May
my words be in the Name of the Holy & Undivided Trinity: +
Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.
Each
year the Sunday after Pentecost we have Trinity Sunday. And it is a
Sunday, you may have heard me say before, that some preachers regard
with a degree of trepidation, for it is a day when they feel obliged
to discuss one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith, that while God is One, he exists in three persons: Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit.
But
mysteries, I think, are only for explaining when it comes to the
fictional kind we find in detective novels and television programmes.
The nature of God, however, is not a problem for us to solve, to put
neatly into a box so that it does not trouble us any more. When it
comes to faith mysteries are for accepting. But that does not mean
there is nothing we can say about the matter. Indeed, I would think
it important that we consider how it is that we know that although
there is only one God he is three persons.
First,
let us begin by thinking about how it is that we know anything about
God. Natural reason can tell us much. We know, for example, that
everything in nature has a beginning and an end, even the universe
itself; and that nothing within our universe can cause itself to come
into being. That suggests that there must be something outside of
nature, some force outside of time and space which brought our
universe into being. That act of creation and the intricate design of
the universe argues that that force must have intelligence or mind –
in other words it must be some form of being. This being, existing
outside of time and space, must needs be eternal, without beginning
and without end; having the ability to create our seemingly infinite
universe out of nothing, it must be all powerful; and of unlimited
intelligence.
Such
things about God we can learn from observation of the world around
us. But, just as there are things we can learn about a person from
observing their actions, and other we can only know if they tell us,
there are things we can only know about God if he himself tells us.
And it is more than reasonable to expect that God would choose to
tell us something more about himself than we can gain by simply
looking at the world around us; if a Divine intelligence creates a
universe with other intelligent beings in it, then it simply makes no
sense to imagine that he would then not communicate with us in some
way.
And
if fact, God has communicated additional information about himself to
us. We have a record of these communications in Holy Scripture. And
we call this information Divine Revelation, for by it we know that
God has revealed information concerning himself to those he has
created.
And
I use the word 'know' rather than 'believe' deliberately; for
knowledge comes not just from the head but also from the heart. And
just as we can know things concerning God by use of our natural
reason and looking at the world around us, our heads, so also we can
learn of him by looking within ourselves, our hearts. We should not
be surprised at this; for the one who created the world also created
us. And this inner knowledge tells us that the one who created us
also communicates with us.
We
all have some experience of this, such as our in-built sense of
morality by which we know right from wrong and good from evil; we
have it also in our innate sense that this life is not all there is,
that there is something about human existence that goes beyond the
mere physical; and we experience it also in our instinct for the
Divine, an experience shared by all people, in all places, throughout
history. Others have experienced this Divine self-revelation more
clearly, more personally, and more specifically. And we call the
record of that Divine Revelation Sacred Scripture, which we have
collected together in that wondrous book we call the Holy Bible.
And
in the Bible we are told by God himself that he is three persons in
one God. We see this in our reading from St Matthew's Gospel today
when Christ himself commands his disciples to go out into the world,
baptising all people in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit. We see it in our epistle from the Apostle St Paul
when he blesses the church in Corinth with the words we now refer to
as the Grace – words referencing God in the three persons of the
Blessed Trinity. And we even see it in our Old Testament reading
today, words taken from the very first verses of the first book of
the Bible, Genesis, where we see first God himself, then his Spirit
hovering over the waters, and then his creative Word spoken, saying
'let there be light' – and that Word, we know from the opening
Chapter of St John's Gospel, was made flesh in Jesus Christ our Lord.
So
we know that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because he has told
us so in Sacred Scripture; and the knowledge of God that we have in
our hearts assures us that what Scripture tells us is true. We do not
have to understand how this can be any more than we have to
understand how it is that he is eternal; how Christ can be both God
and Man, or how it is that bread and wine becomes his Flesh and
Blood for us in the Holy Eucharist. It is enough for us that God
tells us it is so; and that we know in our hearts that it is true. A
truth that I pray all people in all places will come to know in the
Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
