St Margaret's Church Prestwich

Rev Steve gave us this reflection during the 9:45 service at St Margaret’s on Trinity Sunday, 26 May. Here it is for you again:

Think, for a moment, when someone significant in your life was born – maybe your first child or your first brother or sister, your first grandchild or your first niece or nephew.

The day after my first child was born, I remember the moment I presented myself to the hospital maternity ward, and had to press the buzzer for the intercom to ask to be let in. 

For the first time in my life, I said, “I’m Nicholas’s father.”

And I knew from that moment on, into eternity, that was who I would now be.

Nothing will rob me of that role or relationship.

That is the remarkable change in role or relationship that Jesus’ first friends experienced after they had spent time with him, seen how he had lived and who he was, and, crucially, how he died, and how he met them again risen from the dead. 

In meeting him over this time, and in reflecting upon that meeting, their relationship with him changed in a way that was as thorough-going for them as the birth of my first child was for me.

Their relationship with Jesus changed completely the way they would speak of themselves, of God and of the world around them.

John writes in his first letter:  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and which our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life. This life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”  [1 John 1.1, 2]   

In meeting and getting to know Jesus, they realised they were face to face with the very nature of God God-self – not an image, not a metaphor, not a representation – but God as God really is.

This was the revolutionary insight that turned their lives and their world upside down or right way up.

And what we think of today as the doctrine of the Trinity grew out of this remarkable and intimate meeting.

It didn’t begin as an abstract idea, or the reflection of a philosopher, or the ramblings of a theologian.  It began with a meeting which threw everything else into a new perspective – and for which Jesus’ friends needed to find new ideas and new words.      

For if I am face to face with God by being face to face with Jesus, I am face to face with someone that I cannot see, who has sent Jesus to me – and yet that same God is talking directly with me.

And if I am face to face with God, and God has the power to meet me, then God also has the power to make God-self known within me – to come to dwell within me, to give me new life – no less than the person of God whom I cannot see, and the God who is face to face with me in a place and a time. 

God is Beyond,  Beside,  And Within.

Since God coming to dwell within me is as radical and life-changing an experience as being born from above, born of God’s Spirit, then my relationship with God and with everyone around me changes as well.  I have a parent-figure to whom I cry out with a cry of intimate trust, such as “Abba”,  Father, the first words that a child utters [Romans 8.15;  Galatians 4.6].   And I have people to whom I relate in a new way as a sibling.

This arises from a God who loves the world so much that he longs to give God-self to it [John 3.16].  God doesn’t just sit above creation, un-moved by what is happening within it.  When God sees the suffering, the rebellion, the hurt, the injustice, within a world which has mis-used its freedom, then God chooses to get involved – to get his hands dirty, as it were.    

In the Old Testament reading, Isaiah has such a great vision of the Almighty that it envelops him  with guilt and unworthiness [Isaiah 6.5].  God has to take the initiative in healing him…. In atoning for his sin and giving him the ability to respond freely to the call to speak when it comes.  [Isaiah 6.7]

In the Gospel, Jesus challenges Nicodemus to think more carefully what he means when Nicodemus perceives God at work in Jesus’ ministry.

Nicodemus says, “For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”  [John 3.2]

Jesus replies, ““Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born from above, born again.”

To see God truly at work, truly in charge, requires a complete change of perspective, vision and heart – to be born from above [the Greek word, anōthen, means both “above” and “again”] by God’s Spirit, to be called into a new, intimate relationship with God as God is [John 3.3]. 

Jesus says:  “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”  [John 3.5].  The water refers to baptism, the outward sign.  The Spirit refers to the inner reality – God by God’s Spirit coming to live personally in our heart – the same God that we cannot see who is transcendent over all, whom we meet when we are face to face with Jesus as were his disciples in a particular time and place, and who is present and available to all through the coming of the Holy Spirit since.       

That new relationship is summed up in the last sentences of our Gospel reading – that whoever believes/trusts in God’s Son shall have eternal life.  [John 3.16].  The word for “believe”, pistieuein, is better rendered “trust”.  It is nearly always followed, in the Greek in which John writes, by the small word “eis”.  This is not “belief” in the form of head-knowledge – a little like how we may hold on to information or recite a Creed.  This is “belief unto” someone or something  – it’s a trust that reaches out to rely on someone else. It’s putting your life into that other person’s hands – letting them take control – be in the driving seat.  That’s the sort of trust we are invited to show when we repent – when we turn away from what we know to be wrong, when we receive God’s forgiveness shown to us through Jesus’ death and rising again from the dead, and when we invite him to make a home for himself in our hearts.  This is a God who longs to love, redeem and heal: see the final verse of our Gospel reading today – “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  [John 3.17]         

Far from being an abstract concept, the Trinity is about God’s intimacy with us.  We are called into relationship with God as God is – a God who longs to love and to reach out, who feels and hurts the hurts we experience in life today, who longs to redeem and heal – a God who is not satisfied just with being in heaven.

The poet Malcolm Guite’s Sonnet for Trinity Sunday ends with these lines:

“He calls us out of darkness, chaos, chance,

To improvise a music of our own,

To sing the chord that calls us to the dance,

Three notes resounding from a single tone,

To sing the End in whom we all begin;

Our God beyond, beside us and within.”

The whole sonnet is a profound meditation on the Trinity – and can be found here:   https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2022/06/10/a-sonnet-for-trinity-sunday-9/

Our God beyond, beside us and within.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God’s Intimacy.