A bishop is at a parish for Confirmation and decides that in his homily he will quiz the teenagers he is supposed to be confirming.
So he asks them, “who can tell me what the Trinity is?”
They all look at their shoes, in that way that teenagers do.
So he calls on one young man who mumbles a reply, in that way that teenagers do. The bishop says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.”
The boy sighs, in that way that teenagers do, and replies, only slightly louder,
“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
The bishop, wanting the boy to speak up so everyone can hear him,
says, “I’m sorry, I still didn’t understand.”
And the boy, rolling his eyes, in that way that teenagers do,
says loudly and clearly, “ You’re not supposed to understand it. It’s a mystery.”
This Sunday is a bit of a challenge for the preacher. Trinity Sunday is not a popular day to take an appointment. Then the Methodist Church says “let’s do Revelation in June” perhaps the hardest book of the Bible! It’s no wonder we didn’t have enough preachers wanting to do it so we can’t do it across the Circuit as we hoped. Well, let’s be brave here and go on a bit of a fun theological journey.
First, let’s think big. Who is God?
The schoolmaster in Alan Bennett’s play Forty Years On says, ‘Three in one, one in three, perfectly straight-forward. Any doubts about that, see your maths master.’
But there are doubts, of course. Mention the Trinity as three Persons in one God and most people start to glaze over. But what we have here is a brilliant model of God. It reflects the experience of the first Christians that they knew God in creation (the Father), in history (the Son) and in themselves (the Spirit).
So, God above, God beside, God within.
God to protect, God to befriend, God to inspire. We are reminded today there is always more to God than we will ever know.
The story is told of St Augustine of Hippo, a great philosopher and theologian. He was preoccupied with the doctrine of the Trinity. He wanted so much to understand the doctrine of one God in three persons and to be able to explain it logically. One day he was walking along the sea shore reflecting on this matter….the mystery of the Trinity. Suddenly, 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 with sea water, ran up and emptied the cup 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 drew up alongside and said to her, “Little child, what are you doing?”
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?”
She answered back, “And you, how do you suppose that with your small head you can comprehend the immensity of God?” With that the child disappeared.
Bishop David Jenkins, remember him, the controversial Bishop of Durham in the 1980’s. He talked of God as greater than great, more loving than love, closer than close.
The fifteenth century icon of the Trinity by the Russian Andrei Rublev is also helpful to try and get it.
Rublev has depicted three angels sitting equi-distant from each other They have a harmonious elegance about them as they sit round a table. On the table is a chalice with bread and wine. The angels look at each other with mutual affection, and at the bread and wine with reverence and adoration.
But the way the icon has been written is so that we’re drawn into the scene. There’s a space at the table for us. We’re being invited to share the very life of the Trinity, the life of God.
And that’s where the doctrine of the Trinity finally makes sense.
What’s the purpose of our Christian faith? It isn’t to have somewhere nice to go to on a Sunday morning or afternoon. It isn’t to be reminded of how to be good. It isn’t even to learn more about the Bible and doctrine and worship and ethics.
The purpose of our faith is to be drawn into the very life of God, to be in union with God, so that the lifeblood of God flows in our veins. ‘To be participants in the divine nature’ Faith isn’t something we look at from the outside and say ‘how nice.’
It’s something we enter into and say - nothing. Because we’re speechless, embraced in a love greater than words.
This is not a faith of small things. This is a faith of ultimate things. And you can’t get any more ultimate than sharing the very life of God. That’s what we’re for.
And that’s what the Trinity is about at the end of the day. So we think big…
The Scriptures, while teaching that God is one, also claim for Jesus and the Spirit things that can only be true of God. Not three gods, but one God eternally existing in three persons, who are united in a perfect and eternal dance of love, each fully sharing in what it means to be God. Think big.
Then look up - who is Jesus?
John the apostle writes this vision not on a sunny Saturday in Ripon like I did this sermon but in exile on Patmos. Where is Patmos? Patmos is a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea. John was a leader of the church at Ephesus.
The new Christianity needed stamping out. It was a threat. Before his exile one tradition says he was immersed in a cauldron of boiling oil during the persecution of the Christians under the Roman emperor Domitian, He emerged miraculously unharmed, even rejuvenated. He sat naked in the pot, his hands joined in prayer, while his executioners applied bellows to the fire and ladled oil over his head.
Eventually, he was captured and sentenced to Patmos. Patmos was a small, rocky and barren area where many criminals of Rome were sent to serve out their prison terms in harsh conditions. There were mines on the island that the criminals were forced to work. John was sent to the island for the same reasons because the early Christians were considered a strange cult group who were known for causing trouble within the Empire.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ is seen not from comfort but from turmoil, which makes it all the more powerful. John is writing a letter to seven churches in Asia Minor. The churches have already experienced some persecution, the church in Pergamum has experienced one martyrdom, but the persecution is about to get worse. John is concerned that these churches simply are not ready for the increase in persecution. Its not just John who is concerned: Jesus is concerned. That’s why Jesus gave John this Revelation — it was to prepare these seven churches for hard times, to encourage them to not give up hope.
