Readings, Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31 and Psalm 8
Image, Segment from The Holy Family with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1618)

What does it mean to believe in a Triune God? To confess the Holy Trinity? To live as though our God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? There are, of course, conceptual answers (more often than not teaching us what not to say: the Son is not created, the Father is not above the Son, etc), and they are important. A proper understanding of who Jesus is, or why the Spirit is sent at Pentecost requires the full picture of God as Triune.
 
However, while worthy of a sermon, this is not how I want to approach the question “what does it mean to believe in a Triune God” today. Instead, the sermon is: we glorify, recognise, and confess the reality of the Triune God in treating human beings as crowned by God with glory and honour, treating each person as one who the wisdom of God delights.
 
I’ve been reading a book on the Soviet dissident movement, called To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (which would have been my toast to myself had I come out to preach on the conceptual answers to the question of the Trinity). The book centres the simple though radical choice these dissidents made: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.
 
This serves as a guide for our own lives as subjects of the Triune God, citizens of the kingdom of heaven, living amidst worldly fracture, failure, and folly. That in a world of prejudice and discrimination, of abuse and neglect, of violence and war, of tyranny and despotism, of callousness and cruelty, we live as those who believe God cares for the human person. To confess the reality of the Triune God is to live in God’s reality. And in God’s reality, God is mindful of and cares for the mortal, has crowned the human with glory and honour. To glorify the Triune God is to defy the worldly appearance of things and live as if each person has really, truly been made little lower than a God.
 
To live “as is,” is not to live in blinkered delusion, but to awaken to incongruity. It is to wake and see where in the world people are treated as if they bear no crown, no divine image, no holy delight. The most recent Peninsula Living was delivered which detailed the rising scourge of elder abuse across the Northern Beaches (and across the wider State). Stories such as this create a clash between the world as it is and the world as it should be, a clash between how the vulnerable are too often treated in the world, and how they are viewed by God. And this clash acts as a spark, it ignites us to act, advocate, organise and pray so that the as it should be gains ground in the world. 
 
On the global scale, we see the humanitarian crisis spiralling out of control in Gaza. The blocking and destruction of international aid by Israel, their strategies of starvation and deprivation added onto direct military strikes, are enabled and empowered by their own (and much of the wider world’s) decision to classify a population not as little lower than a God, but far lower than human dignity, rights, and compassion. The cataclysmic death toll is enabled and empowered by the ability to look at some people not as crowned with glory and honour, not as a site where Divine Wisdom delights, but as an inhuman problem to be extinguished or expelled. Again these heart wrenching stories spark a clash within us, they create an undeniable incongruity between the world as it is and the world as it should be, about the human as seen through a sinful, worldly vision, and as they are seen by God.     
 
More intimately, we might connect this to last week’s message about the Spirit bearing witness with our own that we are children of God. God has crowned us with glory and honour, making us little lower than a God, and this creates a clash of incongruity with our own negative self-talk, which would seek to place us several rungs lower on that ladder.
 
We believe in the Triune God by not settling for the vision of the world as it is. We believe by  rebelling against the worldly categorisation and treatment of our fellow human beings as anything lower than what God has determined us to be. Because as the reading from Proverbs stresses, it is this relationship to the human that defines the nature of our God.
 
In language reminiscent of the prologue of John, the figure of Wisdom is described as being set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. Narrating God’s ordering of the primordial creation, Wisdom declares Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. It is writings such as these that resourced the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the early church. But again, the emphasis today is not on the conceptual articulation of the Trinity. Rather, we find the emphasis in the following verse when Wisdom declares, and my delights were with the sons of men. Wisdom, who was with God when there were no depths, finds delight with the sons of men. Like the opening of John, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and lived among us.
 
