Proverbs 8: 22-31
Trinity Sunday is supposedly the Sunday when most clergy don’t want to preach – how do you explain “Trinity”, or “Triune” or “Three in One and One in Three”.
If God Almighty created number as well as space and time and gender, then God is beyond time, number and space and gender.
At its simplest I can understand that God was fully present in Jesus (without being absent from heaven as it were!); Jesus is the full embodiment of God – I can understand it but it blows my mind. As the embodiment, incarnation of God, Jesus was present in particular time and space – Galilee and Judea 2000 years ago. But God is also present with us here and with people everywhere by his Spirit (I can comprehend it but it blows my mind that God knows the hairs on my head, diminishing as they are, as well as those on every other head. Worship is our response because God is Almighty
And then I also have to wrestle with the holiness of God before which I am doomed, burnt up as if to a frazzle, if it were not for God’s love and mercy; again worship is our response for there is no reason why a holy God would continue to love creatures that are so disrespectful and rebellious.
It was the early theologians who wrestled with how to speak of God and who came up with the language of Trinity or Triune (which means Three-One). They did quite a good job, but if they thought they had it sorted they were somewhat wrong because God is beyond comprehension. And in our Scriptures we find this wonderful hymn to Wisdom (Proverbs 8); she gate-crashes the Trinity Party as (apparently) a fourth person, present before Creation, involved in Creation like a fellow master-crafts-worker, a woman who seems to be both Jesus (compare this to John 1) and maybe also the Spirit of God. And the language is one of delight and joy and creativity. Some call her Sophia, the Greek word for Wisdom.
Jesus says the Spirit will lead us into all truth, but this is a journey not an end-point. We are granted sufficient truth so that we can believe and trust in God and God’s promises, but when our understanding is reaching its limits we continue in worship, with wonder and awe at what we cannot fully understand, and we continue together with one another, because we are called into a unity, a togetherness in God, and it is all exemplified by the mystery, wonder and gift of the Eucharist, Christ present in bread and wine, God present by his Spirit, the foretaste of his promised Kingdom.
Revd Peter Reiss
