Annie Saunders Sermon for Trinity Sunday

In the name of the Trinity, Creator, Redeemer and Spirit may I speak in love.

As today is Trinity Sunday we're going to explore what many people find a difficult Christian doctrine. The Holy Trinity cansometimes confuse people so today's sermon is a bit meatier, slightly longer, a little voyage if you like. The Trinity is God - often described as three persons – “the Three in One and One in Three.” You could say it’s about aspects or parts of God. Most of all the Trinity is concerned with how we see God, how we perceive and then relate to the divine mystery which is God.

First I want us to quickly identify as many names for God we can think of. Call some out. As humans naming helps us to understand God.

(The names that were given included: Rock, Father, Christ, Lamb, Mother, Beloved, Spirit, Abba, Lord, Jesus, El Shaddai, Jehovah; later we added Wisdom)

So we have many names for God. 

So what or who is the Trinity? Put simply, it is the one God, a single Being of love who created the universe, our world and us.

Traditionally the Trinity is about the three parts or persons of our divine Being - we often say Father, Son and Holy Spirit; we could equally say Creator, Redeemer, Spirit. Each of these aspects of God is equal to the others and all three relate to one another in a dynamic communion, a shared love. Love shared within the Trinity and then shared outwards to love our world and us. Try and think for a second or two of the Trinity as a whirling cosmic dance in which each part or person of God is relating in love to the other - not in power or in domination but in gentle divine love. Each is part of the others and all are equal, there is no hierarchy in the Divine Trinity. All parts or persons are God.

I want to read a couple of extracts. In our Gospel reading Jesus refers to the other parts of God, the Father and the Spirit of truth and Jesus in his human incarnation related most to God as the Father. I’ll read Genesis 1: verses 1-2

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formlessvoid and darkness covered the face of the deep,while the wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

This is also translated as “while the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters.” The Spirit is God and was there when God created the world.

I’ll read Colossians 1:15-19. Paul is writing about Jesus Christ:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible - all things were created through him and for him”

And at the beginning of John's Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”

Creator, Christ Redeemer and Spirit -, three parts, one God of love.

Of course God is unknowable - God is divine mystery. You could say God is unnameable. As God says to Moses in the burning bush on the mountain “I am who I am”. As human beings trying to understand God we use names for God and related to the names we form analogies and metaphors for God. An analogy is when someone is similar to someone or something else. God the Father is an analogy - God’s characteristics are like the best of human fathers. Humans create metaphors for God but they are human ideas. Often inspired by God - but if God is an unknowable mystery, then our names and descriptions of God as I said before,can be fluid. I think here of CS. Lewis and Aslan in the Narnia stories - Aslan who stands for Creator, Christ (and when Aslan isn't there bodily in Narnia) the Spirit. Lewis’s fiction. But it helps some people to understand something of God, something of God is revealed by him as part of that person's relationship with him. So let's try to free our images of God a little, liberate our concepts of God in the Trinity.

I come now to the feminine aspects of God.Traditionally the Trinity has been seen as exclusively male, Father, Son and Holy Spirit but this wasn't always so. In the Old Testament Creator God is described as possessing feminine and maternal characteristics. 

In Deuteronomy 32:

“You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you and you forgot the God that gave you birth”. 

In Hosea Chapter 11:

“God the mother will never forget her children”

So because God mothers the universe - creates life, creates love and creativity and is intensely involved with her creation, it is just as correct inmy understanding, to speak about God the Creator as Mother.

Again - we speak in metaphors - no names or concepts we create about God can measure up to God’s incredible mystery. But the symbol of God the Father has been over-literalised as a descriptive metaphor. Over the centuries the feminine and the mother part of God was suppressed especially after the end of the first century A.D. when the Christian church squashed women's ministry in the church. At this time men began to dominate with an all-male hierarchy of priests. And feminine and maternal images of God were suppressed. Time to gently reclaim them. Images of the feminine and mother aspects of God can help us to form a new understanding of how God might relate within the Trinity and with us his children.

Now I want us to take a quick look again at our Old Testament reading from Proverbs 8. Here we meet the female person of Wisdom, in the Greek, Sofia. Wisdom was a frequent image of God in the Old Testament. In Hebrew thought she is simply God. Because she is seen as filling our world and is present with and in us Wisdom has been closely identified with the Holy Spirit. In parts of the early Christian church Christ was identified with Wisdom Sophia and is referred to as Wisdom in our modern Adventservice. When I read the start of our reading, to me Wisdom calling at the town gate sounds very like the Holy Spirit. And then further on Wisdom sounds like Christ the Word - there at the creation of all as part of God.

