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When I spoke to Mthr Alice about switching my main place of worship to St Luke's, I wasn't sure whether it would be excessively cheeky to ask if I could still preach at St John's from time to time, so I was delighted when she pre-empted me and asked if I'd still like to. She suggested I look at the rota and just sign up for dates that suited me, and as it turned out the next one that seemed to work for both me and St John's was yesterday. Trinity Sunday is viewed with a certain trepidation by novice preachers, as it's notoriously difficult to preach on the doctrine of the Trinity without committing heresy. I think I managed it...
The readings were:
Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31
Romans 5.1-5
John 16.12-15
May the words of my lips and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable to you, O Lord.
A little while ago I was involved in a discussion about the nature of individuality, and one question that we spent quite a lot of time on is whether and how our relationships to other people are part of what defines us as an individual. At a first glance, it seems like a bit of a contradiction – surely what makes a person an individual is precisely that which distinguishes and separates them from other people. But often if you ask someone what it is that defines them, an awful lot of us will give answers that include our relationships. We’ll talk about being a loving parent, or a devoted spouse, or a loyal friend. We’ll talk about our jobs, most of which only really exist because of the people we serve through doing them. Some of us might talk about our sexualities, and the implications that has on who we have particular kinds of relationships with. And we’ll talk about the communities that we’re part of, including for Christians our churches, the manifestation of the relationships of God’s people with one another and with God.
The doctrine of the Trinity shows us that relationships, in this case those between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are just as important in our understanding of who God is, as they are in our understanding of ourselves. Much of what the Bible tells us about the Trinity is precisely about the relationships between the three persons. One God in three persons is a God in community with Godself, and from that we learn that community is holy, that it is important, and that it can be a reflection of God’s glory. Our readings today give us some examples and glimpses of what the relationships within the Trinity look like, and these can give us ideals to work towards in our own communities and relationships.
The passage we heard from Proverbs has been interpreted as being about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son since at least the 4th century AD. I’m going to make a slight digression here, as the observant amongst you may have noticed the line “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work.” Indeed, it was Arius’s interpretation of this passage which sparked one of the great controversies in the early church. Arius believed that the Son was the first of the Father’s creations, and that there was a time before the Son was. When this argument was settled it lead to the adoption of the Nicene Creed, through which we will shortly proclaim that Jesus Christ is “begotten, not made”. This might make it difficult for us to read this passage as being about the relationship between the Father and the Son if we were using the same Greek translation of the book of Proverbs as Arius, but if we go back to the original Hebrew word, qnh, we find that as well as created, it can also be translated as acquired, conceived, or fathered, leaving us safe to continue without fear of committing heresy.
With that cleared up, I would like to return to the last few lines of the passage. “When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
There are three things that stand out to me in these rather lovely verses as characterising the relationship they describe. The first is the phrase “I was beside him”. To me, standing beside someone has connotations of supporting one another, of working as a team, in partnership, without trying to step in front and take control.
Second comes “I was daily his delight”. There is something about the word delight which I find uniquely uplifting. It seems to me that to be delighted isn’t just to be made happy, although that is part of it, but to be surprised, as though you never expected such happiness to be possible. And yet almost paradoxically contrasting with this unexpected surprise, we speak of taking delight in something as though it were a choice. And it absolutely can be. If one looks through the eyes of love, seeking the good in the things around us, then there is always something of the goodness of creation to be delighted by. And remember, “I was daily his delight”. Not “I was once his delight” or even “I was occasionally his delight”, but daily. God’s attitude of taking delight and of seeking goodness is not a passing fancy, but constant, lasting, and eternally trustworthy.
And thirdly, we have “playing before him”. This is closely related to the sense of delight, but it goes even further to highlight how much more there is to God than the image we sometimes carry of judgement and vengeance, an image to be feared. Here we have a God who plays, who has fun, who laughs. An approachable God.
And what of the other readings? What do they tell us about God in relationship? In the Gospel we are told that “the Spirit of truth […] will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.” This expands on what we have already learned about the Trinity having a relationship of “standing beside”, of working as a team, and tells us that they listen to one another. They don’t speak over one another in argumentative contradiction, nor does the spirit come and take credit for speaking what she has heard, as though it were all her own idea. They work as a team, and they share the credit.
