Address given by Carol O'Connor on Trinity Sunday at St Peter’s Church, Fawkner, Sunday the 15th of June, 2014
Jesus says, “I am with you
until the end of the age.” These are the
last words in the Gospel of Matthew.
Jesus, commissions his disciples to go out into the world and baptise
people in the name of the father, son and holy spirit. He bids them to teach people to obey
everything that he has taught them. And assures them that he is always with
them, and by implication all who come after them in his name.
The Trinity is central to
our identity as Christians, as Anglicans, and this morning I want to look at
what I think are 2 important traits of the Trinity. At the heart of the Trinity
is mystery, a mystery founded on Love.
Secondly the Trinity is relational, it highlights to us right ways of
being with ourselves, with God, with one another, and within creation. And this right relationship is what we are
called to share with others. We are
called to make community, to build unity in the sharing of our diverse gifts.
And I want to explore these
2 traits of the Trinity by focusing on an historical period and culture
different from our own. It is the culture of the very early Celtic Christians,
primarily in Ireland Scotland from the late 3rd
century CE until around the 10th-11th centuries.
The coming of Christianity
to Ireland is generally credited to St Patrick who, as a boy was kidnapped and
taken to Ireland in the 4th
century. Later, after escaping and
travelling on the continent, he went back to Ireland bringing a Christianising
influence to the many clans of Celts. I haven’t the time here to explain the
origins of the Celtic Culture, or how this fusion of two cultures - the Celts
and the Christians - happened, including how great monastic houses came to be
built and illuminated manuscripts produced, or the gradual emergence of the
early Irish saints. However, I do want to emphasise that on the whole, the two cultures blended well
together. Also, by bringing with them a written form of language, and by being
able to build and live in their monastic houses alongside the Celts, Christians
enabled the Celts to see themselves with new eyes, just as Christians
themselves began to understand new aspects of their own identity.
MYSTERY
In Tokens of Trust
Rowan Williams reminds us that we are never going to understand the all there
is to be known about God and God’s workings, because we don’t God’s perspective
on it all. God has made a universe some
of which we get a grasp of, some of the time, some of which we don’t, ever. Mystery is very much part of the human
experience. However, what we have is faith that this mystery is one born out of
love.
The Irish Celts were attuned
to mystery. God being 3 persons in one
was a concept they could readily take on board. That the Godhead could inspire
adoration and contemplation was something they could relate to. At the top of their own clan or tuath
was a King who was benevolent, working in their interests and all to ready to
shield and protect them. The pre
Christian Irish also very much had a sense that the veil between this world and
the next as being very thin. A King of creation being in operation behind the
veil was a mystery they could also accept. Their old God of the green, leafy
wood becomes recreated, given new life, in the Christian God of Love. The Celts had a very strong affinity with
and affirmation of the natural world.
Each green leaf, every creature, big and small, was already recognised
as fused with God’s life. And so the
breath of the holy spirit, God’s ruach, could bind us and all creation together
to offer fruits of wisdom and discernment.
Jesus they could embrace as God’s Son, who like a brother could teach
about Love and forgiveness. The Celts
also had a strong regard for the feminine, so Goddesses, such as Bride, goddess
of poetry and fire and the hearth, translate across to becoming St Bridget,
Mary’s midwife at the birth of Jesus. St Bridget is like a close sister intimate presence was always with the Celtic
Christians. She was with them as they performed ordinary domestic chores:
Come Mary and milk my
cow
Come Bride and encompass
her,
Come Columba the benign,
And twine thine arm around
my cow.
The Divine as Triune, or 3
persons in one, was also readily accepted because this number held magic for
them. It perfectly suited their love
of the poetic form, called the Triad. The Celts were primarily an oral
culture. They found that remembering
life’s lessons was best done in 3s. So, for example, Three keys that unlock
thoughts: drunkenness, trustfulness, love. Three coffers whose depth is not
known: the coffers of a chieftain, of the Church, of a privileged poet. Three things that ruin wisdom: ignorance,
inaccurate knowledge, forgetfulness.
And so, in a nutshell, the
early Celtic Christians could move with ease between the idea of a God who was
transcendent, that which we pour our hearts out to in adoration; a spirit who
was immanent - as breath working for good in the world, inspiring
contemplation, stretching our intellect, and; as Jesus, intimate and close,
more-so, than any human being we can ever be with. This Trinity was a mystery they could embrace.
RELATIONAL
James Alison, catholic priest and theologian who recently was out
in Melbourne maintained that we too readily separate the Trinity out into 3
areas of consciousness. In making this split we fail to understand the
relational nature of the Father/Mother, Spirit and Son. Like a piano trio, all three instruments are
needed to make the music; without one, the cello or the flute or the piano, the
music would distort and loose depth. They work relationally, not as 3 areas of
separate consciousness. And, not only is the Trinity relational in terms of its
own unity, but also it calls each one of us into a personal, living
relationship within its own music.
relational - between
person and creation
In having a great affinity
with nature, the early Celtic Christians experienced this relationship in a
personal and very present way. Also
central to this relationship was the figure of Jesus. Jesus is the one who enables
them to experience the spirit in creation, and opens the door to the Godhead.
