Trinity:God as relationship

May 26, 2026

7. Sermon God is relationship. (Trinity Sunday)
[Slide]
The Trinity is the traditional belief of the church which was
formalised in the 4th century. It says that there is one God, but
that one God is three persons. God the Father is the one God,
Jesus is the one God and the Holy Spirit is the one God. Over the
years there have been lots of analogies used to try to explain this.
God is like water which remains water even though it can be liquid,
ice and steam each with different characters but still the one
thing. Or God is like a man or is like a Woman who is at once a
mother, a daughter and a sister, yet still the one person. Or God is
like a banana, if you peel a banana and push your finger into the
top it will split into three equal parts. It’s one but three.
In the end these explanations all fall short of describing the Trinity
and do not really explain it.

This idea of God as the Trinity has therefore been attacked by
Jews & Muslims who claim that we are watering down or even
destroying the fundamental truth of the faith which began with
Abraham that there is one God alone and undivided.
The Trinity has been attacked by fringe Christian groups like
the Jehovah's witnesses. It has als been attacked in the last thee
hundred years by some mainstream Christians too, who especially
question the idea that Jesus is truly God.

All of this, critics argue, makes no sense and imposed by the
official church which wants to keep control of members by
wrapping them up in theory and doctrine.
If you think about God in these abstract terms then ideas about
God are difficult. How can three people or one person at the same
time be truly one and truly three?

[Slide]
I said before that this idea of the Trinity was formalised in the 4th
century. That is about 300 years after Jesus walked among us, but
the idea that the Trinity is just an invention of the church
organisation, is not true. Today’s two New Testament passages
both talk about the one God in three parts. Jesus tells the Disciples
in Matthew 28 to make disciples and baptise in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and Paul's final blessing to the
church in Corinth is also in three parts. “May the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit be with you all.” There are many other passages like thse in
the New Testament. Paul was writing only about 20 years after the
resurrection of Jesus and Matthew was writing in 80AD at the very
latest.

So the very early church including Jesus’ first disciples spoke
about God in this way as one but three. Why would they do that?
Well I think that the answer is that it reflected their experience of
God.

Their experience of God revealed in Jesus was that God had
drawn them into a relationship. They now believed that instead of
being servants, or subjects or slaves of God way off in heaven,
they were adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus the Son of God,
Children of the one Jesus related to as Father and they felt that
they shared in this connection, this relationship through the work
of the Sprit who joined them all together and had poured this love
into their hearts.

[Slide]
To put it another way, the early church, the first Christians
experienced God as being drawn into something that is like a
family relationship.

To illustrate this let me give you two examples. One is from one of
my former congregations. A church family once told me the story
of their daughter coming home with her boyfriend and telling her
Dad that the boyfriend had more or less been made homeless and
was in danger of not completing school. The family took him in. He
completed school, he had a new family, and a new home. He and
the daughter married and have been together for more than 30
Years.

This young man's life was transformed by being included in this
family relationship. His old family had failed him but a new family
had transformed him.

Another example of this is a family called the Homes family from
New Zealand. They adopted a child from overseas who had been
so badly treated so unloved she could not speak, would not look at
people and did not know how to hug or show affection. The family
adopted her, loved her and cared for her and she has become
loving and articulate. Her whole life has been transformed.
This was how the early Christians experienced God. Their
experience of God was like being drawn into a transforming family.
Tax collectors, prostitutes, slaves, women, men, Roman soldiers,
Pharisees like Paul, Fishermen, rich people, poor people, clever
people, those who were a bit slow on the uptake, all of them,
experienced God in this way. They were drawn into a transforming
relationship of Love.

Like the church family's daughter, or the NZ family, someone,
Jesus, had come to them and taken them home to the Father's
house, and from that time on they had been joined to the family in
a relationship of Love. Firstly God was alongside them in Jesus,
secondly God beyond them was previously unknown to them, but
revealed by Jesus to be a loving Father, and thirdly, God within,
the Holy Spirit, the love and life of the family working inside them
and binding them all together.

This is a big part of what the Trinity is, this is what God is like. God
is not some abstract concept. God is relationship and love. God is
Jesus coming among us as a gift, and bringing us to meet the
Father who turns out to be not a tyrant but a loving Parent, who
bathes us in the love of the Spirit and so we are one family, or one
body, Brothers and sisters of Jesus, Children of God, joined
together as one.

[Slide]
Our church’s mission statement says we are a practical expression
of God’s love. What could be more practical than being part of a
transforming relationship. It is in relationships that you are born,
fed, clothed, housed, learn, work and grow. Of course this is not
just for you or for this local church. Jesus does not just take you as
an individual, every Christian is brought into this relationship and
because it is a relationship, you are not only joined with the
Trinity, you are joined with more than a billion people through
space and time and you are invited by Jesus to invite others into
that relationship, to make disciples. That’s what discipleship is. It’s
not a formula or a rigid process, it is sharing your relationship with
God with others. It might be a little scary but it’s really pretty
simple.

At this time, what the country, the world, what you and I need is
loving transforming relationships. This is who the Trinity is and
what God offers, and by the Spirit this is what you can offer too.
You can share the relationship. Amen.