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Three in One God – Trinity Sunday

June 14, 2025

Trinity Sunday – 2025

John 16:12-15

Marian Free

In the name of God, Source of Life, God with us, Empowering Spirit. Amen.

A week or so ago when I was on retreat I read the book The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend our Broken Hearts and World by Sharon Brous. The book is a reflection on ministry and in particular the need to hold the tension between celebration and grief while honouring both. The author is a Jewish Rabbi who was the co-founder of IKAR an innovative Jewish community whose mission statement is “IKAR is a Jewish community rooted in ancient wisdom and inspired by the moral mandate to build a more just and loving world. We are dedicated to reimagining Jewish life through deep relationships and shared values, intellectual and spiritual curiosity, piety and irreverence, joy and defiant hope.” Based in Los Angeles the community numbers around 1000 members. 

As I read, I felt that everyone entering ministry or pastoral care should have a copy of the book to help them navigate the times of great joy and the times of deep sorrow that are part and parcel of community life. During her ministry, Brous has faced many challenging situations and reflects for example, on how she navigated the celebration of her son’s Bar Mitzva on a day following a particularly traumatic event in the life of another family in the community. Somehow she found a balance between acknowledging the family’s trauma while still allowing her son to celebrate an event for which, as a Rabbi’s son, he had been preparing all his life. Elsewhere she reflects on how one sits with the grief of a couple whose teenage children are killed in a car accident caused by a driver under the influence, and how over time that family were able to use their experience to reach out to others facing a similar loss. 

Throughout her ministry Brous has engaged her community – sharing her insights and learning from them. She has also learned the important lesson of caring for herself so that she is not drawing from an empty well. There is so much all of us can learn about the practice of faith from Brous and from her. community.

As the title suggests, Brous draws on a variety of ancient traditions, not only on her Jewish roots but of course her own tradition is what has fed and enlightened her through years of training and ministry. 

I am someone who is deeply moved by the wisdom of Jewish rabbis and in particular their approach to trauma and grief, and I have great respect for other religious traditions, but on reading the book I felt for the first time a sense of absence, the absence of the Holy Spirit in particular and of the Trinity in general.

The Trinity, while difficult for many of us to grasp, and even more difficult for us to put into words, expresses to me a fuller, rounder understanding of God, a God, who as Mike Morrell says is not alone but is community[1], and who, as community, draws us into relationship. For me, an understanding God who is integrally present through the Spirit and who is integrally part of human experience through Jesus is, to me, relatable, enlivening and welcoming and better still, gathers me into the Divine Dance of the three-person God. 

It is fascinating to think that our forebears, steeped in the Jewish faith, experienced the one God in such a new and a radical way. Long before our theologians had begun to come up with definitions and explanations of the Trinity, Paul, followed by the gospel writers, had begun to use language for God that incorporated what we now call the three persons of the Trinity. Take for instance this morning’s reading from Romans. Within just five verses Paul refers to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Paul, who was born, lived and died a Jew, quite unselfconsciously uses God, Jesus and Holy Spirit interchangeably while at the same time not denying or negating a belief that there is only one God. Nor is this a one off, in Romans 8 God, Jesus (Lord/Son) and Spirit are again used as if they are one and the same. 2 Corinthians concludes: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” Paul would have had no sense that he was abandoning the monotheism of his youth only that he had to find language to express his experience of God since Christ burst into his life.

Matthew’s gospel likewise references the Trinity when it concludes with what has become known as the great commission. Jesus tells the disciples to: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The association with what we now call Trinitarian language with baptism obviously existed in the church before the end of the first century and long before we began to put a name to and an explanation for the three-fold nature of the one God. 

And John who has consistently told the disciples that he and the Father are one, now. prepares his disciples for his departure by assuring them that the Spirit, who abides with the Father and the Son will be his continuing presence on earth. He makes no attempt to explain how God can be Father, Son and Spirit, he simply assumes that this language will speak to his reader’s experience of God. 

Of course, I do not know how I would relate to God had I not been brought up in a Christian family in a Christian environment. But, that being my experience, I rejoice in the three-fold God who is at the same time one, whose tri-fold nature embraces and holds me and whose different persons speak to different times and situations of my life.

[1] I’ve quoted this before but it is worth repeating.

ONE alone

      Is not by nature Love,

                  or Laugh,

                  or Sing

ONE alone

      may be prime mover,

                  Unknowable,

                  Indivisible,

                  All

And if Everything is All and All is One

       One is alone

       Self-Centred

                  Not Love

                  Not Laugh

                  Not Sing

TWO

      Ying/Yang 

       Dark/Light

        Male/Female

                  Contending  Dualism

                       Affirming Evil/Good

                       And striving toward Balance

      At best Face-to-Face

                  But never Community

THREE

    Face-to-Face-to-Face

                  Community

                  Ambiguity

                  Mystery

    Love for the Other

                  And for the Other’s Love

Within

      Other-Centred

       Self-giving

                  Loving

                  Singing

                  Laughter

                      A fourth is created

                           Ever-loved and loving.

(Forword to The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. Richard Rohr with Mike Morrell, USA: Whitaker House, 2016.)

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God in three persons

May 25, 2024

Trinity Sunday –  2024

John 3:1-17

Marian Free

 

In the name of God, Source of life, Sharer of our humanity, Fire in our hearts.  Amen.

