Trinity Sunday 2005.22nd May.
Exod 34.1-8, Song of 3 young men 29-34, 2 Corinthians 13.11-13, Matthew 28.16-20.
Traditionally this is the day when priests and ministers invite mission speakers, theological students, or people of the street to preach, because its just too hard a subject. Why is it difficult? I mean, you only have to look at all the books written on the subject of the Trinitarian God to see that it is a very difficult subject. It is difficult to preach on the subject of God the Trinity because God is difficult to describe. We just don’t have the words for an adequate description, we don’t have the imagination to picture the unimaginable. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. Because the danger in just accepting that God is indescribable, almost unimaginable, is that we will just accept the space that is left, and we wont try to find God anyway. We might just think it’s all too hard and give up.
Wine tasting. Have you ever wondered about all that stuff that gets written about oatmeal tannins and spicy oak? I mean, what do oatmeal tannins taste like, or smell like to someone who doesn’t eat them? Or drink them or smell them, what ever it is you do with them? It’s all very subjective, and it’s all very much reminiscent of our problem of describing God. Chocolate is the same. How can we tell someone else what chocolate tastes like? Or that old line “It tastes like chicken” that is applied to just about everything. Does God taste like chicken?
What we find, really, is that no matter what a wine critic writes, no matter what we are told chocolate or barbequed brown snake tastes, it’s no substitute for experiencing it ourselves. Ultimately that is the only way for us to know ourselves what a taste is. Or a smell, or a feeling for that matter. And it’s like that with God as well, in that in reaching out to God, in feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting God for ourselves, we can truly know God. And from that knowledge of God we can be the ones who facilitate the search that others are on for God, especially in the vacuum of God consciousness that we find ourselves in today.
And there is a vacuum of knowledge and experience of God. It’s not through lack of searching, I mean just about every celebrity or pop star is into some sort of spirituality, sparking lots of other people to get into new age fads, which seem to change quite often. People want the spirituality, the crave it, they need it. We are spiritual beings, it is what we were created for. Once upon a time, most people in our society had at least some sort of knowledge about Christianity. But with the increasing secularisation of society people often these days lack the core knowledge, the basics, the Christian reference points, that would give them the foundation and the basis from which to begin that search. It’s into this vacuum that we are directed, by the great commission in the Gospel.
The epistle reading this morning, from 2 Corinthians 13, has at the end of it that prayer that we call “The Grace”. This verse is the earliest known Trinitarian formula in the church. It would seem that very soon, within 30 years of Jesus death and resurrection, the Trinity is known and seems to be an intrinsic part of the faith of the fledgling church. Almost 2000 years later it still is. We affirm it in the words of the Nicene creed. That the Trinitarian faith has withstood the test of time, and has strengthened says a lot. It speaks volumes of the truth that it represents to the community that confesses it world wide. The importance of this is underlined in Jesus command to his disciples, and through them, to us, in the words of the great suggestion. It reminds us that we are taking to the world in the task of the great commission not some fly by night new age psycho mumbo jumbo, but something that is grounded in the history and experience of the church, and more, in the faith history of the Israelites, a faith that links with previous ages, and will link with future ages. This is what we use as the basis for our mission as stated in the Great commission, which is what I would like to look at now.
It’s very easy to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I mean, if you have an appropriate traditional church, you have people almost queuing up for their children to be baptised. Making disciples of people, well, that’s much harder.
Convincing people to be disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, disciples as we are disciples, takes a lot of work. Its not just teaching them to obey everything that Jesus taught us, which is hard enough anyway. Its about incorporating newcomers, new disciples, into the community of faith, the family of Jesus. Being inclusive is the key. It was the key to Jesus’ work on this earth, the way he included people, the way his healings not only made a person healthy in body, it brought them back into society, back into community, healing their spirit. Making a disciple is a bit like a healing. In passing on the Gospel, we are helping God to work a miracle in them that will see them on a path to wholeness. We also need to include the new disciple in our community, so that the miracle has a good, safe and supportive place in which to work. New faith can often seem very strong, but it can also be very fragile. We need to be loving and supportive.
But there will also be changes for us. Inclusion has a cost. Just as getting a new Priest has seen some minor changes to things in the Parish, hopefully changes that people like, any new person joining the comunity will change something in the dynamics of a parish. This is something that needs to be thought of and acknowledged, and a commitment made before the planning day to work through when it happens. We have our planning day next week, and as Margaret Chittleborough will be preaching that morning at the one combined service at 9am, this is my last opportunity before then to speak to you as a whole in the context of a sermon. We are seeking to grow the parish. In the planning day process we will listen to God (I hope) and seek new ways to make disciples and include them in our community as equal members. Please think carefully about this during the week, the seriousness of this part of our task. Because if we invite people here and then get resentful of the changes, then we might as well withhold the invitations and plan closing the decommissioning service.
We have a message to proclaim. We have a God, the Trinitarian God, whose nature is a subject I think I’ve sidestepped quite nicely this morning. This Trinitarian God loves us, it is Gods nature to love us. We love God as well. We have people to reach and include. And we have our own faith to grow in the meantime. Thats a lot to do. So please pray about the planning day this week. Come to the service at 9am, and stay for the planning day. We have a lot to do in the coming years, and we need to get on with it. Just as synod got on with it yesterday in naming Bishop Jeff Driver as our new Archbishop, in a spirit of cooperation and prayerfulness.
The Lord be with you.
