Does the Trinity really matter?

Christchurch Parish News, June 2018

Every year, one week after the feast of Pentecost, we celebrate Trinity Sunday, the Sunday in the church calendar when we delight in the mystery of the Triune God.

At least that’s the idea. But it doesn’t always feel that delightful because most of us have picked up along the way that the doctrine of the Trinity is rather difficult to grasp. From the get-go, we’re expecting it to be a bit of a struggle.

The language that’s traditionally used to explain it doesn’t help much either. The Book of Common Prayer says that in the Trinity ‘there be three Persons, of one substance’. Despite none of these words being longer than two syllables, most of us haven’t much of a clue as to what they actually mean. It all sounds rather fusty and academic. Even if we do take the time to wrestle with the meaning of these words, we’re often none the wiser and are left secretly thinking that the Trinity is something we know we’re meant to thinkmatters, but we’re not really sure that it does.

But it does matter. For simply put, if it were not for the Trinity, we would not know what it means to pray as Christians.

To begin with, when we pray, who is it that we’re praying to? It may be that we address our prayers to ‘God’, as in ‘God, help me—I’ve just had the test results back from the doctor’. But in that moment of fear, who is this God that we’re praying to? What is this God like? Why do we think that this God even hears our prayers, or is remotely interested in them, or in us?

When we try to answer these questions, if we’ve been shaped by the Christian tradition, pretty soon we find ourselves talking about the God we meet in the story of Israel and Jesus. For ours is not a tradition that speaks of God in the abstract. Quite the contrary. Our tradition tells a very specific story, one of God being with us, no matter what.

So we’re not praying to a God whom we only know vaguely. Instead, as Christians, we say that we pray to God the Father. But why do we say ‘Father’? Where did that idea come from? To answer that question, we have to speak of Jesus, for he’s the one who spoke of God as Father and taught us to address our prayers to this Father as well.

As soon as we allow Jesus to shape our understanding of God, there’s so much to call to mind as it all reveals who God is: Jesus’ humble birth; the stories that shaped him and the new ones he told; the things he taught and the healings he performed; his brutal and unjust execution by the religious and political leaders of the day who felt threatened by him; his totally unexpected rising to new life three days later; and his return to heaven 40 days thereafter.

It is this Jesus who told his first followers—and all those who have come after them—to address their prayers to God the Father and that accordingly we can know God as our Father, too.

But what motivates us to pray to God understood in this way? Actually, it’s not a what. It’s a who. As Christians, from the earliest days we have understood that we are not praying to God the Father by ourselves. Instead, we pray both with someone and at the same time that we’re empowered by someone.

The first ‘someone’ is Jesus himself. Having ascended into heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, continues to pray for us for all time and we join him in these prayers for ourselves and for all creation.

But to answer the question as to who the other ‘someone’ is, the one who empowers us to pray in this way, we have to tell more of the story of God being with us.

At Pentecost, ten days after Jesus’ ascension into heaven, God the Father sent the Holy Spirit upon the first followers of Jesus. This Holy Spirit fired up the first disciples and lead them bravely to tell the story of Jesus, through thick and thin, throughout the Roman Empire. The Holy Spirit has continued to do the same ever since, leading people from all around the world to tell one more person that same story of Jesus and who he is.

Then when it comes to how and what we pray as Christians, we can only understand this with reference to the Trinity as well, for it is Jesus who teaches us how to pray and it is the Holy Spirit who guides us in what to pray.

When Jesus’ first disciples asked him how we are to pray, he responded by teaching them the Lord’s Prayer which begins with ‘Our Father’. One of the key elements that follow in this prayer is the petition, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’. As Christians we pray for our dimension of creation—earth, in all its amazing, broken complexity—to become more like God’s dimension, heaven.

In these prayers, we are guided by the Holy Spirit. To take one example, we can find ourselves suddenly thinking of someone for no apparent reason—an old friend, say, from years gone by with whom we’ve lost touch. Recognising that this might be a cue from the Holy Spirit to pray for that person there and then, for a moment we hold them intentionally in heart and mind in the presence of God. We pray that whatever may be happening in their lives, whatever they may be facing, that God the Father will bless them and that they may know that God is with them always, no matter what.

Sometimes the Holy Spirit can even lead us to pray for people we don’t want to pray for. For example, people who have hurt us in the past or those who intend us ill in the present. In this, the Holy Spirit is simply shaping our hearts and minds to be more like that of Jesus, who, having taught his disciples to love and pray for their enemies, himself forgave those who betrayed him, those who abandoned him, and those who executed him.

The Holy Spirit can also lead us as Christians into prayer beyond words that we ourselves can’t understand but which can be interpreted by others. Likewise, the Holy Spirit can pray within us when we have run out of all words and our hearts simply ache with sadness and despair. In those moments, when all we have are tearful sighs and groans, the Holy Spirit is praying within us. God the Father hears these prayers.

Furthermore, the Holy Spirit can lead us into prayers of silence, where we sit still for a moment intentionally just to be with God and to listen in the stillness to the One who is always with us, no matter what.

As Christians, of course, we don’t just pray to God the Father. Often we will directly address our prayers to Jesus himself. One of the oldest prayers in the tradition is, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner’. This is a prayer of petition directly addressed to Jesus. But if someone who didn’t know who Jesus was asked why it was that we were praying to him, we would have to tell some or all of the story I’ve sketched out above, in order to explain why it was to this person specifically that we were praying.

Likewise, as Christians we pray to the Holy Spirit. It’s one of the shortest traditional prayers that we have: ‘Come, Holy Spirit!’ To explain who this Holy Spirit is, in a similar fashion we would have to tell the story of God the Father’s sending of the Spirit. Asked why God the Father did this and who this God the Father is and why we call him Father, then we’re back to talking about Jesus.

So, when we think of what it means to pray as Christians, we can’t help but refer to the Trinity. It is only by doing so that we can holistically speak of the relational identity of God.As Christians, we know God to be Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that this identity is revealed to us in the story of God raising Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel from Egypt¹. It is the story of God being with us always, no matter what.

It is to this God, by whom and in whom we pray: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

1. This echoes a phrase coined by the late Robert Jenson, a Lutheran theologian: ‘God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel from Eygpt.’ A good, short book to read by Jenson is ‘A Theology in Outline — Can these bones live?’ published by OUP.