Archbishop of Sydney

Trinity Sunday

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Ex 34:4-6, 8-9; 2 Cor 13:11-13; Jn 3:16-18

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
18/5/2008

The historical debates over the activities of Moses, who led the Jews in the escape from Egypt and received the Ten Commandments are still quite fierce, although a couple of references I consulted both placed him in the first half of the thirteenth century before Christ.

In the first reading from the Old Testament book of Exodus, we have Moses on Mount Sinai with the tablets of the Law and we have the one true God appearing to Moses to explain something of Himself.

Egypt was the superpower of the age, whose religious imagery still exists to some extent.  These statues, while beautifully made, are often ugly and threatening.  They seem similar to the gods in the pagan Roman world who were jealous of one another, capricious, and unconcerned about the moral behaviour of human beings.

In both societies slavery was common, rulers were powerful and often tyrannical, medicine was primitive and life was regularly short and brutish.  The spirit of evil was alive and active in Society.

The cruelty of this daily life was then reflected in the world of gods and demons, despite the magnificence of the pyramids or the beauty of some Greco-Roman sculpture.

The simple words attributed to God in this passage represents an enormous breakthrough; in fact a revolution in religious thinking.

There are two parts to the breakthrough. First of all, Moses was an explicit monotheist, believing there was and is and will be only one God for all peoples and the whole of creation.  While the Jews were God’s chosen people (something like the teacher’s pet in the language of young school children) they were rejecting the view that other peoples also had gods, who were not as powerful as their God.  No.  There is only one God for all peoples and tribes and the entire cosmos.

It is useful to remember this today in these times of interreligious dialogue.  Christians, Jews and Moslems are explicitly monotheist, even though their various descriptions of the one true God differ considerably.

The second part of the breakthrough lies in the qualities attributed to God.  “Lord, Lord, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness”.

In other words, because God is transcendent (i.e. not one being in the panorama of creation, but beyond the categories we know and use to describe reality); and because God is all powerful, spiritual (not made of material parts) majestic and awe-inspiring, it is not misleading to speak of holy fear, something deeper and greater than reverence or nervousness.  But this fear is limited by love, because God is not a cruel tyrant, not capricious, not playing with us or provoking us.

God is tender, compassionate, kind and faithful in a Godly way, which increases these qualities beyond our comprehension.

Those of us who are lifelong Christians have to work hard to work out what it would be like if we feared or believed that ultimately life was cruel and without meaning; with no possibility of ultimate justice, for the victims to be healed and compensated.  It would be, at the least, an unpleasant psychological prison, which could easily be seen as hellish.

I repeat again that the breakthrough ties in the revelation to the Jews that God is tender, compassionate, kind and faithful.

We take these claims so much for granted now that many don’t even like to think of God being angry.  Moses was merely told God was not quick tempered.  These are all human categories, which don’t fit God well, but they are still useful for us as basic descriptors.

Somehow, it seems to me, a just God has to be angry about the terrible crimes committed in history, although we now know that God always loves sinners enough to call them to repentance.

We should move on.  Today is Trinity Sunday and neither of the other monotheist religions believes in a Trinitarian God, despite the extensive Jewish writings about wisdom, who seems to have been with God always.

God spoke to Moses about love and we believe that God confirmed his love for all of us by sending His only Son to live with us as a brother, as well as a redeemer, so that we might have eternal life (as today’s gospel from John narrates).

Jesus in a certain sense brings God down to our level, so that in the activities and teachings of Jesus, we see God himself at work.  The man, who wept over human suffering, drove the money changers from the temple and obeyed his parents, who wept over the impending destruction of Jerusalem; this is God at work.

Once again the theme of compassion is invoked because Jesus, like His Father, has been sent to save the world and not condemn it, although his call and coming do provoke divisions.  People, who come to know Christ, and God, cannot avoid a decision for him or against Him.  We also have to choose between the Holy Spirit and the spirit of evil.

On this feast of the Holy Trinity, let us conclude with Paul’s blessing. “May the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.