SERMON FOR TRINITY SUNDAY 4TH JUNE 2023
Trinity Sunday
Have you ever read ‘Hard Times’, by Charles Dickens?
The first two chapters are set in a Victorian schoolroom,
‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
Let me see. What is your father?’
‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.
‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’
‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’
‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind… ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse…’
‘Bitzer…Your definition of a horse.’
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’
Horses being the family business Sissy Jupe knew exactly what a horse was, the definition given by the meritorious Bitzer added nothing to her understanding. Sissy surely had a better understanding of horses than anybody in the room, but her understanding came from experience not from books so in Gradgrind’s schoolroom it counted for nothing. If either Bitzer or Mr Gradgrind ever needed to break a horse they would soon find out how useful their definition was.
Trinity Sunday gives us a definition of God, a definition carefully worked out down through the centuries. We believe in One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three persons One God. Consubstantial, coeternal and coequal.
Now, Sissy Jupe, you know who God is. A horse is a graminivorous quadruped and God is a consubstantial, coeternal, coequal Trinity.
Reason is not the only way of knowing something; think about how you know those you are closest to you? Your deep knowledge of those closest to you comes from a relationship of love not from an abstract definition. It is no doubt true that your wife or husband or child or parent is indeed a bipedal culture bearing primate belonging to the species homo-sapiens, but that is not how you know your loved ones, and if someone declared you didn’t know your beloved because you couldn’t explain what a bipedal primate was, you would either feel abashed like Sissy Jupe or, if you were made of sterner stuff, you’d give your pedantic critic an ear bashing.
You don’t fall in love with someone by defining them, and it is the same with God, in fact it is especially so with God because, as the bible tells us, God is love. Knowing God is primarily a matter of the heart not of the head, so to know God you need to first engage the correct organ of knowledge, the heart not the head.
1 John 4; 7-8 says, ‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.’ John is explaining that love is the way to know God.
Perhaps people don’t recognise God because they have been told God is an idea, a consubstantial, coeternal and coequal proposition. God is love, people recognise love, they feel it, they know it. The self sacrificial, redemptive, healing love made known through the life of Jesus is a fundamental part of human experience. God is love, so at the most intimate, at the meaningful, at the deepest parts of your life there is God. In loving each other as Christ loved us we find the very presence of God. No wonder people don’t believe in God if the description we give matches nothing they know, yet the description God gives of Himself, the Word made flesh, matches our very humanity.
Ever since the Apostles proclaimed the Word made flesh theologians have been trying with their entire intellectual might to dissolve flesh back into words. Into strings of words that only those with an academic theological training can understand. If you want to understand God you would do better to put your book aside and go and love others as selflessly as Jesus loved us.
The Trinity is a relationship of perfect love, to say that the three persons of the Trinity are consubstantial, coeternal and coequal is a correct but rather abstract way of describing that eternal love. The truest response to the eternal love of the Trinity is to love God and each other, writing abstracted grammatical equations to try and describe that love is a legitimate response, and can be helpful, but it is not the heart of the matter.
Jesus said ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’, not ‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you can repeat and comprehend Trinitarian formulas.’
In the past Christians have been very mean to people who did not have a Trinitarian understanding of God, some still are. Christians who have got all the right words about the Trinity lined up in the right theological order have persecuted other people for not having the same understanding. To be mean to someone, to persecute them, because they haven’t the same understanding of the Trinity is to demonstrate conclusively that you have no real understanding of the Trinity because ‘whoever does not love does not know God.’
Do you want a simple illustration of the Trinity? Give someone a hug.
A hug translates love which cannot be seen into physical touch which can be seen and felt. A hug is a simple picture of the Word made flesh, and the feeling inside of you when you are hugged by a loved one – that is like the Holy Spirit.
One might say there is one hug – love, touch and the feeling inside.
The One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit pictured in a simple action, a hug. No doubt the theologians would howl ‘HERESY’, but if so that would be because they have neither poetry nor humour.
God is love, made touchable in the body of Jesus Christ, and made known in our lives by the Holy Spirit.
So if someone asks you for an explanation of the Trinity, give them a hug.
The absolute best explanation is to love them with the self giving love of Christ, but that is rather demanding and takes time, so give them a hug. If they really want to understand the meaning of the Trinity they may just get it from that. If all they want is to pick an argument with you about God then they will give up and clear off as we are English, and the notion of being hugged by a stranger or acquaintance is appalling.
Amen.
