POINT THREE RECURRING.........................
A sermon sent to the people of S.LUKE’S, QUEEN’S PARK BRIGHTON still locked out of church services but now allowed in one by one to pray privately.. It’s a reflection for TRINITY SUNDAY
I’m sure all of you are better at maths than I am. Except perhaps children under 9 – but they won’t be reading this anyway, will they?
The rot started because I was frightened of my first maths teacher – a formidable old woman with grey hair in a bun, a loud voice, a hair-trigger temper and a times-tables by heart teaching method.
But I did eventually somehow pass elementary maths O level and one fact in the subject always stuck with me as fascinating:
If you express the fraction one third as a decimal, it never “comes out” i.e. you get stuck with 0.333333 recurring. I think that makes the number 3 rather special.
My wife Ellie, who is interested in numerology (the study of the vibrational properties of numbers) agrees with me. She explains that “1” seeks to assert its individuality, “2” feels the attraction of another and “3” awakens to its need of social interaction. “3” has a creative imagination which allows all things to be possible. Its magnetism draws others and inspires them to expand and grow.
Ah but what about “Two’s company, three’s a crowd”, you may be thinking. Well we should be very wary of that saying. All it really amounts to is “Don’t butt in on or break up courting couples”.
A relationship between 2 people, whether amorous or not, is unhealthy if it is completely inward looking. Sometimes it can even poison itself into “us two against the world”, known in French as a “folie à deux”.
An outgoing couple is never stuck alone together. They always have friends. Sometimes they have a child (and baby makes three) and, if they are married in church, they will have God with them to bless their union.
Now. Does the bible reveal any secrets about the number 3?
Not really.
In Genesis, we have Adam and Eve and their first child Cain (and baby turned murderer makes three!). We also have God appearing to Abraham and Sarah in the form of three strangers
In John’s gospel we have Peter’s three denials before the cock crows mirrored neatly by the risen Christ’s three questions Do you love me?
And of course we know that Christ rose on the third day.
But what about the idea of the HOLY TRINITY whose feast we are celebrating today? Does the bible say anything about that?
Not really.
We’ve got Paul’s words in today’s epistle at the end of his second letter to the Corinthians which contain the formula which we ourselves use as “the Grace” (e.g. at the end of PCC meetings). But the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are referred to as separate entities.
And we’ve got the final words of Matthew in today’s gospel reading. The disciples are told to baptize the people of all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Again these are referred to separately and people who know more about the bible than I do say those words were probably put into Jesus’s mouth by the author of the gospel when it was written (70-80AD?) to reflect current church baptismal practice at that time.
It was not in fact until the 3rd (hah!) century that the theological doctrine of the Trinity as an indivisible “hypostatic union” began to be thrashed out.
Hypostatic union? Come again? Don’t worry. We simple souls don’t need to bother with all that.
Just be aware that all such rarefied jargon came out of Christians’ day to day practical experience of mission and worship. In the end, the doctrine of the Trinity was the only satisfactory way to explain their encounter of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.
It is the great genius, the great insight of Christianity that God is three persons.
The other monotheistic religions have a concept of a single, transcendent deity who must remain a remote figure, even though Jehovah spoke through Moses and Allah spoke through Mohammed (peace be upon him).
We Christians have a God who came down and shared our humanity, rolled His sleeves up, got His hands dirty and was killed for His trouble. And, because of His resurrection and ascension, He has even sent us His own Spirit to dwell within us!
Who could ask for anything more (as the song goes)?
But what we do need to think about this morning is the role that LOVE plays in all this.
The idea of a God in three persons means that there is LOVE already within the Godhead, between Father, Son and Spirit before we even start to consider creation and humanity.
That LOVE is so wonderful and so energising (remember what Ellie told me about the magic number “3”) that it was too good not to share. Hence creation and humanity.
The love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit for each other had to SPILL OVER on to us. It was too good not to share. So it is a model, an example for human society.
As we have recently been reading in John’s gospel (Christ’s speech at the Last Supper),
· the Father is IN the Son
· the Son is IN the Father
· we disciples are IN the Son and therefore IN the Father
· and they send us the Holy Spirit who is IN them (the love between them) to dwell IN us.
Wonderful. But we can’t stop there.. Go and do thou likewise said Jesus.
And that is what, in the 1960s and 70s amid tyranny and exploitation, priests in South America began to preach.: Love each other, love and share, love and help the poor. Follow the pattern of the Trinity.
It was called “liberation theology” and the corrupt, fascist regimes under which those priests lived didn’t like it. St.Oscar Romero was killed for his pains, gunned down as he celebrated Mass.
Pope John Paul II didn’t like liberation theology either. For him it smacked too much of the communism he hated in his native Poland.
Pope Benedict was suspicious of it as well – he was far too traditionalist to embrace this new wind of the Holy Spirit.
But God be praised and blessed for Francis, the Pope from Argentina who is WIDE OPEN to the Holy Spirit.
For him, it’s all so simple. It’s all about LOVE.
For example, against the hateful tradition of excluding the divorced and remarried from Communion, Francis can just say “The body and blood of Christ are not a reward for the virtuous. They are a comfort and a help for sinners.”
I’m going to finish by returning (at my peril) to numbers again. After all, some schools are re-opening at the moment.
Firstly fractions.
This probably makes no mathematical sense at all but, for a Christian, LOVE must always be both the lowest common denominator and the highest common factor.
Secondly geometry.
The Holy Trinity is an equilateral triangle. The three points are of course Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Put the Father at the top, if that seems natural. But the point is that love flows along each side of the triangle in both directions. (Whatever you do, don’t confuse this image with what the tabloid press call “a love triangle” - that’s just about messy sex, not divine love!)
Then there is a second equilateral triangle. The points now are God, you and your neighbour. This time you had definitely better put God at the top! And love flows equally down both sides from God to you and neighbour.
But does it flow up the side from you to God? And does it flow along the bottom from you to neighbour? GO AND DO THOU LIKEWISE………………………..
Phew! Saved by the bell! Class dismissed. Please leave QUIETLY……...See you next term (whenever that is)