all for one and one for allMadpriest's trinity sunday sermon

God hasn’t always been a trinity. In fact he has been quite varied in the number of persons he has consisted of over the years. The main argument in the Old Testament is that he is one god, an idea that has become central to both the Jewish and the Islamic faiths. However, that isn’t the only view of the godhead in the Jewish canon. There enigmatic passages that place God in a community of gods and, more certainly, there were times in the years before Christ that Jewish people regarded some of the attributes of God, namely his spirit and his wisdom, as having personalities in their own right.

There is nothing in the synoptic gospels to indicate that Jesus saw God as anything more than a singular God the Father. He may have believed that he was literally the Son of God (although that is not definite), but being the son does not make a person his father. Also, in the synoptic gospels, the Holy Spirit is an agent that is sent from God. The Spirit is an advocate and an enabler but equality with God the Father is not propounded.

The first church, the Christian community in Jerusalem, that was led by James, the brother of Jesus, did not believe Jesus was God and the Jewish branch of Christianity, the Ebionites, clung on to this particular understanding of the nature of Christ until they disappeared around the 5th. Century A.D.

The idea of God being three persons gradually evolved around the Church in Rome. To be honest, at times at least, it was more to do with politics and the bishop of Rome trying to gain primacy over the other bishops, than it had to do with philosophy and faith. The doctrine of the Trinity became the way Rome defined itsef as orthodox over and against those it considered heretics.

This battle may have gone on for ever, but when Emperor Constantine decreed that Christianity was to be the religion of the Roman Empire, he insisted, like all good dictators, that everybody believed the same thing, and the doctrine of the Trinity very soon became the orthodox belief of most of the Christian Church.

Nowadays, the doctrine of the Holy Trinty is still very important in Church politics. For example, a church has to hold to it to become members of the World Council of Churches. And the doctrine has also become very important in modern theology as a key to understanding relationships between Christians. But my guess is that most Christians don’t think about it much. They accept that it is something they are supposed to believe in but, being human, they still see the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as three distinct individuals and relate to them as individuals.

I have to admit that is the way it is with me. I affirm the Trinity when I recite the Creed every Sunday morning, and I’m happy to accept the mystery of it. But when I think about the three persons of the Trinity the mystery becomes the old man with a beard off the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Robert Powell and a pigeon. What can I say? I’m a human being and unable to think in paradoxes. And to be honest, if it was to be proved that our idea of the Trinity is wrong it would not effect my faith very much. I am Christian because of the words of Christ , my relationship with the Father and the help of the Holy Spirit. I am not a Christian because of theology, although I love theology dearly.

However, having said that, I do believe that there are things we can learn from the Church’s description of the Godhead that can help us as individuals and as communities of believers, live together in a more Kingdomlike manner than we tend to do. This morning I want to look at three characteristics of the Trinity that we can use as a model for our own lives.

Firstly, the Trinity is unity. It is the most perfect example of unity that exists. God is perfectly one. The paradox is that although we perceive three persons within the Trinity, God cannot be divided into parts, God is always one. God is perfection. To divide God into pieces would make him less than perfection, and so less than God, and so not God at all. God has to be one.

And what should this perfect example of unity mean to us? Well for a start it means that the Church, the bride of Christ, should always strive for unity, within itself and with God. At the moment the Church seems to be pulling itself to pieces. Every time some faction disagrees with another faction, the first thing that is threatened is that the aggrieved party is going to leave and set up their own church, their own integrity, and they are no longer in communion with anybody else because they could not possibly share the lord’s Supper with anybody who disagrees with their point of view.

Schism and threats of schism are not examples of good Trinitarian behaviour. The Trinity pulls itself into one, it brings together, it does not rend asunder. For God’s people to pull themselves apart, to pull themselves away from each is not following in Christ’s footsteps. We are all distinct people, and we remain distinct, but within the Church, each one of us, individuals that we are, should be coming together with each other to celebrate our diversity and to celebrate our unity. Such a thing is possible because we see it in the example of the Trinity, its just a lot more difficult than turning our backs on each other.

This leads to my second point. The Trinity is Community. Again the most perfect example of community. We see the three persons of the Trinity working together as one. Each person in the Trinity is an aspect of the one God, each seems to have its own function, but each function would be worthless without the functions of the others. God is perfect community, and his Church should strive to be the same. Belief is communal, it is not an individual act, you cannot be a Christian in isolation, that would be a contradiction in terms, because so much of our faith is concerned with being a community, with loving each other, with loving God, of being part of the vine of faith, with each of us offering our individual and distinctive gifts to each other and to God. Working together as the community of the Kingdom of God.

Thirdly, the Trinity is inclusive, not exclusive.The Trinity wants to involve everything within itself. The Father wants to draw the whole of creation back to himself. Jesus involves the outcast within the kingdom. The Holy Spirit involves the whole world within the chosen people of God. With this example the Church of God cannot be exclusive, we cannot refuse admission to the Church to people who embarrass us, or annoy us or who are different to us in some physical or mental way, because God is not like that. As I said, God wants to draw his people to himself, it is his people who so often choose to walk away from him, not visa versa.

Therefore, as a Church, as God’s people, we need to use the Trinity as our main model for how we behave towards each other within the Church, and how we behave towards those still outside of the Church. We must fight to avoid falling out over the things that divide and instead concentrate of the things that unite us. We should not be spreading bad news to people, we should be spreading the good news of God’s Kingdom throughout the world, and we should be doing this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

DOG in
three persons.

A canine
trinity.