Trinity Sunday 30th May 2021

Readings: Isaiah 6; 1-8, Rom 8:12-17, John 3: 1-17

We look this morning at two diagrammatic representations of the Holy Trinity and how this central part of our faith is lived out and practiced in community.

Much recent theological writing is now pointing out the centrality of the Holy Trinity to our thinking and self-identity as a church.  The Trinity has become as fashionable as Angels – and visit the Internet if you want to see how popular angels now are.  Two books helped me in developing my understanding of the Holy Trinity – both by Robin Greenwood - Transforming Priesthood and Practising Community - I recommend both. The Holy Trinity will inform our planning morning on June 12th. All can have their say in our priorities for the future which will come out of this morning. Central to Robin Greenwood’s thought, and I would also say, this Parish’s, is the living faith in the Holy Trinity.

The readings for today show how central the Holy Trinity is for all that we do. From the prophet Isaiah “Holy Holy Holy” This speaks of the human response to God in worship and praise to God the Father.   All of creation is involved in this response of worship and praise. This worship and praise from the Christian Church involves the whole of life, and there is nothing outside its concern.    This speaks of God the Father caring for all. This is a very twenty-first century model, especially when we apply it to the environment for which we have responsibility.  So, it’s right to ask how much we as individuals and as a church collude with lifestyles which damage our environment. Or how much are we addressing the sickness of the prevailing culture in which we are set with the medicine of the Gospel? Robin Greenwood writes this: “In a society which thrives on adversarial competition and the assumption that a few winners will mean a majority of losers, the proclamation of the Gospel is long overdue.”  This has direct implications for models of society and how the church impinges on them.  In London especially, one of the medicines which the Gospel offers, is community in place of isolation.  Isolation has been something we have all experienced during the pandemic. Recent findings on personal breakdown suggest that those who find themselves in deepest trouble or on the edges of the law will usually have fewer than ten people with whom they have any sort of relationship. And I’m not talking about people who have 5,000 Facebook so called “friends” – I mean real ones. Talking to our Community Payback members week in week out bears this out. Community in place of isolation also addresses what remains of the nuclear family.  The point is this – our social God the Father never intended the isolated nuclear family to be the bearer of all human needs. It takes a village to raise a child. Or an aeroplane.  When I went to Iraq in January, the only calming effect on a screaming child was to pass the child around the whole of the small plane I was in. It worked. This is a major role of the church, and always has been.  Environment, society, and individuals are all embraced in the loving Fatherhood of God the Creator.

Now to God the Son.  Paul writes to the Romans that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ will be with them if their lives in community model that of the Trinity in relationship.   So too our teaching on Jesus, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, is not some abstract piece of theological speculation but has real and practical consequences for the way we live.  If you have been to Turkey, you will know all about the churches of Cappadocia and how they produced the greatest outworking of this Trinitarian theology.  The Cappadocian Fathers of the fourth century spoke of God as complete communion – or persons in relationships.  They used a Greek word to define the relationship of the persons of the Trinity to each other, and by extension gave us a model for how relationships ought to be within the church and society.  The word they used was perichoresis. In its origin, perichoresis was a sort of dance – but not rave, house or techno trance style – it was a dance of mutual and courtly deference where none takes precedence over or dominates another.  The radical thing the Cappadocians said about God and about the human person was this – that outside of relation, we are not.  “Your life and your death is with your neighbour.” Our very existence is defined by our capacity for relation. This is the opposite of the medieval Roman view of the church as a Pyramid with the Pope at the top and the peasants at the bottom.  It is radical, subversive, stuff, and the main reason why we redesigned the Diocesan model to reflect this.  So this then is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And now to God the Spirit.  We are reminded in the Gospel set for today that the Spirit of God lives through each one of the baptised.  Every baptised believer is thus a God-bearer, a Spirit-bearer, and a Christ-bearer.  We are all Christophorus. We are promised that those who wish to obey God can rely on the ever-present Holy Spirit, leading us into all truth. This will lead us as a church and community into new and unfamiliar territory the whole time.  Robin Greenwood puts it like this: “Together, under the spirit, God’s new covenant people are empowered, taught how to love, directed, upheld, and given wisdom” Notice Greenwood’s together – for this is a promise to the church, not to individuals.  Our job is to discern this will together, and the only way we can do that is by staying in relationship.  And whatever we are told from on high, we cannot stay in real relationship by Zoom or online. Like many people, I would love to heave heard this in the official utterances from the Church of England during the pandemic – is simple language we need each other to be whole. But this has been largely absent so far in a Church, seemingly fearful and anxious, and hiding behind more and more layers of bureaucracy. God the Spirit will empower us together – the Holy Spirit is not given as a private possession. When we realise that we are organically joined to each other, we will see that this task of being God’s presence in the world is down to its people, you and me, acting together. This is also a message for political elites around the world, not just in our own country, who are tempted to go down the isolationist, or even the notorious “hostile environment” route. “Your life, and your death, is with your neighbour.”

So be encouraged by the mystery of the Holy Trinity in our life, in our worship, and in all our relationships. near and far. This is the central truth it proclaims- that outside of relation, we are not. So come and join us on June 12th as we act this out and make our plans for the future under God. Whoever you are, whatever your background, whatever your language, whatever your age “we want to hear from you.” This is all energised by the mysterious reality of the Holy Trinity.  And it is with mystery I end, with this powerful poem by John Donne.

“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you

as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend.

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me,

And bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.” Amen