 

Have you ever wondered about the gospel readings set for Trinity Sunday. In Year A (this year) the reading set for the day is Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus which appears to have little to tell us. In Year B the gospel consists of Jesus’ commission to the disciples in which Jesus commands the disciples to baptise in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Year C gives us a reading from John which is part of the reading for Pentecost Sunday (read last week). Here in his teaching on the Spirit of truth, Jesus also refers to the Father – all three members of the Trinity are present.

 

It is difficult to develop a theology of the Trinity from these references. Indeed, it is difficult to find a direct reference to the Trinity in the New Testament. There are hints and allusions on which theologians later built a doctrine, but, apart from Matthew 28 and 2 Corinthians 13:13, there are no specifically Trinitarian statements. Given that there are no direct references to the Trinity, the lectionary struggles to find gospel readings for Trinity Sunday. Jesus doesn’t provide any teaching on this subject. He merely suggests that the nature of the one God is Triune. Unlike St Patrick Jesus  doesn’t reach for a three-leafed clover to make his point. He leaves it to the early church to make sense of his language about himself, God and the Holy Spirit.

 

That said, theologians were not working in a vacuum when they developed the concept of a God in three persons. In Romans 8 for example, Paul speaks of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit interchangeably if they were one and the same entity. Likewise John’s gospel refers to the Father, Son and Spirit as if they are one and the same. In the fourth gospel Jesus iterates over and over again that he and the Father are one. When the Spirit is formally introduced it is clear that the Spirit is indistinguishable from Jesus. So, without using the explicit language of the Trinity the early church clearly thought of God in Trinitarian terms. That is, while believers remained monotheistic, they were able to think of this one God as three persons.

 

As I’ve suggested, finding a gospel reading that is specifically Trinitarian has its difficulties and at first glance it is not easy to see what the story of Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus has to add. Holly Hearon sheds some light on this. She states: ‘The Gospel of John is rich with language exploring the relationship between God, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ She continues: ‘it’s goal however is not to establish doctrine; it is to tell a story about God’s love for the world. In the story of Nicodemus, the language of God, Son, and Spirit reveals unity of purpose in the full expression of God’s interaction with the world.’

 

The encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus exposes the former’s complete lack of comprehension about the nature of Jesus, about the religious experience and about the nature of God. As Jesus makes clear, despite being a teacher of Israel, Nicodemus has a limited, intellectual, earthly understanding of God.  Nicodemus’ faith is not informed by or energised by the Spirit, it is head-based not heart-based. He has recognised that Jesus is empowered by God but he has failed to understand that Jesus is God and he has no understanding of the Spirit, and no concept that a relationship with God requires a complete transformation, a willingness to be reformed and renewed, a desire to hand over one’s heart and one’s head.

 

By using the imagery of rebirth, Jesus reveals the possibility of fully immersing oneself in heavenly (spiritual/Godly) things, of entering the kingdom of heaven while remaining on earth and of forgoing intellectual understanding for the possibility of being informed by the Spirit. At the same time, Jesus indirectly reveals the threefold nature of God. All three members of the Godhead are actively involved here. God is a given, Jesus reveals God and the Spirit enlivens and equips.

 

As is the way with John’s gospel, we are left wanting more. Jesus reveals more than can be absorbed so early in the gospel, Nicodemus exposes his partial understanding and we have been given a tantalising glimpse of the threefold nature of God.

 

Perhaps this is how it should be. Tomes have been written with a goal of establishing the doctrine of the Trinity, but this tantalising glimpse gives us all that we need to enter into a relationship with the One whom we know as Source of life, Sharer of our humanity and Fire in our hearts. God who enters into our very being and brings us to new birth.

 

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Trinity Sunday

June 3, 2023

Trinity – 2023
Matthew 28:16-20
Marian Free

In the name of God, creative, generative force, loving, sacrificial being, empowering and energising breath. Amen.

A little while I saw a meme that featured Jesus and the disciples. The first frame, pictured Jesus preparing the disciples for his ascension. Jesus was saying: “Don’t make this too complicated”. In the next frame, after Jesus has ascended the disciples see a group of people coming over the hill. “Oh no”, they say, “here come the theologians!” The creator of the cartoon was implying that theologians complicate simple tenets of faith by analysing and explaining them.

It is easy to imagine that we would be better off without those academics who make meaning out of scriptures, who turn apparently simple texts into complex ideas. The fact is, that without theologians, we would be confronted with a multitude of conflicting ideas and no arbitrators to determine which interpretation was more accurate or more reflective of the teaching of Jesus and its reception by the first believers.

The early church provides two cases in point – the Incarnation and the Trinity – both of which proved controversial in the first few centuries. In the gospels, Jesus is depicted as both human and divine, but there is no detailed argument as to how this works in practice. The most direct claims are those of Jesus in John’s gospel in which Jesus consistently claims that he and the Father are one. In the Synoptics, there are no direct claims that Jesus and the Father are one (Mt. 11:27 being an exception), but in those gospels Jesus shown to have power over demons, over the natural elements and over life itself – powers previously associated only with God. It seems obvious that the gospel writers took for granted. that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine, but they provide no explicit statement to this effect, and give no explanation as to how such a thing could be. It was left to the early church to determine what this meant and how it could be explained. The result was a number of theories about the nature of Jesus and fierce arguments between various bishops and theologians.

