One and three.

Grappling haiku

They call it myst’ry

this trinity thing, holding

concepts in tension.

After all these years

I still don’t really get it.

I don’t think God minds.

Think how Parent God,

with Jesus and the Spirit,

strangely coalesce.

One God, three persons,

traditional formula:

all else heresy!

Does our imagined

God monitor errant thoughts;

scoring our faith?

Perhaps I also

am heretic. Woe is me!

Or does it matter?

The truth that matters:

God somehow strangely present

in our loving deeds.

O Holy Spirit,

Divine Parent and His Son,

let me live in you.

© Ken Rookes 2019

Go, therefore.

Haiku for those who are sent

Eleven of them

went to Galilee, as told.

Where were the women?

There, on the mountain

they met and worshipped Jesus;

but some were doubting.

All authority

has been entrusted to me:

gather disciples.

Make them mine; baptise

in the name of the Father,

the Son and Spirit.

Teach them to obey

all that I have commanded.

This is true worship.

Remember, my friends,

I will always be with you

to the age's end.

© Ken Rookes 2017

The template of all reality

"...The template of all reality is Trinity : Trinity that is totally male AND totally female. We are told this in the first chapter of our Scripture.  “Let us create humanity in our image, male and female they were created.” the creation story says [Genesis 1:26]. Within the Trinity perfect love and are perfectly loved. We come to know who God is through exchanges of mutual knowing and loving.

We will always run into trouble when we try to name or describe God with human words. We do not have either genderless or gender inclusive pronouns to use when talking about people. This is a problem for people with gender dysphoria so perhaps some will be developed in coming years.

If Wisdom was present in the beginning as John tells us Christ was; where does Wisdom fit with the Trinity? Was Paul correct in naming Christ the Wisdom of God and has the Body of Christ been severely limited through the centuries as it has ignored this? As we heard earlier, Paul saw Christ as both the Power and the Wisdom of God. If the Church had honoured this image it may well have come to call Christ, the daughter of God with subsequent very different outcomes for women through the centuries.

Total exclusion of women in the Church did not occur until after the Reformation. The Orthodox Church has at least one famous icon that depicts a member of the Trinity as female. The Roman Catholic Church has always had Mary, revered as the Mother of Christ. But after the Reformation, neither men nor women in the Protestant Churches had even one woman to look up to. How much might our portrayal of God as totally male influence male dominance and violence against women? It is surely something to prayerfully contemplate."

Rev Julianne Parker

For full sermon see sermons page

Triune Haiku

To make sense of Christ,

(they say it is essential);

this trinity thing.

How does it all work?

Some questions can't be answered,

but still we ask them.

Father, Son, Spirit;

our mystical formula.

Ah, we are foolish!

© Ken Rookes 2016

God models community

Images have been used such as clover leaves where the three segments are likely to be identical, or of a person as a daughter, partner and mother, in an effort to understand to the mystery of the Trinity. Rather than trying to explain the unexplainable, let’s look at what it might mean for humanity to be made in the image of this mystery.

One of the fundamental arguments for the Trinitarian nature of God is at the very beginning of our Scripture in Genesis 1:26,27. We have the words with plural pronouns, “Then God said, “Let US make humankind in OUR image, according to OUR likeness….. in the image of God [he] created them; male and female [he] created them.” We are reminded that in Hebrew Scripture, the Spirit of God and the Wisdom of God are feminine. It would seem that the Trinitarian God is totally masculine and totally feminine as this is what humanity as a whole is like.

Throughout history no two humans have ever been absolutely identical. Even the most identical of identical twins have their differences. What does this say about the creator God? We expect people to be like us, not too different. If they are of the same race, socio-economic background, even family, we expect to be similar and, of course we are in many ways, but not all, by any means. As a consequence, we may subconsciously think that God is like us.  

The Trinitarian nature of God models community and coming together in the diversity of how we were created and who we are with different height, body shape, tolerance, health, understanding and intelligence. We have complex differences in our personalities as we are along the continuum from extremely extrovert to extremely introvert.

There is wisdom and richness in diversity. Maybe the greatest gift to us in the image of God as Trinity is that it normalizes diversity for us. Humanity as a whole is made in the image of God. To imply that any one part of humanity is more God- like than any other part is failing God, others and ourselves. Life in all its fullness is about embracing and celebrating diversity of creation and especially among humans. When we can do this, we will truly be worshipping the mystery which is Triune God.

