Image: Trinity Knot Symbol – Vanderbilt University Divinity Library
INTRODUCTION
Good morning everyone, and happy Trinity Sunday to you all! “This the world shall see reflected: God is One and One in Three”[1] – a great hymn of the Trinity. Our minister ____ says: “Holy One, Holy Three”. And, yes, it’s always three weeks in a row in the Church Calendar: Ascension Day (May 29 this year, forty days after Easter Sunday), Pentecost Sunday (last Sunday), and today, Trinity Sunday.
Our picture today, which you can see on the slide, is the famous Trinity Knot, also known as a Triquetra; it’s a traditional Celtic symbol consisting of three interconnected loops, described as “a timeless symbol of eternity, unity, love, and commitment”, and is found in various forms like jewellery and tattoos – and, yes, in Christian symbolism, it’s often used to represent the Holy Trinity – Father, or Divine Parent, Son (Jesus) and Holy Spirit.
Today, in the Message, a bit later in the service, we’ll go on a bit of a journey through the three persons of the Trinity, as they’re called, focusing especially on the Holy Spirit – seeing we’re now in the Season immediately after Pentecost.
REFLECTION
So, the doctrine of the Trinity – Holy One, Holy Three. Let’s start by looking at the history of the doctrine, how it was developed, then we’ll look at the three persons of the Trinity in detail.
While it doesn’t actually appear explicitly anywhere in the New Testament, the doctrine of the Trinity is certainly based generally on its teachings, including a number of specific trinitarian formulas, the best known of which is probably the so-called Great Commission, Matthew 28:19: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”.
It wasn’t until the 4th century AD, however, that the Trinity was established as a formal doctrine of the church, at the famous Council of Nicea in 325 AD, called by the then newly converted Emperor Constantine to try to bring some unity to what was, at the time, a pretty divided church. The great creed of the church – the Nicene Creed – was formulated at this Council – clearly expressing the idea of the Trinity, with its three “We believes” – we know them so well – “We believe …
- … in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth …
- … and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God …..
- … and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life ……
The trinitarian doctrine was specifically formulated to counter the opposing view of the day known as Arianism – named after Arius, a North African presbyter and ascetic, who lived around 256–336 AD. Arianism held that Jesus was indeed the son of God, but created by god at the time, not co-eternal with God from the beginning, and therefore distinct from God. The decision of the council in favour of Trinitarianism was not the end of the debate, however, and Arianism, in one form or another, continued to be a minority, dissenting view in Christianity, even to the present day – we still have various non-Trinitarian groups, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, some Churches of Christ, some Messianic Jewish groups, Unitarians, Christadelphians – these groups aren’t all the same as each other, obviously, but they all agree in rejecting belief in the Trinity – specifically the belief that Jesus is a completely equal part of the Godhead with God the Father.
So much for the history. Let’s now look at each of the three persons of the Trinity in detail.
We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible …..
Yes, in the Gospels Jesus invariably refers to God as “Father”. Jesus was Jewish, so, when he did so, obviously he was referring to the same God Jews in general believed in, the God of the Old Testament, who was understood as omnipotent creator and judge of the world, and whom Jews typically referred to, in fearful, reverential tones, in Hebrew, as “Adonai”, meaning “My Lord” or “My master”. It’s true that God was sometimes understood as the divine “Father of Israel”, but the people were very hesitant to call God “Father” – a very personal and intimate mode of address – and in fact this was one of the things the Jewish religious leaders of the day were very angry at Jesus about – his habit of referring to God as “My Father”.
What we need to realize is that, in calling God “Father”, Jesus was introducing a new way of thinking about God – no longer the old-time omnipotent creator God who Lords it over everything, and whose judgement and punishment is to be feared; rather a non-judgemental, loving, divine parent. You know I think the Parable of the Prodigal Son, with the lovely grace-filled response of the father in the parable, to his wayward son’s return – no judgement, let’s throw a big feast and celebrate – gives the best picture in all the New Testament, of God as loving divine parent – personal, intimate, non-judgmental, giving us our freedom, but always there for us when we need them.
