The Most Holy Trinity

NRW began as a week of prayer for reconciliation in 1993.

Dates for the week commemorate two important reconciliation milestones, the first, the referendum on 27 May 1967 when Australians voted overwhelmingly to allow the Australian Government to make laws for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to include them in the Census. The second milestone on 3 June 1992 was the Mabo decision in which the High Court gave legal recognition to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as traditional owners and custodians of the land.  The significant complexity of our shared histories has resulted in a long journey towards reconciliation, one which continues.

Also extraordinarily complex is the doctrine of the Trinity – One God in three Persons. Dr. Elizabeth Welch, a retired academic and minister of the United Reform Church in the UK unravels the complexity and provides a very manageable explanation of the Trinity. Rather than focus on doctrine, she encourages the understanding that the Trinity is a way of viewing God, a way of seeing God’s richness, diversity and mystery. Firstly there is creator God who brought all life into being, the God who has placed responsibility for the earth, his creation, into human hands. Then there is Jesus who shared our human life, the incarnate God, who knows our failings, our fragility and vulnerability. And then, thirdly, there is the life giving Spirit, The Spirit who breathed over the waters of creation, was with Jesus at his baptism and poured out on the people of God at Pentecost. The Trinity reminds us of the different faces of the one God. Welch goes on to say that the role of the Church is to live fully in the life of the Trinity, modelling a loving relationality and living this out in the whole of God’s creation.

As Church then, each of us, in modelling a loving relationality is called towards reconciliation. It is up to us to take action for justice, so that God; Father, Son and Spirit,  is visible in our world.