Sermon Trinity Sunday 2025 15^th June 2025

So today is Trinity Sunday, the day all ministers try and explain the Trinity! Yet, trying to do that can mean that we start thinking about the Trinity being this separate entity in itself! I think instead of focusing on the concept of the Trinity, we should think of today maybe as know God better Sunday. So let’s think about how we can know God better. One of the ways is by reading scripture. Through it, we read the stories of God’s relationship with us and in the New Testament we have the significant acts of God through his Son Jesus Christ.

In Luke’s gospel we learn how God became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and humbled himself by becoming human. Through this miracle God draws us into relationship with him, so that we can relate and understand God’s love for us through human relationships.

Each gospel tells the story of Easter, how Jesus Christ set us free from sin by sacrificing himself on the cross. The gospels tell us the intimate details of his last moments on earth being both human and divine and how only God could die and suffer and yet be resurrected fully.

Last week was Pentecost, where the book of Acts describes how the Holy Spirit came among the disciples, this helps us to understand that the Holy Spirit has and is always among us.

Yet this Sunday is not a specific story in the bible or a book, it is fully dedicated to understanding our experience as a Christian community of who God is.

Throughout the New Testament, the idea of the Trinity is hinted at. This morning’s reading from Romans talks of God the Father whose grace we have obtained through our Lord Jesus Christ and how God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

It is not just in the New Testament that God is talked about in different ways and having different characters. In this morning’s reading from Proverbs chapter 8 verse 27 onwards, ‘When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

From a Christian perspective this reading can be seen to be referring to the Holy Spirit, rejoicing in the inhabited world and delighting in us, God’s children.

To help the early Christian community to understand how God could be human yet divine, many discussions and debates took place until the meeting at Nicaea in the year 325AD, which brought about the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

God is the Father who is our creator and the creator of everything.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made.

I like this part of the creed and the way it describes Jesus. Jesus was divine yet human, who came on earth through the miracle of the incarnation of the Virgin Mary and lived among us as a human. He suffered for us on the cross as a human yet was resurrected and redeemed us from our sins through his divinity.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

The Spirit of truth who is with us and has been with us from the beginning and sustains us.

Rather than seeing the Trinity as some puzzle that needs solving so that we can comprehend God, we need to think about the Trinity as the way God is in relationship with us. He is in relationship with us like a Father or Mother are, watching over us and guiding us without controlling our lives. God is Jesus, a God that loved us so much that he came down from heaven humbling himself, not just to be with us, but to experience what it is to be human and then sacrifice himself for our sins. God is the Holy Spirit; she has been among us from the beginning and continues to be with us enabling us to feel God’s presence with us.

Scripture is our human testimony of God; it is people speaking of what they know and have experienced of God on earth.

Throughout scripture the nature of God is described for us, so we can understand God more fully. If God was completely understandable then God would no longer be God.

I understand the need to use analogies or ice cubes or fidgets to help children understand how God can be three but still one, but I think instead of seeing Trinity Sunday as a puzzle that we need to figure out, we should see this Sunday as know God better Sunday, or maybe even God is here Sunday.

Cynthia Rigby said in her book Holding Faith that, the doctrine of the Trinity undoes any concept of God that keeps God and creation at a distance from us. Instead, the Christian confession that God is Triune invites us to participate in the beautiful dance of God's actions in the world. (Page 20 Holding Faith, Cynthia L. Rigby)

The Bible shares the testimonies of people describing how much God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us. The triune aspects of God bring us on a journey of relationship between God and God's people that help us understand more fully the nature of God. God meets us and claims us and is with us as all aspects of the Triune God, not to confuse us or make God more complicated, but actually to make God more knowable and understandable.

 So on this know God better Sunday, let us give thanks for God, Father, Mother, Jesus, Holy Spirit, creator, redeemer and sustainer.

Amen