Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given us, your servants, grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity: keep us steadfast in this faith, that we may evermore be defended from all adversities; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Holy God, faithful and unchanging: enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth, and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love, that we may truly worship you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion
Almighty and eternal God,you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and live and reign in the perfect unity of love: hold us firm in this faith, that we may know you in all your ways and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory, who are three Persons yet one God, now and for ever.
Readings
Old Testament – Proverbs 8.1–4, 22–31
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 Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth – when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 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, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
Psalm
1 O Lord our governor, ♦
how glorious is your name in all the world!
2 Your majesty above the heavens is praised ♦
out of the mouths of babes at the breast.
3 You have founded a stronghold against your foes, ♦
that you might still the enemy and the avenger.
4 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, ♦
the moon and the stars that you have ordained,
5 What is man, that you should be mindful of him; ♦
the son of man, that you should seek him out?
6 You have made him little lower than the angels ♦
and crown him with glory and honour.
7 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands ♦
and put all things under his feet,
8 All sheep and oxen, ♦
even the wild beasts of the field,
9 The birds of the air, the fish of the sea ♦
and whatsoever moves in the paths of the sea.
10 O Lord our governor, ♦
how glorious is your name in all the world!
Epistle – Romans 5.1–5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Gospel – John 16.12–15
‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
hymn 146 Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty
hymn 138 Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire
hymn 295 Let all mortal flesh
hymn 484 The church’s one foundation
Sermon on Trinity Sunday
For many, this Sunday is one of the most important feast days of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church – it celebrates the creed’s formula of the image of God as Trinity – God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As some of you may know, we should be reciting the Athanasian Creed, which you will find in the BCP and Common Worship. – But we won’t, because it is repetitive, and, more probably, because it is so very long, and we don’t do long nowadays anywhere, do we? However, it is profound in a very poetic way.
Wikipedia says about this creed:
The Athanasian Creed – also called the Quicunque Vult (or Quicumque Vult), which is both its Latin name and its opening words, meaning “Whosoever wishes” – is a Christian statement of belief focussed on Trinitarian doctrine and Christology. … The Athanasian Creed has been used in public worship less frequently, with the exception of Trinity Sunday. However, part of it can be found as an “Authorized Affirmation of Faith”… . Despite falling out of liturgical use, the creed’s influence on current Protestant understanding of trinitarian doctrine is clear.
Let’s take our inspiration this morning from this poetic profession, and try to imagine our God here and now.
How can we do this? Our lives are so very prosaic – quite simply, they are not full of poetic moment. We do not partake of the heroic, or the divine, ordinarily, do we? – I have not had a mystical encounter with the source of all being, even the love I show my wife has become, after all these years, very predictable and usual. – What about you? Has your vision opened up vistas of heaven and forced your hand to the good thing in everything you do? Is the infinite a very part of our quite finite and restricted lives here and now? What drives us to act?
My friend, the philosopher, speaks about language and how the poetic is the source of speech and the most profound expression of philosophy, and I might add life itself. Let’s look a little at the Athanasian Creed. Here is how it starts out –
Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence.
We don’t talk like this in our everyday dealings, do we? We don’t talk about salvation or our worship based on that faith. This creed speaks of huge concepts fully outside our usual topics of conversation – we shy away from talking about our God, whether Trinity or Unity, and even the scholars might be guilty of confounding the Persons of the Trinity and not completely unifying the Essence of God.
We don’t have profound discussions with the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker about the foundations of faith, do we? But, if you believe some of the stories from history, around the time the Roman Empire became christian, everyone was happy to talk about how the world was turned upside down by Constantine and the empire’s conversion to christianity. One scholar relates that when people went to the baker, they would gladly engage in a theological debate as they bought their bread.
Believers were happy to take up the cudgels on behalf of the faith, in an intellectual struggle to “keep us steadfast in this faith, that we may evermore be defended from all adversities”. This hope of our Collect was something very real in the lives of people in the Empire – Roman or British – but what about today? What hope do we have? Are we ever happy to explore our hope with, or expose it to, the world?
Last week we started to chat about my talk together – it became a lively conversation, much like what I imagine those debates with the baker must have been so long ago. We were not scared of confronting the big topics which religion presents to us for reflection and discussion, all because we worshipped together.
A scholar once said that creedal formulations have always been based on the life of prayer. Our prayer life – which we share together in public worship – does speak to the acceptance of Trinity, doesn’t it? Didn’t “Blessed be the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit” just call forth our response, “Blessed be God for ever” at the start of our morning prayer together? The Trinity is the foundation of the church of England’s life. Throughout our worship we acknowledge the Trinity. After all, don’t we repeat “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning is now and shall be for ever. Amen” all the way through our worship services?
Our prayer life influences our thinking about everything, doesn’t it? If we take a triumphalist view of the faith, won’t we have dreams of empire? – Our Victorian ancestors certainly did. – If we have a servant view of Christ, won’t we behave in a very different manner? Our understanding of service will come forward in our attitude towards others, in all of our actions. So, won’t our theology reflect this as well?
Faith is not a little black box into which we secrete our fundamental intention toward life, the universe and everything. Things don’t find their way into the realm of faith never to emerge again. No, I would say faith actually binds everything in our lives together. We don’t understand friendship without understanding that most elusive Other, the Divine. Friendship is based on the most profound love possible, that love we have for the divine in our lives – and that love of God for us informs how we love one another and manifest friendship.
The Trinity is a subject for discussion, which we should enjoy, just as we enjoyed our discussion of Pentecost last week over coffee. We need to have that free exchange of ideas just as they did centuries ago. We may still be confused about the object of our faith, but we should not be disheartened and silent. Although I don’t know how to express what Trinity means in language that is clear for “21st century schizoid man,” to quote King Crimson, I should still try to make it something my friends and neighbours might take seriously. I should make it easier for people to understand what the unity of God is when I speak or demonstrate christian love.
We read that Jesus gave us a promise that all will be revealed, when he said, “‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…’” Jesus declares there are a lot of things we don’t know. We are awaiting Jesus Christ coming into the world again, just as the disciples and St Paul expected all to be revealed. Jesus promised the Spirit would come, just as we celebrated last week. In my weakened state as a human being, I await that coming of truth into the world as, I am sure, you do.