Similarly with the Trinity. God as Creator/or Father, Son/Christ/Lord and Spirit is referred to unselfconsciously throughout Paul’s letters and to some extent in the Gospels, but nowhere is there any explanation as to how God can be both three AND one. There is no biblical description of the way in which the three persons of God relate to each other. A Trinitarian God was such a departure from the strict monotheism of Judaism, that there was no language to accommodate a new way of thinking about this same God. The first believers took for granted that God was in some way three persons in one God, but they did not have the appropriate language to defend that belief. It was left to later scholars to find language that honoured the equal value of each member of the Trinity and to describe the relationship between the three – language that often takes away from the relaxed way in which the early community accepted and related to a Trinitarian God.

Interestingly, though the Pauline letters use the language of God, Lord, Christ, and Spirit interchangeably, and though Paul coined prayer: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian formula with which we are most familiar “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” occurs only in Matthew’s gospel. This is in no small part because the gospels were trying to tell the story of Jesus and to record his teaching – rather than to make meaning. of his life, death, and resurrection.

That said, the conclusion to Matthew’s gospel tells us two things – one, that by the 80s, Trinitarian language was being used as a matter of course and two, that the language of Trinity was an essential component of the baptismal liturgy. In other words, at least by the time Matthew was written, the idea of a three-fold God had solidified into a formula – a formula that was accepted even by this most Jewish of the gospel writers. At the same time this formula was used (without explanation) as an essential part of the liturgy that welcomed new believers into the community.

It seems that the early church did not have to reflect on the nature of the Trinity or on the relationship between the members of the Trinity. Early believers appear to have taken three-fold nature of God for granted – without seeing any contradiction between that belief and their existing belief that God was one.

Perhaps the best attempt to make sense of a three-fold God is the Athanasian Creed, which can be found in the back of your Prayer Book, and which used to be said on Trinity Sunday. “So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another; But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together and co-equal. So that in all things, as is aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved must think thus of the Trinity. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.)

The Trinitary is first and foremost relational and communal. The persons of the Trinity are non-competitive, inclusive. No one person of the Trinity has priority and no one person of the Trinity is dispensable, but all work together in unity.

The God whom we are called to worship in not a lonely, isolated, all-powerful despot, but a loving community whose roles are both distinct and indistinguishable. The God whom we worship is not a distant and indifferent power but a fellowship that is so concerned with our well-being that God’s very self shared our humanity becoming one of us and one with us. The God whom we worship is not static and unchanging, but dynamic and innovative, dancing through time and space – before time and beyond time.

The God whom we worship invites us into the dance, into communion with Godself and promises to be with us always, to the end of the age.

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What language can we use?

June 9, 2022

Trinity Sunday – 2022
John 16:12-15
Marian Free

May I speak in the name of God – Earth-maker, Pain-bearer and Life-giver. Amen.

Several years ago, as I was preparing to preach on Trinity Sunday I read an article that discussed the language with which we address God. The writer argued quite forcefully that the words Father, Son and Holy Spirit had to be retained as it was the only language that, in their mind, captured the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. From memory, the author was offended by the use of non-anthropomorphic imagery for God on the basis that such terminology was unable to reflect the idea of relationship.

A recent google search led me to an article which argues in a similar way. The author contended that: “These words, “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit” mean something. They are not abstract concepts, ideas or words conjured up to impose, as claimed by some, a patriarchal regime.”“These names designate the relationship proper to each Person of the Trinity, that is, they proclaim how each Person is distinctly related to the other Persons in the Trinity: “the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another.”

That is, “the Father is related to the Son, the Son to the Father and the Holy Spirit to both.”
If we believe that the words of Scripture are the inspired word of God, the very Word of God, and He has given us this very specific language to speak about the Trinity, then our authority to intend to change this – by mere avoidance of being politically incorrect – has no bearing.”

Father Richard along with the author of the earlier article seem to be driven as much by a reaction against “political correctness” as they are by solid theological study. In their endeavour to hold on to their conservative (patriarchal) viewpoint, they have considerably limited the roles and functions of the members of the Trinity and denied their listeners/readers access to the wealth of expressions that can be used to begin to put language to the ineffable nature of God. Unfortunately, “Father” and “Son” ground us in language that is human and not divine and describe one particular relationship (one not shared by father and daughter, mother and daughter, mother and son). Furthermore, the relationship between Father and Son (language which is found primarily in John’s gospel) can, in human relationships be fractured, abusive or non-existent.

LaCugna is another who wants to retain the language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. She states that: “the language Father, Son and Spirit is relational in that it refers to the roles that each person of the Trinity plays in respect to each other. According to LaCugna: “Creator-Redeemer-Sustainer language does not adequately reflect the language and view of Scripture that God creates through the Son and by the Spirit or that God redeems us through Christ.” I am no theologian, but it seems to me that LaCugna’s language suggests an hierarchy within God rather than mutuality; distinction rather than oneness.

Many of the contemporary arguments around the familial language that we use for the Trinity base their defence on Jesus’ instruction to the disciples before the ascension: “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.” What proponents of this view do not say is that this is the only place in the New Testament which this language is used. The Trinity, as a theological concept does not exist in the New Testament and is a human invention that did not exist for centuries.

The assumption that only the language of Father and Son can be relational is not only anthropomorphic (human) but androcentric (male centred). It ignores the fact that relationships abound in the non-human universe, relationships revealed by biologists and physicists just for starters. In limiting us to the language of Father and Son, people like Father Richard reduce the relationships between the persons of the Trinity to those experienced and expressed by human beings. A God who is beyond understanding surely cannot be contained by the language of a human household, or by language that emphasises human relationships. God transcends all our attempts to define God which is as good a reason as any for us to experiment and play with language – knowing as we do that no language is adequate for God, let alone for the relationships between the persons of the Trinity.

