Trinity Sunday 31 May 2015 Sermon

Trinity Sunday 31.5.15 God’s feast day

In encouraging each other to pray we sometimes put in the caution that we should not only pray to receive things, but also pray in praise of God and thanksgiving to Him.

At the human level it would be considered bad manners to address another person only ever in terms of request. We do not want to ‘use’ people; just so with Almighty God.

We do want Him to give us things that we need; and He encourages us to ask Him (for our daily bread).

But He also wants that we would come to a deeper understanding of Him, such that we value Him more than the things He provides. We love the Creator more than the created.

We find it hard, generally, to lift our minds so high, but God will help us to know Him better and see where everything fits in.

Trinity Sunday could be understood as God’s own feast day. We have feasts for saints, Our Lady, for events such as Christmas and Pentecost. Well, Trinity Sunday is a feast for God Himself; a chance to celebrate His existence and His nature.

He is all-good, all wise, all-loving. These are infinite qualities, beyond our mental grasp. We do not have to understand everything about God, only to recognize our place before Him – which is one of great humility.

The angels in heaven bow down before Him constantly and sing Sanctus, Sanctus… and they are superior to us.

We cannot do that all the time, but in our attitude at least we need to have a profound reverence and humility towards Almighty God.

He does not need our praise, but we need to praise Him. We need to do this because it enables us to have the true perspective for everything else that we do.

So much of human life is tragically misspent because God is left out of the picture.

People think He either does not exist, or does not matter.

He not only matters; He matters far more than anyone or anything else.

We may not feel Him to be so important but that just means we have not yet reached the proper understanding.

To come to this understanding of God does not make other people or things unimportant. It just means they take their proper place in our estimation.

We love others even more if we love God the most. We use the things of the world with greater wisdom and enjoyment if we use them in accord with God's will.

So we try to grow beyond the view of God as simply someone who is there to fulfil our needs.

We learn to love Him for His own sake. We still ask Him for things but we now see that to possess Him is the greatest blessing.

If He is so good and we are in union with Him how can we lose?

So this feast, Trinity Sunday, we take the chance to think about God, as He is, for His own sake. (Much as we do on someone’s birthday, or funeral.)

How much would we miss God if He were not around?

We glorify Him for who He is and what He is.

He has revealed Himself to us as Three Persons. We know something of each of the three Persons. God the Son we know the best. We can relate to all three at different times, but we understand that any dealings with one Person is dealing with all of God, not just one-third.

Every opportunity to praise His goodness and glory we should take; because it will make the truth better known to ourselves and the world.

Everything wrong with the world could be said to result from a lack of recognition of God. We can go some way to correct that.

All glory be to the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.