Today is Trinity Sunday. While we think in a particular way about God revealed as Trinity today, we continue to worship God as Trinity throughout the year. Trinity is a subject on which I do not feel especially comfortable preaching. So today I want to draw your attention to relating to a God named Trinity.  

The Old Testament presents God as Creator, beginning with Genesis. Our reading from Genesis describes the work of God the Creator in the seven days of creation. The psalmist in Psalm 8 speaks of God’s majesty and creativity, and of the place of humanity in the created order. In the liberating act of God in Exodus, God is revealed as merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.  

In continuing to love and liberate humankind, God reveals God’s self in Jesus Christ. God also comes as the Holy Spirit to guide humanity into relationship with God. Paul, having experienced God’s love and liberation and having come to know God as Trinity, closes his letter with a Trinitarian blessing to the Corinthians.  

Although the Bible does not mention the word Trinity, God is revealed in Scripture as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity is a statement about the specific, peculiar, and unique nature of God. The doctrine of the Trinity is not some dry, incomprehensible, or irrelevant dogma of the church; rather, it is an attempt to speak of the wonder at the heart of our faith. 

In my estimation, people in a congregation do not always like doctrinal preaching, theologically heavy sermons, or lectures on church dogma. I am not a scholar who can deliver any of that. I try my best to be as pastoral as possible. Yet I still wish to celebrate the grand convictions of the Christian faith and to invite you to relate to this God, the Trinity.  

It is a great pastoral gift for people to know the truth—the truth about God. We prayed in our collect today: Father, you sent your Son to bring us truth and your Holy Spirit to make us holy.  

Our prayer, study, worship, and understanding are all bound up with God as Trinity. Trinity is at the very centre of our particular claims about the God who has met us in Jesus Christ and given us the Holy Spirit in establishing the community of the followers of Jesus Christ. Therefore, you and I are here, reading the Scriptures and trying to understand and relate to a God named Trinity. 

I think the doctrine of the Trinity is the greatest intellectual achievement of Christian theology. It is our way of speaking about God. It is our understanding and our experience of God. St Augustine described this understanding and experience of God in a simpler way: “God is the lover, the beloved, and the love.” 

We relate to this Trinitarian God and seek to receive the salvation that this God, who is love, offers to us. The Trinity is complete, mutual, self-giving love. And this God created us and all humankind in God’s image. Charles Wesley, in his hymn ‘Sinners, Turn, Why Will You Die’, wrote this stanza: “You, whom God ordained to be / Transcripts of the Trinity, / why will you die…” 

These lines remind us that God is writing a message to the world upon our lives, speaking to the world of God’s inner being through lives formed in the likeness of the Trinity. We are here this morning because our relational God, the Trinity, has drawn us toward God. This relational God has made us the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, and keeps placing us in one another’s lives, enabling others to reach us and enabling us to reach them. So to believe in the Trinity is not merely to hold a doctrine in the mind; it is to be drawn into the life of God, and then sent out to live that life in love, communion, and self-giving grace. 

And that is the God in Trinity to whom we belong, whom we worship, and with whom we are called to live.