Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31 Before the earth came into being,
Wisdom was born
Romans 5.1-5 The love of God has been poured into
our hearts
John 16.12-15 The Spirit of truth will lead you to
the complete truth
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How often, I wonder, do we ever really
think about God.
It seems an odd question to ask in a
church.
After all, isn’t part of coming to
church about believing in God?
We refer to God a lot in prayers and hymns,
we claim insights into God’s will and say that God is interested in our world
and in us.
Do we ever really ponder God? Is the
worship and adoration of God front and centre of our hearts and minds when we
come to church?
Jesus Christ, as shown in today’s gospel
reading is all about setting us aright with God, and all that flows from that
in how we think and speak and act.
He notes that the sheer weight of the
mystery of God is unbearable without him, and without the Holy Spirit of God to
continue to lead us into all truth.
It’s easy, and convenient, to dodge
talking about God even in church.
Perhaps we are like footballers who talk
endlessly about 4-4-2 formations, passing, heading, crossing and the offside
rule, but never consider the nature of the ball they kick.
It’s a trivial example perhaps, but do
we really consider the mystery at the
heart of faith: God?
Ironically atheists seem to think more
about the existence and nature of God than many people of faith.
Atheism, an emphatic belief that there
is no God to be understood or worshipped, challenges us to consider who God is,
and who God isn’t.
Often an atheist asks, ‘what kind of God would allow such and such?’
It’s as if they want to believe in a god, but it’s a question that Trinity
Sunday demands too: what kind of God
do we believe in?
It matters what we believe about God; it matters that we believe in God.
The object of our worship is where we
locate our heart, our desires, our purpose.
Human beings have the capacity to make
all sorts of things their gods.
Many ancient religions and contemporary ‘spiritualities’ regard elements of creation, on earth or in the
skies, as things to be worshipped: for the ancient Egyptians it was Ra, the sun
god.
Those heading off to Stonehenge at the
end of the month for the summer solstice will also reverence the sun.
After all, the sun was, and is, a source
of life, with power and energy, light and warmth.
But neither the sun – s-u-n – nor moon,
nor rivers, nor springs nor anything else in all creation brings us to life,
has the capacity help us see beyond ourselves.
The sun cannot save us from the mirk and
mire of human existence. As Genesis notes, in creation God put the sun in its place (cf Genesis 1.17-18) and
saw that it is good.
Nature is compelling and beautiful, but
it is a gift to us to be cherished and tended, but it is not our god.
Psalm 8, sung this morning, is a
beautiful meditation on just that theme.
This idolising continues in contemporary
culture when parents make gods of their children; advertising makes a god of
the toned and lithe human body; food (cf Philippians 3.19), drink, even fun,
are seen as the highest Good.
If those are the forms of devotion that
we see today this is because the kind of god that is ultimately believed in is
the autonomy of the individual: I am the beginning and ending of my own reality;
creator, producer and star of my own drama.
And if I am my own god, then everything
is on my terms.
That is the secular creed: I believe in
me.
A Christian cannot ultimately say ‘I
believe in me; I believe in my own power to sort out and save my life’.
What we do profess, we say at the beginning
of the Creed: ‘Credo in unum Deum’ - I believe in one God.
The Creed is the distilled account of
our witness to who God reveals Godself to
be and our response to the atheist
question: what kind of God?
In the Creeds we describe the God who is
‘above all things and through all things and in all things’ (Epistle I to
Serapion, 28-30, St Athanasius Office of
Readings, The Most Holy Trinity).
St Athanasius echoes this: ‘Yes,
certainly “above all things”’ as the Father, the first principle and origin;
and truly “through all things” that is through the Word, and finally “in all
things” in the Holy Spirit’.
In making that profession of faith we
are claiming something deeply true about God – the oneness of God – and about
ourselves.
Since when we say ‘I believe in God’ we
are saying that the source of all that is, seen and unseen, is not generated by
our own imaginations, not a projection of our fantasies about ourselves, but we
are rooted in the invisible God who is made visible in Jesus Christ and
continues to be known to us in the Holy Spirit.
This God, our God, is known intimately
in his face, the face of Jesus Christ. And we seek his face in the sacraments,
in prayer, in scripture.
To see Christ is to see the Father, that
is, to see the God who is both beyond ourselves, and ‘Emmanuel: God with us’
(Matthew 1.18), who diverts us from our self-destructive ways and the idols we
would so merrily create for ourselves.
‘What kind of God?’ asks the atheist.
Trinity Sunday is the annual invitation
card to the day by day placing of God at the very heart and centre of our
lives.
God, the Holy Trinity, is not a mystery
to be explained but an invitation to be accepted.
Responding to the invitation we fix our
gaze on the face of Christ and are drawn into the love of God that is both
perfect within the Godhead and spills out into human existence.
We can say, with any atheist, that we do
not believe in a god who is capricious, grumpy, ill-willed or takes pleasure
from natural disaster or devastating illness.
Rather the God in whom we believe condescends
to share our humanity, comes to renew creation and shape us into the people he
created us to be in the first place.
Only in God’s power, and not our own,
can we overcome the tendency to be possessive, controlling, manipulative and
self-destructive.
All that is God’s is declared to us by
Jesus Christ and, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are led by the hand into
all truth, that is the truth of God.
At the heart of Catholic Christian faith
is this deep yet ever generating mystery: God the maker of all things wills to
save us from our self-destruction in the person of Jesus Christ and in the
power of the Holy Spirit: three persons, yet always One God, to whom be power
and glory, majesty and dominion now and in all eternity. Amen.
