Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Sermon 26 May 2013. St Philip's Camberwell

 Feast of the Most Holy, Most Glorious, Most Blessed and Undivided Trinity

This is a long sermon, even by my standards. I can reassure you that it is not what I said in situ, but what I wrote up after delivery. If anyone read last year's sermon on the Trinity (for Trinity Sunday), you will I am afraid see some repetition. It was, to be fair, for a different congregation. And I don't really mind 'banging on' about how the doctrine of the Trinity is as relevant as anything else in Christianity, relating to our right worship, so that we live aright. There, sermon over. Now for the sermon...

I must apologise if I offend anyone but I am going to be blunt. There is something that I hate. (Something, not someone!) I hate the old joke that goes:

On Trinity Sunday the preacher mounts the pulpit and says:

'In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Trinity! The Trinity... is a mystery!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.'

And he sits down.

What I hate is the implication that the doctrine of  the Trinity is the one part of Christian teaching that your average Christian can't be expected to have any meaningful connection to.

It is for the experts only, or the real keenies.

I say: No! Don't get me wrong. I am not saying the doctrine of the Trinity is easy. The preacher is right. The Trinity is a mystery. It is a Mystery with a capital M. This means we will never - not even in eternity - come to understand or comprehend it fully, get the measure of it. My point is: Yes, this makes it hard to find the right words to use, but compared to what?  

What is there about God which is easy, which is not a Mystery?

You might say: Well, the really simple stuff like 'God exists'. But that is far from simple. What does it mean for an existing thing to exist? It must take up time and space. But God is outside of time and space. So it is extremely difficult to say that 'God exists' - and the Church Fathers knew this; this isn't some modern idea. To speak of God, we have to stretch our language almost out of recognition. Again, what of 'God speaks'. That may sound like a more authentically biblical approach, and so be easier. But if God speaks to us, God must use human language. And how can God convey divine truths using that hopelessly inadequate thing, human language, coming as it does from human minds and human societies? Or again, 'God comes to us'? But in what sense was God ever distant? Or can it make sense to say God is now somehow 'even nearer'? All the time, we are stretching language to convey something of the Mystery of God. So! If our preacher-friend finds he does have some things to say about God on the remaining 51 Sundays of the year,then, in all humility, he owes them some reflections on Trinity Sunday too!

God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and God is One. This indeed is Mystery. I cannot explain it for sum it up. What I can do is tell the story of the Trinity. Here is one version. After the Resurrection, Christians found it right to worship Jesus, to pray to and worship Him as the Son of God. They also found it right to honour the memory of his mortal life, when he himself prayed to and worshipped his Heavenly Father. So Christians found it right to pray to and worship the Father and the Son. And, over the centuries, while they were reflecting on this (yes, it took centuries), they also realised they had come to find it right to worship the Spirit moving among and through them. All this while insisting that God is One, Unique and Undivided. 

Now, if you don't start where Christians start, with worship of the Son of God, then the rest will not make sense. Indeed, to many religious people it doesn't make sense at all, but is rather a blasphemy. But if you do start where Christians start, then it makes more sense to say that we worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, than to say other things, which might sound simpler, but (usually) turn out not to be. So the doctrine of the Trinity says: This is how we celebrate God-as-Christians-celebrate-God. 

The doctrine of the Trinity, then, is about our celebration, our worship, our awe, our exuberant praise of Living God and our silent contemplation of the One who humbled and humbles himself as Body, in Bread, in Wine. To stress this point, I have been known to get the congregation to sing along with me the chorus to the song, The Joys of Mary. Do you know it? The chorus is: 'Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost, through all eternity! Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost through all eternity!' I'll spare you more! The point is: God, Holy Trinity, is to be praised, and is worthy of our praise. Not to be examined or explained away. But also not to be denied, or diminished. 

Liturgy is the technical name for our worship of God Holy Trinity. It happens that I've been thinking this week about liturgy and Liturgical Time. Did you realise there was such a thing as Liturgical Time? I think there is. What makes Liturgical Time different from the time we think of as ordinary time is, well, it takes time! It moves slowly. Think about it. We have our Church Year, and none of it can be rushed. If we are used to coming to church, before long we realise that we are hearing the same stories. This is not because Christians are less imaginative than other folk. It is meant to be that way. We need to hear the same stories. And each year they will be the same. And each year they will be different. We will hear something or other differently, or make different connections.

So Liturgical time is not a straight line where we move on from one new thing, to another newer thing, to another even newer thing. But nor is it a closed-up circle, where we just revisit exactly the same old points, tediously. The best image must be of a spiral upwards. From the vertical vantage point, it is the same; from the horizontal, it is ascending. This is how it is meant to be. Because change does happen. But for most us, the real change happens slowly, incrementally, imperceptibly, as we inhabit and go on inhabiting the stories. Slowly. Liturgical Time takes time.

So what? Well, I want to say that this is a good thing. The contrast is with the world's time, when we are always in a rush from one point to the next. I don't just mean we are busy people; we may or may not be busy. I mean in ordinary time we are faced with so much that is urgent. Here is a problem, and it needs a solution now! We haven't got the luxury of inaction. We need an answer, even if it is a make-do answer and not the ultimate answer, because we need it now!

Brothers and sisters, isn't that precisely what the world is telling us today, as we deal with the horrible, hateful, sinful murder committed nearby in Woolwich? The media immediately wanted to know: What is to blame? Is it Islam? Is it political Islamism? Is it what our armies are doing in Afghanistan or elsewhere? Or it about gangs and knives and young men needing to be macho? Or poverty and disaffection? Or severe mental illness? We need the answer and we need it now (though deep down we know instant answers can't be found). 

But it is worse than that, for most of the media have already moved on from seeking an answer. They have given the answer: What is to blame is 'religious extremism'! It's a nonsense. Sisters and brothers, I know that most of us are - whether we use this language or not - 'extremely religious'. Are we somehow to blame? Or is it just people who are 'extremely Muslim'? Well, it happens that I spent Thursday in the company of some 'extremely Muslim' people, at a conference, and they were exceptionally gentle, kind, intelligent and open. So I just don't believe that. 

But the world just hasn't got the time to listen to such arguments. We need an answer and we need an answer now. Because something must be done. Because we must teach them a lesson! Bluntly, it is more important that we teach 'them' a lesson, than that we know with any confidence who 'they' are. Because this is urgent as that! Something must be done, even if it is the wrong thing. Because this is as urgent as that! Given all of that, is it surprising that, so often, the thing that must be done turns out to be violence of one sort or another, or coercion of one sort or another? 

The world's time, with its relentless urgency, is wrong. We do not need all the answers at once. We need the answers when we find them. And so we Christians can do the really radical thing. We can refrain from giving an answer. We can sit. Pray. Hope. Watch. (We do have to watch and discern - I am not for a moment saying that 'anything goes'.) We can draw strength from Liturgical Time, which allows real change - only as slowly as it needs to happen for it to be real, enduring, and healing. 

So, through slow, Liturgical Time, we praise Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God. And we bear the pain of those who mourn and those in fear. And (if we are Christians) we bear the pain of those who turn to violence and may wish us ill. Pray. Hope. Watch. Because it is the loving worship of the Triune God-who-is-love which truly changes things. In God's good time. Mysteriously.

'Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost through all eternity'.

Amen.