Trinity Sunday
I wonder if you have recently heard a preacher, one like no other? I will tell you the reason why I watched the royal wedding on TV was because Gill and I had heard Michael Currie preach 16 years ago at a conference in Chicago, and he was astounding. Now, older and maybe toned down from those days for the occasion, he was still great.
He started with a reading about love.
Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned.
Now there is a text for a wedding in the pomp, the splendour and the magnificence of Windsor Castle. ‘If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned.’
Here is the substance of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness when ‘the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” ’ Yes, all that wealth, utterly scorned.
And then, Michael Curry reminded is, love is a fire, and, starting with Teilhard de Chardin, he noted that the harnessing of fire was the ultimate point in the evolution of humanity. Fire enabled the human race to survive the ice ages, but, more than that, the harnessing of fire allowed food to be cooked, and become more richly nourishing that anything which had ever gone before. The final stages of the evolution of the human brain required a rich diet of cooked food.
Love is a fire. Not something weak, wishy washy and sentimental, but with a transforming power to change the world. Love is the engine of all creation. Michael Curry again, referred in his sermon to the harnessing of fire, especially in the industrial revolution. Nothing to me epitomises and illustrates the beauty and the power of fire than a steam locomotive in all its glory, where you actually see the fire, and see the work it does in driving 500 tons of a laden train at up to 100 miles an hour. And all this, from one sweating fireman, feeding the coal on into the firebox. The drama of such an engine is palpable. We see the release of a creative energy to do work. Love is such a creative energy at work. And the whole story of creation is of the release of such an energy. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God.’ Or, as the psalmist put it, ‘The voice of the Lord is a glorious voice’. The gospel writer’s news is that the creator has come to us, is one with us in Jesus who came to affirm that God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son.
Isaiah gives us a picture of that fire of love.
‘One of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ This fire of perfect love is forgiveness, sin blotted out. ‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’
The story of the Holy Trinity is a story that God is love, God reveals himself as love through Jesus Christ. God shares that love with us through his Holy Spirit who enables us to recognise and respond to him. This is the struggle which is played out throughout the pages of scripture. For God is not an angry despot, who is vengeful and whose wrath must be appeased by sacrifice. God is not that bloodthirsty monster. Humanity has, throughout the ages, made that mistake about God, and has carried out the most terrible slaughter and unspeakable horrors in the name of honouring the deity, and it has been utterly wrong. The entire notion of making a sacrifice to honour God is a misuse of all the good that God has given. Taking a life does not honour the giver of all life. No, god is love, and all he asks is our love in return.
The rabbi, Nicodemus, came to Jesus by night, wanting to know how Jesus performed the miracles, and was answered with a kind of riddle which he couldn’t fathom. How can you be born from above? How can you see everything afresh, as though never seen before? We might just have a glimpse of that when we fall in love. The world IS different. The may blossom in the hedgerows sparkles as never before, the rain drop on the new roses draws us in to experience their scent. Everything bursting to life in springtime sings the glory of its creator and awakens our hearts to respond in love. How did Jesus perform those miracles? With a love so intense it was like a fire, a love so intense it had a force like a steam engine, a love so intense it could harness all the energy of creation, to heal the sick, to restore the broken, raise up the fallen, cleanse the leper and raise the dead. In Jesus we see that God’s love is actualised in his sharing our life, showing us how to live as our creator intended, a life to be given away in a life of loving that we might share in the love which never comes to an end, a love greater than faith, than hope, or the imaginings of Nicodemus.
The image of kindling a living flame gives us a picture of the awakening of love, at first small, insignificant, barely able to survive, but then it catches, and everything is revealed by its light, we are warmed by its heat. How amazing that at the dawn of creation the energy was there to sustain all that God had made to sustain and develop for 14 billion years. God loved the world so much, that he gave and gave and gave everything, even himself.
And if we see it, if we just catch a glimpse of his love, then we might respond in recognition, crying out ‘Abba, Father! I am your child, your beloved child.’ And when we do that ‘it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.’
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not a dry credal formula, but is the very source of life, the fullness of God’s love, the love that is a fire, the fire in the preaching of Michael Curry, the fire of love that we pray is present in every loving partnership, the love that is our response to God’s love, and the love which we celebrate today in bread and wine, the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.