When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?  (Psalm 8:3-4)

There are a number of ‘special’ Sundays in the Church’s year. This is Trinity Sunday and it’s always one that I, and lots of other preachers, approach with a degree of trepidation. Not only does the Trinity not appear in the Bible, at least not overtly, the actual doctrine of he Trinity - the relationship between God, Christ and the Holy Spirit -  that we are supposed to be reflecting on this morning has caused some of the bitterest arguments in all of Christian history. Especially the split between the Western Church and the Orthodox Church in 1054 over the vital and burning question: “Does the Holy Spirit proceed from The Father or from The Father AND The Son?”

I don’t know. I’m not sure I even understand the question. So I always sit down to prepare my sermon with the terrible fear that I’m going to commit some terrible heresy. But then I realise. I don’t really care. Just, if you spot any hints of modalism, monothelitism or patripassianism, just keep it to yourself, won’t you? I’m just a man, an ordinary human being. I don’t pretend fully to understand the inner workings of the relationship between God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. All I can do is tell you what the Trinity means to me. So let me start with my telescope and a question an ex-girlfriend once asked me.

Since I was seven, in hospital and my Mum brought me a Ladybird book about the Night Sky I’ve been interested in astronomy. I have a telescope at home that lets me look far out into the vast cosmos, to see literally billions of stars, galaxies so far away that it has taken their light millions of years to reach my eyes and reflecting stretches of time that reach back before this world was even created. Many years ago, when I was at university and before I got that telescope, a girl I was going out with asked me if reflecting on the vastness of the universe made me feel small and insignificant.

That is the question the Psalmist dwells on in our text. From the beginning of religious thought human beings have considered its gods, as something so far above themselves that they cannot be understood, cannot be fully grasped. They placed their dwellings at the tops of high mountains like Olympus. This was as true of the ancient Israelites as it was for any of the other peoples of the Middle East of the time and it’s reflected in the emphasis on Mount Zion for the Jews and Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans.

Times change though. During the Exile the Jews came to understand God as transcending time and space; that he was God for all peoples, not just Israel. As our understanding of the world we live in has grown and expanded our understanding of God has grown expanded until we see him now as the architect of a universe so vast that it boggles the mind even to think about it. We use words like omnipresent, omniscient, eternal to describe a God so vast that we might be tempted to feel small and insignificant; to ask, with the Psalmist, what are human beings that God should care for us. How can a God so vast and strange and seemingly distant understand us in our weakness, in our frailties, in our all-too-human temptations?

And the Word became flesh. Again there are more heresies associated with the incarnation - with God coming into the world in the life of Jesus - than you can shake a stick at. Set up a stake and burn me already because again I can’t claim fully to understand how Christ was fully God and fully human. All I can tell you is what it means to me. In Christ God lived the life of a human being, in all our weakness, with all our limitations, with all our frailties. In Christ God came down from that high mountain, or that vast cosmos, and lived among us as one of us.

In Christ God knows what it’s like to be scared, to be tempted, to be limited by our bodies, by our senses. In Christ God knows what it’s like to be just one man when the crowd howls “Crucify him!”; to be just one man, seemingly like any other, nailed to a cross and dehumanised; to die as anyone else. By living our frailties God knows our frailties. By living our temptations God knows our temptations. By living our weakness God knows our weakness. That’s why, when we mess up through our frailties, our temptations and our weaknesses we can feel assured of his forgiveness. 

But let me get back to my girlfriend’s question - the question that echoed the Psalmist in our text; whether looking out into the vastness of space made me feel small and insignificant. I was an atheist then so don’t expect a Christian answer but it keeps coming back to me. I said “No. Because that vastness - or at least a representation of it - is now inside my head. All that vastness is now, somehow, inside me.” OK I’m paraphrasing. Nineteen year old me was a lot more stuttery around girls.

That’s the Holy Spirit, though, isn’t it? Somehow, through the Holy Spirit, that vast omnipresent, eternal, all powerful God that is bigger than this vast universe we live in and older than time itself lives within us; lives in our hearts and minds inspiring and guiding us to be the people God wants us to be. This is the answer to the Psalmists’s question and it’s right there in the question itself. “What are mortals that you care for them?” The message of the Trinity is that God loves us, each unique one of us. He surrounds us with that love

He surrounds us physically, present in the earth beneath our feet and the sky above our heads as the Father who bestrides time itself and who fills his creation in all its vastness. He walks beside us as the Son who shares our humanity and teaches us to look for God not in books of rules or in rituals and catechisms but in the love of a father for an errant son or the care for a stranger on the road. He lives within us guiding us, if we will listen, to be the people he wants us to be; to be citizens of Heaven on earth.

I say us. I mean me. I mean you. Each one of you. Take a moment. You are unique. In all the universe’s vastness and in all of eternity there is no one exactly like you. Look at the person next to you. Take a moment. They are unique. In all the universe’s vastness and in all of eternity there is no one exactly like them. Now look at the people who wash up on our shores running in fear from war. Look at the mother struggling to pay her bills and going without food so her kids don’t go hungry. Look at the huddled mass of blankets in a shop doorway helplessly waving a battered cup. They are unique. In all the universe’s vastness and in all of eternity there is no one exactly like them.

This is the answer to my girlfriend’s question. God is at both ends of the telescope. The God who made all that is, all that was, all that ever will be, is right here with us, within us, loving us around us, beside us and within us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and guiding us to love each other as brothers and sisters

Father God, maker of all that is, we thank you that you walked beside us in Christ; that you still walk beside us. Fill us with your Holy Spirit to love one another and care for all your children

Preached at St Mungo Church in the parish of St Mungo