The use of a wider selection of epithets for the members of the Trinity allows for the expression of a wide range of human experience – in relationship with one another and with God. It also frees us from seeing God – and the relationships between the three person of the Trinity – in human terms. Language such as that found in the New Zealand Prayer Book: “Earth-maker, Pain-bearer and Life-giver” adequately captures the roles of the three persons of the Trinity and liberates us from imagining God in terms of the parental, paternal language of Father and Son. The use of non-familial, non-anthropomorphic language expands, rather than diminishes our understanding of God. Abstract expressions force us to consider the nature of the relationship rather than allowing us to rely on familiar and comfortable images. There is enormous power in the imagery ofexpressions such as: “World-Weaver, Hand-Holder, Breath-Bringer,” “Mother, Lover, Friend,”“Mighty Creator, Eternal Word, Abiding Spirit” and there is nothing about such imagery to suggest that the individual expressions cannot be in relationship with each other.

It is not a bad thing for our presumptions to be questioned, our illusions shattered, and our use of language challenged. God who cannot be contained, Jesus whom the tomb could not hold and the Spirit who blows where she wills will never and should never be captured by the limitations of human language. What is essential is that no matter what language we use that we do nothing to detract from “the eternal oneness, inseparability, and mutual indwelling of each of the divine “persons”” of the God who is three AND one.

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God the Trinity

May 29, 2021

Trinity Sunday – 2021

John 3:1-17

Marian Free

In the name of God, who creates, redeems and sanctifies. Amen.

At the beginning of the week Quinn, knowing that it was Trinity Sunday today, helpfully sent me an article to read. I was very grateful to receive anything that might give me a different perspective on one of the most difficult theological principles of our faith, but I have to confess that I didn’t find the article at all useful for my purposes. The author, as I recall, warned against trying to preach on the doctrine of the Trinity and suggested instead that the preacher focus on relationship – our relationship with God the Trinity. I have to say that theology (at least academic theology) is not my strong point, so over the past 27 years I have made very few attempts to try to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. So, at least I was safe on that point! Unfortunately, the author of the article really didn’t provide me with any useful way to speak about relationships or at least none that would have helped me to preach on the topic. In fact, nothing that I have read in the past week has given me any ideas that I felt could be used to expand our understanding of and relationship with the Trinity.

Preaching on the Trinity today was not helped by the readings. Apart from the threefold ‘holy’ in Isaiah’s vision, there is little to suggest that God can be experienced as three and yet as one. I’m not sure how to explain this because I would have thought that there were a number of texts throughout our biblical texts that at least hint at the threefold nature of God. In other words, the Trinitarian nature of God is not just a theological principle, nor did the idea arise in isolation at the Incarnation or at Pentecost. It certainly, did not develop in a vacuum in the third or fourth centuries of the current era when the Athanasian Creed was penned. That is to say, that while our forebears in faith believed firmly that there was only one God, the Old Testament does provide clues that the oneness of God is complex and that the one God who we profess can be experienced in more than one way. From Genesis on, there are references to the Spirit (Moses was filled with the divine spirit and the prophets were empowered by the spirit of the Lord. In the Book of Proverbs (3:9), the figure of Wisdom is described as co-creator of God (much in the same way that John’s gospel speaks of the ‘Word’ – ‘In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God’ and so on.

Christians can argue that God’s nature did not fundamentally change with the birth of Jesus and the coming of the spirit (of course that would be ridiculous). However, in the light of the Jesus’ event our understanding of, and the language we use for God changed. 

This is evident in the earliest Christian writings – the letters of Paul. Completely unselfconsciously Paul uses the expressions God, Lord and Spirit interchangeably (notably in Romans 8). Most famously perhaps is the greeting with which he concludes 2 Corinthians “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” I don’t imagine for one minute, that Paul, being a Jew was abandoning the one true God of his ancestors, but that he now felt God encompassed Jesus and the Spirit. Later, Matthew’s gospel would conclude with Jesus’ instruction to the disciples that they: “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, The Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  

The language we use for God has ancient roots, it was only in the face of division and that the church felt it necessary to come up with an agreed position or doctrine as to how God could be both one and three. It is this, the doctrine of the Trinity, that I find it so difficult to explain or teach, but that does not mean that I am not absolutely convinced of the importance of worshipping God as one and God as three and I am equally convinced that our relationship with God should be with God the Trinity – Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.

Perhaps the book that has had the most impact on me is The Divine Dance by the Franciscan brother Richard Rohr. Unfortunately, it is impossible to share with you the contents of the book as Richard does not write in a linear fashion but circles around on himself so that while it is possible to get the sense of what he is saying it is not so easy to explain it. It is the images, not the words that I have found particularly helpful, and I share them in case they help you to make sense of the extraordinary nature of God. 

