Sermon: Trinity Sunday
The Revd Canon Angela Weaver is Residentiary Canon
- Preacher:
- Angela Weaver
- Date:
- Sunday 6th June 2010
- Service:
- Cathedral Eucharist
I can remember my mother blowing bubbles with her hands, using soap when I was having a bath as a small child. I remember doing the same with my own children. My grandchildren love bubbles. A year ago when two of them were 3 and not quite 2, I set up the bubble machine and they were delighted. They chased the bubbles, fascinated by their colour and movement and even the dog joined in trying to catch them.
I love bubbles. It is something in the simple yet complex nature of their being. They are light, colourful, dynamic, moving, and unpredictable and they seem to defy gravity, taken by the wind to heights we cannot reach.
Bubbles are made of three things, water, soap and air. Such cheap, simple things, yet together they make such a beautiful creation which is so much more than the sum of its parts.
As you watch a bubble you can see colour, movement and energy - always changing, never static and reflecting the light around it.
During Lent the Cathedral hosted an exhibition of Iain McKillip’s art. One of those pictures was of the Trinity inspired by the writing of John of the Cross. You should have been given a copy of the picture with your newssheet this morning.
In Iain’s picture there is something like a bubble. It has the swirling, moving nature of a bubble with all its colour and light. But in Iain’s bubble there are figures, some clear some not so clear. What is certain is that they are moving and in relationship with one another.
The largest figure is of Christ, not because he is the most important part of the Trinity, but because he is, at the moment of the picture, reaching out. We are limited by the two dimensions of the picture, though, as you look at the painting it is almost as though it has three dimensions.
In the background is the figure of God the Father, indistinct, yet powerful as one blue hand reaches out to support Christ and the other to touch and make contact with the Holy Spirit, who, like Wisdom in our first lesson, has more femininity about her, yet great strength.
The Holy Spirit, has her hand reaching out to embrace a human figure who is reaching up into the Trinity in an attitude of prayer.
How difficult it is to imagine something as mystical as the Trinity. No picture is ever going to be able to explain, no words, no book, no sermon will give us a clear impression of what is inexplicable.
Some Muslims think that the Trinity is made up of God the Father, Jesus and Mary. Logical and much easier to imagine than what we struggle to understand. But struggle we must because that is all a part of our dynamic relationship with God.
Jesus says in the Gospel reading for today.
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.
I think it is very hard for us to bear some of the parts of our faith. How can we be open to parts of the Christian doctrine and live in this scientific age? Do we need to separate what we know from what we believe?
John’s description of the Trinity is one where nothing can be separated. It is of a circle in which the light comes from the other members of the group. Each member of the Trinity is seeing and holding out for the love of the others, like Ian McKillop’s picture. The light that comes from within is showing us how much each one loves the other and is like the other.
Not long before my mother died, when she had lost her memory and didn’t know me I went to see her, as I approached her chair, I said, ‘Hello.’ But she said, ‘Well I never, you look just like me!’ (she was from Somerset you know!) The three parts of the Trinity look just like each other, but different. That likeness enables us to recognise the three parts of God, separate, yet together, the same, yet distinct.
The unpredictability of that light, colourful, dynamic, moving circle of love does not exclude us. If you look again at Iain’s painting you will see the human figure – that’s you, that’s me, being invited in, embraced and welcomed by the Trinity. We are, after all, baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And we become like the figures we see, not by right, but by the generosity of the energy and light which comes from the movement and love of that circle. It seems to defy gravity, taken by the power we cannot understand to heights we cannot reach on our own initiative.
We are being called. From the Old Testament reading we heard,
Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way,at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: ‘To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.
The cry is to all that live to become one with God in God’s loving embrace.
The power of that loving embrace is the three parts of God which has been there from the beginning of creation and goes on creating in a never ending dance of love. The colour, the beauty, the dynamism, the energy, the oneness and movement attracts us just like the bubbles attract little children. We are God’s little children and we can reach higher than ourselves through the love of God.
Through Christ and his cross, we can accept the invitation to participate in the Trinity, the wonderful dance of life.
Please do have a look at Iain’s original painting as you leave the cathedral this morning and ask yourself how you can become a part of that dance.