Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 15 June 2025.
Stained glass illustrating the Trinity (no attribution available)
• First Reading: Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31 (Wisdom’s call)
• Second Reading: Romans 5: 1-5 (Peace and hope)
• Gospel: John 16: 12-15 (The Spirit of Truth will guide you into all truth)
Look at any home in the country and you will see every sort of electrical gadgets: televisions, radios, washing machines, toasters, dish washers and the rest.
All of them assembled from many parts and even then needing some power source to make them work.
Look at the sky and remember the rainbow – seven colours of light – qualities, if you like, and yet one visible marvel.
Think of any family, office or organization and you have many people bound together in one sense of being and purpose.
So why the difficulty with the Trinity? We are all quite used to seeing a unity composed of many parts or members.
Look at the church: the assembly of the eleven disciples (Judas excluded); then the 120 gathered on the Day of Pentecost.
Look also at how St Paul sees it when writes he writes to the church in Corinth: one body with many members and parts, many gifts and ministries.
Perhaps we are not really comfortable when thinking of God: three persons in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Trinity and unity, together. Perfect harmony, no tension or confusion.
And yet in his statement on the Christian faith, St Athanasius tries to put it together for us. One family, all members almighty, eternal and infinite: created by none yet all joined and revolving around each other.
And within this there is a definite order – not chaos or confusion. God is the beginning of all things, eternally present. The Word and Wisdom of God, later distilled into the human Jesus, is made by none and yet begotten of God the Father and Him alone.
The Holy Spirit – proceeding from God the Father and God the Son. Teaching us about and pointing to Jesus alone, just as Jesus is clear and consistent in pointing to God the Father alone, and to none other.
A pattern of incredible beauty, with no discord or clash of colours. A harmony and perfection of form and thought, of reason and wisdom, of mystery and clarity.
All shown to us and yet received differently, and sometimes not at all. Offered to us so that we may receive, but leading into depths that we could never have imagined, let alone penetrated.
In this sense we live on what we are given, for we could never discover or probe it ourselves. But it is also the life of faith.
And yet the lessons show us different aspects: the call of Wisdom, made to all of humanity even if some are determined to reject it. An invitation to receive the blessings that God has for us, if we will receive them at His hand: as He gives them and in the timing and order that He does so.
For in this, God is in control of His own revelation of Himself to those who seek Him and wait on Him.
For this is Wisdom which existed before the beginning of all time and matter, all forces of nature and forms of energy. This is the Wisdom of God which designed the universe to exquisite balance and at calculations extending to unbelievable numbers of decimal points.
But it is also the Wisdom which spoke the will of God and it happened as willed: a created universe, with its ecology and society, held together by intricate and exquisite physical, moral and social norms. Free persons held together and given direction and purpose by laws to enable all members to prosper together. A freedom within the law, the wisdom, the will of God.
The purpose of God in drawing us back to Him through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Given and received but never earned or contended for.
Where the main place of striving is in ourselves.
And so Paul writes of the love of God being poured into us – not drop by reluctant drop but a flow limited only by our ability and willingness to receive.
This is the presence of God the Son, Jesus Christ, now made present to us in every land by the presence and movement of the Holy Spirit. He who only takes what He receives from Jesus and gives it to us.
Perhaps our greatest difficulty with the Trinity lies in our own sense of competition and striving to overcome not only our surroundings but one another as well.
That striving for power, authority, influence, wealth, control and standing.
But Jesus gave us the proper pattern by letting go: of His place in the power and glory of heaven in order to live within the squalor and degradation of human society with all its pressures and sources of friction.
He let go not only of His place in heaven but of the lifestyle that His trade as a carpenter might have given Him – and having done that He then risked rejection and abuse as He proclaimed the Kingdom of God, offering forgiveness and healing as He did so rather than condemnation and theological superiority.
Finally of course, He let go of life itself. But just as the Father was willing to let go of Jesus in becoming human, and Jesus was willing to let go of all else, so also the Holy Spirit has no claim of Himself – and give only what He is given by Father and Son.
