Trinity Sunday
7th JUNE 2009 9:00am Sung Eucharist & 11:45am Family Service
Preacher: The Revd
Hugh Phillipson
JOHN 3: 1-17
Let’s imagine we’re in the
Cultural Centre concert hall. The Hong Kong Phil are playing
a powerful and moving symphony. You are carried along by the ebb and flow of
the music
At the same time are you
thinking about what’s going on to make this music happen?
Is it the conductor waving
his arms about? The composer who
wrote it? All those skilled musicians? I very much doubt it. Most of us would
simply be enjoying the music, and thinking about what it means for us.
In the same way I think
most of us live out our Christian faith and worship together on Sunday, without
getting too excited about the doctrine of the Trinity – one God, but three
persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit. My guess is a lot of people would say the
Trinity is hard to understand. It’s an obscure doctrine – invented by
theologians with nothing better to do with their time.
It’s dusted off every year
on Trinity Sunday but it really doesn’t have much relevance.
But may be a better
understanding of the Trinity could enrich our faith? So perhaps we should give
it another chance and think about it for a while.
Let’s start with the gospel
story today about Nicodemus - a leader among the Pharisees with an impressive
CV who was intrigued by Jesus and came to see him secretly at night. He greeted
him over courteously - “Teacher from what we have seen you do, we know you are
from God” Jesus typically doesn’t stand on ceremony and launches straight in. You
haven’t got a clue! If you really want to see God’s kingdom you must be born
again – born by water and the Holy Spirit
He then explains and
describes his relationship with God….his destiny and God’s
loving plan for the whole world. He finishes with perhaps the most
famous and loved verse in the Bible: “God so loved the world that he gave his
one and only son… Anyone who believes in him will not die but have eternal
life.”
If we look at it, in that
one story of Nicodemus we have all the elements of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit
giving birth to God’s children, the Father sending the Son, the Son revealing
and explaining the Father and the Holy Spirit. So the Trinity is not some
clever theologian’s invented formula.
What it is, is an
expression of the reality of God explained to us by Jesus
It’s fairly easy to
understand that the ascended Jesus and God the Father are as one, yet at the
same time distinct individuals. But why the need for a
separate member of the Trinity the Holy Spirit? Why not just have a holy
duality – Father and Son? In trying to answer that let’s consider for a moment the
Universe - God’s astonishingly vast creation.
Astronomy is an exciting
science. All the time they are discovering more and more as technology advances.
Five years ago the wisdom was that our sun was one of 100 billion stars in our
own galaxy -
The Milky Way. That’s an awful lot of stars but the estimate has now gone up to
400 billion! Again at that time our Galaxy was thought to be one of 10 billion
galaxies. That’s gone up to 100 billion. Now there are 6 billion of us on this planet.
The universe is so big that each one of us could have 12 galaxies named after
us! I just get dizzy thinking about it.
Equally, it’s almost
impossible to imagine the power and might of our Creator God through whom
everything in this vast Universe came into being. If we encountered that power
and might face to face we would surely be blown away. And such a revelation, if
we did survive would take away from us that precious gift from God - Free Will.
We could end up as frightened gibbering automatons.
No - in his tender love
and care for us God comforts strengthens and sustains us with the Holy Spirit,
which for most of us is the still small voice, which we need to listen for very
carefully and prayerfully. God is not out to bully and intimidate us with his
power. Instead he gives us the Holy Spirit - his gentle loving presence, which
is also the presence of Jesus.
Without the Son and the
Holy Spirit of the Trinity we would only see God as the mysterious, ultimate,
all powerful and remote creator of the universe - beyond time, beyond space , beyond infinity.
To gain a better
understanding of the Trinity, we like to use models or images. You may find one
or two of these helpful.
Think of the sun. When you
see it in the sky it’s much too bright and powerful to look at. But even when it‘s cloudy we still know
its there. The sun provides us with both light and warmth, both essential for
life and for our survival. So the Sun reminds us of the all powerful creator
God the Father. The light from the Sun reminds us of Jesus - the light of the
world. The warmth of the Sun is the sustaining presence of God in the form of
the Holy Spirit.
Another image to help us which , as an ex civil engineer, I like is Water. Water is
made up of Hydrogen and Oxygen - two parts to one- H2O. But it
can be found in three totally different forms. As a gas –
steam. As a liquid – water. As
a solid – ice. All are completely different in character – but are of the
same substance H2O… Three in one – The Water Trinity!
And let’s not forget our
Cultural Centre orchestral concert. We could think of the composer who creates
and writes the music as God. The conductor, who conveys to us
the musical thinking and expression of the composer, as Jesus. We
Christians are the orchestral players who try and follow the conductor, but are
only able to play the beauty of the piece through our musical instruments – the
Holy Spirit. All combine to form the one piece of music.
But models can only help
us so far. Who can fully understand the unfathomable reality of God?
It is a great mystery. It’s
a bit like asking a fly to describe its understanding of us human beings!
But what is fathomable to
us and is at the core of our faith is the truth contained in the Trinity.
The one mysterious all
powerful God, has shown himself to be a loving caring Father to each of us -
Abba – Daddy.
As well as giving us life,
in love he has sent us God the Son - Jesus Christ.
Jesus, God in human form,
has shown us by his life, death and resurrection the loving forgiving nature of
God and has given us the real hope of eternal life.
God has sent us the loving
Holy Spirit, God’s presence amongst us, to strengthen us, to bring us comfort,
peace, joy and sometimes glimpses of Heaven itself.
All three: Father, Son and
Holy Spirit are bound together themselves in love as one
So let us praise and thank
God for the mysterious, but wonderful Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.