Who is Jesus? He is the first and the last – and he is coming again soon – on the clouds – and every eye will see him. Perhaps we are not good at seeing. You will remember I scratched the cornea in my right eye when I was in hospital last year. I couldn’t see out of it for several weeks. When it had healed I went for an eye test. My eye had changed so I needed a new lens in my glasses. “Come back in six months” they said. So last week I went back for another eye test. Guess what? My eye had gone back to how it was so I needed another new lens in my glasses. Another £141! But we need to be able to see clearly. I hate that bit of the test where you click on the thing when you see the little lights. I know I miss a lot of them. I guess that’s how it is with Jesus, especially when we are struggling. We forget he is always and everywhere and is fighting a battle for us against those things which would destroy us.
John is constantly trying to help his churches frame current events in light of the greater Biblical story. This is why John says, “Blessed are those read aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”
Read it aloud: you know, the friends at Snape chapel did just that last Thursday. They met and read 22 chapters aloud to each other.
I’ll say it again: the churches were to hear these words and take heart. John is encouraging them to hold fast to their faith and their witness to Jesus Christ. John is very concerned that they are not up for it. He sees the church on a collision course with the state. Things will get worse before they get better — yet in spite of that, John encourages them not to give up hope, not to abandon their witness. Christ is on the throne. That constantly remains the focus of John.
The glory, the splendour, the power, and the goodness of God. Listen to the way John opens his letter, as a greeting from the Triune God — Father, Holy Spirit and Son. John says: “To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ. First, John greets his churches in the name of the One Who Is, Who Was and Who Is to Come — the great I Am. The same God who revealed Himself to Moses, the same God who delivered the Israelites from slavery to Egypt — He is here with you now, and He greets you with grace and peace. John then greets the church in the name of the Holy Spirit. Grace to you and peace to you from the seven Spirits before his throne.
Why does John says “the seven spirits”? John is drawing from Zechariah 4 where the seven lamps are seen as one Spirit, and from the Greek version of Isaiah 11, Isaiah’s prophecy about the Messiah coming from the stump of Jesse. Isaiah says the Spirit of God shall rest upon him — now count the attributes of the Spirit: the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and godliness shall fill him; the spirit of the fear of God.
The seven attributes of the One Spirit: wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, knowledge and godliness, and the fear of God. That’s why some translations say — “the sevenfold Spirit.” This same Spirit who was with the Messiah with wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, godliness, and fear of the Lord —
this same Spirit now intimately dwells with the people of God. Grace to you and peace from the Sevenfold Spirit before the throne.
So we look up despite today because there is a bigger picture. We are discombobulated as a church today, we worry a lot and we forget Jesus the first and the last is here. I presented some big ideas to a church AGM on Tuesday. Someone in the discussion afterwards said we have to take risks. By our mediocrity and tiredness we have limited the love of Jesus because we don’t rely on it ourselves. The church has become the power, not its Lord.Look up. He is coming!
Then go – go in the power of the Spirit to live and work to his praise and glory. Jesus last commission on earth was to make disciples and baptise them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Go is the call of the Church. Go, with Jesus who is with us always to the end of the age.
David Adam, in the introduction to his book of prayers, which he calls “Traces of Glory”, describes the island on which he was living, Holy Island, as the home of many saints. Aidan came and founded a monastery there, Chad, Cedd, Wilfred, Cuthbert all spent times of prayer and dedication on the island. On this patch of earth, Eadfrith wrote the Lindisfarne Gospels to the glory of God and St Cuthbert. Later, the Benedictines built a daughter house to their monastery in Durham. David Adam says, “All have left traces of themselves and their work”.
There are many places on earth where transformations are brought about by God’s love and grace acting in the lives of ordinary people. We sometimes only think of them when we sum up their lives in a funeral.
I’ve four funerals at the moment in my head – three are on consecutive days this week. We will gather to mark how Brian and Greta and Margaret and Pat made a difference.
The scale of human giving making a difference is not ours to know – suffice, that ordinary children, women and men, do bring lasting change by the love and presence of God revealed through them. David Adam dedicates his book to Will, who died aged 56, and who in life, showed many traces of glory.
“If life is to have traces of eternal it must have the Eternal with it and around it. Now, in this world, we need to show traces of glory.”
Go.
Revelation calls God’s people to hold on. And to remember the heavenly things, the eternal love, the power of God in Christ, the gift of the Spirit especially when we think other things are winning. So, well done for being brave. We need a big God, a faith that looks up, and a reminder that God is working his purpose out and that sometimes is through us. And sometimes despite us!
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