May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of my heart and all of our
hearts be pleasing to Thee, O Lord, our
Rock and our Redeemer.
Amen.
Trinity Sunday is a contemplation of the inner
life of God as a communion of love,
one divine essence, one divine being, one divine
life, revealed as three divine persons in eternal
relationship as God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit.
Now, it's through the life and teachings of
Jesus at his baptism, at the Annunciation where
the Holy Spirit conceived Jesus in the womb
of Mary, there's many places where we began
to see the Trinity at work.
And it's through his life and teachings that
the early Christians came to understand the nature
of God as three distinct persons or expressions
of the one divine life, mutually indwelling, co
-inhering and relating as a divine family, a
divine family whose name is the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We might not think of the name of
God being Trinitarian, but Jesus said, baptize them
in the name, singular.
God, the Father, God, the Son, and God,
the Holy Spirit.
Jesus confers this name on the mission of
the church, as I mentioned, to go into
all the world and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them, immersing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit.
Christians are those who, through faith, have been
immersed by water and of spirit into this
divine life, into this communion of infinite love,
as we say in the Eucharistic prayer, Holy
and Gracious Father, in your infinite love.
So it's been an immersion into a communion
of infinite love, eternal love, shared within the
inner life of God, the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit, a holy family of
one God, one divinity of three persons.
The whole mission of Jesus was to reveal
the one true God as Father.
To show us the Father.
And to call the nations to worship the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
as Paul describes him.
The Father is the God and Father of
the Son.
The Lord Jesus Christ.
Though the Lord Jesus Christ shares the same
divinity with the Father.
The fatherhood of God has nothing to do
with the misconstrued attack on the theological language
of the Bible as patriarchy.
Patriarchy has gotten a really, really bad name,
and it's used to describe the gendered terms
even for God in the Bible.
We would have to argue with Jesus himself
to change that wording, even though it's being
done throughout much of the church.
It's not our idea.
So there are those who seek to wipe
out the gendered language of the Bible and
so doing make a grave theological error.
It's misunderstanding the whole foundation from eternity into
time and space.
Ultimately, we are in relations with God as
Father because he is the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of
God.
This father has a son, and this is
why he is a father, right?
This father has a family, and that's why
he is a father.
Father is his name.
And it's not symbolic.
But spiritually, one who generates life, life eternal.
The son is eternally begotten of the father.
Fathers beget mother's birth.
The son is eternally begotten of the father,
God from God, light from light, true God
from true God of one being essence with
the father of the same divinity.
You could say it's one divinity with three
persons, Jesus, the son of the father.
And our great high priest now participates with
us in praying the prayer he gave us.
Conferring on us a fully adopted status as
Abba's children, praying our father.
He is our father because he is the
father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Knowing this right in the introduction, just those
thoughts alone, how could we confer patriarchy on
the words of Jesus?
Patriarchy in a negative, derogative way of looking
at it, that is.
Family and fatherhood is not a human invention
or a cultural development alone.
No, we do not read anthropomorphic ideas back
into God, but we read theopromorphic truth into
us.
We're not projecting onto God human characteristics.
God gives us the divine characteristics because we
are made in his image and likeness.
See how we twist this and turn it
around very, very easily.
The earthly family is being deconstructed by none
other than the father of lies.
There's another father in contention with the father.
He's called the father of lies by Jesus
himself.
The father of lies, Satan himself knows full
well where family is derived.
He used to be in that family and
he chose to leave and to lead all
of us out of the father's family.
You have an enemy.
And we have one who has overcome that
enemy.
The son of the father in whom we
dwell.
We're in the son and the son is
in us by his spirit because of his
redemptive work.
Therefore, family comes from God.
Family comes from God.
Our father, who created human beings, male and
female, to be united together in communion with
the divine family, the Holy Trinity.
You don't get this on the news.
That's why we need to teach theology, right?
This is why Paul prays Ephesians 314 and
following.
For this reason, I bow my knees before
the almighty one, the supreme being.
No, I bow my knees before the father,
not just any old father, but the father.
Perfected in love who cast out all fears.
For this reason, I bow my knees before
the father from whom get this verse 15,
Ephesians 315, from whom every family in heaven.
And on earth is named, it comes from
God.
This is not a human cultural institution.
God gave us the idea of family because
it is first generated in him eternally.
It's a beautiful thing to think, isn't it,
that according to the riches of his glory,
he may grant you to be strengthened with
power.
Here's the Trinitarian thing going on, bowing his
knees before the father, strengthened with power through
his spirit in your inner being so that
Christ, so that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith.