I now think of the Trinity primarily in terms of relationship – the relationships within the Trinity and our relationship with the Trinity as part of the Trinity. In my mind’s eye the Trinity is something like electrons held within a sphere. In this image the electrons are pure energy – spinning within the space – bound not by a nucleus, but by each other, relating to and dependent on each other participating in a never-ending dance – moving in and out and around, touching and separating, empowering and being empowered, drawing energy from one another yet never being depleted. The power of this image for me, is that there is room for all of us to join in the dance. The sphere which I can hold in my imagination, is in fact boundless. It can hold within it all creation and all creation is invited to be caught up in, to be part of and to be held by the whirling, spinning energy that is the Trinity. Our relationship with God is one of participation in, not separation from and, if our energy flags, it is of no consequence – the energy of the three holds us, heals us and restores us until we are ready to re-join the dance.

As the members of the Trinity relate to and energise each other, so we, taking our place in the relationship that pre-exists us draw our power and our renewal from the very source.

In the end though it is all about the heart and our relationship with the one God whom we know as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.

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One God

June 6, 2020

Trinity Sunday – 2020
Matthew 28:16-20

Marian Free

In the name of God – Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver. Amen.

There is a wonderful scene in a movie adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory. The story is set in Mexico in the 1930’s in a time when Catholicism was banned. An unorthodox priest and the socialist police officer who captures him forge an odd friendship and each in different ways is redeemed. One day over lunch the lieutenant challenges the priest to explain the Trinity. There are three bottles of wine in the basket and, from memory, the priest explains that the wine in the bottles is the same wine even though it is in different bottles. The next morning, when the priest awakes, he is overcome with guilt because the bottle he designated as the Holy Spirit was the one from which the two had drunk thus implying that the Spirit was somehow lesser.

Today we celebrate one of the key feast days of the Church – Trinity Sunday – and yet it is not announced with the colour of Pentecost, the excitement of Easter or the wonder of Christmas. How many of you are present today because you are fired up by the Trinity? Too often in fact the subject matter is skirted over, ignored, or, as my father used to bemoan, simplified to the point of heresy.

The problem is, that when it comes to the Trinity, most of us feel awkward and inarticulate, not up to the task of expressing what we are told (or what we know) to be true. Without necessarily understanding, some of us are able to intuit the threeness of the Godhead, others accept the idea that God is three and God is one because that is their faith, and others come up with poor analogies that don’t really do justice to the concept but in general most of us are aware that we can’t adequately put what we think and feel into words. This is distressing because the Trinitarian nature of the Christian God is what sets us apart from other religions and gives us the richness of understanding God as community. It is sad reflection on who we are because we assert that God is one and God is three and yet most of us find ourselves in a position where we simply cannot explain the Trinity to the curious or defend it against the sceptical.

In the last four years I have had the good fortune to stumble on two books that have helped me to really make sense of the Trinity. When I read The Divine Dance by Richard Rohr , I experienced a clarity that had eluded me until then. As the poem with which the book begins says in part:
“One is Alone
Self-Centred
Not love
Two is at best
Face-to Face
but never community
Three Face-to-Face-to-Face
Community,
love for the Other and for the Other’s love
A fourth is created
Ever-loved and loving” .
God as community invites each one of us to be a part of that community. Extraordinary as it seems, if God is community, we are included in the divine energy that is God.

This year I came across the book, The Trinity, how not to be a heretic by Professor Stephen Bullivant from St Mary’s University London. I highly recommend it . Bullivant expresses his grief that the Trinity, the central doctrine of the Christian faith, is one that no one (catechists, priests, pastors, Sunday School teachers, theology students, online evangelists) ever talks about. It is, he says, passed over in silence and ignored as something that Christians supposedly cannot, and are not meant to understand (loc 127).

Yet, “the doctrine of the Trinity did not arise out of speculation about God” or from “philosophical thinking” but rather “out of the effort to digest real historical experiences” (Joseph Ratzinger, quoted loc 383). In other words, the Trinity is a concept that tries to capture the fact that the early Christians experienced God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and used the terms interchangeably and unselfconsciously, without in any way splitting God into three. For example, at Jesus’ baptism God and the Holy Spirit are also present. In the Gospel of John Jesus claims that anyone who has seen him has seen the Father, and that he (or the Father) will send the Spirit. In chapter 8 of Romans Paul refers to the Father, Lord (or Jesus) and the Holy Spirit in such a way that it is clear that he thinks of them as one and the same .

While the Trinity is a unique Christian doctrine, and while it is important that we should not read the Christian experience back into the Old Testament, it can be argued that the Old Testament revelation of God is not singular. Within the very first chapter, God refers to Godself in the plural: “Let us make humankind in our own image” (Gen 1:26). In chapter 18 of Genesis the Lord appears to Abraham in the form of three men, but Abraham addresses them in the singular, “My Lord”. In the Book of Proverbs Wisdom is both separate from God and yet is God and throughout the Old Testament there are references to the Spirit. God is experienced as Lord, as Wisdom and as Spirit without any hint that there are three Gods.

The Trinity then is not a complicated formula devised by theologians or philosophers in their ivory towers, but a word that sums up the lived experience of the early Christians, captures the ways in which God was known in the Old Testament and expresses our own intuition of who and what God is.

Bullivant suggests that the doctrine of the Trinity very simply boils down to three, core Christian convictions:
“1. There is only one God,
2. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is each God,
3. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not the same.”

So, it is not that hard. When you are challenged, or when you want to share your faith in the Trinity you simply have to explain your experience which is corresponds with that of the early believers and which echoes the experience of the Old Testament writers – that is:
“1. There is only one God,
2. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is each God,
3. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not the same.”

Have a wonderful Trinity Sunday and may the Trinity be the God whom you unselfconsciously and confidently know and proclaim.

