“God was made human and human beings might be made divine” – Augustine

Trinity Sunday. Why do we need to give one particular Sunday over to the Trinity if Trinity is simply how Christians understand God? And I imagine that God gets preached about every Sunday; Sunday by Sunday preachers go through great trials to make these ancient writings about God relevant to us. But perhaps when we call this Sunday ‘Trinity Sunday’, that might be a hint that we should just talk about God, forget about making it relevant.

So this sermon is my attempt to say something about God that might bring you a slightly different insight of our triune God. I am going to do this by offering you the Trinity like we are offered novels.

A good novel, I think, isn’t there to echo back the world we know. Instead, a good novel should take us into a different world and, when we put it down, we come back to our world and things can seem different. And that’s how I want to talk about the Trinity this morning – an invitation to a different world, a strange world.

First of all, we need to understand that ‘Trinity’ is shorthand for a story. The story we re-tell when we get together as church, that makes sense of God. And it’s a story best summed up in that well-worn verse from John’s Gospel:

“For God so loved the world, that he sent his one and only Son.”

But, in order to understand this story, we have to go back to the very beginning, always a good place to start when you are trying to understand something! A really, really long story – in the version I have it’s a 964 page story.

The way I read the story, I believe it’s all about a love affair, a really long and involved love-affair. It’s a story about alluring love, a love that beckons, that desires and longs for intimate union. It’s a story that starts in a garden, where Adam and Eve, that first community, took long walks with God, sat and feasted in God’s presence. And at the very end of the story, in Revelation, the story culminates with another intimate scene, a marriage feast, the union of bride and groom – the church and Christ.

But, as we know, the path of the story isn’t strewn with rose petals. This constantly re-emerging problem comes at the very beginning. Humans – the object of God’s love- refuse to accept union with God as a gift. They, we, would rather make it happen when we want it, and how we want it. And so we hear of Adam and Eve, our ancestors, trying to make themselves like God, instead of waiting for God to offer a union beyond their wildest dreams.

And that’s a constant temptation, making love happen, forcing love, making the other, the desired, love us and accept us on our terms when and how we want it. I fear that our kind of love suffers from impatience, the impatience we see when Adam and Eve follow the advice of the serpent in the garden. It is refusal to be the kind of creatures, the kind of humans God created us to be – the kind of creatures God created as the object of his love – created for communion with God, created to share in God’s love, in the love that is God. But it’s all about the how, how we get there – or should I say how God gets us there, how God brings us into his loving embrace.

And it happens in and through Jesus. That’s what St Paul says in his letter to the Romans which reads: “it’s Jesus Christ who brings us into God’s presence, who takes us into God, who initiates us into God’s glory”. And as Augustine put it: “God was made human – that human beings might be made divine.”

‘Trinity is merely another name for this story, this story of God’s movement – or, I should say, the story of the movement of love which is God. This is where we get to an important insight of what we mean when we say ‘Trinity’ – it’s that God is not static. God isn’t that old bearded man upstairs, confined to his throne. “God is a movement, an impulse, a delight. God is the unceasing movement of love – endless invitation – the overflow and excess of self-giving.

A dancing God. In case you’re thinking I’m getting a little too fluffy and sentimental, I’ll give you the technical Trinitarian word for what I’m trying to explain. Maybe you’ll believe me if I use big and important words. It’s perichoresis. And it means that God’s identity is not static, not stagnant. God is simply the person we call “Father” or “Son” or “Holy Spirit”. Perichoresis means that God is the relationship between the three; God is the way the three are not separate and divisible individuals. They exist in and through one another, completely dependent on one another. That’s why I say that our God, the Trinity, is a dancing God – always moving, always in relationship, always in love, always giving, always deferring. It’s the sort of dance where the lead gets shifted at every turn.

The passage from John’s Gospel (16: 12-16), which is the reading set for Year C in the lectionary – even more so than our reading this morning – displays this dance of giving. Jesus says : “I still have many things to say to you…When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears and he will declare to you things that are to come”.. “because he will take what is mine and declare it to you” .. “All that the Father has is mine, for this reason I said that we will take what is mine and declare it to you.”  And if we remember from the beginning of John’s gospel – Jesus is God’s way of speaking – that Jesus is the Logos, the Word that comes from God.  So, it’s no small matter that Jesus gives up his role as Logos – the one who speaks God to us and allows the Spirit to take over that mission, that identity. As Jesus says in verse 14 of the John reading: “He (The Spirit) will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” But it’s not just the Spirit and Son working alone in partnership. Jesus gives the only thing he can – the only thing he has, the Father, when he says in verse 15: “All that the Father has is mine.”  Everything is shared. One gives to another. And it’s all for our sake, for the sake of intimate union with God.

How does this union play out? It’s one thing to listen to me go on and on and talk about how great it is that God is the triune dance of Father, Son and Spirit, but it’s quite another for us to feel part of that dance, to receive an invitation to the dance, to stand in the glorious presence of God. It’s one thing to say with St Augustine and many others that “God became human that human beings might be made divine.” And it’s quite another to feel our lives made part of that divine life of love.
I hope you won’t thing I’ve lost it – or something similar! But I believe the church, our worship, this ordinary gathering, and all the ways this fellowship overflows into the rest of our lives and through our lives into the world, is our dance with God. The good news of the gospel is that we are being lured into God’s love. The eternal life, that we are offered, is that very same eternal life of love that is our dancing God, eternal life being simply another way of talking about the triune life of God. And we are brought into that dance by the Holy Spirit. That’s the presence Jesus promised. And with the Spirit is the very love affair of God overflowing into our lives. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans; “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”  And shortly little Sasha will be receive that invitation to the dance as we baptise her in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and will receive the promise of God: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The best picture, the most complete vision we have of God, is Jesus – the one who is the Word of the Father, who was filled with the Holy Spirit, who submitted completely to the Spirit, who was driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness of this world. Jesus is the embodied invitation from God, the word of God, to enter into God’s dance, into the intimacy of God’s life of love.

How do we know if we have entered into the eternal dance of God, Father, Son and Spirit? We know it by the way we come here – week after week – and discern and receive Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God’s invitation to the divine dance of eternal life. Our worship is how we open ourselves to the breath of God, the Holy Spirit that forms us into the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ – offering us again and again God’s loving embrace, God’s invitation to the dance, the Word from God. And that’s called grace.

What does the Trinity look like? It looks like John 3: 16

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”

And what does this mean for the way we receive him – the way we receive the invitation of God – the world from God? It means loving like Jesus loves. Surrendering our perceived mission, our dearly held visions of success. For the sake of something never before dreamed or imagined, the eternal love of God.

As our parting word this morning – again words from St Paul to the Roman (5:3-5)
“We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” - Amen