing of this belief. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That's how the Church is made. It is not surprising that the divine community of love should seek to create an earthly community of love, one that holds diversity in loving unity, just as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit hold diversity in eternal loving unity.

God is made known through Creation, through the life of Jesus, and by the work of the Spirit. What we could not understand for ourselves, God gave to us in revelation. Jesus is God's great self explanation, and the Holy Spirit continues that work of self explanation.

It was always going to be difficult for us to understand God, as we are limited, and He is limitless, but God the Father overcame this by sending His Son to live within the limits of a human life, so that we could see for ourselves what He is like. The Father then sent the Holy Spirit to continue this revelatory self explanation by building the Church, and speaking to people's hearts.

People often find the doctrine of the Trinity difficult. God chose to express Himself in flesh and blood, theologians feel they have to express God's simple and profound flesh and blood explanation in words, in many words, many long and complicated words. It's almost as if we are trying to reverse the incarnation, to turn flesh back into words, when we should know the best way, God's way, is to make love known by self giving, not by generating text.

The Trinity is a revelation, not a complication. The Trinity is the invisible made visible. The Trinity is God with us, rather than God in abstract. The Trinity gives us what we could never have found out for ourselves. The Trinity isn't theoretical, it is love in action. The Trinity describes what divine love does when it sees a world in need. So, as the Disciple John wrote, “... let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”

Amen.