Romans 8.12-17, John 3.1-17
Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
Trinity Sunday, 27 May 2018
A joker once said this: "There are three types of people in the world. Those who can count, and those who can't." ...
Have you noticed how often
Things come in threes?
Things come in threes in religion:
the Father the Son and the Spirit,
the amount of times the cock crowed for Peter,
Shadrach, Mesach and Abednigo.
Things come in threes when you're shopping:
Small, medium and large
Buy two get one free
Three good meals a day
Things come in threes in your life story:
past
present and
future
Things come in threes on your calendar:
yesterday
today and
tomorrow
Things come in threes at Austwick Church this weekend:
with WW1, the RAF and the Suffragettes. [3]
Things come in threes when you're celebrating:
Hip hip hooray!, hip hip hooray!, hip hip hooray!
Blondes, Brunettes and Redheads could tell you,
The Three Musketeers would let you know,
Every Tom, Dick and Harry express this:
Things come in threes.
Mark Twain once made up a saying about the three key things in life:
‘Work like you don't need the money.
Dance like no one is watching.
And love like you've never been hurt’, he said.
There's this quote from Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
And Fred Flintstone says things in threes: "Yabba, dabba, do!"
Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again: our faith says that: Things come in threes.
When someone starts telling you a joke in a pub:
you know it'll have an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman in it.
If someone tells you they never go to church, they probably will, three times:
for a baptism, a wedding and a funeral.
A man I once visited told me about the last days of his old mum's life. This lady, in her younger days, had loved playing darts in the pub team while her husband was over on the snooker table. Her son told me that the very last thing she did before she slipped away into unconsciousness was this: she took a piece of tissue paper and rolled it up between her fingers, and then she threw it like this (dart-throw motion). Then she did the same thing again. And again, a third time. Her son told me what he thought she was doing: she was going through the motions of playing darts again, remembering the best times she had had in her life.
Saint Thomas Aquinas said,
"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man:
to know what he ought to believe;
to know what he ought to desire;
and to know what he ought to do".
"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die", many people say, just slightly misquoting scripture.
And we all know what the three wise monkeys say: "I see no evil, I speak no evil, I hear no evil".
There's Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen-y-Ghent;
There's ITV, Sky and the BBC;
There's the Three Bears who met with Goldilocks:
Things come in threes.
There's the triple jump,
There's the stumps on a cricket wicket,
There's the lines on a bingo card:
Things come in threes.
And God comes in threes, as we well know by now. So today on Trinity Sunday we celebrate the way that our lives are blessed by the Father, our creator, the Son, our Saviour, and the Spirit, who is with us now connecting us to God.
Jesus taught his disciples three things they should do to spread the good news to others:
Go and make disciples of all nations,
Baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teach them to obey everything that he commanded.
And Saint Paul taught the Corinthian believers three things they should do to live the right way together:
Put things in order,
agree with one another,
live in peace;
and the God of love and peace will be with you - he said.
Now Trinity Sunday is day which some preachers worry about, because they find it hard to know how to describe the Trinity. They think it's something that other people will never understand. A complex doctrine beyond the theologically untrained. If I ever get that arrogant or ignorant, please fire me.
Because God has ordained that: Things come in threes.
And at a deep, hidden level of our hearts and minds, we understand that.
Now I have to admit, I’ve preached this sermon a few times before. But it changes after every time. Last time I did it, people came up to me afterwards and said I could have mentioned the Three Wise Men, or Three Blind Mice; and one man told me that he had realised for the first time ever, that behind the altar in his church, there are three windows, each with a picture illustrating one person of the Trinity - Father, Son and Spirit.
And best of all in a tiny Dartmoor chapel some time back, a sage old joiner and funeral director George Heathman, then aged 90-plus and still working, smiled wryly throughout my talk and later told me nonchalantly that just a week before he’d had a triple heart bypass operation...
There are signs of the Trinity everywhere in our lives, in the world, if we are tuned in to seeing them.
I think we are all wired to comprehend the possibility that when we and another person are in a room together, God is there with us too.
I think that’s why we warm to the story of the three companions walking the road to Emmaus.
I think that’s why we understand what a Scotsman means when he raises a toast to us using these words -
Never above you
Never below you
always beside you.
I’ll finish with the prayer we call The Grace, because I certainly think we understand the Trinity through those words. If you agree, than you might join in with me in saying them together now:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with us all, evermore. Amen
Notes
[1] Thanks for help and inspiration to The Book of Threes. I'm delighted that subsequent to my posting this sermon online, The Book of Threes has included it on their site: here.
[2] I’ve previously preached versions of this in Liverpool, West Devon and Somerset. See blogs here and here for links.
[3] On the weekend of Trinity Sunday 2018, Austwick Church was hosting an exhibition commemorating the centenaries of World War One, the foundation of the RAF, and Women’s Suffrage.
Comments