That you being rooted and grounded in love
and God is love, it's being rooted and
grounded in Christ, being rooted and grounded in
love, ontological love, not the kind of love
that we strive to develop, but it's love,
perfected love, unconditional love, eternal.
Rooted and grounded in God, who is love,
may have strength to comprehend with all the
saints what is the breadth and length and
height and depth and to know the love
of Christ.
Oh, St. Aidan's, that we may know the
love of Christ.
That surpasses knowledge.
That you may be filled with all the
fullness of God.
You see, the juxtaposition that you may know
the love of Christ and filled with all
the fullness.
Paul is just saying one thing, but he's
breaking it down, filled with God, filled with
love, strengthened by his spirit, it's all one
operation of the father and the son and
the Holy Spirit.
Now, historically, since the second century by Tullian,
this has come to be known and described
as the Holy Trinity.
He was the first to actually use the
word and as today's Eucharistic preface, for with
your co-eternal son and Holy Spirit, you
are one God, one Lord in Trinity of
persons and in unity of being.
And we celebrate the one and equal glory
of you, oh, father and the son and
of the Holy Spirit.
So today, I pray that we would not
think about this mystery as merely a philosophical
construct, something for people to ponder who have
too much time on their hands.
This is not the way we receive the
teaching of the Holy Trinity.
We pray the truth of the Holy Trinity.
We receive the life through the spirit of
the Holy Trinity.
We are immersed through baptism into that life
of the Holy Trinity.
It's way, way beyond a philosophical construct, something
that Jesus reveals to the church.
We should receive it as two things, at
least as an affirmation of faith as expressed
throughout the scriptures and in the creeds and
as a call to mission.
The creeds call us to affirm this faith,
we believe in one God, the father almighty,
he's father, he's not just the almighty, he's
father almighty.
If you're not praying to a force, you're
praying to something so incomprehensibly loving that you
can't get your head around it, but he's
more than a force.
And he can be forceful, he can be
forceful, but he's not the force, he's the
source.
There you go.
He's the father almighty, he's the maker of
heaven and earth.
We believe in Jesus Christ, his only son,
our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary and so
forth.
So right there in the beginning of the
Nicene Creed, before they actually address the Holy
Spirit at the end, the Trinity is right
there in the beginning, conceived by the Holy
Spirit.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was conceived in the
womb of the Virgin by the very Holy
Spirit himself.
It's a Trinitarian work because the father sent
the son and the spirit conceived of the
divine logos in the womb of Mary and
he became man.
Amen.
The name of the Holy Trinity is a
call to mission, not just any mission, but
to the mission of God, God's mission in
the world.
As part of his apostolic people, we are
sending today Anita in Georgia off to Zambia
and we're sending Lisa next week off to
Uganda.
And then within a month, we'll be receiving
missionaries, Trevor and John of Connect Africa, and
they will be preaching and sharing and spending
a good week or so with us.
And so.
This is what the Holy Trinity does, the
Holy Trinity is in the work of completing
the mission and Jesus gives us that mission
first by being immersed into the life of
the Holy Trinity in the name of the
father and of the son and of the
Holy Spirit.
Go do it.
So let's never forget that Christ revealed the
nature of God and what we've come to
call the Holy Trinity and calls us to
his continued mission in the world, first by
immersing us into the name of the father
and of the son and of the Holy
Spirit, the divine family, a communion of infinite
love and thinking about today's readings.
May we be like that humble bush.
We're kind of like that humble bush, we
need the flame, we need the eternal flame
to come upon us that doesn't consume us
somewhat like the incarnation.
The very life of God came into the
womb of Mary and it didn't consume her.
She became a bush of flame with the
life of God.
May we, too, become a bush of flame
set aflame by God's burning love, his burning
fire of love, that living presence of God
who dwells in us, the spirit of adoption,
who cries Abba father in the name of
the father and the son and the Holy
Spirit.
Amen.
Let's stand together and we will affirm our
faith in this Trinitarian life.
We believe in one God, the father, the
almighty maker of heaven and earth, of all
that is seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the
only son of God, eternally begotten of the
father, God from God, light from life, true
God from true God, begotten, not made of
one being with the father.
Through him, all things were made for us
and for our salvation.
He came down from heaven by the power
of the Holy Spirit.
He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and
was made man for our sake.
He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
He suffered death and was buried on the
third day.
He rose again in accordance with the scriptures.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at
the right hand of the father.
He will come again in glory to judge
the living and the dead, and his kingdom
will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
the giver of life who proceeds from the
father and the son with the father and
the son.
He is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic
church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of
sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come.
Seated for the prayers of the people this
morning.