“When he established the heavens I was there”

and then 

“I was beside him like a master worker and I was daily his delight and I delighted in all his creation.” 

So today I am saying that we have space to explore God in the Trinity -how we perceive Him or Her, the images and metaphors we use. Let's now take a little time together to explore. And we're going to do this using the icon of the Holy Trinity. It was painted by a Russian monk named Andrei Rublev, around 1411.

You probably know that an icon is an image - atool to understand God. We focus on it prayerfully, we don't worship the image. In a sense, as we contemplate the image, we look past it and perceive God. And this contemplation allows God to perceive us too. That’s how icons work.   How were icons made? Usually by a monk who prayed continuously as he painted. The monk was in constant conversation or contemplation with God. Layers of paint, layers of prayer. 

Rublev’s painting is known as the Holy Trinity icon. It is based on the story of the three visitors to Abraham and Sarah in the desert when the three visitors suddenly appear. The three beings are also referred to as “the Lord”. They tell Abraham that Sarah will have a child and eat the meal Abraham has quickly prepared for them, together, under a tree in the shade.Rublev omitted Abraham and Sarah because he wanted to focus the image on the visitors, the Trinity of God itself.

The figure here on the left is Creator God. In the middle is Jesus Christ and this figure on the right is the Holy Spirit. We can recognise them by the colours of their garments. They sit together around a low table with the chalice on it to symbolise the Eucharist. And it’s as if they’re in a circle with life and love passing from one to the other in a mutual sharing of divine love. Such gentleness – look at the hands – the gestures of one to another and look at the eyes – how they look at each other in such love. Note the faces – not masculine, but genderless or even with elements of the gentle feminine aspect of God.

Notice too, the circle of the figures isn’t closed -there’s space at the front of the table. Perhaps someone is missing maybe they're already part of the picture? There is space here for the observer, the one who perceives - the ones who makes up the Church, Christ’s body in our world. In other words – us - we are already part of the icon picture, part of this loving community of the Trinity of God. Me and you caught up in God's cosmic dance of divine love.

Just as Rublev was exploring the ideas of the Trinity so we can now sit quietly and gaze at his painting. Let's be silent and at peace for a few minutes. As we gaze at Andrei’s icon we ask God to encompass us, to enfold us in His great dance of divine mystery and divine love. 

Short meditation

We thank you God for your mystery and for your many names. Reveal your being and your love to each one of us. Amen

The Blessing of Repentance - A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent - Revd Ray Gaston

Listen to Revd Ray's sermon on The Blessing of Repentance 

Lenten Fasting - A sermon for the First Sunday in Lent - Revd Sue Watson

I need to ask you a question: is anybody giving something up for Lent? And what sort of things are you giving up?

What do you think this is all about- depriving ourselves of the things we enjoy? Why do we do it- or attempt to do it? I wonder if it’s so that we can pat ourselves on the back and congratulate ourselves on our will-power, when we arrive at Easter and we’ve succeeded? And succeeded in what?

I’ve found myself asking these questions recently, as I prepare-yet again- to give up red wine for forty days- minus Sundays, which are, after all, feast days, not fast days!

What am I trying to achieve and who will benefit from my exertions?

Well, I know that I’ll benefit, if I’m healthier and if I lose weight – which I doubt I will…but will it be of any other use, to give up something I enjoy, just to take it up again when Lent is over? It’s a question worth pondering.

I guess ‘giving something up’, if you like, is a watered-down version of the idea that Lent has always been one of those times when the church has called upon the people to fast. ‘Giving something up’ isn’t a complete fast, but it is abstinence- abstinence from a particular thing such as meat, or chocolate…

Since the early centuries, the Church has suggested three things that we should undertake during Lent - prayer, fasting and almsgiving. It is for this reason that the Gospel text for Ash Wednesday every year is Jesus’ advice on prayer, fasting and almsgiving (Matt 6:1-6, 16-18):    “ Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward in heaven…whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen, not by others, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father, who sees in secret will reward you.”

In other words, don’t do it in public to make a show- do it privately, so that God knows, but no-one else – and Jesus applies this direction to prayer and giving alms, as well as to fasting.

In years past, the notion of a fast on certain days was common: Friday, for example, the day of the crucifixion, was never a day to eat meat, hence the fish and chip tradition! But there have also been many other days when fasting was required, for example: the eves of Christmas, the Purification and the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Easter Eve and the eve of certain saints’ days, as well as the Ember days and the three Rogation days.