 

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Energy, love, relationship – the Triune God’

June 15, 2019

Trinity – 2019 (some thoughts)

John 16:12-15

Marian Free

In the name of God, lover, beloved and source of love. Amen.

“For Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), a French Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist, love is “the very physical structure of the Universe.” That is a very daring statement, especially for a scientist to make. Yet for Teilhard, gravity, atomic bonding, orbits, cycles, photosynthesis, ecosystems, force fields, electromagnetic fields, sexuality, human friendship, animal instinct, and evolution all reveal an energy that is attracting all things and beings to one another, in a movement toward ever greater complexity and diversity—and yet ironically also toward unification at ever deeper levels. This energy is quite simply love under many different forms.”

The energy, love and relationship that are at the heart of the Triune God are the source both of unity and diversity, similarity and distinction, community and individuality. As much as they are unified in the oneness of God, the three persons of the Trinity are also separate and distinct, bound together in a relationship of love whose energy reaches out to embrace and include all creation. We need not be afraid to be gathered in, caught up by the energy that exists within and that streams forth from the heart of God. For just as the three persons of the Trinity do not sacrifice their distinctiveness in order to be one, neither do we give up that which makes us ourselves when we allow ourselves to be drawn into the oneness of God.The energy that holds the Trinity together is the energy that energizes the world, drawing into God’s orbit all who allow themselves to be captured and captivated by God’s love and in so doing increasing the presence of God in the world.

The unity and diversity embraced by the threefold God demonstrate that unity is not the same as uniformity and that it is often our differences (not the things we have in common) that enrich and enhance our relationships with each other and with the world around us. Contrary to what we might expect those things that set us apart from each other, and from the universe that we inhabit, are ultimately those things that draw us together. Our survival as a species depends both on our interconnectedness with all living (and non-living) things as much as it thrives on those things which make us distinct from the world around us. If we were all the same as one another there would be no need for relationship, nothing to attract us to the other and no energy to engage us in exploring what it is that unites (and what it is that divides) us. Just as opposites attract, and just as iron alloyed with carbon produces steel, so we are made stronger and our lives more interesting by diffence.

The relationship, energy and love at the heart of the Triune God create a model for the ordering of our relationships with one another. Being in relationship does not diminish any one person of the Trinity. Each member retains their distinctiveness while at the same time ceding any claim to superiority or dominance. If each member of the human race was secure in themselves, they would understand that they lose nothing by giving everything for the other. The Trinity that models perfect loving and perfect giving, demonstrates that wholeness in relationship reflects wholeness in personhood and that perfect relationships are partnerships between equals.

As our relationships with one another are built on the mutual respect modeled by the three-fold God, so too our relationships with the natural environment should reflect the Trinitarian nature of God. If our relationship with the universe reflected the love, energy and relationship revealed by the Triune God, it would not be destructive or exploitative but would be one of respect for creation and gratitude for all that creation provides for our sustenance and well-being.

A threefold God is not alone. A threefold God is not liable to dualism. A threefold God is relationship – a loving, dynamic, energizing relationship between three equals, each willing to sacrifice their individuality in order to be part of the whole and yet able to retain a sense of identify and wholeness.

In God who is three and yet also one, we find perfect love and the model for perfect existence.

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Life-giving, all-embracing Trinity

May 26, 2018

Trinity Sunday – 2018

John 3:1-17 (The gospel set for the day – not the starting point for this reflection)

Marian Free

In the name of the Trinity – boundless and abundant love, creative and life-giving force, all-giving and endlessly welcoming. Amen.

I have just started reading the novel, Gone Girl. The story seems to be about the disappearance of a young woman who has reluctantly moved with her new husband from New York to an uninspiring town in the mid-west. The novel is written from the point of view of the young woman, Amy, and her husband, Nick. Amy and Nick each have an opportunity to tell their side of the story. This means that while the readers are engaged in the investigation into Amy’s disappearance they are, at the same time, given a glimpse into the unraveling of what had appeared to be a perfect relationship – brought about by differing expectations and by different experiences of family.

Human relationships can be messy, complex and destructive, threatened by insecurity, damaged by carelessness and undermined by unrealistic expectations. The inability of some to form mutually respectful relationships is exposed not only in families, but also in communities, nations and the world as a whole. It is only too obvious that our world is not an harmonious place in which people rejoice in difference and seek the well-being of others. Our fractured and broken world is a place in which competition rules and in which suspicion and fear cause people to look inwards, protecting what is theirs and creating boundaries between themselves and those whom they believe threaten our security and our comforts.

Richard Rohr suggests that the Trinity provides the answer to the problem of relationships with each other, within communities and between the nations of the world. A greater understanding of the relational nature of God – Father Son and Spirit, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier might, he suggests, help us to relate better to God and more importantly to one another. He points out that the Trinity is a much-neglected aspect of our theology. The concept is difficult to explain, and most clergy are grateful for the fact that the Trinity is celebrated only once a year rather than on every Sunday of every year. Rohr quotes Karl Rahner who states: “Christians are, in their practical lives, almost mere ‘monotheists’. We must be willing to admit that, should the doctrine of the Trinity have to be dropped as false, the major part of religious literature could well remain virtually unchanged.”

When I first read that quote, I thought that Rahner was right. I wondered how many of us would be truly distressed if we discovered that God was one and not three at all. We might even be relieved to learn that we no longer had to struggle with the conundrum of a threefold God.