Rev Julianne Parker (full sermon in sermon section)

Ungraspable

Grasping after the ungraspable

mysterious God,
who allows God’s-self to be glimpsed
touched, known and argued with
in the very human Son of Man,
as he walks dustily and hungrily
along lonely paths;
stepping among anxious people
who press insistently and demand answers.
Reaching after elusive meaning
in a world that weeps, mourns,
confounds and hides;
in which the surprising Spirit
of a strangely gracious God
emerges from human shadows
to disturb and shake.
She affirms the doubting,
lifts the faltering
and breathes stillness into the fear.
Always this servant Spirit comes
to brush tender tingling life,
hinting at the mystery
of the three-personed God
in whom all things have their beginning;
and their end.
 

© Ken Rookes

 

Trinity, Cranach, Lucas the elder

An amazing painting of the Trinity

Trinity sermon example

The story is told of St Augustine of Hippo, a great philosopher and theologian who wanted so much to understand the doctrine of the Trinity and to be able to explain it logically. One day as he was walking along the sea shore and reflecting on this, he suddenly saw a little child all alone on the shore. The child made a whole in the sand, ran to the sea with a little cup, filled her cup, came and poured it into the hole she had made in the sand. Back and forth she went to the sea, filled her cup and came and poured it into the hole. Augustine went up to her and said, "Little child, what are doing?" and she replied, "I am trying to empty the sea into this hole." "How do you think," Augustine asked her, "that you can empty this immense sea into this tiny hole and with this tiny cup?" To which she replied, " And you, how do you suppose that with this your small head you can comprehend the immensity of God?" With that the child disappeared.

Trinity joke

In New York lived a Jewish man who was a very militant atheist. But he sent his son to Trinity Christian School because, despite its denominational roots, it was a great school and completely secular.
After a month, the boy came home and said casually, "By the way, Dad, I learned what Trinity means! It means 'The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'"
The father could barely control his rage. He seized his son by the shoulders and declared, "Morris, I'm going to tell you something now and I want you never to forget it. Forget this Trinity business. There is only one God... and we don't believe in him!" 

and Jesus said "What?"

Jesus said, Whom do men say that I am?

And his disciples answered and said, Some say you are John the Baptist returned from the dead; others say Elias, or other of the old prophets.

And Jesus answered and said, But whom do you say that I am?

Peter answered and said, "Thou art the Logos, existing in the Father as His rationality and then, by an act of His will, being generated, in consideration of the various functions by which God is related to his creation, but only on the fact that Scripture speaks of a Father, and a Son, and a Holy Spirit, each member of the Trinity being coequal with every other member, and each acting inseparably with and interpenetrating every other member, with only an economic subordination within God, but causing no division which would make the substance no longer simple."

And Jesus answering, said, "What?" 

A Trinity Joke

About a century or two ago, the Pope decided that all the Jews had to leave the Vatican. Naturally there was a big uproar from the Jewish community.

So the Pope made a deal. He would have a religious debate with a member of the Jewish community. If the Jew won, they could stay. If the Pope won, the Jews would leave.

The Jews realized that they had no choice. So they picked a middle aged man named Moishe to represent them. Moishe asked for one addition to the debate. To make it more interesting, neither side would be allowed to talk. The pope agreed.

The day of the great debate came. Moishe and the Pope sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. Moishe looked back at him and raised one finger. The Pope waved his fingers in a circle around his head. Moishe pointed to the ground where he sat. The Pope pulled out a wafer and a glass of wine. Moishe pulled out an apple. The Pope stood up and said, "I give up. This man is too good. The Jews can stay."

An hour later, the cardinals were all around the Pope asking him what happened. The Pope said, "First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up one finger to remind me that there was still one God common to both our religions. Then I waved my finger around me to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground and showing that God was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and the wafer to show that God absolves us from our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of original sin. He had an answer for everything. What could I do?"

Meanwhile, the Jewish community had crowded around Moishe.

"What happened?" they asked.

"Well," said Moishe, "First he said to me that the Jews had three days to get out of here. I told him that not one of us was leaving. Then he told me that this whole city would be cleared of Jews. I let him know that we were staying right here."

