This year for the first time ever I am preaching on Trinity Sunday. It has tended to be one I take off because the big outreach events of Pentecost leave me fit for not a lot and as it is usually nearer June than May it's a good weekend to have off - apart from avoiding the perils of preaching it!
Thinking back over more than 30 years of regular church going, most years of which I have been in church on Trinity Sunday I have never, ever heard anyone preach on the Trinity - not in a Baptist church, a Methodist church, a URC, C of E or even RC - and I've been in all of these at least once on said Sunday.
So it is proving a good challenge beginning, albeit later than usual, to think about hymns and songs to accompany some of the lectionary readings to to ponder how I might get my good people to begin to engage a little with the concept.
I am contemplating beginning by asking them for the metaphors and analogies they know of (and dreading the inevitable answers) and then seeing if they actually know that the doctrine is not explicitly in the Bible (shock, horror!). Not that there aren't threefold references in the Bible, before anyone accuses me of total heresy, but the neat tidy concept itself just isn't there. I might well them go on to use Rublev's famous icon and Mattisse's dance to tease around some ideas of community/relationship and even playfulness within the Godhead. Whether I survive after showing images of naked 'ladies' on a Sunday remains to be seen! After all, even my middle aged knees are a bit too risque for some of my congregation...
In the meantime I'm trying to find some more inspiring than 'Holy, holy. holy,' 'Father we love you' and 'Father we adore you' by way of explicitly trinitarian hymns and songs.
PS the worst ever metaphor for the Trinity I have encountered is...'the trinity is like a trifle, there are three layers but one pudding' Aaaaaaaargh!
Comments
You're right, the Trinity is not for trifling with. Sweet fellowship divine?
If it's any consolation, my congregation would be similarly appalled by my middle-aged knees.
I suspect that isn't any consolation.
Have you tried 'We are heirs of God Almighty' (1577 SOF3). It is sung to Austria (I tend to use Abbotts Leigh) however there are some lines i struggle with. - Apple of the Fathers Eye being one and I will let you work out which others. If you need the words they can be found here
(http://shop.kingswaysongs.com/product_info.php?cPath=4_41&products_id=852)
My personal favourite is "God is like a shamrock -- small, green and split three ways." - Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run
my personal dislike is the cherry Pie one. "When you cut it three ways all the filling merges back into one".
The worst one I heard was a very scientific one - water is ice, liquid and steam! But the user of this illustration failed to realise it is nigh impossible to have all three exist at the same time.
Good old Rublev. What would we do with out him?
I wouldn't say 'nigh on impossible,' it happens all the time at ice rinks and when you pull ice cubes out of the freezer, but you're right, ice water and steam can can only co-exist at the 'triple point' which under normal atmospheric conditions is a smidge above zero celcius (just to prove I can recall something from my A level chemistry!). It is a pretty naff analogy - either the three 'phases' of God can only co-exist under special conditions or God can only be in one or two of them at any one time. Either of which is, of course, a load of old Northampton Town FC! (Cobblers)
I'm probably preparing to be shot down in flames, as nothing I say about the Trinity ever seems to be anything less than heretical. It's a good job you don't have to know everything about God to know God (discuss). Also I'm probably exegetically up the spout again. But here goes.
The description in John 14 of God coming to move in with us/live alongside us/make God's dwelling with us (pause for sudden realisation of further echoes in Revelation 21) interweaves Jesus' "presence/absence/leaving us/not leaving us as orpans/dwelling with us" both with the Spirit's presence/activity and with the Father's resolve to come and live with us. The key that opens the door to all this divine house-moving is a Johannine cluster of relationship/abiding/being in Jesus as he is in the Father/doing as he does/obedience.
This Johannine account of 'proto-trinity' revolves (dances?) around a set of relationships articulated as the love shared by Jesus/the Father in which we share when we also love one another.
This has the knock on effect that, if we share in this set of relationships, we will also do what we see Jesus do, just as
he did what he saw the Father doing.
Trinity, therefore, isn't just a philosophical description of divine geometry or a mystical subject for devotional contemplation but also a dynamic source for ethical action.
Maybe...
"Trinity, therefore, isn't just a philosophical description of divine geometry or a mystical subject for devotional contemplation but also a dynamic source for ethical action."
I think that is pretty much the kind of idea that unederlies Paul Fiddes' pastoral theology of the Trinity.
On Sunday I'm going to use a bit of Genesis 1 ('humankind in our image') as the call to worship and the starting point to my exploration. It is not (just) that individuals are made in the image and likeness of God, it is humankind that is - i.e. a relational/communitarian foundation (and not the oft quoted two become one, Genesis 2, ergo marriage is God's ideal for everyone - spit!).
One comment I found on the Rublev icon is that the fourth side of the table is open as an invitation to the viewer to join in - an image of hospitality and welcome - as an equal participant.
This is turn kind of leads to the Matisse dance image (employed by Paul Fiddes) and to the Matthew 28 mission/comission - go and recruit more dancers by taking part in the missional grand chain (this latter being a Catriona metaphor!). Connecting with God and whirling out to the world and being whirled back and forth kind of thing (hopefully without getting so giddy you fall over!).
So that's my heresy for this week.
I may invite my people to draw their own 'icon' but think I'll need to play that one by ear...
If you're right (and I'm sure you are), it's interesting again as a matter of canonical theology that Genesis and Revelation begin and round off the biblical narrative with pictures of community in relationship to the divine Source of that community.
Hmmm, "Go and make disciples baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". An invitation to synchronised swimming? Complete with the smiles (and the nose clips)?
You could always get them to do a dance...