On reflection though, it seemed to me that while we may not be able to articulate the meaning, most of us do relate to God who is three but is also one. God as Trinity is something we know intuitively. Over the course of a lifetime the Trinitarian God becomes part of our DNA. Though we tend to use shorthand when we pray – God, Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, we simply assume that when we pray to one we pray to all, when we relate to one we relate to all.

The problem – if there is a problem – is that because we take for granted the threefold nature of God, we may not take the time to reflect on the meaning of the Trinity and to consider what it really means to engage with God who is Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver and we (and perhaps the world) are the poorer for this. Perhaps, if we make an effort to struggle with the relational nature of the threefold God, we will be better equipped to share that mystery with others. If we really grasp what it means to worship a threefold God we might discover that the Trinitarian God is a model for all relationships and a solution to all the problems of our fragmented world.

Last year on this day, I read you the poem that is in the Foreword of Richard Rohr’s book The Divine Dance. I confess that I haven’t read the book to its end, but what I have read has been life-changing and faith-renewing. Rohr has helped me to know God in a new way and my faith is enriched by that knowing. In fact, I don’t think that I am over stating it if I say that I feel that I have found my way to the heart of the Trinitarian God. Rohr has helped me come to grips with the Trinity in a way in which all my academic study did not – indeed could not.

I have come to see that God who is three is relational. God relates to Jesus who relates to the Spirit who relates to God, who relates to the Spirit who relates to Jesus, who relates to God in an outpouring of love that flows from one to another and back again. A constant stream of love that in turn creates an atmosphere of love that cannot help but flow outward from the threefold God to the world – drawing the whole world into a loving and welcoming embrace. The love that each person of the Trinity has for the others is complete and without reserve. Nothing is held back, each person of the Trinity is totally open to the other members of the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity is completely vulnerable – having given everything of themselves to the other persons.

In their love for one another, the members of the Trinity create an energy that is life-giving and dynamic, a creative force that drives and empowers all that is good in this world. God in relationship is generous, self-giving and abundant. God in relationship is not remote and disinterested, but is fully engaged and participatory. God in relationship is fully immersed in the world and invites us to fully immerse ourselves in God. God who is relational has no boundaries, but welcomes us into the very heart of the Trinity that we might be caught up and held in the stream of love that flows between the three. The threefold God is not afraid that our presence (or the presence of anyone else) will contaminate their divinity, but rather has absolute confidence that our being in relationship with God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier will serve to enhance and enrich that relationship and our relationships with one another.

The Trinity models the love that can be the salvation of the world – love that heals and sustains, love that delights in the other, love that gives itself entirely without losing anything of itself and without seeking anything in return, love that embraces difference, love that seeks the well-being of the other and love that refuses to exclude anyone from that love.

God who is one could be aloof and alone. God who is two could be self-contained – each focussed wholly on the other. God who is three is other-centred, inclusive, life-giving and welcoming. The Trinity, God who is three invites us all to be a part of this loving community, to allow ourselves to be loved and to give ourselves in love and in so doing, to contribute to the healing of the world.

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Love, Laugh, Sing

June 10, 2017

Trinity Sunday – 2017

Matthew 28:16-20

Marian Free

 

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, three in one, one in three. Amen.

Every now and again one comes across an image or a phrase that brings utter clarity to an idea that until that moment had been clouded or obscure. Such was the case for me when I read a poem by William Paul Young (author of The Shack). In the foreword to Richard Rohr’s book on the Trinity The Divine Dance[1], Young has written a poem that, for me, shone a light on the Trinity in a way that nothing else has. It goes:

ONE alone

is not by nature Love

or Laugh

or Sing

ONE alone

may be Prime Mover

Unknowable

Indivisible

All

and if Everything is All and All is One

One is Alone

Self-Centred

Not Love

Not Laugh

Not Sing

TWO

Ying/Yang

Dark/Light

Male/Female

contending Dualism

Affirming Evil/Good

And striving toward Balance

At best Face-to-Face

but Never Community

THREE

Face-to-Face-to-Face

Community

Ambiguity

Mystery

Love for the Other

And for the Other’s Love

Within

Other-Centred

Self-Giving

Loving

Singing

Laughter

A fourth is created

Ever-loved and loving.

The contrast between One alone and three in community spoke powerfully to me. A God who is alone could be aloof and unapproachable and, without others, may not laugh and sing. A God who is two has the potential to be divisive – one pitted against the other, each competing for attention. A God who is three yet one is a God who is community – loving, playful and joyful, inviting relationship, inviting us into that relationship.

It is easy for us to imagine that a Triune God is the invention of the Christian church, that God who was one, suddenly became three when Jesus entered human history. That, of course, is nonsense. God is God. God doesn’t suddenly morph from one to three just because, in God’s great love for us, God entered into the stream of human history.

God has been in relationship from the very beginning: creating humankind in God’s image, choosing and speaking with Abraham, communicating directly with Moses and with the prophets. God the Creator gave Godself to humankind in revelation over and over and over again long before God gave Godself to us in the form of Jesus. At the same time over and over again, God has created a response from humanity, working within us in Spirit so that we might know and respond to God.

From the beginning of time then God has been known and expressed as Godself, as God’s self-communication and as God’s presence within us enabling us to respond to God. It is only since Jesus’ presence among us that we have named God as three persons – Father, Son and Spirit – only since the early days of the church that we have struggled to form a doctrine to express in words something that we have always known in our hearts, that God is Creator, Revealer and Enabler.