There is always a directionality, or focal point, for the figure of Wisdom or Word: to be among us, to be for us, to live and delight with us. While it is established that these figures are with God from the beginning, pivotal in the act of creation, the emphasis is not on their relation in an idealised pre-human eternity. Rather the emphasis is the movement toward the human, the decision to be with and for us. The emphasis is that God, who established the clouds above, the mountains below, and the limits of the seas; God for whom the moon and the stars are the works of Their fingers; should be mindful of human beings, that God should care for mortals, and make them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. Who God is, from the beginning is the one who is turned toward the human. God is only and always a God for us. A God who has elected in freedom to be our creator, redeemer, and sustainer. Who is the Triune God? The one who crowned us with honour and glory. 
 
As Julian of Norwich wrote, I saw that God never began to love mankind; for just as mankind will be in endless bliss, fulfilling God’s joy with regard to his works, just so has that same mankind been known and loved in God’s prescience from without beginning in his righteous intent… For before he made us, he loved us. (Showings)
 
What does it mean to recognise this Triune God and live faithfully in this reality? It is to recognise ourselves and our fellow human creatures as those God is mindful of, and in turn be mindful of them. To recognise ourselves and our fellow as cared for by God, and in turn care for them. To recognise ourselves and our fellow as crowned by God and in turn treat each other as crowned. It is to live as dissidents to the world of sin and death, to the world as it is, and instead to live as free citizens of the kingdom of God; world as it should be. We live as those who see and consider neighbours and strangers with the dignity, respect, and love that befits God’s own care. We live as those who are troubled by the incongruity between the all-too-common worldly denigration of the human creature and seek to rectify this out of a robust vision of God’s as it should be. In doing so we believe in the Triune God as the one who in absolute freedom, and from without beginning answered the question of divine identity simply in being mindful of us, and in being mindful, loving us.

Readings, Acts 2:1-21 and Romans 8:14-17, 26-27
Image, Roman Barabakh (Ukrainian, 1990–), Descent of the Holy Spirit, 2017. 
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Much is to be made of the external propulsion of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The scene is dramatically public. The domesticity in which the story begins is blown open by a force of eternity pouring out on flesh. The day begins with the disciples in a house, perhaps in prayer or enjoying a meal, and then suddenly – what a word – suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.
 
Naturally, a crowd gathers. Perhaps one of the few universals is that if there’s a spectacle we’re going to idle on by (we slow to this day to glimpse a car crash or house being demolished). Here a crowd gathers, but not only because of a general curiosity in spectacle, but because they hear a bunch of Galileans speaking in myriad tongues. A crowd from across the region remark: how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 
 
As I said, dramatically public. The external reality and impact of the coming of the Holy Spirit then as now is central to the Day of Pentecost. It is with the Spirit that the disciples can now follow Jesus’ command to be his witnesses in all the earth. It is with the Spirit that the gospel is now able to be proclaimed in all tongues, to find soil in all cultures. It is with the Spirit that the church can be filled with divine power to continue Christ’s work in the world. It is with the Spirit that we can become the body of Christ through the giving and receiving of the Spirit’s gifts. It is with the Spirit that we can bear the good fruit of the kingdom. All of these dimensions of the Spirit’s life in the church point to the truth that the Church is a body that is sent. That the church’s concern is not simply its own life, but the world which Christ loved and for which he lay down his life. The Spirit makes us a public-facing people, called do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
 
All this is rightly marked and celebrated at Pentecost. But Paul reminds us today, that there is an inner dimension of the Spirit’s animating life, a pastoral dynamic of the Spirit’s mission.
The Spirit we have received, Paul remarks, is not one which provokes us to fear, but is a spirit of adoption. When we pray, our Father, as we do each week, it is the Spirit making this possible. In these words (offered not only in our weekly corporate prayer but any time you call on the name of God in hope) the Spirit bears witness with our spirit about the most important thing about us. The Spirit bears witness with our own to that most beautiful, most soul affirming truth: we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The Spirit weaves us into the family of God. Waltzing with our own spirit, joining voice in song, we and the Spirit cry, Abba! Father! and it is so. We become who we have been made to be: children of God, co-heirs with Christ. 
 
