St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by The Revd Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George in the City and Diocese of Cape Town on Trinity Sunday, 3 June 2007

O Trinity of radiant light
Creation's source, Eternal force
Shine in us, a beckoning light -
Holy, holy, holy, Lord.

O Trinity of saving love
Our soul's delight, love's tender might
Save us for a gathering love -
Glory to God in the highest.

O Trinity of blessed, holy life
the body's fire, our heart's desire
Send us out, renewing life
Come, Holy Spirit, come.

O God of light and love and life
in us arise, a living flame of holy life and love,
to the honour
for the glory
by the power
of your most holy name.

Today we give thanks for the Name by which par excellance we Christians name God. And while there are many other names by which we address God and by which we call God to mind, this name is God's proper name for us, the name that holds in its very articulation the ultimate reality we mean we say God. So, today, Trinity Sunday, is in fact God's Name Day, the day when we celebrate the wonder of that Name, the glory of it, and the enduring resonance by which it rings in our songs, our prayers, our affirmations of faith and in our hearts.

Consider for a moment the cultural dynamic of naming. There are fundamentally two ways in which we name things.

In the first instance, we name things at the beginning of their existence – children when they are born, institutions when they are founded. These names are the building blocks of our hopes, our great expectations. Of course, our past experience is brought to the act of naming. Peter is named for his father or grandfather, who of in turn was name for the first disciple - all of them by being named Peter are gifted with a particular heritage and positioned for a future full of anticipated meanings. In the same way, the names of institutions are freighted with an expression of the purposes for which there are great hopes at the time of the establishment of those institutions, The Centre for the Study of Creative Non-Violence, The African Union, St Raphael's Retreat Centre.

There is a second way of naming. In it we name things not in the first place from the hopes with which we invest them, but rather from the harvest of our experience and the connections between the new thing which we are naming and what we know of the world and of life. This is the way in which we name phenomena when they discovered, giving plants, animals and geographical features names that relate kind to kind and form to form. This is also how we acquire our nick-names or honorifics, calling Peter 'Whistle'- because he is always wetting his, and calling the science teacher 'Galli' because he never tired of celebrating what he thought of as Galileo's epoch-making discoveries.

It is in this way that we have given God the name Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not in the first place because this Name represents our wager against the future, or even our great expectations for it, but rather because it is the harvest of our experience. The Name of the Trinity is not a divinely given name, that issues from a direct revelation. It is, on the contrary, a given name, carrying in it the harvest of our experience of God over the countless ages of human existence, particularly borne out of our Judaeo-Christian heritage.

Our forbearers in Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, in Isaac and Rebecca, in Jacob, Rachel and Leah, and in the many generations of Jews since then, looked around them and saw a world redolent with the mystery of life, the wonder of sunrise, the predictability of times and seasons, the bright green of the trees and grass, the power of the rivers, the remarkable gift of the many splendours of life. They stood awed by the staggering variety and unity of Creation. All this wonder coming from nowhere, all this unaccountable beauty, this power, this life, given, and given again and again. This is God, they said, this almighty power that makes and animates all things. This is God they said who fathers forth a universe and mothers it with nurturing care. From the harvest of their experience of life they named a parenting God, a life force pulsing in and through all things.

O Trinity of radiant light
Creation's source, Eternal force
Shine in us, a beckoning light -
Holy, holy, holy, Lord.

Our Jewish forbears too, recognised within the almighty working of a powerful and generative God, a life force released into creation, a breath of power to animate desire, inspire beauty, summon courage and enable the realisation of potential. As our ancestors discovered this power at work in them and within their communities, a power that within them and through the works of their hands advanced the purposes of Creation's Source, they called this recognizable power God's spirit, unleashed in the world and at work in them. A holy spirit our ancestor's understood this to be, since it enabled in us participation in God's holy purposes.

O Trinity of blessed, holy life
the body's fire, our heart's desire
Send us out, renewing life -
Come, Holy Spirit, come.

In the fullness of time there arose in our Jewish forbears an expectation of a new age when the whole of creation would be restored to the wonder it was created to be, a paradise they had lost, but a dream that still lived powerfully within them. This 'Day of the Lord.' with all the connotations of restoration and renewal they believed would be ushered in by the Messiah, the Christ of God, in whom all humanity would be gathered into the everlasting shalom of reconciliation with God. Of this anointed one the prophets spoke and the Psalmist sang. Powerfully in every Jewish heart pulsed this expectation of the Holy One who would be the Peace in whom creation would come to its fulfilment.

Our Christian forbears, those who lived and walked with Jesus, heard his voice and felt his touch, recognised in his person, his teaching and his ministry this very incarnation of God alive among them, totally identified with God's purposes, God-with-us, the human face of God. Yes, they affirmed, as they were baptised into his name, this God of ours has been with God's people from the very beginning, as Creation's Source and generative, loving parent. This God too, one and the same, breathe over the waters to bring creation to birth and enlivens it still, one God at one and the same time and in the same person, life-giving Creator and renewing Spirit that makes all things holy. And this God, Creator and Spirit, our Christian forbears testified, comes alive in our human history in the person of the Anointed One, the Messiah, only begotten of God, whom they knew in Jesus Christ. One God, always one: an almighty Father who creates and sustains in love; the Spirit of that Father that animates, kindles and consecrates; that God incarnated in our history, God's human face, one with us and or us. Father, Son and Holy Spirit they named God, ever three and ever One.

O God of light and love and life
in us arise, a living flame of holy life and love,
to the honour
for the glory
by the power
of your most holy name.

This is a Name of wonder, grace and glory – the holy and blessed Trinity. Today let is be mindful as we say it, lingering over its syllables, singing the music of is rhythms. Trinity, Trinity, Trinity of light and love and life. Let the power of it take up residence in your heart. Let the wonder of it illuminate your mind. Let the mystery of it lay hold of your soul. And then, tomorrow and the next day, when you call upon God, or step into God's presence, recall the immensity of the majesty of our God, revealed to us in God's history with us since before time began, and continuing still in grace and power and then say, O blessed and holy Trinity, my God and ours.

Of course, there are problems with any name given to an immensity like the mystery of God – our Jewish forbears prudently and humbly resisted this temptation. And a name born out of a tradition of patriarchy that insists on calling God Father as a name for God is more problematic still. It is clearly the generative begetting and enduring loving nurture that characterises the best parenting that is meant when we call God Father. In this we must mean Mother as well, mustn't we and perhaps, like the good Julian of Norwich and the mystics, we should all sometimes call God Mother.

What is remarkable about the name we have inherited for God is that it names a community. A society of intimate connection where distinction is characteristic and unity is essential. Our God is relational and our God is as diverse as our God is one. And therein is the lesson that leaps from our songs of praise and our meditation today. The loving hand of God has moulded and shaped us precisely and carefully into the divine image. As God is relational, so are we relational. As God is the incarnation in human history of God's divine purposes, so are we agents of God's will and embodiments of God's purposes. As God is the Spirit that empowers, makes new and consecrates, so are ours the lives that must empower, make new and consecrate. In all of this diversity, God is One - a community of light and love and light. It is this that we celebrate and this that we are called to me.

May we find within our celebration our calling: to be one as God is one, recognising, offering and celebrating our diversity in a unified community of light and love and life.

Back to Sermons page

Mission and Vision | Services | Music | Ministries| History | Glass | Tour | Staff
Cathedral Friends | Publications | Links | Site Map | Home