Trinity Sunday - 12 Jun 1954

Today is Trinity Sunday, the festival that the Church holds each year in honour of the mystery of God’s being. We have to say ‘mystery’ because although we know a certain amount about God, we have not the mental faculties necessary for knowing everything about Him. Far back in ancient times, people believed in many gods. There were, they thought, gods of the hills and gods of the rivers, gods of the ocean, gods of the seasons, gods of the nations, and many besides. Even today in places where the light of the Gospel has not shone, people believe in many gods. Only very gradually did people begin to learn that there is only one God, and that the many gods they believed in were imaginary and false. The first people to learn this were the Jews. They learned it because the true God taught it to them through their prophets, so that they might make it known to other nations.

But there was another truth about God that God wanted men to know. He wanted men to know that within the one God-head there are certain mysterious distinctions. God did not expect them to learn how it is that there are these distinctions – that would be quite beyond human comprehension, but He did want them to know that there are these distinctions. The Jewish people found it difficult to learn this lesson, and even refused to learn it. As we know, they eventually put Jesus to death. Our Lord’s own disciples also found it difficult to learn but they were willing to learn it, and so gradually did. It was after the time of the Apostles that the truth came to be formulated as we know it today : the doctrine of the Trinity – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Yet they are not three Gods, but one God. God the Father – the Creator; God the Son – the Redeemer, and God the Holy Ghost – the Sanctifier. Yet they are not three Gods, but one. Three persons in one God – that is the doctrine of the Trinity.

On Trinity Sunday we should try to think of the glory, majesty and love of God, who is the eternal Father. He showed us for all time exactly what He is like in the person of His Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. As the Spirit of love and truth and power He has been working in and through the creative process from the beginning of time. He still works in the world and in each of us today, in so far as we allow Him to do so.

The special call today, then is to worship, and this note is struck particularly in today’s Epistle, where the writer puts before us a vision of God in all His majesty. All creation joins in praise and worship. He writes: “I was in the Spirit and behold a throne was set in heaven.” If we are in the Spirit we too may see and behold, although dimly, and so we offer our worship and praise. We cannot wholly explain the mystery of the Divine nature – if we could, we should be as God. But we worship that which we know because the fundamental fact of Christianity is that God has revealed Himself, and we know Him as Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.