The Trinity

I wonder whether you could recall your experiences during the first few months or years when you started working and were a junior employee. Among those experiences, could you remember a few extra things you were expected to do outside your job description that people who had been around for some time were not expected to do? It may be that you were expected to work on the weekends, make morning and afternoon tea for the staff, run errands for the boss, or pick up his/her kids to and from school.

Although new employees are most likely to work within a strictly outlined job description and contract today, twenty-nine years ago, I was expected to do a few extra things when I was a newly ordained Deacon and then a Priest.

As a newbie, I was expected to do the home visits, take Holy Communion to the homes of the elderly who couldn’t attend church during Easter and Christmas, visit and take communion to Nursing homes, and also attend the funerals of non-church members. I did all of them with much joy and commitment and learned the skills to be a priest and a pastor.

Another thing I was also expected to do was to preach on Trinity Sunday for the first four years of my ministry.

Only later did I learn that I was expected to preach on Trinity Sunday, not only because I am a junior priest but also because preachers try to avoid preaching on the Trinity if possible.

When I was a lecturer at Trinity College Theological School, I knew of a few student pastors who would make strange excuses to avoid being sent to a local parish to preach on Trinity Sunday.

I think there are three reasons for this avoidance of preaching on Trinity Sunday:

First, there is an expectation that on Trinity Sunday, one must preach on the doctrine of the Trinity. That is the doctrine that in the unity of the Godhead, there are Three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and these Three Persons are distinct from one another. The 4th century Church Father St Athanasius put it this way: “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God.” According to St Athanasius, this belief is said to be the universal faith of the church, which everyone should believe faithfully if he or she is to be saved.

Many find it hard to work out the math and attempt to come up with examples we have all heard of the Trinity. For instance, the examples of the shamrock: one leaf, three branches; an egg: shell, egg white, and yolk; water: ice, steam, and liquid; a person: mind, body, and spirit; or man or woman: son, husband, and Father or daughter, wife, and mother.

Second, the doctrine of the Trinity was used to divide people into believers and heretics. The people who could not get their heads around it have been kicked out of the church.

Third, The doctrine of the Trinity is not taught in the Bible. There are things in the Bible that suggest that God might be understood as a trinity, but nothing attempts to explain it. The church came to define the Trinity about 200 years after Jesus. At that time, the explanation was not mathematical but an attempt to understand what God is like and how God relates to us.

So today, I want you to join me on a journey to understand—and deepen the understanding we already have gained in our Christian living—what God is like and how He relates to us.

To help us in our journey, I would like to use the icon of the Holy Trinity painted by the 14th-century Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev (pronounced “Rooblyohff”). Andrei was a monk at the Holy Trinity Monastery. Although we know that he is the iconographer behind the most famous icon of the Holy Trinity, we know only very few details of his life.

At this point of our journey, I would like you to have the cover page of this liturgy with the icon’s picture in front of you. The icon of the Holy Trinity is full of symbols that will help us understand it.

Before looking at the symbols in the icon, it must be said that this icon is based on the story in Genesis 18:1-15 where we read about the hospitality of Abraham to three angels. In that sense, this is the icon of The Hospitality of Abraham, but with Sarah and Abraham removed and other symbols altered to reflect the Trinity.

Here in this story, we see the revelation of the Trinity in the Old Testament in the simplest way. If you are to read the story, you will notice that he sometimes uses a singular tense when Abraham refers to the angels. That indicates that although there were three persons, they are One. Yet other times, he uses plural pronouns for the three angels. That is to say, that they are three distinct persons.