I have heard it said that there is currently a growing interest in society in fasting, for spiritual reasons. That may be so, but if you search Google now, most of the references you find to fasting are about dieting: the five-two diet, intermittent fasting, the five day fast. In a part of the world where food is so readily available to most of us, society at large tends to think of fasting as a way to lose excess weight.

But the notion of fasting is very Biblical and it has a spiritual purpose. Fasting was a regular practice in Israel, often a communal as well as an individual activity, with the whole community engaged in fasting together: when the disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus they asked “Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus responded by saying that fasting is not for the time when the bridegroom is with his disciples, but the time will come when he is no longer with them…and then they will fast. Here we see that Jesus sees fasting as something reflective, associated with a certain sadness, or sense of something lacking and an activity designed to keep in touch with God…and so he clearly expects his followers to have times of fasting when he is no longer with them.

So what is fasting and what exactly is it meant to achieve?

Fasting, broadly speaking, is the voluntary avoidance of eating something that is good. When Christians talk about fasting, we normally mean restricting the food that we eat. We can fast between meals by not eating snacks, or we can engage in a complete fast by abstaining from all food on certain days. The English word breakfast, in fact, means the meal that breaks the fast.

While fasting takes the form of refraining from eating for a period of time, its purpose is to do with taming our bodies and taking the focus off our bodily needs so that we can concentrate on higher, more spiritual things.

 Of course, there is the issue of how we get to the point of ignoring the hunger pangs, so that all we think about is food, defeating the object of focussing more on God and our relationship with him! That takes time to learn and to practice. But the practice of letting go of our obsession with feeding and comforting our physical bodies will, in time, allow our minds to focus on our spiritual, rather than our physical needs. It will open the door to a closer awareness of God, heightened sensitivity to his creation, and, indeed, to other people and their needs.

This isn’t of course, to say that food isn’t a necessary requirement for healthy living…that would be silly: when Jesus is in the wilderness and fasting, the devil tempted him to turn stones into bread. Jesus didn’t respond by saying that he didn’t need bread – what he said was that living needs both bread and the word of God: As the Gospel of Matthew says: “One does not live by bread alone… but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”- a quotation from the Hebrew scriptures, Deuteronomy Chapter 8. We need to get the balance right between our focus on our bodily needs and on our spiritual needs. Sometimes these are out of kilter and fasting is a way of correcting the balance.

So, the advantage to me, as an individual, of fasting might be that I lose weight, that I’m therefore healthier and that I have been able to focus my attention more on my heavenly Father through prayer and meditation and now find myself closer to him. That would surely be well worth the effort.

But is it enough? This kind of fasting and prayer as a very personal and individual thing, bringing benefit just to oneself is not the whole picture.  The value of fasting and prayer goes much deeper than this and there is a further step to take: there are consequences for getting closer to God.

When Jesus talks about piety- our religious practice – he links three things: prayer, fasting and giving. ..our religious practice, says Jesus includes all three of these things, not just prayer and fasting, but looking outward, looking towards others in their need, supporting those who are without the basic necessities of life- giving our money and our time to them, campaigning for changes in oppressive behaviour by governments and institutions which practice unfair discrimination, highlighting corrupt employment practice - caring in whatever ways we can.

What Jesus is talking about here is seeking justice for all: and this flows outwards from true religious observance- from fasting and prayer: all three things are inter-connected: prayer, fasting and caring for the needs of others.

In the time of the prophet Isaiah, the people of Israel fasted together but were far from God and God says to them, through the prophet: “day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways as if they were a nation that practised righteousness…”In other words, their fasting was hollow, it was not linked to righteous behaviour or the requirements of God- justice and mercy. Let me read to you the words of God, spoken by the prophet Isaiah to the people of Israel:

‘Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,
    and oppress all your workers.
⁴ Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
    and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
    will not make your voice heard on high.
⁵ Is such the fast that I choose,
    a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
    and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

⁶ Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
    the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
⁹ Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry for help, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

Jesus fasted in the wilderness, he prayed in the wilderness and then he exercised a ministry among the people which proclaimed justice and mercy for the poor and the excluded, healing and wholeness for all those in need. He sought out the despised and ate with them, he offered forgiveness to the wrong-doer and he brought joy and feasting to those who chose to follow him. He calls us to do the same.

And, as was promised, when Jesus called out to his Father on the cross for help, the Lord answered and said: “Here I am” and he raised him up on the third day

May our Lenten fast, whatever its form, lead us to act in the world as he acted: to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.

Amen