But such a truth can be difficult to swallow. It can be hard to see ourselves as part of such a family, to say of ourselves: I am a child of God. We might well be able to say it of almost anyone else, but of ourselves surely it can’t be true. There are all kinds of reasons we might harbour these misgivings. Perhaps our experience of crying out to an earthly father or mother was not met with the kind of care and attention for the analogy to hold much water. Perhaps the prejudices of society have communicated that we were not fearfully and wonderfully made but lesser, aberrant, ugly. Perhaps our struggles and affections were cast as beyond the interest or acceptance of God. Perhaps the circumstances and sorrows of our life have led you to feel far more alone than adopted. Perhaps other names you have been named, spoken in authoritative tones, have made a deeper imprint on your identity than the name child of God. None of these are easy to shake, they cannot simply be waved away or quickly overwritten. It is tragic. What’s the old line, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has finished tying its shoelaces. The truth that we are children of God can be a slow truth to learn, and it can suffer setbacks. But for this reason we have the Spirit. Because when we do not know how to pray as we ought, when we do not feel able or ready to cry out Abba! Father! like children of God, it is the Spirit who helps us in our weakness. It is the Spirit who intercedes with sighs too deep for words, so that even if we cannot see ourselves as a child of God and co-heir with Christ, God does.      
 
Over the past month and a bit, various members of our community have shared songs or hymns that have shaped and sustained their faith. I have my own today to accompany this message. Julien Baker, a singer-songwriter from Tennessee wrote Rejoice in 2015, she was twenty at the time. The song, like much of her catalogue, wrestles with her experience of addiction, the death of friends, and the negative animosity toward her sexuality she experienced in her church. Despite the raw openness with which she gives voice to these wounds, woes, and wrongs, the song searches for and proclaims a ruddy hope. As she sings,
Give me everything good, I'll throw it away
I wish I could quit, but I can't stand the shakes
Choking smoke, singing your praise
But I think there's a God and He hears either way
I rejoice and complain
I never know what to say
 
Like the psalmist who sings, Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Baker proclaims in the face of her mistreatment at the hands of the church, in the face of her own mistakes, in the face of her frailty: I think there’s a God and They hear either way.* This is the Spirit bearing witness, that even when we do not know how to pray, even when we do not know there is someone to pray to, the Spirit groans and God hears either way. 
 
And because of this spirit of adoption, Baker is able to sing my favourite line: Lift my voice that I was made. I was made. There is perhaps no more important foundation on which to build a life. You were made. Fearfully and lovingly made. Who you are is not a mistake. Against the forces of sin and death which would say that some people are not made, are not children of God, that some people must hide, apologise, or assimilate some fundamental part of themselves, Baker lifts her voice against these forces to bear witness with the Spirit that she is a child of God. 
 
At the close of the song, Baker proclaims that the God who hears her, knows her name and all her hideous mistakes. But at this point she does not fall back into fear. For she has not been given a spirit of slavery to fall back into the bounds of earthly prejudice or limitation, but a spirit of adoption to say that she is heard, and if heard made, and if made, then a child of God. A child who, despite and amid the complaint, doubt, failure, and rage, might still sing, defiant and holy:
I rejoice, I rejoice
I rejoice, I rejoice 
 
((At this point in the sermon we listened to the song))
 
This Pentecost, may the Spirit lend voice to your rejoicing and complaining.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit comfort you with the truth that you are heard even when you have no words.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit remind you that you were made.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit bear witness with your own that you are a child of God.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit be a place of freedom.
 
This inner place of truth and freedom beats back worldly falsity and fraud. And it is out of this depth of love and understanding that the work of proclaiming the good news in all corners of your heart and your world begins. Out of this well-spring of trust may you find fresh words and deeds to tell out the good news of God’s grace. With tongues sparked to life by the warming of our hearts, may we find those bound by earthly lies and herald good news: where the Spirit is there is the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

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* In more contemporary performances of the song, Baker changes the Divine pronoun as reflected here.