Greetings to you on this Trinity Sunday!

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that when priests and other ministers are preparing their sermons, homilies or talks they use a wide variety of resources to guide and structure the message they want to share – and this can be really useful when the ‘topic’ or theme is a difficult one to try to explain. From great theological tomes by learned fathers and mothers, to snippets of thought in an online blog – all can find their way into a Sunday sermon.

Today, The Feast of the Holy Trinity, is often a day thought to be particularly challenging and in preparing for this sermon I was doing a bit of research and came across an article: ‘The Top 10 ways to explain the Holy Trinity’.

Now I won’t bother you with all 10, but here are the top 3.

At number 3 – The Holy Trinity is likened to Battery, Wire and Electricity. God is the power source, the battery. The Son is the mediator, the wire which conducts God’s love to us and The Spirit is the power itself, the love of God which comes to us through Jesus.

Now this explanation has some strength in that it differentiates the three persons of The Trinity and puts them in relationship with one another BUT the downside is that it uses inanimate objects to try to explain something that should be something fundamentally living and dynamic.

So to the 2nd most popular way to explain The Trinity – a Dance. God is the dance, the energy, the movement at the centre of creation and the trinity is our way of saying God does the dance perfectly with all of the dancers in harmony.

Now this explanation is better at describing a living, moving relationship, but it is a bit abstract and isn’t great at helping us identify the three persons of the Trinity.

Finally at Number 1 – the most popular way of explaining the Holy Trinity comes from Ireland and good old St Patrick himself – The 3-leaved clover. Each leaf on the plant appears whole and independent, but they are indivisibly part of a single stem. But then questions like ‘Is the stem then a different source from which the three persons of the trinity emerge?’ spring into the mind.

And so on and so on.

I haven’t been able to find any explanation or representation of the Holy Trinity that doesn’t conjure up a raft of questions.

So what I am about to say to you on this Feast of the Holy Trinity may sound a bit strange. It might even sound as if I am being unfaithful and even inappropriate. But I think it’s important and maybe even necessary.

Are you ready?

Stop thinking about God.

You probably didn’t expect to be reading a sermon that told you to stop thinking about God, but before you pick up the hotline to the Bishop, let me explain what I mean.

I suspect that many of us spend too much time and effort thinking about God. Now that’s not just an observation, it is also a confession of one who loves thinking about God. But maybe, just maybe we should spend a little bit less time thinking about God and instead simply be with Him. Here’s what I mean. Would you rather be with the one you love or think about the one you love? Would you prefer your relationships to be defined by love for another or information about another?

There is a sense in which thinking about God keeps us from being present with Him. In some way thinking about God can distance us from Him and set up a kind of ‘subject – object’ duality and that is actually the very opposite of trinitarian life!

We think about other people when we are not with them. Some of us think about our children who have grown up and moved out. Some think about our partners when we are away from each other. We think about our friends when we are apart. We think about our loved ones who have died. But in that moment when we are really present, when we have truly shown up and offered all that we are and all that we have, we’re not thinking about the other person, we are one with them. It is a moment of love, intimacy, and union. It’s not defined by life or death, distance or geography. It is defined and made possible for us by the eternal life and love shared by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Who is the person with whom you have or had the closest, deepest, most intimate relationship? Picture him or her and your relationship. When you are with that person you are not thinking about him or her. In moments of ecstatic love, you look at him or her and see yourself in his or her life and he or she does the same with you. We open ourselves to each other. We give ourselves to the other and receive the other into ourselves. That is the trinitarian life. It is the choreography of love and it’s happening all the time.

In the midst of an honest, real, and meaningful conversation we’re not thinking about the other person. We are with them and they are with us. A single life envelops and flows between us. We don’t make that happen, it just does. That’s trinitarian life.

When we are rolling on the floor, laughing, and playing with our child or grandchild we are not thinking about them, we are completely open and present to their life and they to ours. The line between their life and our life gets blurry and there is only love. That’s trinitarian life.

Sometimes we see the world through another’s eyes and their joys or sorrows take root in us as if they were our own. When that happens we are not receiving news or information about another, we are sharing a common life. We are loving our neighbour as our self. That’s trinitarian life.

Every now and then we are immersed in prayer and no longer conscious that we are praying. We no longer see ourselves talking to or thinking about God. Rather, our life is one with His and we are participating in the life of the Holy Trinity.

Each of these are moments when we can honestly say, “I love, therefore I am.” These and a thousand others just like them are trinitarian moments. Love for one another and faith in the Holy Trinity are integrally related. You cannot have one without the other.

The Holy Trinity is not a concept to be explained, numbers to be calculated, or a problem to be solved. It is a life to be lived, a love to be shared, and a beauty to be revealed.

Stop thinking about God. Live the life, share the love, reveal the beauty. Amen.

God bless you and those you hold dear this coming week.

Fr Simon