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Trinity Sunday
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A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
✛
‘Always with love and for love.’
Preached at the Chapel Royal
From the Gospel according to Saint John: Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” (John 16:13) Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus said that his disciples would know the truth and that “the truth will make you free.” (John 8:32)
The doctrine of the Trinity is at one and the same time the most essential and yet the least understood parts of the Christian tradition. If you turn to the scriptures, you will find allusions to it, and you will be able to find many passages that help us understand it – but to define the traditional doctrine, you will have to piece them all together. What you will not find is that dogma carefully articulated. It was many years before the doctrine was expressed in credal form and the Nicene Creed was not created until 300 years after the birth of Jesus Christ.
There have been, of course, many attempts to find analogies to help us understand the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity; the clover leaf; the three states of water; a three-dimensional cube made up of two-dimensional squares; I even saw a primary school assembly plan that used the children’s program “Thunderbirds” which, I must say, was quite enjoyable… Jeff, (God the Father) stays at HQ on Tracy Island. The sons (Jesus) go out to rescue people. They communicate by radio (The Holy Spirit). The problem for me, though was…where did Lady Penelope fit in? At the end of the day, all analogies fail because they are just that – analogies. It seems strange that something so fundamental to our faith as Christians took so long to be expressed in words but, perhaps, that is the whole point; the doctrine of the Trinity is not like a scientific formula; rather, it is through experience that the first Christians were led to express the doctrine of the Trinity.
Preaching on Trinity Sunday several years ago, the late Pope Francis said this, “God does not want so much to reveal to us that he exists, but rather that he is the ‘God with us,’ that he loves us, is interested in our personal story and cares for each person, from the smallest to the greatest,” (Sermon preached in 2018).
When God creates humankind in the Book of Genesis, he said, “Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our likeness…So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” In other words, from the very beginning, human beings were called to live in community because the most perfect community is found within God as the Holy Trinity. To be fully human. therefore, is to acknowledge our relationship with a loving Father in union with his Son Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. As Rowan Williams once famously said, “Human beings deserve to have the fullness of their humanity engaged.” (From an on-line interview)
How often, though, do we live such shallow, almost two-dimensional lives – devoid of the depth of what we are called to be because of that love of God. This is even more painfully revealed when communities or countries are broken and divided; when people distrust one another; when there is violence or abuse; when people are not given the dignity of equality as human beings, those communities fail to reflect the image of God who is perfect community. We Christians are called by Jesus to allow the Spirit of truth to dwell in us, and that truth will set us free of all that hinders the making of community, thus reflecting the love of God who is perfect community.
When he delivered the historic Speech from the Throne to open the 45th Parliament of Canada just a matter of days ago, I was struck by the words of introduction of His Majesty The King in acknowledging that the parliament building was, itself, built on unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people. The King said, “This land acknowledgement is a recognition of shared history as a nation. While continuing to deepen my own understanding, it is my great hope that in each of your communities, and collectively as a country, a path is found toward truth and reconciliation, in both word and deed.”
Truth and reconciliation, in both word and deed. How significant that those words were chosen by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu with the reconstruction of South Africa after the Apartheid era: Truth and reconciliation.
“The Spirit of truth will lead us into all truth, and will set us free, said Jesus; and Saint Paul reminded the Church in Galatia, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”(Galatians 5:25)
Truth and reconciliation in both word and deed.
Last year, the children of the Chapel Royal made their first visit to the United States and sang with my own choristers at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue. As part of those celebrations, I was privileged to visit the Chapel Royal in Toronto, at Massey College, built on Treaty Lands and Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. As a Chapel Royal, it is unique in that it stands as a witness to that process of truth and reconciliation that our King spoke of, and how that truth and reconciliation must be experienced in both word and deed. It is very moving to see the emblems of the United Kingdom and the First Nations sitting side by side in the Chapel, and a most beautiful mural as one enters the Chapel depicting cooperation and reconciliation.
The scriptures make it plain that we are all made in the image of God and they also make it plain that God yearns for humanity to recognize that image and how it is expressed through living in community in harmony. For that reason, alone, God does not tolerate injustice; it is found in the cry of the prophets; it is found in the songs of protest which we call the psalms; and it is experienced in the life of Jesus Christ when God humbled himself to come among us to call us back to himself and to make us fully three-dimensional creatures with a capacity to truly love in the way that only those who know God can truly love.
In his sermon I mentioned earlier, the late Pope Francis went on to say that the doctrine of the Trinity “makes us contemplate the mystery of a God who incessantly creates, redeems and sanctifies, always with love and for love, and to every creature that welcomes him, he gives the gift of reflecting a ray of his beauty, goodness and truth.”
Always with love and for love.
Perhaps, at the end of the day, that is the greatest definition of the Trinity that might help us discover our true humanity and give us hope for our churches, our communities and, ultimately, for ourselves:
‘Always with love and for love.’
And done, as His Majesty so rightly said, by seeking truth and reconciliation, in both word and deed.
