ST ALBAN’S CHURCH COPENHAGEN

SERMON PREACHED ON TRINITY SUNDAY, 22 May 2016,
by the CHAPLAIN, THE REVD. DARREN MCCALLIG.
“PICTURING GOD.”
Once upon a time there was a little girl at Sunday School. And this young girl was
sitting on the Sunday School floor with a large sheet of paper in front of her. And on
that sheet of paper the little girl was exuberantly and energetically drawing a colourful
and beautiful picture with all the colours and crayons she could find. The Sunday
School teacher came over to the girl and said, “Wow! That’s a lovely picture you have
there. What is it?” “It’s a picture of God,” said the little girl. “Oh, I see,” said the
Sunday School Teacher. “How lovely. But, of course, nobody knows what God looks
like.” To which the little girl replied, “They will when I’m finished.”!
Today is Trinity Sunday. It’s the day we celebrate the Church’s “picture” of God – God
as Trinity, God as three persons in one divine life. God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Trinity Sunday, by the way, is the only day in the Church’s year which is set aside to
celebrate a Holy Idea rather than a Holy Event – say Christmas or Easter – or a Holy
Person, like a Saint’s Day. No, today we celebrate a Holy Idea, a doctrine – the doctrine
of the Trinity – and that, quite frankly, can make it a difficult day for preachers.
How do you talk about three persons in one divine life? How does one plus one plus one
equal … one? And what does any of this have to do with us and our attempts to lead
good and fruitful and maybe even holy lives here in Copenhagen in 2016? Good
questions!
Well, let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start by reminding ourselves of where and how
this whole idea of God as three in one began. In a very brief summary it goes something
like this: Christianity began, as you know, as a movement within Judaism. And one of
the key insights of the Jewish faith was - and still is of course - that there is one God.
Not lots of God, but just one God: one Creator; one Source behind all that is; one single
coherent mystery underpinning everything. One God. As that great Jewish prayer - the
Shema - puts it, “Hear, O Israel the Lord our God is one.”
So, it was really quite revolutionary when the early Christians began to speak of this
One God as being revealed in, fully present in the life of a human being, the life of
Jesus. Basically, these early Christians were forced by that experience to expand their
understanding of the One God to make room for their passionate conviction that Jesus
was - as St Paul put it - the image of the Unseen God, the human face of God, if you
like. And not only that, but these early Christians also had to factor-into all this their
experience - after Jesus’ death and resurrection - their experience of how he was still
with them - how they continued to experience Jesus’ presence with them in the form of
a tremendous energy, or power, or Spirit.
It was a lot to take in and a lot to work through. And it took those early Christians - and
indeed it took the early Church - several centuries to come up with a new “language” to
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