We hear more about this sharing in Romans, where Paul tells us that it is through Jesus Christ that we hope to share in the glory of God, and again in the next few verses of the Gospel. “He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” We see then, that there is no possessiveness in the Trinity, that they share what they have with one another. And this is not a grudging sharing performed through a sense of obligation, counting out what they have and dividing it up because that’s fair and just. This is a far richer and more generous sharing, a whole-hearted giving of everything. And what is more, this is not simply a generosity shown one to another, between themselves, all God together, knowing that what is given will be returned with love. This overflowing generosity spills out so that humanity in all its poverty and weakness are also invited to share in the glory of God, although there is nothing we can offer in return that will add to that glory. So too must our generosity not be limited to people who seem “like us”, but we should reach out and share with everyone, most especially those who have nothing to give in return, for they are those who are most in need.
Finally, and in some sense encapsulating everything that has already been said, we return to Romans, where Paul tells us that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” The Trinity is first and foremost a community of love – the Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and the Son loves the Holy Spirit and the Father. And because God lives in us and we in God, we are also loved, and given the power to love God and one another with this full exuberance. All the examples we have looked at of God relating to God are ones we would profit from following, but this one Jesus gives us as an explicit command over and over. In John 13.34, and again in 15.12 he says “Love one another, as I have loved you.” In Matthew 22.37-39, he quotes Deuteronomy and Leviticus to tell us that the two greatest commandments are “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength” and “Love your neighbour as yourself”.
And so as we reflect on this Trinity of community and relationship, let us ask ourselves what we are doing to follow God’s example. Are we looking on one another with delight, seeking out the good in those around us, and taking time to have fun and play together, rather spending every moment bogged down in serious and important business? Are we taking care to support one another, to work as a team, to listen to one another, and to share the credit. Are we sharing generously of our time and resources and strength and abilities? And are we keeping love at the heart of everything we do? The more we live out the values of the trinity in our families and communities, the closer we will be to the kingdom of God, where all partake fully in that most perfect community of all.
The readings were:
Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31
Romans 5.1-5
John 16.12-15
May the words of my lips and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable to you, O Lord.
A little while ago I was involved in a discussion about the nature of individuality, and one question that we spent quite a lot of time on is whether and how our relationships to other people are part of what defines us as an individual. At a first glance, it seems like a bit of a contradiction – surely what makes a person an individual is precisely that which distinguishes and separates them from other people. But often if you ask someone what it is that defines them, an awful lot of us will give answers that include our relationships. We’ll talk about being a loving parent, or a devoted spouse, or a loyal friend. We’ll talk about our jobs, most of which only really exist because of the people we serve through doing them. Some of us might talk about our sexualities, and the implications that has on who we have particular kinds of relationships with. And we’ll talk about the communities that we’re part of, including for Christians our churches, the manifestation of the relationships of God’s people with one another and with God.
The doctrine of the Trinity shows us that relationships, in this case those between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are just as important in our understanding of who God is, as they are in our understanding of ourselves. Much of what the Bible tells us about the Trinity is precisely about the relationships between the three persons. One God in three persons is a God in community with Godself, and from that we learn that community is holy, that it is important, and that it can be a reflection of God’s glory. Our readings today give us some examples and glimpses of what the relationships within the Trinity look like, and these can give us ideals to work towards in our own communities and relationships.
The passage we heard from Proverbs has been interpreted as being about the relationship between God the Father and God the Son since at least the 4th century AD. I’m going to make a slight digression here, as the observant amongst you may have noticed the line “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work.” Indeed, it was Arius’s interpretation of this passage which sparked one of the great controversies in the early church. Arius believed that the Son was the first of the Father’s creations, and that there was a time before the Son was. When this argument was settled it lead to the adoption of the Nicene Creed, through which we will shortly proclaim that Jesus Christ is “begotten, not made”. This might make it difficult for us to read this passage as being about the relationship between the Father and the Son if we were using the same Greek translation of the book of Proverbs as Arius, but if we go back to the original Hebrew word, qnh, we find that as well as created, it can also be translated as acquired, conceived, or fathered, leaving us safe to continue without fear of committing heresy.
