Sermon Archive
Trinity
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Holy Communion on 11 June 2006, Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6:1-8 ; Romans 8:12-17 ; John 3:1-17
Today is traditionally known by the Church as Trinity Sunday. But in Edinburgh, Trinity is best known as the northern terminus of the 23 bus. The district of Trinity was developed in the mid-19th century as an 'attractive place of residence' for the 'wealthy ship owners and merchants' of 'the neighbouring port of Leith'. But how did it get its name? According to a recent account Trinity was part of the lands granted by David I to his new Abbey of Holyrood in about 1128. In 1505, James IV purchased 143 acres from Holyrood, in order to establish a naval base or New Haven; and it was the western part of this Crown land that was acquired in 1713 by Trinity Hospital and developed as Trinity Mains farm… The origin of the place name is, therefore, based on the dedication of Leith's charitable institutions to the Holy Trinity.
Now Edinburgh's Trinity, of course, is only one among many districts, cities and institutions, all over Europe and beyond, which share that name. If you look up maps or a gazetteer, or if you use a computer to search on Google, you will find any number of them. You may even come across a reference to 'Team Trinity', which is described as 'one of the largest R/C car manufacturers'. The 'R/C' however (perhaps disappointly to Da Vinci Code conspiracy theorists) refers not to Roman Catholic attempts to mass-produce pope-mobiles, but to rally cars; and in most places where you find the word used, its meaning, as in the case of Edinburgh's Trinity, seems to relate more to a forgotten past than to the familiar present.
Even the Church now has some difficulty in relating Trinity Sunday to the modern world. Although Presbyterians have never made much of such festivals - until the 1950s my Free Church grandfather kept his business open even on Christmas day - in the Anglican tradition all of the Sundays after today until November were referred to as those 'after Trinity'. But now it is much more common for Anglicans and Catholics to refer to these as the Sundays 'after Pentecost'.
Why did Trinity lose its former prominence? Possibly it was because, in the 20th century, the idea seemed too abstract, too theoretical, to have much relevance to the practicalities of modern life. Nor was the doctrine of the Trinity, as such, to be found in the Bible - as our readings this morning illustrate. The doctrine was developed much later by the Church, often in conflicts as much political as theological, in attempts to draw out the implications of its experience of God as Father, Son and Spirit. But after the Reformation such attempts began to sound over-ambitious. The doctrine of the Trinity began to sound like mere humans trying to talk about what passes human understanding - to describe what God is in himself, rather than human experience of God. Wasn't the doctrine an attempt to turn God's way of communicating with us, through the Word made flesh, back into words again? And wasn't it more important to concentrate on what the Church actually knew - its experience as a community of individuals inspired by the spirit of Christ to live and work in the real world of the present? By the 20th century many Christians were arguing that the focus should now be, not on speculation about the supernatural, but, as the Christian Aid slogan says, on 'life before death'?
There is now also perhaps an additional reason for downplaying the Trinity. In the present era of inter-faith discussion and collaboration, the doctrine appears to be a major stumbling-block to Christian-Muslim conversation. Islam from the very first asserted the one God, Allah, over against the many gods of the Arabian peninsula, and the Qur'an is severely critical of Christians for departing from the common faith by talking of 'Three'. In the Middle Ages, some Christian theologians replied that this was a misunderstanding of the doctrine, which certainly did not refer to three Gods. When they talked about God's 'three-in-oneness', these theologians said, they were not using the words 'three' and 'one' in the same way as they are used in everyday speech, for example when counting things. Christian language about God's triunity was not the kind of language which could be used about anything other than God; and thus it was in full agreement with what the Qur'an itself said of God: 'There is nothing like unto Him'.
Now there is little evidence that Muslims in the Middle Ages were persuaded by these theologians' arguments; and if you find how I have just been trying to express their ideas difficult or impossible to follow, that would not be surprising. These debates were conducted in the highly technical philosophical language of that time, with which only specialist philosophers are now familiar. But what is interesting and important about these mediaeval debates, is that they actually took place at all. The reason why they did was that at that time Christian and Muslim scholars were working closely together in translating Greek philosophy and science into Arabic, and laying the foundations of the flourishing Islamic intellectual culture to which later ages, and indeed modern science, owe so much. Even if Christians and Muslims were not able to agree on the Trinity, an important lesson this has for us today, is that by 'working together on common projects', and thereby 'developing a common language' Christians and Muslims can begin to understand one another better.
Not all of us of course may be involved in such projects, but there is a more general lesson also to be drawn today from these old debates. For all the disagreements that the doctrine of the Trinity created between Christians and Muslims, they were at least agreed on this - that where God is concerned, 'There is nothing like unto Him'. If we downplay the Trinity too much today, we may be in danger of losing sight of that, and of something crucial, not only about God, but also about ourselves.
Consider ourselves first. If we look around the world today, and also nearer to home, it seems pretty clear that much conflict and unhappiness arises from our need to feel different from or even superior to others. To an outside observer (the proverbial visitor from outer space for example) of course, those who feel most different to one another, may actually seem most alike - Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, for example. Many of the ways in which we distinguish ourselves from others - what we wear, where we live, our occupations or recreations - might also seem ridiculously unimportant to an outside observer. Yet this need to feel different or even superior appears to be deeply rooted in us; and there isn't, as far as I can see, any very obvious way of preventing it from leading to the kind of harmful or destructive conflicts which all-too-often beset us abroad or at home. This is particularly true, I think, in a modern secular society, which sees as all-important what you achieve in the brief span between the twin dependencies of growing up and growing old. If that is all there is to care about, then perhaps it makes sense to put your own individual, family, country's or generation's interests first, and not care too much about what happens to everyone else.
Yet that is an attitude many of us are unhappy with, and when we catch ourselves putting our own interests first, many of us feel guilty about it. We want our lives to matter, to be meaningful, to have a purpose, but we feel that it is wrong to achieve that at the expense of others. Is there any alternative?
It is precisely this alternative that the doctrine of the Trinity is trying to talk about. 'There is nothing like unto Him.' God, that is, is utterly unlike anything we can conceive or describe. God is not, indeed, any 'thing' that we ever could conceive or describe. The distance between God and us is infinite. Yet throughout history the most natural thing in the world has been for humans - in dire need or in sheer gratitude - to cry out to God. And when they or we with our whole hearts say 'Thou' to God, the infinite distance disappears. And the Trinitarian reason for this, St Paul tells us in our Epistle this morning, is that: 'When we cry "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.' To cry, "Abba! Father!" is to trust that in God our lives already do matter, are meaningful, do have a purpose, and that to be so, they do not need to be different or supposedly superior to the lives of others.
To trust in God. The word 'in' is of the greatest importance here. When we repeat the creed, we do not say 'I believe that God...' but 'I believe in God...' This is not a statement of fact. It is more like someone encouraging another person at a crucial moment by saying 'I believe in you' - only in this case it is our human response to the ultimate mystery of our existence, beyond all human understanding, where we nevertheless hear God saying to us 'I believe in you'.
When we try to talk about the Trinity, words fail us; and rightly so. No words can encompass what the human heart was created most deeply to desire. Anything we can say about the Trinity moreover will miss its meaning if we ignore Isaiah's response in this morning's reading: “Here am I! Send me.” To say that is not to seek any exceptional calling that is different or superior to those of others. It is rather to realise that each of us has responsibilities no one else can fulfil, and that however weighty or however insignificant these may seem in worldly terms, God is relying on you and me to make the difference only you or I can make. 'I believe in you' God says. It is by accepting that, and acting on it every day, that we shall ultimately discover what it really means to say "I believe in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
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