Living God, Take these all too human words and anoint them with your Spirit so that in their hearing we may each encounter the living Word, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Well, it’s Trinity Sunday. The day many preachers fear. The day they have to stand up and explain the mystery of the Trinity. Before we go any further though, let’s pause for a second.

Have you ever thought how odd it is that there is a Trinity Sunday? There aren’t any other Sunday’s dedicated to specific doctrines or teachings, although Creation Sunday is sort of becoming a thing. With Pentecost done, Trinity Sunday sums things up as we move into ordinary time until next Advent.

And because today is a Sunday dedicated to a doctrine or teaching a lot of preachers feel under pressure to explain it. This is a problem because a lot of people are particularly anxious about this doctrine and the mathematics of three into one.

The way out of this is usually an analogy with something that can be one thing with three parts or modes – oranges, onions, H20 etc.

This is an understandable but not, I think, a particularly helpful response. For one thing each of these models is misleading, if not in one way or another a hostage to heretical fortune. More significantly though, these models are not needed. They are not needed because the Trinity does not need to be explained. It’s not a maths problem.

Ask yourself this, what do you gain, in your faith and discipleship, from solving the puzzle of threeness and oneness? How does it bring you closer to God? I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is I wouldn’t start there. Instead of explaining the trinity, let’s ask ourselves why we believe and trust in the triune God.

Well, first things first, we don’t have much of a choice. As Christians we believe in Father, Son and Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. We believe in the Trinity because we believe God created, redeems and sustains us.

Christians don’t believe in Father, Son, Spirit and the Trinity. We know God through what God has done and this has a remarkable pattern that falls into three. So Christian faith is trinitarianly shaped or structured, end of. Or as some people have put it, the trinity is the grammar of the Christian faith.

We heard this threefold structure in the Gloria this morning. We also see it in other parts of the liturgy. At the baptism shortly Serena will offer a prayer over the water which makes reference to Creation, to the Spirit moving over the waters, to Jesus’ own baptism in the Jordon and to the promised restoration of all things.

Later during the Eucharist, after telling the story of Jesus at the last supper, she will pray for the Holy Spirit to move over the bread and wine and then the final blessing will be given in the name of the Father, Son and the Spirit.

Scripture too is full of stories which tell of the things God has done, as Father, Son and Spirit. Our bible passages this morning show us this. Our Genesis reading is one of the versions of the creation story in the Bible. Its poetry that reminds us that we trust in God because God made us deliberately, out of love. The world, indeed, the cosmos, was made with purpose and care. This is a foundational Christian belief which gives us a particular posture towards the world. We can’t believe it is an accident. Because it was made with love and care we recognise that we need to love and care for it also.

Then we get to the gospels which tell us all sorts of things about who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for us. Our text from Matthew 28 says ‘they worshiped him’. Let’s not forget how scandalous, and even blasphemous, it would have been to suggest to the people of Israel that a person was worthy of worship.

The early Christians came to be convinced that this same Jesus wasn’t just a good bloke but was somehow God. As John’s gospel emphasises frequently, what the Son does the father does and today’s passage from Matthew talks about Jesus sharing all authority with the Father.

Again, these were pretty controversial claims for Jewish people to make. However, if we take seriously that Jesus is somehow God, then all bets are off. As a result the very idea of God has to be different because God has turned up. God, traditionally speaking, isn’t supposed to be able to, or to want to, do that.

But that’s not the end of the story. Jesus lived a historical human life and ascended to the father. That could have been the end of it. But this doesn’t mean God leaves us to it. Instead, as Sarah spoke about last week, the Spirit, who is equally God, comes to accompany and build us up into Christ’s body.

From the presence of the holy spirit we get, as the book of Acts shows us, the Church. A community not just trying to copy or imitate Jesus but inspired and empowered by the Spirit in its faith and practice. Without the Spirit to enliven our ability to follow Jesus would be entirely down to our own effort and skill. Not only this but we’d always be looking backwards to the past instead of forward to the new things God is doing.

All of this is summed up in what we, for the sake of convenience, call the doctrine of the Trinity. But that’s not an explanation – it’s a shorthand for who God is and what God has done.

 Namely, God has loved us and shows this by making and meeting us. God wants to be with us, to have relationship with us, and through us to transform the world.

The trinity isn’t some big scary abstract doctrine. It’s simply a reflection of the God we know, experience and trust. It’s not the maths or the mechanics that matters most, it’s the love of God we see, and which we can’t avoid, when we trust in who God is, what God has done, and continues to do.

So, we don’t need to be anxious about, or try to explain the Trinity. If someone asks you about it, talk about God being love and how we know that. Because God has made us, meet us and carries us forwards.

In the name of the father, son and hold Spirit, Amen.