Yes, Jesus does say “Father”, masculine, when he refers to God, and part of this is definitely the old-time patriarchal religious language of his day; but another part of it – the true part – is God as divine parent who gives birth, life to the universe, this living, growing, evolving universe, including us. You know, I try to avoid calling God “creator”, or “maker”, as our first hymn did today. Jesus never refers to God in this way. Giving birth to something is a very different thing to creating or making it – we, human parents, for example, give birth to our children, give them a life of their own – we would never say we created or made them – we have a much richer relationship with them, as God has with us.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father (the Divine Parent) before all ages ……
Yes, Jesus the “Christ” – “Messiah, “Saviour”, “Chosen one” – “Christ” is not Jesus’ surname, as we know, but a title, first given him by the Apostle Paul in fact – “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle”, the famous Letter to the Romans begins, and Paul refers to Jesus as “Christ” no less than four times in the first eight verses of the letter. Paul is intent on connecting Jesus up with the prophesied Messiah or Saviour of Israel of the Old Testament. Later, the writer of John’s Gospel goes even further and connects up Jesus with the Logos, the Word of God, so that he becomes not just the historical Jesus but the Cosmic Christ, now fully part of the Triune Godhead, co-eternal with God from the beginning.
But Jesus was a very different type of Messiah, definitely not the sort the Jewish people of the day were hoping for, and because of that they turned their backs on him – even Jesus’ own disciples mostly didn’t get what he was really about – and eventually, as we know, they killed him.
The Messiah the people were looking for was a worldly, temporal hero or king to save them from the Romans, and their other enemies, and restore Israel to its former glories. But the salvation Jesus came to bring was not a temporal, worldly salvation, rather a spiritual one. Which brings me, of course, to …..
And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life …….
We live now, 2000 years on from Jesus, in the Age of the Holy Spirit – or another way you could put it is that we live in the time of the growing, spreading Kingdom, the amazing gradual spiritual transformation of humanity, which started with Jesus, and now continues through the Holy Spirit.
Through the Spirit: God’s intervention in the world is a spiritual one, not a direct, physical one. I’m sorry to say it, but, no, God just does not intervene in the world in the way we often wish they would, and we keep asking them to – “please heal me or my loved one from this illness”; “help me to find a job, I’m really struggling at the moment”; “bring peace, an end to wars and conflicts”; “bring justice for all the terrible things people do to each other” – but no, God does not intervene in this way, at our request, when we want them to, for the things we think are important for ourselves.
Rather, instead, God intervenes spiritually, spirit to Spirit, God’s Spirit to our spirit; and the intervention is for one thing and one thing only – something much more exciting and urgent than all those things we typically ask God for – the faith, trust, courage, ability to undergo, or keep undergoing, the Metanoia – the amazing life-changing inner, spiritual transformation, from our natural-born life of self-centredness, to a new life of selflessness, living for and serving others. I know, I’m a cracked record on the Metanoia – I manage to get it into every sermon I give, as I’m sure you’ve noticed😁! It’s what Jesus died on the Cross for, it’s what the Holy Spirit is now all about, it’s what the Kingdom is about. For that matter, it’s what the sacraments of the church are about – Baptism and Communion – the spiritual downloading into our lives of the faith and courage to let go of our selfish desires, undergo real inner transformation, and open ourselves up to serve the world. The Metanoia.
This is not the modern “spirituality revolution”, by the way. We cannot find the Spirit on our own, within us, inside ourselves, through some sort of spiritual practice or ritual, ancient or modern. The Spirit, and the Metanoia it brings, are essentially collective in nature, an experience and transformation we undergo together, with others, in community. The outcome we’re looking for is not finding ourselves, our identity, who I really am; it’s losing ourselves, giving ourselves up to each other, in the Spirit. That’s why church life together is important: we pray and worship together, we do the sacraments together, we do mission together, we share our life journeys together. It’s not that there aren’t great times, when we’re on our own, when we can’t speak to and hear from God; rather, it’s of the nature of the Spirit, and the Metanoia it brings, that they draw us together as one.
“I ask … that they may all be one,” Jesus prays in John 21, “As you, [Divine Parent], are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
So, the Trinity – God the Divine Parent, Jesus the Son of God, the Holy Spirit of God – I commend them to you, unreservedly, on this Trinity Sunday, 15 July 2025. AMEN.
[1] Together in Song 179, Praise with joy the world’s Creator; words by John Bell and Graham Moule, tune: Praise my Soul.
