Today, Trinity Sunday. Last autumn we had ideas of God the Father, in Advent and at Harvest. Then, from Christmas to Ascension, we focussed specially on the life, death and Resurrection of God the Son, and then, last Sunday, at Pentecost, we focussed on God the Holy Spirit. Today is something of a summing up of all that, our vision of God as the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are three momentous readings set for today, of which we heard two. All having to do with how we see God.

It is in the name of the Trinity that we are baptised, and it is our understanding of God as Trinity that sets us apart from the other faiths which follow one God. For us the idea of the Trinity is a rather startling but wonderful mystery, but for Jews, Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses it is something shocking and distasteful which they cannot take on board.

If you we were to ask what happens next in our year, after Trinity Sunday, the summer is largely about attending to Jesus’ actual teachings, except when we meet a saint’s day.

The reading which we didn’t hear was a famous one from Isaiah the prophet, set way before any ideas of the Trinity. The great prophets often had special experiences at the time when they realised that they had their demanding vocation, and when they had to then decide whether to rise to it. So it is that Isaiah says that he had a vision of God in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem around 740 BC. In Isaiah chapter 6 we read: ‘In the year that King Uzziah died,’ says Isaiah, ‘I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and his train filled the Temple’.

‘I saw the Lord’, said Isaiah. But the giddy truth is that he cannot tell us anything much of God at all. Isaiah speaks of God’s train, of his angelic attendants, of smoke, of the building shaking. But of God himself he can actually say nothing. But he does feel deeply unworthy, and God somehow helps him with that, and Isaiah is willing for the work that he’s called to as a prophet. But he is told that his ministry will be a disaster, people will not respond. And Isaiah asks how long problems will continue, and the answer comes, ‘until the land is desolate’. Saying that following God has to be open-ended, we can’t have expectations or make conditions. Many, perhaps, would like the idea of serving God if success as a minister would have guaranteed results, and be certain to have prestige and a nice career. Many people might have a notion of serving God, but quite likely in an uncostly, advisory capacity, but it doesn’t work like that! But, whatever happens to Isaiah himself, the message seems to be that God’s initiatives and people’s faithful efforts will bear fruit in the end.

In the next reading, from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we are told that God, - following his help to us in Christ - God is going to help us work with him, if we are willing, by somehow himself dwelling within our very selves. So that we will know God, as the human Jesus did, as Abba, Father.

A little diversion. Over the years my three children have often called me ‘Father’, rather than ’Dad’.  Father, a perfectly normal word. The Jews have their special polite and reverent word to address God, in their prayers, ‘Abinu’. Jesus changed that by using ‘Abba’, the common, intimate word for father, used in the family. We are now, as Christians, drawn into that intimate relationship with God ….. but do we actually want that? Aren’t we much more comfortable keeping God at a distance?

Time was, even recently, when 'thee’s and ‘thou’s, were an intimate way of talking. But not so much now. But they seem to have survived, in the Church, as a formal respectful language for addressing God. But God in Christ has gone to great lengths to come alongside us as one of us, wanting to draw us into an amazing intimate relationship with him, using the normal familiar word for father. If we then, in the name of respect, decline the intimate, and use rather cold, and distant, ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s it is, - perhaps, a questionable approach, - which might suggest that we want to keep God – ever so respectfully – at a safe distance from us, whether he wants that or not!

A number of other thoughts occur. Even before the pandemic, social isolation, was coming to be seen as an issue. That is, apparently, where some people have no one close to them at all, with whom to share their lives. 

The doctrine of the Trinity suggests that within God himself there is a community of love. Community somehow at the heart of things. The love within the Trinity somehow spilled over to create us and share life with us.

If God is indeed, - as the hymn says, - the ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind’, and if true life is about relationship with him, and humanity is intended to be a community, God’s family. If all that is true, then the Church has a big challenge. Tackling social isolation is very much something for us.

But challenges for the Church are great. We must show to the world the most genuine sort of human community. The Church must be a model of good community. But we actually have glaring failings. The safeguarding situation has been light years away from being a model for the world. Our record on racism is iffy. Jesus prayed on the night before his death that his followers might be one, that the world may believe. Mission and Unity go together. The divisions in the Church make us unimpressive, and evangelism difficult. We can’t even agree globally when to celebrate Christmas and Easter, or agree within our local Anglican Church as to which of our own priests we can receive communion from, with what some call ‘safety and confidence’.

And we must be careful not to, thoughtlessly, imitate secular ways of doing business, in our methods of Church government, of making money, and in our systems of honours, prestige, careers and titles. The Pope wisely told his cardinals that they should get themselves red woollen cassocks, - expensive flashy red silk ones are not really appropriate, chaps.

The Church in England has much to do. We are getting deeper into a minority situation. The majority of the population, I think, is apparently, no longer wanting Anglican bishops in the House of Lords, or seeing them as relevant to the Country’s life. Besides trying to help our communities, where help is needed, and besides trying to do the right things about the environment, we need to build up our people by study of Bible and Doctrine, working with all ages, and focussing on good liturgy every Sunday.

Time was when the Church was at the centre of community life. If we try to behave like that now, in a largely secular world, people understandably resent that. We are thought to be punching above our weight. But, the local Church is nevertheless called to exhibit something special about true humanity and true community, while, at the same time, having to relate suitably to non-church, secular, community organisations with their different visions and aspirations. But, in doing so, the Church of the living God cannot thoughtlessly retreat, and lapse into seeing itself as just one more group among many, which would be to betray our calling. Our relationship is with God, the Trinity, a God embodying true community within his very self, and we mustn’t lose that focus.

Fr Roger