A couple of weeks ago we celebrated the Ascension, which was Jesus’ great homecoming after a long exile. This Sunday is also about coming home, but this time it’s our great homecoming.
Writing about the Trinity is daunting, especially for someone like me who is not a theologian. My only consolation is that smarter people than me have also fallen at this hurdle – even St Augustine, who wrote an entire treatise about the Trinity. And it’s meant to be daunting, because it’s like looking at your own creation story and your own destination all at once.
You realise that the funny, happy, foolish sort of life you’ve been bumbling along in is just a tiny blip in a vast eternity. And yet your blip-ness is infinitely precious and valuable to the God who made you out of nothing.
You and everything around you were created out of nothing. Just take a moment to think about that.
You’ve also been created as an immortal being. However, due to circumstances beyond your control, you are currently stuck in a fallen body. Never mind. This is only temporary, and it’s a good training ground to prepare the sort of immortal being you’re going to be for the rest of eternity.
You have been given the gift of free will, plus a sleepless adversary who hates you and will do anything to destroy you. But you’ve also been given powerful weapons and protectors against him if you choose to use them.
There’s a reason quest stories – and these days, video games – are so compelling. It’s because they reflect to us in a shallow way the dreadful and challenging real quest that we’re all on right now. But in this real-life quest, we aren’t spectators. We are active participants, and we don’t have a choice about that.
We only have a choice about how we tackle the quest each day. Are we smart about it, or very stupid?
Your real-life quest will end one day in your death and judgement. That’s when we – and you – find out who you really are. Hopefully you have used your weapons wisely and exercised your free will like a racehorse in the pursuit of goodness.
If you have, then you won’t be withered into a twig by the sight of what’s waiting for you on the other side.
Reality check: I hope you’re not clinging to the idea of having wings and standing around on clouds. Human beings don’t have wings in this life, so we won’t have them in the next life. We don’t become angels (despite what well-meaning people say at funerals).
You’re designed to live forever in a renewed, re-created Earth in a resurrected human body. Your final destination is to live in the light of the three-way relationship of perfect love and equality that is the Holy Trinity.
This divine relationship will be so close to you that you won’t need churches or sacraments.
So if things like love, relationship, and equality make you feel uncomfortable in this life, how will you ever enjoy them for eternity?
Everything that you do in this life is preparing you for eternity. There is no standing still in the spiritual life, so you should always be moving in the right direction. To live in the Trinity for eternity, you must start whetting your appetite for it now and emptying out your soul to receive an eternity of love.
Once there, your little human heart will pour out endless torrents of love into the Trinity, who will pour their love back into you. You will be caught up into that torrent of love, which paradoxically also includes all the other people caught up in that torrent, in their beautiful individuality.
We don’t lose our individuality in the Trinity; we just have it perfected, so that we will literally be our best selves in body and soul. Every good act you do in this life is making it easier for you to receive this outpouring of perfect happiness. Every evil act you do is making it harder.
There’s no room in the Trinity for your pride, snobbery, greed, selfishness, control-freakery, and malice. People who think the idea of heaven is a facile children’s story could not be further from the truth. Heaven is painfully real – more real than anything you see around you.
Gaining it is a joy you will never regret. Losing it will be an eternity of regret.
And I hope to see you there, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