There is a long poem
commonly known as Marbhan’s hut. Here, Marbhan who was once a Prince, explains
to his brother, the king of Connaught in the 7th
century, why he has chosen to lead the life of a Christian hermit. We read in the poem a person who is very
much at home in the natural world, in the ordinariness of life and who finds a
deep friendship with Jesus who is the true benefactor of all that is good:
I have a hut in the wood
none knows it but my Lord;
an ash tree this side, a
hazel beyond,
a great tree on a mound
enfolds it
………
Around it lie tame swine,
goats, boars,
wild swine, grazing deer,
a badger’s brood.
……..
A beautiful pine makes music
to me
that is not hired;
though I sing to Christ I
fare no worse
than you do.
Though you delight in your
own pleasures
greater than all wealth,
for my part I am thankful
for what is given me
from my dear Christ.
Without an hour of quarrel,
without the noise of strife
which disturbs you,
grateful to the Prince who
gives every good
to me in my hut.
For Marbhan, life in the
present moment, and in the ordinary, is to be delighted in. Not as something
that ends in itself but is constantly orienting itself in right relationship
with Jesus, ‘grateful to the Prince, who gives every good / to me in my hut.’
Celtic Christians knew instinctively something which Rowan Williams explains,
that is, Jesus makes humanly visible God’s presence in the world. Jesus is he
who ‘is supremely the one who makes God credible, trustworthy.’ (TT p
65). For the early Celtic Christians
the presence of Christ is familiar, intimate, companionable. In his company
their world makes sense.
relational - between person and person
One anonymous Celtic
Christian hermit has written this epigram:
King of stars
Dark
or bright my house may be,
But I close my door on none
Lest
Christ close his door on me
It was an important call to
the early Celtic Christians to keep their doors open in hospitality. They tell
us, that just as Jesus keeps his door open for us, we need to keep our door
open for others. We have a
responsibility to look after one another. We are called to act kindly with each
other, stranger and friend. Whoever knocks at our door.
relational - between
person and Trinity
One of the most famous
Celtic Christian poems, or hymns known today, is St Patrick’s Breastplate. a
lovely aspect of this hymn is its vivid imagery of nature. (the flashing of the lightning free…) It is
also made very clear that we as Christians, move inside God’s story. The words
ring like the creed in its affirmation of the essential Christian story and
beliefs. We move in a world of relationships centred on the Trinity. Like the
intricate weaving of the Celtic knot, there is no beginning, no end. Only us in
creation with Jesus and on the inside.
Everything in the hymn is
premised in the opening verse which is repeated at the end: I bind unto my
self today /The strong name of the Trinity /By invocation of the same / The
Three in one, and One in Three. The
created order of the universe, from the beginning of the ages to its end,
exists because of the holy reality of the Trinity. In other words, the world
has been in relationship with its maker before us, and will be again after us.
For St Patrick, this knowledge is an enlightenment that gives him both humility
and strength. It enables him to accomplish in the world what he feels called to
do. He too takes up his commission to go out in the name of the Trinity and
take his place in the narrative of God’s creation. His image for this
understanding is of a lorica or a breastplate. He puts it on to give him courage and
protection. The alternate title for
this poem is the Deer’s Cry, which refers to the time St Patrick was
said to have proclaimed these words. On
a perilous journey to Tara, afraid of being attacked by marauding Celts, he
chanted the words with his frightened men. The words acted a protection by
disguising them as a group of deer as they crept across the countryside.
Draws us in to comtemplation
In order for this relational
aspect of the Trinity to work, there has to be a sense of spaciousness. And so for us, there has to be times for
solitude, for contemplation, meditation.
And in these times of letting go, we can face ourselves as we truly are
known before God. This understanding of life in God is, at least in part, is
coming to the early Celtic Christians from the aestheticism of the Desert
Mothers and Fathers of the East. As our
poet Marbhan found, by leaving behind the complications and demands of
political life for an even more challenging one - as hermit or in a monastic
community he has been enabled to enter more deeply close communion with
God. In our own lives today, either
short periods of meditation each day, or periodic days of retreat can allow us
to go deeper into ourselves. There too,
we can see the false Gods we have created: hang-ups about money, fear of
growing old, the power of fear itself.
It’s during this time of withdrawal that we can be more open to God’s
call in our lives.
Calls us on journey
In our reading this morning,
Jesus is bidding his disciples to go forth.
He hands them the mystery of the Trinity and asks them to build
communities in his name. They are called to journey on.
Celtic Christians had a firm
belief in life lived as journey in the name of Christ. The idea of pilgrimage, or peregrinatio,
a journey undertaken expressly to deepen ones experience of God in the world,
reveals how they understood that we are not called simply to make our lives as
comfortable as possible. Like these
first disciples, as committed Christians we are called to move on. Whether, as
in Columcille’s case who founded Iona, we have penance to do for some wrong
doing, which for him turned out to be his gift. Or like Columbanus who founded
Gubbio in Italy, is a call to spread the faith. Or simply, in an ordinary way, to move on in terms of deepening
our own selves in our faith community, stretch our thinking, help bring about a
little more good into the world - we are called to journey. No matter how we
experience the call - we must remember that we are a pilgrim people. One thing we learn for certain in life is
that change happens. And the wisdom and
guidance, the open text of the Trinity helps us through, helps us negotiate
this change.
John O’Donohue, who has
written about Celtic Christianity, tells us that in the Gaelic language, there
is no single word for ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye’ - it’s always something like: God be
with you, or God bless you. And here,
at the end of Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus says: I am with you until the end
of the age, he too is pointedly not saying goodbye to the disciples, but I
bless you, I bless you in the strong name of the Trinity.
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