31/05/2026
Today's sermon by Revd Tayrina
There are certain Sundays in the church year where the priest wakes up and thinks, "Excellent. This practically writes itself."
Christmas? Baby Jesus.
Easter? Empty tomb.
Palm Sunday? Donkey.
Lovely. Clear. Manageable.
Then there is Trinity Sunday.
The annual festival where clergy all over the country begin muttering nervous prayers and trying not to accidentally repeat something the Church declared heresy in the fourth century.
Because we naturally want to explain things. We want neat answers. We like understanding how things work.
Over the centuries people have had a good go at explaining the Trinity.
Perhaps you've heard some of them.
God is like a three-leaf clover.
God is like an egg: shell, white and yolk.
God is like water: liquid, ice and steam.
The trouble is every analogy eventually wobbles and falls over. Before long you've accidentally invented some ancient theological problem and somewhere a long-dead bishop has just sat bolt upright in alarm.
So this morning I do not want to spend our time trying to explain the Trinity away.
I wonder whether sometimes our mistake is thinking that if we cannot completely understand something, somehow we cannot trust it.
Instead I want us to think about something else entirely.
Gravity!
Gravity is odd if you think about it for more than thirty seconds.
We cannot see gravity.
We cannot pick it up.
We cannot put it in a jar and pass it around after coffee.
Yet every single person here has experienced gravity already today.
Gravity got you out of bed this morning. Gravity kept your feet on the floor. Gravity stopped you floating gently out of the church roof halfway through the first hymn.
Scientists can tell us enormous amounts about gravity. They can describe what it does and calculate its effects with extraordinary precision.
But there is still mystery there.
There are still things we do not fully understand.
And yet none of us woke up this morning and said, "Well, I refuse to get out of bed until I have a complete grasp of gravitational theory."
No.
We trust it.
Actually, more than that, gravity holds us.
And perhaps the Trinity is something like that.
Not in the sense that God is simply some force drifting around the universe. God is infinitely more personal than that.But perhaps our relationship with God is similar.
Because the truth is we do not possess God.
We do not master God.
We do not pin God down and say, "Right then, I understand you now."
God holds us.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit surrounding our lives every moment of every day.
The Father who creates us and calls us beloved.
The Son who walks among us and shows us the face of God.
The Spirit who breathes courage into fearful hearts and whispers hope into weary souls.
Not three gods; not one God wearing different hats; but one God, eternally giving and receiving love.
A relationship so rich and complete that it spills out into creation itself.
And perhaps this tells us something important about church too.
Because if I am honest, the Trinity does not really make efficient sense.
One God in three persons? It is gloriously untidy!
And perhaps we know something about gloriously untidy things in our own lives.
Take our own benefice.
Three parishes. Six churches. Different traditions, different personalities, different stories.
If someone sat down with a clipboard and tried designing us from scratch, they might have a small lie down halfway through.
One church likes this.
One church likes that.
Some people love change; others regard change with the same enthusiasm as an unexpected letter from the taxman.
Some love silence and reflection; some become slightly anxious if there is more than three seconds of silence and begin wondering whether somebody has forgotten what comes next.
And occasionally we can find ourselves thinking, "Wouldn't it just be easier if everybody became exactly the same?"
Well perhaps easier.
But perhaps poorer too.
Because there is a difference between uniformity and unity.
The Trinity is not God saying, "Everyone become identical."
The Father is not the Son.
The Son is not the Spirit.
The Spirit is not the Father.
Distinct, yet bound together in love. Different, yet one.
And somehow together revealing something fuller and richer than apart.
Maybe that is true of us too...Coggeshall and Cressing and Stisted.
Different gifts, different strengths, different stories.
We do not lose ourselves by belonging to one another.
Perhaps we become more ourselves.
Because Christian community has never really been about saying, "my church." It is learning to say, "our church."
Not because we become one giant beige blob where everybody agrees about everything (heaven preserve us!) but because God's way seems always to be relationship.
God takes distinct things and somehow binds them together into something more beautiful than the parts alone.
But perhaps the deepest comfort of Trinity Sunday is this.
You do not need to understand everything about God.
Some of us spend a lot of life trying to hold everything together.
Trying to make sense of things.
Trying to fix things.
Trying to carry worries for our families, our work, our futures, our churches.
Trying to understand why some prayers seem answered quickly while others seem to echo back in silence.
Trying to understand loss.
Trying to understand change.
Trying to understand life itself.
And eventually we discover something exhausting: we were never built to carry the weight of the world.
But the good news is this: we do not have to; because your faith does not depend upon the strength of your understanding. It depends upon the strength of God's love.
And God's love is stronger than your doubts.
Stronger than your fears.
Stronger than your uncertainties.
You do not hold God together.
God holds you. Like gravity. Quietly. Constantly.
Faithfully.
Even now.
Amen.
