Trinity

Sermon Notes Trinity Sunday 31st May Matthew 28:16-20 by Desiree Snyman

God Is Love

When I say, “God is love,” people usually smile and nod. But when I say, “God is Trinity,” people often begin to frown. Maybe that is because we have made the Trinity sound like difficult philosophy. The Trinity has been turned into complicated doctrine instead of what it truly is: a way of life, a relationship to enter, a habit of love to practice. St. Augustine once said, “If you see love, you see the Trinity.” 

I suggest there are three obstacles to allowing the Trinity to be the heart of the Christian faith. 

The first obstacle is that Western Christianity has overemphasised the intellectual aspects of belief. Doctrine has also become overlaid with philosophy. Faith is often seen as doctrine to which we give intellectual agreement. What if each of our Christian doctrines were invitations to an abundant life, a life worth living, a habit, a lifestyle? What if each doctrine were a spiritual practice that led to a fuller way of being human and a fuller way of being divine? 

For example, the doctrine of the Incarnation is more than the belief that God became human. Incarnation is a spiritual practice of embodiment, a way of reconnecting with and listening to your body's sensations, emotions, and wisdom in support of healing and well-being. In a moment we shall see that the doctrine of the Trinity is an invitation to live in relationship, to live in the energy of love. 

A second obstacle to living a Trinitarian life is grammar. Remember our grammar lessons from kindy, where nouns were places, people, or things and verbs were actions? People think of God as a noun. What if God is more like a verb? 

Seeing God as a noun turns God into an object. When people think of God as a noun, they often picture God as an old man, cranky and grumpy, and it becomes our job to cheer him up with good behaviour. This is not the Christian God. It may be the god of the Greeks or the Vikings, but in the Christian faith God is not an object, a thing, a noun. God is less like a noun and more like a verb, the living energy of love. There is a dynamism to God.

A third mistake people make with the doctrine of the Trinity is that they begin with the one God and then try to explain how God is nevertheless three. The Bible actually begins with the Three and then shows us how they are One, like three dancers moving in one dance. The Bible begins with relationship. In 1 John we hear: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” In Matthew 28 the three Persons of the Trinity are named alongside one another as equals. The only difference is their ordering. 

Scripture says: God is love. And if God is love, then God is relationship. The Creator loves the Christ. The Christ receives and returns that love. The Holy Spirit is the living bond of love flowing between them. What makes them one is love. We see this most clearly in the baptism of Jesus. Jesus stands in the water. The voice of Love speaks: “You are my beloved.” And the Spirit descends like a dove. In that moment the inner life of God bursts open into visibility. 

The Trinity is not a puzzle to solve. It is a communion of love overflowing into the world.  Here is the astonishing part: humanity is included in this divine life. As 2 Peter 1:4 says, we are called to become “partakers of the divine nature.” God has opened the divine dance and invited us in. 

So, in simple language, what do Christians believe? We believe that God is beyond us, God is within us, and God is alongside us, all at the very same time. We believe that Creator, Christ, and Spirit are so perfectly united in love that they are one. We believe that God is community. 

What does this mean for us? Relationship is not just something God does. Relationship is what God is. We are formed through relationship, with God, with one another, and with creation itself. We are not isolated individuals carrying the weight of existence alone. We belong to one another. That is why baptism matters so deeply. 

At Jesus’ baptism these words are spoken: “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And in baptism those words become ours too. Because we are beloved, we are invited into the divine dance of love itself. 

The Trinity is not meant to remain doctrine on a page. It is meant to become a spiritual practice. To live inside the flow of loving and being loved. To forgive. To show compassion. To practice mutuality and self-giving love. To see every person not as a rival or an inconvenience but as beloved. And so, the good news of Trinity Sunday is this: God is not an old man in the sky. God is not an object. God is living relationship. God is love flowing endlessly in and through creation. And that love has made room for us. So when we abide in love, we abide in God. And when we live in God, we begin to join the great divine dance.