People often come to me and say: ”it doesn’t matter what you believe in as long as you are a good person”, or “I don’t care about all that dogmatic stuff, it is what is in your heart that is important”. Honestly, I usually don’t know what to say back to them, as they are not usually looking from an answer and often assume that I agree with them. Well, have to say now that, regardless of whether you are I am good people or not, what we believe is crucial to the way we think, look at the world, live our lives and prepare for what comes after this life.
So today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, which for most people is a pretty dry topic. As the young say: boooring!!! Maybe it is if you are approaching it from a dry theoretical perspective. The trick for us is to remember who we are, we are a people called by God . Just last Sunday we remembered that we are held together by the Holy Spirit, the same spirit who animated the apostles and sent them out to all nations. This Spirit was sent by Jesus, who himself was sent by the Father. All that we know of the Trinity revolves around relationship… about how they fit together, work together and reach out of themselves to others. It took the first four hundred years of the Church’s life to nut this one out. Finally it was decided that the three persons were coequal, consubstantial and coeternal. This leaves the question of how they relate to each other and us. Once we understand how the Trinity relates to each other, then we can become to know the way to relate to them and to each other.
One explanation that makes sense to me is called the mutual love theory. St Augustine developed it in the fourth century. It goes like this: the Father and Son relate to each other through a love, they bestow this love on each other. This bestowal, this breathing forth, is the Holy Spirit. They then reach out to the world as one God, but through different persons. The Son became incarnate and lived among us as Jesus the Christ, and Holy Spirit was breathed forth into our world by the Father and the Son, and continues to live in the Church as the Holy Spirit. The love of God returns to God.
We are inheritors of a circle of love. If we want to be true disciples, we continue to relate to each other and with God through love. We are invited into this circle through Jesus who offers us a share in his life. He wants to draw us into the life and love of the Trinity. John 3.16 makes this plain: ‘so that everyone who believes on him may not be lost but have eternal life’. The love that we are called to is succinctly put in the letter to the Corinthians: “try to grow perfect, help one another, be united love in peace”.
Relationship is at the heart of the Trinity, holding it together and sending it forth. This love comes from God to us, drawing us out of ourselves into relationship with God and with each other. Life on earth can only make sense if we are able to from and sustain relationship with God and each other. We are reminded by this every time we say: in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.
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