30th May 2021
‘The Holy Trinity doesn’t do anything for me.’
That was the answer of someone in a survey. You can see why. Unlike the Garden of Eden, the stable at Christmas, the Pentecost crowds, it has no story to enjoy. There is no ‘human interest’. Worst of all, it doesn’t seem relevant. These other Christian festivals lead to something. We can die to sin and be raised to new life, forgive others, feed the hungry, love our neighbour but what in the name of the Trinity do we do? So why should this dry doctrine be dignified with a special festival?
The earlier Celtic Church would have been surprised to hear us. They thought about the Trinity every day, God-Jesus-Spirit, surrounding them in their ordinary life. Before a journey they might pray:
The keeping of God upon you in every pass,
The shielding of Christ upon you in every path,
The bathing of Spirit upon you in every stream
In every land and sea you go.
As they washed in the morning and poured water from their cupped hands:
The palmful of the God of life,
The palmful of the Christ of love,
The palmful of the Spirit of Peace.
And in dowsing the fire at night, this prayer:
The Sacred Three – to save – to shield – to surround –
the hearth – the house – the household – this eve –
this night – and every night – each single night.
An Australian magazine once spoke to 50 people in the public eye and asked them what they thought of God. Many had problems with God. For some, severe, demanding, disapproving. For others too remote, out of touch, irrelevant, but still necessary when there was death or crisis. But both lots thought of God as an individual, whom you either liked or didn’t, whom you could speak to or not, just like the individuals he created.
It wasn’t long after Jesus that the early Church knocked this on its head. The Old Testament God had a makeover in the life of Jesus, and as life went on, in joy and sorrow, persecution and peace, success and failure, they came to appreciate that the Spirit that Jesus promised was with them. God wasn’t a person, but a community. We need to get the comma in the right place. It is God COMMA, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is not PLUS the Son, PLUS the Holy Spirit. God-Jesus-Spirit is a community and permeates our human communities and longs for these communities to be healthy, loving, just, and peaceful. That’s what the Celts felt in the rhymes and prayers we quoted, that God-Jesus-Spirit surrounded them and bore them up, supported them, brought them energy as they battled through life.
So, God the Trinity is not an intractable mathematical equation, but more like song. We know we can only imperfectly understand God, but we know enough to sing. That is why the psalms and the prayers and other Christian utterances traditionally still end, ‘Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.’ We call it a doxology which means ‘speaking praise’ and comes from early Christian songs captured in the book of Revelation. So we sing of a God with many dimensions, who once came into human life, to share it and bless it, and has remained ever since, a person-mystery as near to us as our families and our companions, supporting us and bearing us up. No wonder we sing.
A prayer
O God,
your name is veiled in mystery,
yet we dare to call you Father;
your Son was begotten before all ages,
yet is born among us in time;
your Holy Spirit fills the whole creation,
yet is poured forth now into our hearts.
Because you have made us and loved us
and called us by name,
draw us more deeply into your divine life,
so that we may glorify you rightly,
through your Son,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever. Amen.
The Icel Collects, for Trinity Sunday