Minister 's Letter - June 2009
Dear Friends,
We are all probably familiar with the story of Robinson Crusoe the seafarer stranded on an inhospitable island who through flexibility and good sense survives. Crusoe reflects something of our fears and needs, the fear of loneliness and solitude, the need for society. If we make ourselves too solitary, too alone, we repress our real human need for society. Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, does not seem too concerned with Robinson Crusoe's spiritual development but it is in such a hermitage or desert that sometimes we come towards a relationship with God. We may project on God our feeling that he is the ultimate solitary, the alone above all alones. Such a God would be awesome but somewhat chilly and aloof. The God we celebrate on Trinity Sunday is not a God of solitude but of relationship - a convivial God who is not a distant fearsome power in a novel, the key to a Da Vinci Code but love itself, love Himself.
Trinity Sunday completes the Christian year. This end and beginning Sunday is different: it is a time to think about God, to mull over the implications of our faith and what it means to be God - centred, and how to think, too, of how we relate to God.
The Trinity may seem remote and it is all too easy to fall into heresy but in reality this triune God is not distant from us. The Trinity makes sense of those central doctrines of Incarnation and Resurrection. By the Trinity we, as simple as we are, drawn Godwards. This may seem a daunting thought - but no He is not a God like other Gods, not God-like, not a teflon hero - but the saviour of all life, all being. That is the first foundation of the Trinity. But the teaching of Jesus goes far beyond that. God is more than a creator - He is the Father who loves Him, Jesus, and this is not the distant love of a master for a servant but a love between equals; Jesus is part of God's family in the closest way. Fatherhood is the foundation of what we call Trinity. Jesus is the perfect image of the Father: 'He who has seen me has seen the Father,' an equal whom the Father can love.
God is an eternal lover of Jesus. The life of love and delight we call the Holy Spirit. God is love. Even beyond creating there is loving. In the Son-became-man He loves us too as equals. What we call the sending of the Holy Spirit is our being taken up beyond the world of creatures into the life of God himself. Many of us may think of ourselves as little Gods but this is our inclination towards selfish autonomy. The Trinity is the opposite of that. It is the model for all our relationships, because it is based on love freely given, to which we are the heirs and co-heirs with Christ. The Biblical readings for Trinity emphasise trust, belonging and intimacy and these are perhaps verbal ways of looking at the Trinity. It is near the end of school year - but Jesus is not sad in his parting words. He leaves his disciples with encouragement: in the name of Trinity go forth. The Trinity offers us freedom, love and community: a future life of endless possibility. If he had thought about it Robinson Crusoe was never alone.
In Christ,
Christopher White
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