With that cleared up, I would like to return to the last few lines of the passage. “When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker, and I was daily his delight, playing before him always, playing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
There are three things that stand out to me in these rather lovely verses as characterising the relationship they describe. The first is the phrase “I was beside him”. To me, standing beside someone has connotations of supporting one another, of working as a team, in partnership, without trying to step in front and take control.
Second comes “I was daily his delight”. There is something about the word delight which I find uniquely uplifting. It seems to me that to be delighted isn’t just to be made happy, although that is part of it, but to be surprised, as though you never expected such happiness to be possible. And yet almost paradoxically contrasting with this unexpected surprise, we speak of taking delight in something as though it were a choice. And it absolutely can be. If one looks through the eyes of love, seeking the good in the things around us, then there is always something of the goodness of creation to be delighted by. And remember, “I was daily his delight”. Not “I was once his delight” or even “I was occasionally his delight”, but daily. God’s attitude of taking delight and of seeking goodness is not a passing fancy, but constant, lasting, and eternally trustworthy.
And thirdly, we have “playing before him”. This is closely related to the sense of delight, but it goes even further to highlight how much more there is to God than the image we sometimes carry of judgement and vengeance, an image to be feared. Here we have a God who plays, who has fun, who laughs. An approachable God.
And what of the other readings? What do they tell us about God in relationship? In the Gospel we are told that “the Spirit of truth […] will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.” This expands on what we have already learned about the Trinity having a relationship of “standing beside”, of working as a team, and tells us that they listen to one another. They don’t speak over one another in argumentative contradiction, nor does the spirit come and take credit for speaking what she has heard, as though it were all her own idea. They work as a team, and they share the credit.
We hear more about this sharing in Romans, where Paul tells us that it is through Jesus Christ that we hope to share in the glory of God, and again in the next few verses of the Gospel. “He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” We see then, that there is no possessiveness in the Trinity, that they share what they have with one another. And this is not a grudging sharing performed through a sense of obligation, counting out what they have and dividing it up because that’s fair and just. This is a far richer and more generous sharing, a whole-hearted giving of everything. And what is more, this is not simply a generosity shown one to another, between themselves, all God together, knowing that what is given will be returned with love. This overflowing generosity spills out so that humanity in all its poverty and weakness are also invited to share in the glory of God, although there is nothing we can offer in return that will add to that glory. So too must our generosity not be limited to people who seem “like us”, but we should reach out and share with everyone, most especially those who have nothing to give in return, for they are those who are most in need.
Finally, and in some sense encapsulating everything that has already been said, we return to Romans, where Paul tells us that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” The Trinity is first and foremost a community of love – the Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit loves the Father and the Son, and the Son loves the Holy Spirit and the Father. And because God lives in us and we in God, we are also loved, and given the power to love God and one another with this full exuberance. All the examples we have looked at of God relating to God are ones we would profit from following, but this one Jesus gives us as an explicit command over and over. In John 13.34, and again in 15.12 he says “Love one another, as I have loved you.” In Matthew 22.37-39, he quotes Deuteronomy and Leviticus to tell us that the two greatest commandments are “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength” and “Love your neighbour as yourself”.
And so as we reflect on this Trinity of community and relationship, let us ask ourselves what we are doing to follow God’s example. Are we looking on one another with delight, seeking out the good in those around us, and taking time to have fun and play together, rather spending every moment bogged down in serious and important business? Are we taking care to support one another, to work as a team, to listen to one another, and to share the credit. Are we sharing generously of our time and resources and strength and abilities? And are we keeping love at the heart of everything we do? The more we live out the values of the trinity in our families and communities, the closer we will be to the kingdom of God, where all partake fully in that most perfect community of all.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-13 12:21 pm (UTC)From:Interpreting this through the lens of my religion, I found that after this opening gambit my subconscious half expected that the next 5 paragraphs would be a digression on category theory :-)
no subject
Date: 2022-06-13 12:47 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-06-13 12:53 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-06-13 06:48 pm (UTC)From:Dissecting the frog
Date: 2022-06-14 11:27 am (UTC)From:Category theory is an extension of the Erlangen Programme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlangen_program
You probably don't remember the Erlangen Programme (but I refuse to believe that I haven't mentioned it to you) but you are familiar with the basic move, which is to study geometry not by focusing on points, distances, angles but instead to focus on groups of symmetries. "Symmetries" here means a function that preserves *some* important property of an object. So a symmetry could be an actual symmetry, or it could preserve only angles, or only distance.
