Trinity Sunday
Trinity Sunday
This coming Sunday is known as Trinity Sunday. Of course, every Sunday is Trinity Sunday since our worship is shaped entirely by reference to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
And I think worship and prayer are the best ways to approach the mystery of the Trinity. We ought not to expect that we can fathom God; such a God would be akin to idol and not worthy of worship. And yet God seeks to be known, not distant or obscure. In that sense, the Trinity is a great gift to us because whatever else you can say about God, he is "relational". Fathers love their children, children are loved by their fathers, and our spirits are our most fundamental and intimate selves. If God wanted to be distant and unknowable, he would never have revealed himself in these ways.
This week I came across a sermon by Mike Higton, Professor of Theology and Ministry at Durham University in England, who preached (almost) the whole sermon in words of one syllable to demonstrate that the Trinity was not complicated beyond measure. I wanted to share his conclusion with you, below.
I look forward to worshipping with you on Sunday.
+Steve E
So there is God, the one to whom we pray, the one to whom we look, to whom we call out, the one who made the world and who loves all that has been made. And then there is God by our side, God once more the one with whom we pray; God in the life of this man who shares our life, this man who lives the life of God by our side, and who pours out his life in love for us. And then there is God in our hearts, God in our guts, God one more time, the stream in which we dip our toes, the stream in which we long to swim, the stream which filled the Son and can fill us too, and bear us in love back to our source.
The life of the one God meets us in all these three ways, and all that we meet in these three ways, has its roots deep, deep down in God’s life—all the way down in God’s life—in ways that our minds are not fit to grasp in ways that break our words to bits. One life, one love, one will, works through these three to meet us when we pray, to catch hold of us, to bear us up—and to take us home.
And that’s why our words for God need to stretch; one-bit words, it turns out, will not do on their own. We call the source, the one to whom we pray, God the Father. And we call the one by our side, the one with whom we pray, God once more, Jesus. And we call the one in our hearts, the one in whom we pray, God one more time, the Spirit. And that is why we call this God—the God we meet when we pray, the God we know when we pray—that is why we call this God ‘three in one’; that is why we call our God Trinity.
5th Sunday Potluck/Membership Sunday—Sunday, May 31
Bishop Julian Episcopal Visitation (Q&A following worship)—Sunday, June 7
Weekly:
Around the Table—A prayer time for women, Thursdays, 9:00am at the Wishart’s. Email Lauren for details. (wishartlauren@gmail.com)
Youth Formation (ages 10–13)—Sundays at 9:00am.
Morning Prayer—Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday 8:00–8:30am on Zoom (redeemerannapolis.org/midweek).
Men’s Bible Study—Thursdays, 7:00am @ 1309.
Image: The Holy Trinity, Andrei Rublev, ca. 1410