"And then?" asked a woman.

"I don't know," said Moishe. "He took out his lunch and I took out mine."

Triune God

The 3D God is at home within the cosmos,

a habitation created in a dream-thought explosion

of energy, light and grace. In that moment,

time began its insistent journey

outwards to locate and define

every particle that ever existed.

This same triune Deity calls into being love,

which reaches, gathers and embraces,

– always did, always does, always will,

– and weeps at the estrangement

and the bondage of creation

Knowing that fear must be defied

if life is to triumph, a Word-child

is sent to embody foolish,

love-filled hope;

seeking an end to the alienation

and recklessly shining his uninvited light

into previously shadowed places.

The embracings receive added substance

as hand are clasped, feet are washed,

cheeks are kissed, tears are shed,

and greetings of peace are extended to all.

The third dimension comes as Spirit,

transcending temporal and spatial limits,

to speak once more, and for all time,

that same word of impossible love.

Groaning deeply to resonate

with the barely audible vibrations upon which

the universe is built, she creates once more,

and again, challenge, peace, truth and justice;

calling forth life out of darkness

to refashion the cosmos.

in grace and hope. 

I find it a challenge to engage with the Trinity in poetry. I keep wanting to change things, but this will have to do for now.

© Ken Rookes 2012

Martin Buber

Martin Buber (in I and Thou) puts it this way:

You know always in your heart that you need God more than everything; but do you not know that God needs you -- in the fullness of His eternity needs you? How would humanity be, how would you be, if God did not need humanity, did not need you? You need God, in order to be -- and God needs you, for the very meaning of your life. ... There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of human persons, of you and me.

 http://www.sarahlaughed.net/sermons/trinity/

Ubuntu

 "I'm a people person, and I get most excited about theology when I can see how it informs our life together as human beings -- when it tells us something of how we can be Christ's body in the world in a way that furthers God's work of reconciling the whole world to God's self. I was excited by the writings of African theologians who spoke ofubuntu, a word from the Nguni language in Africa which Desmond Tutu (in No Future Without Forgiveness) describes as meaning that "my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound, in yours ... a person is a person through other persons." "A person with ubuntu," Tutu says, "is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole."1 That's a thoroughly biblical idea that a humanities gal like me can get excited about. Ubuntu is not just an abstraction -- it's an idea that has been and can be incredibly powerful in helping communities heal and reconcile."
http://www.sarahlaughed.net/sermons/trinity/

Jurgan Moltmann

"God is and always has been, loving and giving and other-centred and relational and sociable, companionable, friendly.  Because the real God is the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Christians call this relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit the trinity (and I’ll tell you why in a second).  And this God, the trinity, is the living and true God.

But that other, solitary, self-centred god is not really God at all.

That god is simply an imaginary idea that reflects our own culture and times.  Other people in other times have imagined – perhaps – lots of different gods 

...to find the pulse of the universe (if you want to tap into the heart beat of reality) what do you find?  You find fierce, passionate, determined, life-giving love that flows between the Generous Father, His Beloved Son and the Life-Giving Spirit.

The life of these Persons, the relationships which they share IS the source of all true beauty, joy, goodness, holiness and love.  To belong to this God, to participate in this circle of divine friendship is the goal of all existence, it is the meaning of life."

http://christthetruth.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/trinity-sermon/

Celtic Trinity

Trinity

When the human Jesus no longer

walked amidst earth’s dust,

we might have expected his influence

to wane. But it didn’t; his story was told,

his words were remembered

and his mysterious presence

continued to be felt. His inspired followers

attested to an ongoing connection,

and concluded that, without doubt,

he must have been the unique child

of the all-creating Deity, and that his Spirit

resided with them still.

Starting with the inherited, and therefore

inevitable starting point, that God is One;

they then declared the Divinity

to be Triune. This would eventually

cause considerable consternation

among the logically and mathematically inclined;

those who insist upon precise definitions

and accurate formulations.

In earnest desperation they still

scratch around for a neat analogy

from nature, science or geometry;

to elucidate that which can never

be explained. Likenesses

are always inadequate,

just as all metaphors eventually fail;

the curious God who was found to be

surprisingly present can never

be reduced to mere diagrams.

© 2011 Ken Rookes