Trinity Sunday 2020

The Trinity Knot

• Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Psalm 8  • 
• 2 Corinthians 13:11-13  • 
• Matthew 28:16-20
  
• This Sunday is the only day in the whole Christian Calendar that is dedicated to a theological doctrine. Every other festival or commemoration celebrates a person or an event (and occasionally, a sacred symbol). Unusually, too, in the readings for Trinity Sunday, the Old Testament lesson is by far the longest, more than a chapter in fact, while both the Epistle and Gospel run to just a few verses.

---

Compared to other ‘high days’, a feast day dedicated to the Holy Trinity came relatively late in the Church’s history and was not made official until 1334. The intention was to conclude the liturgical commemorations of the life of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit with a commemoration focusing on the whole nature of God. Trinity was taken up with particular enthusiasm by the church in England, and came to be specially identified with the Anglican Church that resulted from Henry VIII's break with Rome in the 16th century.

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity -- that there are Three Persons in One God -- is central to orthodox Christianity. It figures in the Creeds and in confessions of faith that Christians are required to affirm at baptism and confirmation. Yet, though we are asked to affirm it again and again, it is an immensely difficult doctrine to understand, and perhaps can never be understood completely. So how did Christians end up in the position of being required to believe a doctrine they struggle to understand?

Lucas Cranach -- The Trinity

The answer is: they found they had no choice. All the early Christians were Jews, deeply committed to monotheism, the belief that God is One, Creator of all that is made – the implication of the creation story that provides the first lesson this Sunday. At the same time, the Gospel they preached was about Jesus’ unique relationship to God, and how the Resurrection set him apart from even the greatest Jewish prophets. Then they had to do justice to their experience at Pentecost when, even with Jesus no longer present among them, his spirit empowered them to set aside their fears and anxieties and confront persecution in the name of the Cross. If all these elements are essential to the Gospel the Apostles felt compelled to preach, something like the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is inescapable. That was why Christians had to find a theological formula that would allow them to acknowledge God in the Father who created them, the Son who redeemed them, and the Spirit who sanctified them. Father, Son and Holy Spirit were not three gods, but three different 'Persons' in one God. This assertion may be mystifying, but it proved inescapable.

---

​We owe the doctrine's most familiar version – in the form of a blessing – to St Paul, who ends the brief Epistle for this Sunday with these words --“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all”. But Paul’s blessing is not his own invention. It simply echoes the “great commission” that Jesus gives his disciples in the Gospel – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”. Each year, Trinity Sunday comes as reminder of this continuing commission.