Trinity Sunday, Yr C 8am, 10.30am Cathedral, 12.6.22

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A school pupil was awarded first prize at a Science Fair for his project in which he asked people if they would sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical "Dihydrogen monoxide". He gave seven reasons:

• 1. It can cause excessive sweating and vomiting.

• 2. It is a major component in acid rain.

• 3. It can cause severe burns in its gaseous state.

• 4. Accidental inhalation can kill you.

• 5. It contributes to erosion.

• 6. It decreases the effectiveness of car brakes.

• 7. It has been found in tumours of cancer patients.

He asked 50 people if they supported a ban.

• 43 said yes

• 6 were undecided

• 1 disagreed.

And what was the chemical he was talking about? Dihydrogen monoxide is, of course, H2O - water. How easy it is to be taken in.

Today is Trinity Sunday, and it would be very easy to be taken in by all sorts of different but quite honestly heretical understandings about God and what exactly the Trinity is. And for those worried I might extend the water metaphor, have no fear – certainly not! So much of what passes for Christian truth in this area is known technically as complete guff. We simply cannot perm any two views from five, adapt others’ ideas, or make it up. These things matter. Truth is not relative, nor can it be subject to popular vote.

There have been many attempts to describe the Trinity in an understandable way. Let me be clear here and now that much as I might hint at it, I also will fail. No finite words can describe infinite God and there is a sense in which every single person preaching today will be talking heretically because we can never do full justice to Almighty God. Words, images, human wisdom, are not adequate to the task. On this day on which we also celebrate Music Sunday, we give thanks for the music written by composers inspired by their faith to try to transport us somewhere divine, transcendent – it is all a reaching after that which is also impossible to reach but at least propels us closer. The mystics often gave up trying to describe what God is and resorted instead to describing what God isn't; the Via Negativa, the negative way, was the best approximation that could be hoped for.

St Augustine of Hippo, while puzzling over the doctrine of the Trinity, was walking along a beach one day when he observed a young boy with a bucket, running back and forth to pour water into a little hole. Augustine asked, "What are you doing?" The boy replied, "I'm trying to put the ocean into this hole." It was then that Augustine realized he had been trying to put an infinite God into his finite mind. Ultimately, it is impossible. But that is not to excuse from the attempt to understand something so important and so intrinsic to our faith. We just have to take care to whom we listen and what we take from it. The enduring sin of our society is not to hold any systematic beliefs at all, but to join together those we like, that take our fancy, regardless of their provenance, or whether they are mutually compatible. We need to look behind what we see and read and hear and understand these things at a deeper level.

The problem with all images and approximations, negative ways or not, is that they all break down at some point. They overemphasise one aspect at the expense of another. They might emphasise the unity at the expense of the diversity of the godhead or the diversity at the expense of the unity but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t valuable or helpful.

One of the most critical aspects is that the Trinity, God the father, God, the Son, God the Holy Spirit, is based on relationship – of the three persons to one another. Now at one level that too is a heresy because it potentially divides God into three and Christians were occasionally accused of believing in three Gods but that is not what the creeds say or what we are trying to say, rather it is three persons in one God.

Of fundamental importance here is that at the heart of Godhead is something that is relational and that is something to do with love. From the first letter of John, we know that ‘God is love’. And if we are made in any sense in the image of God, that must say something important to us and about us as well: if relationship is fundamental to God, it must also be fundamental to our humanity. It is why we hold love in the highest esteem above all other. We have St Paul’s great hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is named as the first fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. So, if God is love and God is himself relational, it explains why marriage, family, community life matter, because they are all about the relational, and they are all expressions of our common and fundamental humanity – and note those words at the end of the reading from Proverbs which talks about God delighting in the human race. They stand out starkly and as a reminder to love our fellow human beings, with all their faults and foibles because we are all loved by Almighty God. And on this pride weekend, it is important to note that no one is excluded.

So as we note the importance of relationship, we cannot also fail to notice that one of the biggest issues facing our society across all ages is loneliness, which is about a lack of the relational. This has been made worse in Covid and many people are still afraid to go out or to meet others. We need to find ways to connect people better, because we are human, because we are made in God’s image to relate to others.

So, is this doctrine of the Trinity important today? The answer has to be the most emphatic ‘Yes’. Let me give you an example about someone who didn’t think it important. A religious weight loss program called ‘Weigh Down’ was created in 1992 by a woman named, Gwen Shamblin. It was simply aerobics in Churches to Christian music, and it seemed to help some people. It grew especially in the US and became a multimillion-dollar corporation with over 30,000 churches and organizations participating.

In the year 2000 the whole movement was threatened, and her business placed in jeopardy when Shamblin, made comments regarding her beliefs in the Trinity. She basically said that the concept of the Trinity was wrong and she neither believed it nor taught it. Her comments sent shockwaves through her community of followers and business partners. She was removed from websites; influential churches dropped her program, some key employees left. Her publisher cancelled the publication of her book that was scheduled for release soon after. All of this was because she trifled with the Trinity. But why was it important? The church

has, after all, often struggled to explain how God can be both One God and three persons. In an interview, she agreed that Jesus was both Lord and God but she maintained that Jesus held only a secondary and unequal relationship to the Father. But what might be the conclusion of such a statement? It is only this: that Christ Jesus is not fully divine. And it cuts to the heart of the Church's understanding of God and of Jesus’ own teaching. Without it, Christianity is meaningless.

It is in fact to name a heresy, which quickly grew in the early church, known as Arianism after its founder, a priest called Arius. It grew particularly in the 4th century, and it took the church over 100 years to work out its theology on it. Eventually they realised after the important ecumenical councils of Nicea and Constantinople, and much infighting that Jesus Christ had to be both fully God and fully human. It was Gregory of Nazianzus, who clinched the argument saying ‘that which was not assumed was not redeemed’.

The study of heresy is a fascinating area, and I have learnt at least as much about the Christian faith from understanding what it is not, as from understanding what it is (a slightly different version I suppose of the via negativa). Arianism is still around today in a modern form, in the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They do not accept Jesus as divine, with all the consequences that then follow from that view.

Gwen Shamblin made the mistake of engaging in shambolic theology. She had not thought through properly what she said and failed to realise its implications. The Church's understanding was built up over not years, not even decades but centuries of painful thought, argument, and counter argument. It took time to work it out.

The dictionary definition of the word orthodox is this: conforming to what is generally or traditionally accepted as right or true. The touchstone of (small ‘o’) orthodox Christianity, is quite simply belief in a Trinitarian God. This is the defining belief of those churches that are members of the World Council of Churches which includes Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Free Churches and it is what separates them from those that may not join the World Council such as Jehovah’s Witness or Mormons or other faiths. Christianity is unique in proclaiming a Trinitarian relational divinity. It is what distinguishes the Christian faith from all other theistic religions.

And those arguments in the early church are why we have ended up with words in the creeds and which we will recite in a moment, which were written and agreed at those early ecumenical councils of the fourth century, precisely to counter the heresies prevalent at the time saying about Jesus Christ, that he is ‘God from God, light from light, true God from true God. These words have a huge history behind them and they matter. They have meaning that is significant and while we may not be able fully to understand the Trinity, we can at least make some headway towards a better understanding.

I have not really begun even to scratch the surface of the doctrine of the Trinity but don’t doubt its importance. It is the essence of our faith, three persons in one God, relational and based on love and also telling us something about our humanity. In the midst of a turbulent world, so ready to be alarmed, God is the one thing who does not, cannot and will not change. God simply is.

Amen.