Homily for Trinity Sunday 2010

Recently at a family birthday lunch the son of a nephew of mine asked me "Who made God?" That is a question all of us have asked at one time or another. But this child was only in year two. He was obviously beginning to hear about God and Jesus at school. He was demonstrating to me that he had indeed taken the notion of God seriously and was thinking about the issue. Whenever a young child asks such a question it still disarms me no matter how often I have heard it asked. And, although I can give a quick answer, I always hesitate lest you close a child's questioning mind. My quick answer was "No one made God". That seemed to satisfy him for the moment.

We live in a world that thinks in terms of cause and effect. It has been given voice and enshrined in our thinking by Sir Issac Newton (1643-1727). He gave us a world view that turned out to be very mechanical. We are always looking for the causes of things. Science looks deeply at the causes of the way things are in our world and immense sums of money are spent looking for the causes of disease or why a child behaves in such a way. Newton's insights paved the way for some wonderful discoveries and technologies.

But things not always so straightforward. Since Newton's day it has been found that his model of the world was limited. The universe is much more complicated and surprising. Some scientists speculate that the universe could be eternal. It is interesting to know that even St Thomas Aquinas, in and article entitled, "On the Eternity of the World" argued that it would not be heretical to say that God could create something that always existed, that the universe itself could be eternal!

We get into difficulty because, to simplify things, we imagine God to be another being like us. God is over there and the universe is over here. God is like a potter and we are the clay as scripture says (Isaiah 64:8). God, however, is not just a combination of all the superheros with all their powers multiplied by a million times or whatever. No matter how big and powerful we might imagine a most powerful being to be we would still not arrive at what God is. Because God is not a being like any created being. Philosophers say God just is. Nevertheless, we have to use human language to speak of God. We have to use human images and metaphors to say anything about God. In the end we can only say with Thomas Aquinas, what God is not, from a human point of view. That is about as far as the human intellect can go unaided.

It is all the more astonishing, therefore, to hear the Scriptures speak of God in very personal terms. That is a real problem for many today. Many would be prepared to believe in an impersonal force in the universe. But that is not how God is revealed to us. The God of Scripture seems to have created the universe out of pure joy! Little else could account for the wonders of creation. The Psalmist prays today, "When I see the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars which you arranged, what is man that you should keep him in mind, mortal man that you care for him?" (Psalm 8)

Or, as the personification of Wisdom in the reading from Proverbs says, "I was by his side, a master craftsman, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere in the world, delighting to be with the sons of men" (Proverbs 8:30,31). St John the evangelist in his first letter reflecting on the experience of the early Christians comes to the conclusion simply that "God is love" (1 John 4:16). God is like an eternal conversation, an everlasting dance of joy that brings forth all of us and all creation. God is a community of love, a Trinity.

In reflecting on the Scriptures and particularly its experience of the presence of the risen Christ the Christian Church sums it all up in the doctrine of the Trinity. In this the creeds try to keep firm both the unity of God on the one hand and the revelation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as distinct persons on the other. The creed does not explain the Trinity. It just states it.

Jesus says to us today, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12). He promises the Spirit to help us. What we cannot bear is the knowledge that the almighty God would be revealed in someone who dwells amongst us, suffers and dies out of love for us. It is the experience of this love mediated to us through Christ living within us by the Spirit that demonstrates the truth of the Trinity. So just as Jesus love revealed something of God to us, we to by loving as Jesus loved can continue to reveal God to our world.

So, "Who made God?" An atheist might say we created God out of our need for a superhero. We simply say God made us in God's image and continues to sustain us in joy and in sorrow. Without God we would be alone and lost in an immense uncaring universe. I know what kind of God I would prefer to believe in and the kind of universe I would prefer to live in.

Fr Graham