Trinity Sunday

On this day when we celebrate and proclaim the Holy Trinity, as one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one, how do you explain this to people who are conditioned in all we do from childhood, to think and speak rationally.  The whole concept is totally contrary to human understanding, we may talk about someone having a split personality, but someone being three persons at the same time just doesn’t make sense to us.  We cannot get our heads around it.

The Church has many different depictions of the Holy Trinity, but the icon which defines the very essence of the Trinity is invariably the one which shows the Trinity in the form of three angels painted by the great Icon Painter Andrei Rublev in about 1410.  This Icon is considered a masterpiece of ancient Russian iconography. It is based on the story of the mysterious appearance of the three angels who visited Abraham and Sarah under the oak of Mamre.  In this Icon the persons of the Holy Trinity are shown in the order in which they are confessed in the Credo.  God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  If you look carefully all the three angels are blessing the chalice in the centre of the Icon, in which lies a sacrificed calf, prepared for eating. It is suggested the sacrifice of the calf signifies the Saviour’s death on the cross, while its preparation as food symbolizes the sacrament of the Eucharist.  All three angels have staves in their hand as a symbol of their divine power.

The first angel shown on the left, is vested in a blue undergarment which depicts his divine celestial nature, and a light purple outer garment which attests to the unfathomable nature and the royal dignity of this angel.  Behind him and above his head towers a house, the abode of Abraham, and a sacrificial alter in front of the house.  This symbolically expresses God’s master plan for creation.

The second angel is placed in the middle of the icon, above his head extend the branches of an oak tree, which reminds us of the tree of life that was standing in the Garden of Eden, and also alludes to the Cross.  The vestments worn symbolise the incarnation and divinity of God the Son.

The angel on the right is the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.  His light blue undergarment and smoky-green outer garment represents heaven and earth, and the life giving force of the Holy Spirit.

Rublev’s Icon while being an unsurpassed work of iconography and an art treasure, is first and foremost a visual representation of the revelation of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.  It speaks to us visually of God. Looking at this masterpiece no-one could doubt that Rublev has done God justice by his unique craftsmanship which allows us to visually understand, even in part, the concept of the Blessed Trinity, but how do we verbally express such a concept?  This visual representation actually makes us realise that it is impossible to ever do God justice by talking about him, our language as expressive as it is, cannot express the profoundest mystery of all, which is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

How can we speak about God who is the creator of all, both as high as the mountains and the very heavens themselves, and as deep as the deepest oceans, who is within us and yet beyond us, before us and after us, the God that encompasses what has been, is now and will be in the future, as the Old Testament Prophet said, “who can we compare God to”? And that is the problem for us on Trinity Sunday, we try to explain God in three persons when we cannot even explain God the Father.

The problem for us mortals is we must humanise and understand everything, or we feel inadequate and feel we have failed. It’s about control, we feel we must understand everything and then we can control it, the weather, the environment, science, even human life, and from recent debates about euthanasia, our own death, but the truth is there are things we do not and cannot understand and control, things that only God understands and controls. The Welsh poet-priest R.S.Thomas wrote, “For one like me, God will never be plain and out there, but dark rather and inexplicable”. And that is the truth, God is inexplicable, we cannot comprehend him, we cannot adequately describe him, we may have an image in our minds about what God looks like, but they are feeble attempts by people to describe God in human form, perhaps that’s why Muslim’s do not even attempt to describe God in visual form,  and deep down I think we know God doesn’t really look like an old man with a white beard sitting on a gold throne, or like the image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so perhaps we shouldn’t attempt to try to describe God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, perhaps we should say nothing and accept God for being God.  Perhaps we should remain silent and just contemplate God in our lives.

For Christians, as indeed for other religions, it is about the presence of God in our world and in our selves, about discovering and discerning the Holy Spirit in our lives, and to be able to do that we need to learn to be quiet, more reflective, more prayerful, to disengage from the hussle and bussle of our very busy lives and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us. That is what the Desert Fathers did centuries ago, that is what contemplatives do today.  And by their actions or should I say inaction they give us the lesson that teaches us when we are still and silent we become open to God in a new and open way, and can be more prayerful in our relationship with God.

But please don’t misunderstand me, being more prayerful doesn’t mean passivity, being still and silent and prayerful doesn’t mean inaction on our part, because we all cannot go off into the desert and lead solitary lives, and we probably wouldn’t want to anyway.  Looking at Rublev’s Icon speaks to me of relationship - three in one, one in three – speaks of how we are to be with each other and with community. How we are to live as Christians, how we act towards each other, and towards the world, a community which is constantly reaching out to each other and the wider community in self-giving and love.

Jesus called us to love, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you”.  As Christians we are called to live out that commandment, which can be very daunting and very costly in how we live our lives.  God, through Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit calls us to love our neighbours, our community, our nation, our world, it also calls us to love ourselves, which often can be the hardest thing to do, if we don’t love ourselves, loving others is very hard. Frankly there is no other way of being Christian, and as we embrace that call from Christ to love one another, we will find ourselves more caring about justice and peace, about our community and those who need our love and prayers in this church, this parish, this town, this world.

We hear this morning, Jesus’ commission to his disciples, which is his commission to us also,  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.  That great commissioning of all people for all time, and the promise, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”.

The angel told Joseph that his son, the Son of God, would be called Immanuel, which means God with us, and that was the promise Christ left us with, that God, the High and Mighty God, creator of all, God of the compassionate and merciful, is in our world, in our hearts and minds now and for all time.  Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.