TRINITY SUNDAY

Romans 8: 12-17 John 3: 1-17

Trinity Sunday. Always popular for using the orange, or even a traffic light, as a symbol of the Godhead. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all at once and all at the same time. Out come the oranges and the construction of the segments, the rind and the seeds. They are used to explain how three different parts of an orange can also be a whole orange. The same goes for the traffic light with its coloured lights, the light head and the pole on which it is mounted. Three parts, all individual, yet all one.

How do we relate to this complex figure of God as three in one? God is our Father. Once upon a time we were in control of our nature. We wallowed in our sinful ways. But God has called us to himself. Our old ways are left behind as we move over to the control of God. We begin a new life with him,leaving behind our old life. The past is cancelled, our debts wiped out. God, in his mercy, has brought us into his possession. We begin a new life with God. We become heirs of all his riches. It is like adoption. We move from one family, in this case the family of sinfulness, into a new family. We exchange the rules and head of the old family with the new rules of the Christian family and new Head in the person of God. So here we have God the Father.

We walk through life in our new family. We are heirs in that family. In fact we become joint heirs with Jesus Christ, God’s own Son. That which Christ inherits we too inherit. It also follows that the suffering that Christ suffered we inherit. However, Christ was raised to life in glory. We too shall share in that life and glory. A family bonds together. A family shares. A family has a father as head of the family, so too we have God as our Father. We are heirs of God as is his Son. Thereby, as joint heirs, we share with Christ in his suffering and we share in his glory.

As we approach our heavenly Father in prayer we can cry out ‘Abba, Father’. In crying out its is our whole being that is being raised to God. Our whole being is lifted up in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit within us is bearing witness that we are children of God. In lifting us up we are being raised from slavery, from the hands of debtors, from the ways of the flesh, to the life of a child of God. Our spirit within us joins hands, as it were, with the Holy Spirit. We become one in the family of God. As we travel through life the Holy Spirit is at our side. We travel in the company of all of the children of God, united by the Holy Spirit, one with God’s Son, Jesus Christ, all crying out to God our Father.

Through baptism we take into our life the power of the Holy Trinity. We have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, fully active within us. We are empowered by the Trinity in all that we do. Acknowledging the presence of the Godhead we share in the glory that Christ inherited.

Collect for Trinity Sunday

Almighty and everlasting God,

you have given us your servants grace,

by the confession of a true faith,

to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity

and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:

keep us steadfast in this faith,

that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.