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The vast mystery of God

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The vast mystery of God

15 June 2025

Series: Trinity

Topic: Trinity

Book: John, Proverbs, Psalms, Romans

The vast mystery of God

Ian Banks

Some 1600 years ago, St Augustine wrote a lengthy treatise called ‘On the Trinity’. It took him many years. There’s a story told that at one point during this time he was walking by the seaside in his native North Africa, meditating on the difficult problem of how God could be three Persons at once. He came upon a small child who had dug a hole in the sand, and with a seashell was repeatedly scooping water from the sea into the hole.

Augustine watched for a while puzzling over what the child was doing before curiosity got the better of him. “What are you doing?” he asked.  The child answered that he was emptying the sea and pouring it into the little hole in the sand. “But that’s impossible” Augustine said. “Obviously, the sea is too large and the hole too small.” “Indeed,” said the rather precocious child, “but I will draw all the water from the sea and empty it into this hole quicker than you will succeed in containing the vast mystery of God in the mere words of a book.” Augustine turned away in amazement and when he looked back the child had disappeared…

It’s a nice story – but it didn’t stop Augustine from trying!

Doctrine

What can we hope to do with one of the hardest doctrines of the church in the space of a few minutes? Perhaps it’s what Jesus had in mind when he said he had many things to say but that we couldn’t bear them now? We couldn’t cope with or understand them now.

I think we’re best served by taking a look at today’s readings and exploring what each of them are saying to us. To ask how they help us to think about the Trinity. And these texts do give us a clue about the extent, the breadth, of God’s visibleness, if there is such a word.

Our passage from John 16 looks like it’s been chosen because it has the Father, Jesus and the Spirit all getting a name check in the space of a few verses. We’re still in that time where Jesus is giving his final teaching before his arrest and crucifixion. And this is now the 3rd chapter where he talks in some way about the Spirit.

Rublev

We see that Jesus and the Spirit are tied up with the Father. And the disciples then, and us know, are invited into this intimacy. It reminds me of that famous icon, Rublev’s the ‘Hospitality of Abraham’ which I’ve shown you before. The scene is a moment in time during the visit of the 3 strangers to the tent of Abraham and Sarah, as described in Genesis 18. Those 3 are often thought of as being an OT picture of the Trinity. The icon has the 3 divine figures sat at on 3 sides of a table looking at and gesturing towards each other but with a space free at the front – a space that we are invited to fill and become part of that group. We become a fourth element of that relationship. A ‘quadrinity’ perhaps, or ‘quaternity’.

That rather domestic image of God is rather different perhaps to one that we might get from a passage like Isaiah 6 were the prophet has a vision of God so huge that just the hem of his robe fills the Temple. And that’s part of our dilemma. How do we think about even one element of the Trinity, who at one moment can be sat at table sharing a meal with us and at another be so beyond our comprehension, inspiring awe and wonder?

To help us with that, God became man as Christ Jesus. Jesus was the visible presence of God. So, how does God go about making God’s presence known if Jesus is not physically around now? Well, it’s through us, we are now that visible presence of God, thanks to the work of the Spirit in us.

Encourager

In John, Jesus sometimes uses the Greek word ‘paraclete’, one who comes alongside, who encourages, to describe the Spirit.  He uses it earlier in this chapter: ‘If I do not go away, the Encourager will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you’. I wonder how we make God visible in how we come alongside, in how we encourage others.

In today’s verses though, Jesus describes the Spirit as the Spirit of truth, that will guide us in every truth. If, again, we are that visible presence of God, then, as Lee challenged us last week, how do we speak truth in situations, how do we guide others in truth?

Our faith is not about worshipping some chap from the Middle East, who walked about two thousand years ago, and we wish was still here. We worship someone who is alive today. God’s ongoing Spirit continues to make Christ known – and he does it through us.

The Spirit in us is the means by which Jesus continues to be revealed. It’s an ever-moving trajectory. God is still present, still working for change, still pushing for new horizons – and he does it through us.

Wisdom

The wonderful verses from Proverbs, show us another aspect of that. The God with whom we are invited to be in relationship is the God who created heavens and earth and mountains and fields. And we see God in all those things. But these verses finish with the inhabited world and with the human race. Yes, we see God in flowers and trees – but God is there in people and in relationships too.

So, here we have a God is who is never distant from creation – all of creation. Not just in fluffy bunnies but in the person sat next to you. And yes, in you, too.

But there is something more going on in these verses from Proverbs, since these are about the Wisdom of God, which here is thought of as being feminine. Does not understanding raise her voice; she takes her stand; she cries out. This Wisdom was the first creation, the first act, before the heavens and the depths and the earth and the fields. She works alongside God during the creation process, as a master worker, an architect. And she’s vocal about it, she makes her presence felt. And she rejoices and delights in all that God makes but particularly in humanity. The Hebrew word is closer to giggling. Wisdom is giggling with delight at creation, at us. Wisdom finds joy in us.

The image of God

Earlier in John’s Gospel, he picks up on the same idea. John 1 talks of the Word, the Logos, who became flesh and that Word was in the beginning with God and without him not one thing came into being.

And notice the similarity with the hymn found in Colossians 1:15-20. Christ Jesus is described as the image of God, the firstborn of all creation, the one through whom everything was created. Christ is being identified by the author of Colossians as that Wisdom of God seen in Proverbs… the one who finds joy and delight in us…and Christ has done so from the very beginning of creation.

Our calling

The choice of Psalm 8 today builds on that. That same God who was active in the life of Jesus and breathes his Spirit into a new community, into us, is evident in all the earth. The wonderful poetry in this psalm shows us both divine power – and, critically, our place in it.

The psalm opens and closes with praise and glory to God but in between it answers the question about what we are in the light of all creation. What our place is in relationship to the three of the Trinity. And the answer is that we have a job to do. We’ve been given a role, a vocation in that relationship. The psalm says our calling is to care for creation.

During our time here we may have multiple callings, many vocations. But, according to the psalm, the one that remains with each of us is to look after that particular part of creation in which we find ourselves.

The grace of God

And we do that because of love. Our verses from Romans tell us that the Spirit has poured God’s love into our hearts – and through Jesus Christ we have the peace, the shalom of God.

The Trinity is a way of giving us access to the grace of God. God’s grace is the unmerited favour, kindness and love shown to us even though we don’t deserve it. It empowers us to respond to God’s love in how we live our lives.

Since I started with St Augustine, it seems only right to end with him too.

Augustine once wrote: ‘It is not that we keep His commandments first and that then He loves – but that He loves us and then we keep His commandments. This is that grace which is revealed to the humble but hidden from the proud’.

Augustine saw love as the principal way in which the Trinity and grace are connected. The internal relations in the Trinity between Father, Son and Holy Spirit are characterized by mutual love. We join and complete that circle – and do the work that we’ve been given to do, thanks to the love which extends to us because of God’s boundless grace. Amen

“The vast mystery of God” was delivered by Ian Banks at St John and St Mark on Trinity Sunday, 15th June 2025. It was based on John 16:12-15, Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31, Romans 5:1-5 and Psalm 8.

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