As the poem suggests, this is important – not least of all, because a Trinitarian God is a God in community. A creative, energizing force is not alone or competitive, but is a divine dance of love that knows no division or separation and creates, sustains and embraces us. The relationship between the Father and the Son, the Father and the Spirit, the Son and the Spirit, the Son and the Father, the Spirit and the Father and the Spirit and the Son is such that none are separate, but all three together incorporate the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Spirit.

A God who is relationship both demonstrates relationship – a relationship that is inclusive, self-giving and open – and invites us into that relationship so that as God is one, so we are one with God.

The Trinity is a gift and not a burden. Instead of trying to get our head around the doctrine, the how and why of it all, let us simply rejoice in a God in whose being is Love and Laugh and Sing and who includes us in the loving, the laughter and the song.

[1] Rohr, Richard with Morrell, Mike. The Divine Dance:The Trinity and your Transformation. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016, 19.

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God is relationship – Trinity Sunday

May 21, 2016

Trinity Sunday – 2016

Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-giver[1]. Amen.

Whilst in the process of thinking about today’s sermon, I was reminded of the debate around alternate Trinitarian language – in particular the arguments against using the expression Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier in the place of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The heart of the argument is this: that the relational nature of the traditional language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is lost when Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier are used.

Language is important because it both describes our reality and defines our reality. That is, we use words to make sense of the world around us and those words then take on a meaning of their own, which in turn affects how we see the world.

A good example is the use of language to label other people – especially those who are different from ourselves. Up until the 1980s it was not uncommon to refer to a person by their disability. No one thought twice about referring to a person as “a spastic” or “a mongoloid”. In that way a person was defined more by their physical condition rather than by their personality or by their ability. Thankfully that use of language is by and large in the past. Today we might refer to someone as a person with cerebral palsy – acknowledging that they are a person first and foremost. The change in language use helps us to see people differently and helps them to have a self-identity that is distinct from their disability.

Despite dictionary definitions, words do not carry the same meaning for everyone. For example our experience of “Father” or “Dad” can vary from that of a loving, interested caring man, through that of a distant, indifferent man to that of an overbearing or abusive person. Our experience of our own father may determine our own understanding of what a father is. If our experience of “Father” has only been of someone who hurts or belittles us, we might find it hard if not impossible to apply that terminology to God. A woman who has been raped or sexually abused, might have the same difficulty relating to the maleness of Jesus[2]. It can be hard for such a person to believe that a man – even a man such as Jesus can really identify with the experience of a violent or unwanted sexual attack.

A greater understanding of issues such as domestic violence and rape has led the church to embrace a greater variety in the language we use for God and to a lesser extent for Jesus. This has two benefits. First of all it recognises that the bible itself refers to God in more than one way; that God cannot be confined by language; that God is neither male nor female and that while we might attribute human characteristics to God, God is anything but human. An examination of the Old Testament reveals that the language for God is not restricted to Father, but includes feminine and even inanimate language to try to capture the grandeur and ineffability that is God[3]. Secondly, broadening the language for God enables those for whom “Father” does not bring to mind images of gentleness, love and encouragement, to use language that does encompass those characteristics for them.

Of the three-persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is the least bound by gender-defining language. This might be because the Spirit is the most difficult to conceptualise and also because the Spirit is never named other than by its nature.

The issue of language is more complex when it comes to the Trinity. An important aspect of the Trinity is the relationship between the three-persons, a relationship of inter-connection that is both a model for and a reminder of our relationships with one another. As members of the Body of Christ, we are invited into relationship with one another and more importantly into the relationship shared by the members of the Trinity.

There are many who argue that if we are to change the language of the Trinity from Father, Son and Spirit we will lose the sense of relationship, mutuality and intimacy that this formula implies.

I am a biblical scholar, not a theologian, but it seems to me that if we understand the nature of the Trinity to be relational it is not impossible for terminology such as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier to take on a relational aspect. Surely we understand that the Creator is the person within the Godhead to whom we attribute the creation of the world, that the Redeemer is the one who entered the world and was crucified and restored to life for our salvation and that the Sanctifier is the person within the Godhead who enlivens and sanctifies us in the present moment and until eternity. It is not the language that we use so much as the understanding of that language that gives it meaning[4].

In the final analysis, the Trinity is a glorious mystery that invites us into a relationship with a God who is beyond description and of whom we only ever glimpse the smallest detail. The Trinity is a wonderful gift extended to us through the church. It is a shame to waste time arguing over words when we could be letting ourselves be caught up into an experience of God that is impossible to capture and even more impossible to describe.

 

[1] From a version of the Lord’s Prayer in the New Zealand Prayer Book.

[2] There is a powerful poem written by a survivor of sexual abuse who, when confronted by the image of a woman on the cross, was able to understand that Christ knew her own experience and had been with her in her suffering.

[3] God is depicted as midwife (Ps 22:9), as mother (Is 49:13-15, 66:13, Ps 131:2, Is 42:13-15) and as giving birth (Is 42:15, Jer 31:20, Is 14:1, Ps 77:10; 79:8) not to mention as a “rock” and a “fortress” and other inanimate images in the Psalms and elsewhere.

[4] Attempts to develop inclusive language Trinitarian formulae that are also relational leads to such clumsy language as, “Parent, womb, birth-giver” or “The Parent, the Christ and the Transformer”.

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