Trinity Sunday

 

Recently I went for a walk in the park. There, I passed a mother and daughter, sitting by the duckpond. The daughter was sitting on a bench; the mother, in a motorised wheelchair. The daughter was feeding her mother puréed food from a plastic spoon.

If I stepped into a TARDIS and travelled back in time half a century and more, I might meet the same mother and daughter in the same place. The mother sitting on the bench; the daughter in a stroller. The mother feeding her daughter puréed food from a plastic spoon.

In the present, love has come full circle.

My eyes and the daughter’s met, a moment of recognition: one human being bearing witness to the love of another human being for another human being.

Chances are, you believe in God. That even if you consider yourself to be an agnostic or an atheist (and certainly if you consider yourself to be a bad Christian) you will have an image of the God you are unsure of or reject. And I wonder how that image compares to how Paul describes God to the church in Rome. (Romans 5.1-5)

Paul claims that God is the source of wellbeing (peace) and dignity (glory) and affection (love).

Every time we find ourselves seated in wellbeing and dignity and affection, we find ourselves close to God — whether we realise it or not. And whenever we fall away from wellbeing or dignity or affection, we fall away from nearness to God.

To live in wellbeing and dignity and affection requires connection to others. We cannot fully bear ourselves with dignity without extending dignity to others, even if they do not reciprocate. The Church is called to be the community described by wellbeing, dignity, and affection. And the truth is that we fall away from this time and time again, which is why we acknowledge and face up to this whenever we gather together.

A couple of weeks ago, I baptised Hudson, whose family are part of our local church community. At every Baptism, I remind us all that “We all wander far from God and lose our way. In Christ, God comes to find us and bring us home.” This is the reality: not that we do not fall away from wellbeing, dignity, and affection, but that Christ comes to find us — again and again — and brings us home.

Paul describes this as assurance (faith) of the living-kindness (grace) that is Jesus, the reality that grounds us: the One who finds us and brings us home. This is the loving-kindness of God, that searches us out when we are lost far from wellbeing, dignity, and affection, and makes a Way back to these, our home.

(Faith is assurance: I have faith that on the morning after I die, the sun will rise, even though I won’t be here to see it.)

Paul goes on to speak of anticipation (hope) of dignity and affection. To anticipate something is not simply to expect that it will happen at some future point, but to participate in a future reality in the present. Today I published Glenn and Heather’s banns of marriage for the third and final time of asking. They are anticipating their wedding day, and all the days that will lie beyond it. That anticipation is something they experience now. Likewise, to anticipate (hope in) the dignity of God is to experience that dignity now.

Paul goes on to say something deeply shocking to our society. He speaks of rejoicing (boasting) in our constraints (sufferings) because constraints produce endurance, which in turn evidences proof of character, which in turn renews anticipation.

We live in a society that rails against any form of constraint. The very thought of a woman held in a motorised wheelchair, being fed puréed food from a plastic spoon appals us. We might concede that it happens, but we don’t want to see it in the park. We don’t want to be confronted by it: there is nothing but tragedy in constraints, and all we can do is thank God it isn’t us. But the park is exactly where daughters should feed their mothers, free from any shame, attending to — participating in — wellbeing, dignity, and affection.

We are finite, born with certain constraints and having to take on additional constraints as we get older. Paul says that God does not shield us from constraints but uses them to strengthen — to make perfect — our participation in affection: the deepest form of love, that remains between parent and child long after the child was dependent on the parent, between husband and wife long after romance has worn thin.

Paul describes this renewable participation in affection as evidence of God’s Holy Spirit constantly poured out on our lives.

This, then, is how Paul speaks of God. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, source of the wellbeing, dignity, and affection we can know. Jesus, the loving-kindness of God that grounds us, bringing us back again and again. The Holy Spirit, the affection we participate in.

This is the God in whom we are invited to have assurance, in whose life we are invited to participate, as our lives are lifted into union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is a faith and hope fit for the world we find ourselves in. This is our faith.