Enjoying the Trinity (31 May 2015)

TRINITY SUNDAY 2015 (Romans 8.12-17; John 3.1-17)
If I was sitting where you are today I wouldn’t want yet another sermon attempting to demonstrate the reasonableness of one God in 3 persons. Over the years I’ve sat through bewildering explanations involving ice cubes, water trays and steaming kettles, cans of 3 in 1 oil, jaffa cakes and the good old clover leaf. I’m not sure any of them made me much wiser or more secure in my faith.

Detailed sermons on the doctrine of the Trinity can be just as baffling. The proverbial choir boy reciting the Athanasian Creed which says: ‘the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Spirit incomprehensible’, whispers to his mate that: ‘if you ask me the whole blooming thing is incomprehensible!’ Many will sympathize with him. Why a doctrine in the first place?

The doctrine arose because of the need to identify the God that the early Christians were proclaiming. The question was being asked ‘is this the same God as the Jews are worshipping?’ In the second century Gnosticism became a rival to Christianity. On the surface much of it looked the same, but was it really the same God?

Today, I'm not going to delve into doctrine or attempt clever demonstrations of its reasonableness but reflection on the Christian experience that has led to the doctrine. C.S. Lewis writes about the Christian experience of prayer:‘An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get into touch with God. But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God - that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him. You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying - the goal he is trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on - the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal. The whole 3-fold life of the 3-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary act of prayer.’

This morning we have been dropped into six verses of one of the great and complex passages in scripture – Romans 8. It doesn’t give us a schematic diagram of God but it does give us another description of our experience. There is something/someone (we call the Spirit) inside us urging us not to live by the flesh and its sinful ways. This is the same One who helps us relate to God as our Father and to see ourselves now as adopted sons of God and therefore brothers of Christ, and co-heirs with him. We are no longer slaves to sin but adopted sons of God.

All this relies heavily on our understanding of Roman households and slaves within them. Slaves were stripped of all family ties; they had no identity of their own. Their only identity came through the head of the household. On the other hand to be a ‘son’ was to have status within Roman society; it gave you the ability to be your Father’s heir. The same went for adopted sons. 

 If you know the story of Ben-Hur you’ll remember a perfect example of what adoption means in this context.Ben-Hur (played by Charlton Heston) has become a slave on a galley ship. When it is sunk he saves the life of a prominent Roman citizen Arrius (played by Jack Hawkins). Back in Rome at a party for all his friends Arrius, whose own son has died, makes Ben-Hur his adopted son (and names him Arrius).  Before the assembled company he says: ‘The formalities of adoption have been completed. Young Arrius is now the legal bearer of my name and the heir to my property.’ Arrius gives Ben-Hur the ring from his finger. Ben-Hur then says: ‘I shall always try to wear this ring as a son of Arrius should – with gratitude, affection and with honour.’

I think the Spirit of God is a bit like that ring. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given us his Spirit as a pledge to show who we are. The Spirit of the Triune God is our adoption certificate that proves our sonship. We are welcomed into the family of God; children of God and co-heirs with Christ of all that God has for us in heaven.

Trinity Sunday is a day when we are in danger of focusing solely on a doctrine. The doctrine is there to define who God and also to interpret our common Christian experience, maybe especially our experience of the Spirit.

Poor Nicodemus – he was doing his best but he couldn’t quite grasp what Jesus was getting at. It was just an intellectual conundrum. He needed to experience the wind of the Spirit in his life. The Spirit that draws us into communion with the God who is, in his very being, persons in relationship with each other. 

Let's not allow the Trinity to become an intellectual conundrum for us to solve.  But let's enter into the life of the Trinity and enjoy the experience, discovering more of the richness of our inheritance in Christ.