Studying these groups of symmetries doesn't tell us everything about what we're studying but it can be a lot easier to work with and focuses in on certain aspects of the object. And the ease of working with these groups can make this approach more productive for certain problems.
When studying Groups we find it helpful to look at a certain kinds of functions that preserve "Group-iness" i.e. isomorphisms and homomorphisms.
There is an isomorphism between the group of symmetries of a cube, and the group of symmetries of the octahedron, and this tells us that while they're different objects there is something fundamentally the same about these objects. This is related to the fact that they're dual polyhedra.
But what is an isomorphism (or homorphism) other than a kind of symmetry? - it preserves "group-iness" after all!
So if it's productive to look at objects and their symmetries then maybe it would be useful to look at Groups and homomorphisms. And in fact that is generally what we do when we're doing group theory. Basically the category of groups is just all groups and the homomorphisms between them.
You meet the category of groups when you do undergraduate group theory, you just don't speak its name.
The same applies for the category of vector spaces, and sets, etc. When studying them we look at the class of object and the functions that preserve the defining characteristic of that object, which is just what the category of that object is, we just never say "category".
Categories themselves are a bit more complicated in that sometimes the functions between the objects aren't really functions, i.e. Categories are wider than just objects and functions that preserve the defining characteristic of that object, but they are included and that's where the inspiration for the idea came from.
But now we go one level deeper! If looking at objects and the functions that preserve the characteristic identity of those objects (i.e. categories) is so cool, then why don't we look at categories and a "function" that preserves category-ness?
The answer is:
1) we do, and that's what category theory is. The functions that preserve category-ness are called "functors".
2) because unless you're working at an incredible level of abstractness and generality setting up all the machinery is really not worth the effort, and does more to obscure than reveal. Why set up the machinery of the category of groups if you're talking about groups? This is also why category theory is known as "generalised abstract nonsense"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_nonsense
I implied that categories consist of objects and functions. It is more correct to say that they consist of objects and "arrows".
A covariant functor preserves the direction of arrows. A contravariant functor reverses the direction of all the arrows.
The fundamental theorem of Galois Theory can be considered to be saying that there is a contravariant functor between Field extensions and Galois groups, but that would be incredibly wanky, so I won't.
A contravariant functor is inherently more funny than a covariant functor, in the same way that a banana is inherently funnier than an apple.
I am happy to be corrected, but I think "contravariant" isn't that relevant to logic of the joke, it's just there because it's more specific and inherently more funny than covariant.
A "natural transformation" is, as you might expect by now, basically a map between functors that preserves functor-ness.
Re: Dissecting the frog
Date: 2022-06-14 12:18 pm (UTC)From:I chose the details of the joke on pure intuition without really thinking through things like this, but now you say that, you're clearly right :-) For the same reason that it's inherently funnier to do something backwards for no reason.
On a bit more of a meta-level, part of the joke I intended was that category theory is more or less the ultimate expression of the mathematician's urge to abstract and generalise, to view any individual concrete problem as merely one example of some larger pattern, and (sometimes to a fault) to be more interested in understanding that larger pattern than in solving any of the details of the individual problem.
Faced with a problem such as a heresy, you might actually want to do something about that heresy (though, since this is not the 14th century, I probably mean "correcting your draft sermon to avoid it" rather than "burning someone at the stake"). The category theorist's instinctive approach is to take a step back, look at the bigger picture ... and then get sidetracked by an interesting feature of the wider landscape around the problem, and never get back to the actual individual problem that needed solving. :-)
no subject
Date: 2022-06-13 01:50 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-06-13 06:49 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-06-13 09:17 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 10:07 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 07:19 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 08:15 pm (UTC)From: