Romans 8.12-17 and John 3:1-17
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem Pied Beauty begins with the wonderful words, ‘Glory be to God for dappled things’.
It’s a phrase I love and one which I found woven into the rhythm of my walking a few weeks ago as I led a pilgrimage to Lindisfarne (Holy Island).
As we strolled towards the causeway, the light of the rising sun enhanced the colours of spring flowers in the hedgerows and added a gentle layer of beauty.
‘Glory be to God for dappled things’.
As our bare feet moved across the cold wet sand following the ancient pilgrim way, the water shimmered deep blue as it reflected the hue of the sky above.
‘Glory be to God for dappled things’.
It seemed so natural to gather on the shore of the island and recite the familiar opening words of morning prayer, ‘O Lord open our lips and our mouth shall proclaim your praise’.
In that moment our voices joined as one with all creation – with the chorus of birds around us, with the colours of the land and sea and sky, with the warmth of the sun.
The Venerable Bede (whose feast day we celebrated just yesterday) tells us that St Cuthbert’s voice of prayer would join on those islands with the calls of the eider duck and the kittiwake, with the deep growl of the puffin and the bark of the seal, with the roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves.
We shared in Cuthbert’s joy that morning as our voices were woven into the tapestry of praise which is the wonder of all creation.
The experience was one simply of relationship. An expression of the relationship with God through that which he has made, and an expression of the relationship with God through and in the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And there we find the essence of this pivotal festival in the Christian year – Trinity Sunday. The simplicity of relationship.
So many clumsy attempts exist to try and explain what the Trinity is all about. I’m sure you’ve heard them all: the Trinity is like water with three states of solid, liquid and gas; the Trinity is like an egg with the elements of yoke and white and shell – distinct but somehow as one. We even find Nicodemus wrestling with the matter in today’s gospel reading. How to define the Trinity.
But all these attempts fall short, and that is because the Trinity doesn’t exist to be explained or understood – it exists to be lived.
The Trinity is simply and profoundly a relationship – a flow of relationship among persons; a flow of relationship that we find ourselves caught up within.
In my eyes, the famous icon by Andre Rublev communicates this more effectively than anything else. It depicts three heavenly figures seated at a table, grouped in perfect harmony, complete in themselves. And yet there is room for us as well. The icon is written in a way that invites us to join them, to share in the joy that they find in each other, to participate in their life.
That’s what a Trinitarian faith looks like – you and I finding our place in the life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And that life is very simply an expression of a perfect relationship of love – the heart of all things, the source of all that is and is to come.
I’ve been delving into the wisdom of the medieval English mystic Julian of Norwich over the past few weeks. When Julian speaks of the Trinity she speaks of the wonder of knowing, experiencing, and ‘diving into’ the love that called it into being.
“Know it well”, she says, “love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love”.
There are deep echoes there of this morning’s first reading in which St Paul wrote to the Romans of the intimacy of relationship with God – a relationship that invites us to call him ‘Abba, Father’ and to rediscover ourselves as children of God.
The difficulty about Trinitarian doctrine is not the challenge of a mathematical puzzle or a metaphor strained beyond limit – but the difficulty of comprehending a love that goes so deep.
It is the love which called us into being, the love within which we will be immersed at our journeys end, the love into which we step afresh each day.
So this Trinity Sunday let’s stop trying to understand and explain the Trinity.
Instead, let’s embrace it, participate in it, live and breathe it.
Let us enter into the love that has created all things.
This is our calling, our vocation – to participate in the life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
And to offer to the world with open hands and hearts the love that we have found.
Let us pray:
Almighty God,
envelop us in the mystery of your love,
that as we enter into the heart of the Trinity
so creation may come to sing of your glory,
and our lives shine with the radiance of all that is and is to come.
We ask this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
ever three and ever one.
Amen.