Trinity Sunday 2021
Today we’re going to go over a Yr 7 Christian Studies lesson on the Trinity. We’re stepping into mystery here, and, by the end, I hope you have got a good and exciting glimpse of where you might fit into that mystery.
The Bible is very strong on there only being one God, but it’s a complex one. One God, but three persons? Our human language struggles.
Traditionally, if we just looked at the Creed, we would say, God the Father, that’s the creator. Jesus the Son – he’s the one who died on the cross so that our sins are forgiven. The Holy Spirit – he’s the one that makes us holy, and helps us to believe that we are always welcome in God’s love, we belong. That is all true, but we are going to find out in 1 minute, that who God is, and how God works is a lot richer.
In the very first verses of the Bible it says God created the heavens and earth. The earth was just a ball of surging waters, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. There it is, in the second verse of the Bible, the Holy Spirit is part of the creating work. It’s not just the Father. I picture the Holy Spirit like a nesting mother bird, incubating the new life that is about to hatch out.
It’s not just the Holy Spirit intimately involved in creation. The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is part of making everything. So, there we have it, creation is a work not just of the Father, but of the Holy Spirit and of Jesus.
There is another clue to the complexity of God as one, back in the first chapter of the Bible. Look at the pattern. Let there be light, let there be some water pushed up to make the atmosphere, let the water move to one side so land can appear, let the land start to grow plants and trees, let there be lights, sun, moon and starts, let the water and the air be full of living things, let the land produce animals. Finally, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness. Can you see the change in language?
‘Let us make humankind in our image, our likeness.’ Who is the ‘us’? For Old Testament people, maybe they saw God as having a conference with his heavenly council, his angels and archangels. It could be that God is talking to the new creation, ‘Now we’re going to make humans, and they will reflect both created stuff, and the spirit.’ For New Testament people, we think of God the Trinity having this conversation.
So, it’s not just the Father who is the Creator. Both the Holy Spirit and Jesus are intimately involved.
Let’s move on to the Son as the Redeemer.
Jesus’ very life as a human baby starts with the Holy Spirit working in Mary.
When Jesus was baptized, notice what happens. Jesus didn’t have this halo shining over his head. He was perfectly ordinary. But when he gets baptized, something different happens, that didn’t happen with any other person. The heavens open, like people had been praying for ages. ‘Come down, set us free from the enemies who have taken us over.’ What do you notice? Jesus isn’t given super health and is suddenly fully weaponised. He receives the Holy Spirit as a dove, who stays with him. He didn’t walk around with a bird on his shoulder for the next few years. I think that’s picture language for saying that the Holy Spirit was now inside him, working with him. The dove we saw in the stained-glass window earlier – this is why the Holy Spirit is sometimes pictured as a dove.
The people around saw the dove coming down from heaven, and they also heard the voice from heaven, announcing that this ordinary looking human was God’s Son, and his Father was absolutely delighted with him. This is the one time when people clearly experienced God as present in three different ways.
All Jesus’ followers had seen him, and known him. They knew that he talked to his Abba, Father in heaven. Then, after Pentecost they experienced the Holy Spirit as a real force, making a difference in their lives. For them, just as for Christians today, God as Three-in-One was a lived experience.
2 Corinthians 13:14 New International Version – UK
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
As you look at this verse , what qualities of each does Paul name in this blessing?
Grace from Jesus – undeserved mercy and love, forgiveness.
Love from God the Father.
Fellowship – that is not a normal Yr 7 word. It’s about being team, being connected, working together and enjoying it. That is what the Holy Spirit does in us and between us.
There is a beautiful 15th century Russian icon of the Trinity. In the Old Testament, Abraham and Sarah, desperately waiting for God to keep the promise about them having their own child, receive 3 mysterious visitors out of the noon day mirage. Later they realise these visitors were, somehow, God. In the icon by Rublev they are painted as 3 heavenly beings. What do you use the painter saying about who they are, and how they relate?
The way they are sitting, there’s space for you to join them. It’s not a closed circle. You are welcome.
And that leads us to one of the early church descriptions of how the Trinity works. Early Greek Christians came up with perichoresis. Peri – around, like perimeter, the border around something. Choresis, dance. Choreography – writing down the dance steps. The relationship within the Trinity id like a dance, a circle dance.
Have any of you ever been to a Greek festival, or the Greek club, or a Greek wedding? Did you get brought into a circle dance? It doesn’t matter whether you know the steps, they show you, and you are welcome, whether you are good at it or not. I think that is a great picture of the Trinity at work. You are welcomed into this beautiful dance of life, at the very heart of everything.
Is life always a festival? Of course not. In the very heart of God there is also a place where our pain, and the pain and hurt of the whole world is held and worked with. Remember the Risen Christ, showing his disciples and us his hands, and the wound still in his side. Our pain is also safely held in the dance of God.
Final thoughts from the 12th century about the dynamics of three.
When there is just one leader, one boss, you’re never quite sure. When there are two people in a close relationship, it can be very exclusive. When two reach out and include another, then it’s a whole different experience. That is what we have all been born to experience, in the Trinity, and that is what we are all called into.
The Trinity is not abstract doctrine. It is a way to describe the richness of how God relates and loves. We are all invited into the very centre of that rich, life-giving love.
