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Dynamic Trinity


On Trinity Sunday, (26th May 2013) we think about the nature of the Christian God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It makes Christianity incredibly distinctive among the monotheistic religions. How does our belief in the Trinity effect our life as Christians?


Catherine Mowry LaCugna explains in her book, God For Us, that the Trinity is “ultimately a practical doctrine with radical consequences for Christian life . . . [it] is the specifically Christian way of speaking about God, [and] what it means to participate in the life of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit.”

But, what does that mean for you and me, today?

Well, let’s think about it like this:

FEAR What are the things that human beings fear/what do you fear? Think to yourself, honestly about it. Look to our tabloids to understand what most of us fear: Change, difference, otherness, suffering, lack, poverty, death?  

I want you to imagine fear as a place.

DESIRE Then think about what you seek/desire/long for? Deep down inside what are your hopes? Look to the Bible for these: Peace, stability, love, freedom, joy?

I want you to imagine desire as a place.

Fear and desire are two places, far away from one another:

How does Christianity tell us that that chasm between fear and desire is crossed?
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Christianity tells us a participative story about how the gap between our fear and our desire is bridged by the love of God. And that story is the story of God as Trinity. The Godhead prepares us (OT), visits us – as the Son,  loves us to the end, and continually enables us, through the Spirit, to move from fear to love, from chaos to peace, from imprisonment to freedom, from sadness to joy.

The gap between fear and desire is a gap that is literally traversed and it is traversed by God. For Hetravels, metaphorically, really, particularly and hopefully to us in the Son and continues to recall us to hope, love and belief through the Spirit.

The Trinity explains to us about a God who creates, communicates and travels to be with His creation: our God who enters into places of fear, despair and loss to invite us to return with him to a place of hope, love and joy. He gives us His Spirit to keep reminding, encouraging and inviting us to return with him.

When we think about God we think about an active, dynamic, interrelationship that invites, changes and traverses in order to bring us to where He is.

The lively Trinitarian God is, to quote philosopher Charles Hartshorne, the “most moved mover,”. This is not a static, self-subsisting God. This is a God who rolls up His sleeves and gets really dirty, working away to bring us back to a place where our true desires are realised.

And how should the nature of our God be reflected in us, His disciples? We should try and act like God does – joining with others, working together to bring people into God’s kingdom of peace and joy.


God calls us into community and out of safety.

We enable one another, but do not restrict one another.

We support one another, but realise that the work of truth requires sacrifice and separation.

We realise that God’s love is not just good news for me but good news for others and so we turn outwards.

We take the risk that the Son took; we leave the beauty and security of truth and divinity and enter into places of doubt, fear, hopelessness, insecurity and poverty. There we keep shining the light of the love of God (however hard it may be to hang on to) as that which can liberate all people.

We practice the dynamic, moving, brave, hopeful, risk-taking love which is revealed to us in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.




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