Trinity #HeresyAlert

Yup, it’s that time of year to wheel out the curate, the lay minister, the retired bishop or whomever else you have lying around and give them the Trinity to preach on. Meanwhile the church wardens, elders or circuit Sanhedrin can prepare the stake and kindling in the carpark.

Please find below a bundle of resources for Trinity Sunday and please don’t execute me for heresy cos, let’s face it, God is so brain-thumpingly awesome that anything we say is going to be short of the mark.

Below are some links to Trinity resources, including a gorgeous trinity knot for you to colour while meditating on your heresies. Below that a reflection on adoption in Romans 8 and at the end, as always, your liturgy resources.

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What has the Trinity ever done for us?

(first published 2021)

To slightly mis-quote Monty Python, ‘What has the Trinity ever done for us?’

Well, maybe not aqueducts, roads or public baths, but in today’s passages we find probably the biggest and best thing that anyone ever did for someone else. God adopted us into his family, and by doing that gave us a new name, a new start and a new purpose.

Let’s dig in and look at that word ‘adoption’.

Paul’s word is huiothesias (“hoo-ee-o-they-see-as”, υἱοθεσίας). It’s a mixture of huio (son) and thesia (to place), so it means to place someone in a family as a son, and specifically as an heir. It’s a favourite word of Paul’s which he comes back to later in Romans as well as Galatians and Ephesians.

What does it mean to be adopted as an heir? In Bible times families were like clans, living and working closely together, and the eldest son would eventually take over the family business. It’s more like the way they do adoption in Japan.

Fun fact: In Japan, 98% of adoptions are not of children, but of men in their 20s or 30s.

Does that seem odd? Not if you are looking for someone to run a multi-national company.

Fun fact #2: The current head of Suzuki is Osamu Suzuki, the fourth generation of adopted sons in that job.

This is not some kind of second-class son, a lower status. Being adopted is a sought-after position. Adopted sons are chosen, wanted, honoured.

What is this adoption like? It’s more than just a change of name. This is a whole life. You work with your new dad and learn his job, you might live with your new parents and even marry their daughter (that’s not as weird as it sounds). New start, new name, new allegiance, new family, new way of doing things.

It’s almost like being born again. (Now, where have I heard that before?)

Nicodemus didn’t really understand what Jesus was talking about in that famous verse from John. “Huh? Born again? You expect me to climb back into my mum’s belly?” (I paraphrase). But even if we get that it’s not literal, I doubt that any of us really understand what a big deal this is.

Our English translations miss the glorious wordplay as Jesus talks about wind and spirit – it’s the same word in Aramaic and Greek, and also means life-breath, like when God breathed on a clod of earth back in Genesis and it became a living human.

Yes, the same awesome life-giving spirit / breath / wind that God promised to every believer, and was poured out at Pentecost, is the Spirit who speaks to our hearts and tells us that we are God’s children.

Paul contrasts this spirit of adoption with a spirt of slavery. Think of the lost son in Luke’s parable. He thought he had blown it (I mean, he had) and was only worthy to be a farm hand, but the father took him back as a dearly loved child, welcomed, wanted, and inheritor of his father’s riches.

Both a son and a servant work on the family farm. Both live and eat there. Both are known by the father’s name. But for one it is a job, for the other it is family. A child of the family is there for keeps, not for coins.

And so is our adoption. We are grafted into God’s family, made part of the vine. Born of the Spirit who testifies with our spirit that we are truly God’s daughters and sons. Heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.

So what has the Trinity ever done for us?
Through adoption as heirs we have:

A new name – we are called by our Father’s name, part of a new family
A new start – no matter how much we have blown it, Jesus grants us a fresh start
A new purpose – we work now in the family business, with the Spirit guiding us

Liturgy Resources for Trinity

Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:12-17

Confession and Absolution

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.
O Lord, you are great indeed. We cannot lift our eyes to you for you are holy.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.”
O Lord, we confess that we, your people, are lost and unclean and have strayed from your path. Forgive us, we pray, for you are holy.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

And I said: “I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
O Lord, we confess the sins of our world: the love we have not shown to the weak, the poor, the marginalised, and the care we have not take of our planet. Forgive us, we pray, for you are holy.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

Then a seraph touched my mouth with a live coal and said
“Your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”
O Lord, you are gracious and merciful and forgive all who truly repent.
Strengthen us, we pray, to live in the light of your calling, for you are holy.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
Amen.

Blessing and Dismissal

May you know that spirit of adoption by which we cry, “Abba! Father!”
May you rejoice in God’s family.
May the Spirit bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God.
May you be led by that Spirit
and the blessing …

I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
Let it be so.
Amen!