Glenn Chestnutt’s sermon from Trinity Sunday 18 May 2008 St John the Evangelist, Kitchener.

Let us pray.
Lord, your word is truth; consecrate us by your truth.
Guide our minds by your Spirit, so that we may understand your word, learn your will, and follow more closely in the steps of Christ our Lord.
Amen

First may I take this opportunity to thank you, Canon Pratt, for you warm words of welcome to me, Hannah and Rowan and your kind invitation to preach today, Trinity Sunday…

There is a legend about an ancient Benedictine Monastery. Every Sunday the monks would gather to hear a sermon on some topic or other. The sermon could go on for well over an hour. But on Trinity Sunday- instead of a protracted sermon there was simply silence for an extended period of time during which the mystery of the Trinity was contemplated.
Some modern scholars argue that one reason for this approach was because it was felt the Trinity was so difficult a concept to explain.

I had thought today we could follow the monastic example by contemplating the Trinity in silence together- however after considering this approach to the topic I decided against it in fear that Canon Pratt would never ask me back again!
So where did this idea of God, as three and yet one, come from?

As we all know the early Christians were Jews by birth. From an early age they had been taught the Shema, the Jewish declaration of faith: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”. This strong emphasis on one God was a distinguishing feature of the monotheistic Jewish religion and culture in a world marked by polytheistic pagan religions.

And yet these Jewish Christians, came to believe that in the person of Jesus Christ they had experienced something of the Kingdom of God - the Kingdom that is from above and yet was present among them as both water and spirit, in the flesh and blood of the man Jesus.
And it didn’t stop there. The New Testament scriptures tell us that even after Jesus’ ascension they still knew the presence of God with them providing guidance in their daily lives, and enabling, enlivening and enriching their worship together, continuing to hold before them the promise of eternal life, life from above, in God’s presence with them.
The idea of the Trinity didn’t fall as some perfectly formed philosophical concept from the pen of a professor of theology.
It came out of centuries of prayer, reflection and debate amongst God’s people about the nature of God- a journey
arising out of a living relationship between God and humanity, the dynamic voice of God’s authority speaking to the very heart of humanity.

One way to understand this idea of a dynamic voice and experience that speaks to our hearts- our inner most being- would be to consider looking at the Trinity through a musical lens. Music is one of those human enterprises that speaks to us of movement and energy, of dynamism and living relationship where a simultaneous multiplicity of sounds or voices is not only allowed but actually encouraged. By its nature, music is a language of community in a way that a static image is not.

The chief attribute of polyphony - of different musical sequences and melodies overlapping one another as different voices sing - is its simultaneous non-excluding difference. More than one note is played at a time, and none of these notes is so dominant as to render another mute. Attention to one melody does not imply a diminished role for the others.
Of course every analogy is flawed when talking about God-but in some ways the Trinity can come clearer into focus for us if we speak about it in terms of music. The Trinity proclaims something of our polyphonic understanding of God - one in which the different voices of God are heard and distinctive melodies played simultaneously without damage to God’s unity.
At the heart of God, we see a unity of purpose or a consensus that is constantly shifting. This constant shifting can also be explained as a living relationship.

That’s what living relationships are like - they change and shift and challenge us to express consensus in different ways.
The Trinity then is the model for human relationships, for human community and this is central to any understanding we might have of church life whether here in St John’s or indeed in Edinburgh where Hannah, Rowan and I currently live-
The Trinity is the model for our relationship with God, our relationships with one another as individuals, as congregations and as a complex living communities of different people, gathering, worshipping and working together; It is also the model for our relationships with the vibrant, multifaith, multicultural, multi-faceted communities of the world around us.

I know that St John’s is in the midst of a full-scale stewardship programme and you have recently determined a set of goals for yourselves that includes becoming more involved in your downtown neighbourhood through hosting arts events, working more with young people, and generally being a lively presence in our downtown. The Church I work at in Edinburgh is also preparing for a stewardship campaign, which will begin in earnest in September. In fact, the Saturday before I left to come to Canada, my Church in Edinburgh hosted a day focused on young people and how our congregation there might be more inclusive of them.

Just this week I attended a conference in Knox College University of Toronto entitled “After post modernism, so what? This was a look through a Presbyterian lens at the state of the Church here in Canada. There is general consensus that the Church is declining in influence in Canadian society and that there is a marked falling off formal Christian belief and practice of Canadians. These findings resonate around most of the mainline Churches here in Canada, but also in Scotland and indeed throughout most of our Western civilization.

I believe the doctrine of the Trinity is a resource we can turn to as we attempt to make sense of who we are and of what can help us through what is quite possibly an axial age- an age which overlaps between modernism and post modernism - an age which throws up everything we have taken for granted as absolute in belief and practice for generations.
And one of the key issues for us amidst all the complexity of our world is trying to discern what sort of community we are and want to be. For you here in St John the Evangelist- What sort of community do you want to be?

A community that is open to the world around you, open to the texture of sounds and melodies and voices that are different from your own but which might also echo the song of the Spirit at work in the heart of creation?

Do you want to be a community that is prepared to live with the dissonances as well as the harmonies that arise when different voices and different melodies weave together?

Do you want to be a community that finds it consensus and authority, only in and through the living relations of which you are part of as Christians; but yet be confident and open enough to allow that consensus to move and shift as you listen together to the voice of the Spirit in a changing world?

These questions are just as relevant to my context in Scotland as they are here to you-

And together I believe that our hope lies in being distinctive Christian communities that are able to take all of the experiences of the modern/postmodern world we live in and offer them to God in authentic praise and worship that draws us into the very heart of the eternal music of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
May it be so!

It is to God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that we give glory and praise, now and forever. Amen