Trinity Sunday
D. G. Phillips
Holy Communion
LaHave, Vogler’s, Crousetown, May 18, AD 2008
Revelation 4:1-11 John 3:1-15
'You are worthy, O Lord, to receive
glory, and honour and power;
For you created all things, and for your
pleasure they are,
and were created.’
Several years ago, when I was being brought back
by God into His Church, I was traveling in Algiers, the capital of
Algeria in North Africa, a predominantly Muslim country. It was
Christmas Eve day and I knew there was an ancient cathedral in the
city – so got a cab to go there. The cab driver, who was Muslim,
assumed rightly I was a Christian, asked me how God could possibly
be three if God is One? I admitted I didn’t know. I had never seen
the Creed of St. Athanasius at the time, and I’m not sure it would
have helped him – he didn’t believe in Jesus.
I admit all these years later to still being much
like Nicodemus in today’s Gospel – in the dark about God, but
coming to Jesus to ask Him in my darkness, Rabbi, we know that
thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles
that thou doest, except God be with him.
And this is in part what we do Sunday by Sunday
in coming to Church – it is to sit at Jesus’ feet because we believe
He is a teacher come from God and we want to hear him teach
us of heavenly things.
And since Advent last December, we have heard and
come to know a little more about the birth, life, death,
resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Jesus
has told us, If you have seen me you have seen the Father.
The Son is the perfect image of the Father – not bodily, since God
does not have a body, but spiritually. And Jesus says, I and the
Father are One. [If I hold a truth and one of you holds the
same truth, there are two of us but not two truths but one truth.
The Son of God is the fullness of the Truth – and God the Father
cannot be less than the fullness of the Truth – and so the Son says,
I and the Father are One.]
Now Scripture says that the Spirit giveth life
and only God can give life. So since the Spirit is truly God, then
He must be perfectly like the Father and so perfectly like the Son.
Jesus says, he shall not speak of
himself…He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall
shew it unto you.
So the Father is God, the Son is God and the Spirit is God, and yet
there are not three Gods but One God.
It is not surprising that we have great
difficulty understanding God the Holy Trinity. Here are two
reasons:
FIRST, it is not because the Trinity is
nonsensical or irrational, but because our vision is limited by our
being only human.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man
be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God...Except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh –
human; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit –
something more.
To come to know God and to participate in the
life of God we need the grace of God. Each of us has been baptized
– born of water and of the Spirit – and so we are catching
glimpses of God, we are being brought in to that Kingdom, by
trusting not in our own abilities but in the grace of God to lift us
there.
And SECOND, our ignorance of how God can be Three
in One, is also because our minds have been darkened by sin. If we
were perfect, we could look at our souls and see a mirror of the
Trinity in us because our souls are made in the image of the Triune
God. Our darkness is not just the ignorance of human limitations
but also because of the impurity of our minds. St. Paul says in 1
Corinthians, for now we look through a glass darkly – or
we see in a mirror dimly, but then (when we are perfected by God
we shall see Him) face to face [1 Cor 13:12].
The lesson today is from the Revelation of St.
John. St. John is a man whose soul was made ready, purified, for a
vision of heaven and of God near the end of his life on earth – and
he has shared it with the Church for all time. It was on the Lord’s
Day on the Isle of Patmos, as he was worshipping, that he was lifted
up in the spirit to the vision. What he saw was a vision of the
whole host of heaven – adoring the thrice holy Lord God Almighty
which was, and is, and is to come. And he saw the saints with
the crowns they had received from God casting their crowns before
the single throne, in other words, returning the glory and honour
and thanks to God. They have been taken up into the Love of the
Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father, which is the Holy
Spirit.
And we know even now something of this Spirit,
this Love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father –
don’t we.
When I got to the ancient cathedral in Algiers on
Christmas Eve day, it was a warm sunny day, and I walked up to it to
find out the times of the services that day or the next so I could
join in with the Christians there. But it was surrounded by barbed
wire – there was no indication of any services – it was clear it had
not been in use for a while. And my heart sank. I longed to join
in with fellow Christians, and the longing and desire to worship was
perhaps clearer to me, by it being denied to me that great feast
day.
Our love for these churches in Petite Riviere and
New Dublin, these hallowed places for worship, is a sign of our
participation in the life of God the Holy Trinity. We long to
worship God because we have received the Holy Spirit.
And each of us has been brought here today by the
Holy Spirit. And that Spirit, which proceeds from the Father,
inspires us to love the Son and to desire a deeper union with Him,
Holy Communion, that we may evermore dwell in Him and He in us. And
that same Holy Spirit in our hearts then leads us to cry out,
Abba, Father (we say the Our Father right after receiving
Communion). Do you see how our union with the Son, leads us to call
God our Father? We’ve been caught up into the life of God.
We are catching glimpses of the Holy Trinity.
And though we cannot explain well how God can be Three in One, we do
know that we long for a clearer vision, that we would have our inner
vision cleansed to behold such Beauty and Majesty, and that such a
vision, even in small glimpses, compels us to fall down before God
and return to Him the glory for the crowns he adorns us with in this
life and to give Him honour and thanks and praise.
This Trinity season, which we are in until
December, we will sit at Jesus feet Sunday by Sunday and learn first
about earthly and then of heavenly things. If we are willing, the
Spirit will lead us and will purify us that we might share in a
greater vision and an ever greater participation in the life and
adoration of the triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost – for….
Thou art worthy, O Lord,
To receive glory and honour and power;
For thou hast created all things,
And for thy pleasure [we] are, and were created.
Amen.
