In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the feast day that commemorates the Most Holy Trinity - the embracing of God in 'three Persons' Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This feast day commemorates a doctrine rather than a historical event - a doctrine that emerged from reflections on biblical witness and Christian experience.
A doctrine that we will shortly profess together, as we do each Sunday and each feast day when we say together the Nicene Creed: that we believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth - our creator; the one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotton Son of God - our redeemer; and the Holy Ghost, (the Holy Spirit) the Giver of life - our sustainer. This creed was drafted in the fourth century and has been kept as feast day throughout the Christian world since the fourteenth century. This surely evokes a very powerful image of Christians in communities of faith around the world down the ages verbally professing the same belief!
But these words that we profess, this doctrine of the Trinity, the nature of God, is a mystery, a mystery that these Christians, and others, down the centuries have struggled to articulate - we just don't have the human language for something so divine - so beyond us. But what we cannot make sense of in our heads we can feel in our hearts - through faith, through our relationship with God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The sense of being called by love to love, being in relationship - meeting God in prayer, through worship, and in the sacrament of Holy Communion.
Each of today's readings speaks to us of the mystery and magnificence of God revealed to us - God's people, in the Trinity. They also illustrate the lack of vocabulary humans display when speaking of and to God.
In Isaiah we heard that it required the transforming power of God's presence for the cleansing of the prophet's lips, thus restoring wholeness and directing Isaiah's speech - a gift from God that allowed him to respond to the call "whom shall I send" with "Here am I; send me".
In our epistle we heard the cry of "Abba! Father", the cry that God responds to from the Christian children who have adopted status - those who live in the Spirit. That is all we have to do - simple language - sufficient language.
In our Gospel reading we heard the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, whose speech fumbles and falters and reveals his lack of understanding, but he is not condemned, as we are not condemned. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, in darkness to be brought into the light - the new way - Jesus who brings us out of darkness into light by His divine gift of love.
Although scripture does not give us a fully formulated doctrine of the Trinity it does contain all of the elements out of which theology has constructed the doctrine.
As when we meet the 'Persons' of the Trinity together in Luke at Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist when we read of the Holy Spirit descending upon Him in the form of a dove and the voice from heaven saying "you are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased". The three in relationship.
This relationship - the nature of God in three 'Persons' is what the early church, the community of Christ's faithful people knew they were tasked to share with the world after Pentecost after each had been filled with the Holy Spirit. It was now their responsibility to carry the message of God's redemptive action into the world - their mission. They had to reconcile the Divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit with Jewish monotheism.
We have an image of that relationship here in this fall - the Triquetra (try ket ra) - our All Saints symbol - 'logo' if you like! Using the shape of a fish, one of the oldest Christian symbols, the shape comprises three equal arches of the circle which expresses the equality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The union of the arches represent the unity of the three while their continuous form symbolises eternity and their interweaving the indivisibility of the Trinity. In the centre is an equilateral triangle, the most ancient of the Trinity symbols.
Tom Wright suggests that "it would be a mistake to give the impression that the Christian doctrine of God is a matter of cleaver intellectual word-games or mind games. No, for Christians, it is always a love-game. God's love for the world calling out for a response from us to transform us and our broken world."
Our response is personal - we are a church, we are a congregation of faith but the relationship we have is personal. How we each think of God is personal to each one of us as is how we respond the God's call, God's call for us to draw closer.
I recently read Wm Paul Young's book "The Shack". It is a story of the painful journey Mackenzie (Mack) makes while in the grip of his 'Great Sadness', a journey he makes to meet God, in response to God's invitation - Father Son and Holy Spirit. He responds and goes in search of answers. During his weekend with the three 'Persons' he encounters God in surprising ways and in so doing he grows to know, and to trust them and in so doing grow to know himself more clearly.
Each of us journey in our own way and in our own time and at our own pace, and we will, each one of us, relate to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in different ways.
And it is as pilgrims on the journey, pilgrims who lack the vocabulary to articulate the nature of God, that we are called to live our lives 'casting the net', not a net of entrapment, rather a net that, like a spiders web reaches out, interweaves and connects. It is not so much what we say but how we live that will carry the message of God's redemptive action - that is our mission as it was the mission of the disciples after Pentecost.
The Try ket ra depicts the perfect relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - a relationship of love and equality, not of power struggle. As Christians we are called to reflect the image of God in the world, sharing the love we know we receive from God with others.
The love that Catherine of Siena wrote of in her Dialogue: "You, eternal Trinity, are the craftsman; and I your handiwork have come to know that you are in love with the beauty of what you have made, since you made of me a new creation in the blood of your Son."
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Sermon by: Christine Barclay