A Reflection, by Fr. Gareth Ingham, for Trinity Sunday.
Making sense of things can sometimes be a real challenge.
This week at Church we will be celebrating the principal feast of Trinity Sunday. Our focus during worship, prayer, and teaching will alight on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It’s an annual reminder that as followers of Jesus Christ, we worship a triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not three gods but one God; or as Athanasius put it, ‘one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity’.
The Trinity is important as it helps us to understand the revelations of God, who Jesus is, and how our Lord relates to both the Father and to the Holy Spirit, whose arrival we celebrated last week at Pentecost.
Some people may dismiss the importance of the Trinity, as it can seem to be complicated and just create confusion. But in the history of the Church this is nothing new. It took a few hundred years of asking difficult questions for the divinity of Jesus to be ironed out. It then took many more difficult questions for the Church to develop a shared understanding of the Holy Trinity.
Questions are part of our faith and have been asked of Jesus from the beginning. In Sunday’s Gospel reading Nicodemus visits Jesus by night; he wants to find out more, to make sense of who Jesus is. He arrives at night in the darkness of ignorance and can’t quite grasp the answers he receives.
It may be that Nicodemus is asking too many questions from the head,
‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?
…and not asking enough questions from the heart.
The triune God we worship is a God of relationship. The Holy Trinity is a ‘being in communion’, who through our questions of faith, love, and trust, will hopefully draw us into that divine communion.
St Paul in his letter to the Romans reminds us, ‘we have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Christianity is a questioning faith. Hopefully by asking questions of faith, love, and trust, we can continue to make sense of things. Especially when we ask those questions with our hearts as well as our minds.
Fr. Gareth Ingham
Priest in Charge – The Benefice of CRIFTINS with DUDLESTON and WELSH FRANKTON
and The Benefice of PETTON with COCKSHUTT, WELSHAMPTON, and LYNEAL with COLEMERE.
Feature Image: Holy_Trinity_on_stained_glasses, Wikicommons, PD.