Magazine for the Builth Ministry Area July/August 2019
Issue No 213
The Trinity - a Divine Mystery. Trinity Sunday was, this year, celebrated on Father’s Day. We have little trouble thinking of God as ‘Father’- as a benign (though, perhaps, also strict) parent. But the biblical concept embraced much more than that. The father was seen as the one who gave life, the mother as merely the carrier. So God the Father gives us the understanding of God as Creator, bringing and holding all life in being. But Jesus introduces us to God as ‘Abba’; offering a much more intimate understanding of the father role. He invites us not to just worship God from afar but to enter into a real and living relationship with him: one where you can know and be known. And it is Jesus himself who makes that possible. It is through him that we can know the Divine Being more intimately. For Jesus was both fully human - and fully divine. As the prologue to St. John’s gospel tells us, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God …. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. … The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” Jesus Christ points us towards God and yet also is God. So when we enter into a close relationship with him, we are brought into the closer presence of the divine source of all life. In knowing Jesus, we can know ourselves to be fully loved and accepted by God the Father. We are brought into the fullness of life: both here and for all eternity. But we also know that the presence of Jesus here on earth was constrained by both time and place. So, Jesus promised his disciples
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that the Holy Spirit will come upon them and lead them in His way. “He will glorify me; will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 1.13) The Holy Spirit empowers and sustains not just creation but also discipleship. The power of God that ‘moved over the face of the waters’ at the beginning of creation is the same power that enables us to follow him today. We can see, then, that God has, throughout scripture been experienced as three persons in one: as ‘Trinity.’ Something which our limited, rational human minds, have trouble fully understanding. But we don’t need to understand in any scientific way. For if we could explain the divine nature in mere human terms, he would cease to be God. For all words are only partial truths whilst God is Absolute Truth. The Trinity is not to be explained away; it is to be fully experienced. What really matters is not our intellectual understanding but our willingness to believe that which we say in our worship every Sunday. “We believe in one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Not three separate ‘persons’ but all bound together in One Unity. Let us enjoy the mystery of God as Trinity. Let us rejoice that this Triune God loves and sustains us more than we can possibly imagine. Then let us commit ourselves to go out and love in the same way as God loves us; building up relationships in our homes, our community and our world. In his name: Trinity.
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EDITORSHIP If you wish to contact the editor, please note the email address: signpostsmagazine@gmail.com