No kittens

Notes for a Sermon preached on May 31st, Trinity Sunday, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17

Notes only – Family Service with interaction with the children.

Today is Trinity Sunday. Day we celebrate the Christian Doctrine of God as one and three, three persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Sounds complicated. Supposedly day most likely to hear heresy from the preacher. Best way of avoiding heresy according to a popular meme: “say nothing and show pictures of kittens instead.” 

But I won’t – so you can get your pens and paper out and get ready to report me to the bishop.

But another way of avoiding heresy just refer to creeds - there’s even a special creed that focuses on Trinity: the Athanasian Creed (BCP page 864). “And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. … The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.”

And so it goes on, I wonder why we don’t say it every Sunday?

But perhaps our children can help us? Question to children: What is God like? How would you describe God? What does God do?

………

Athanasius right that God never fully comprehensible. But we do have experience of God, our own and those we can read about in Scripture like in today’s readings: 

The God in Isaiah (6:1-8) sounds pretty frightening to me: “the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty” accompanied by earthquakes, lots of smoke, seraphs with six wings …. And that is God too. The God who created everything and is almighty. 

But God is also the one Jesus called Dad: “Abba! Father!” and Paul says that we can call God Father too because we are all children of God through the Spirit. (Romans 8:12-17)

And as we also heard this morning this almighty God who created the world, also loves the world, and loves it so much that he sent God’s Son into the world to be saved through him. (John 3:17)

God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit. We heard about all three persons in the readings. Some people prefer to use the words Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier – and those are all things that God has done and does, but not the only things and it does sound as if just one person created, another redeemed, and a third makes us holy. And that’s wrong. The Spirit moved over the waters at Creation, and the Word was there in the beginning, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all involved in our salvation and in our transformation, they are separate but also inseparable.

I put one of the traditional symbols of the Trinity on the cover of the bulletin. It’s actually showing the three persons of the Godhead.

[Get 3 children to join hands to form symbol of Trinity]

Three persons interwoven, intertwined, fully involved with one another, fully connected as one but three. But not so tight or exclusive that there is no room for us, for God’s children born of water and the spirit. And not turned in on themselves, for God is always looking out and is always fully involved in the world that God, all of God, created, redeemed, sanctified and loves.

Amen