Amidst all the pomp and ceremony of the Jubilee weekend celebrations, the BBC managed to hit us with two and half minutes of pure genius and we saw maybe the best bit of television our nation saw in a long time, as the queen invited Paddington Bear to Buckingham Palace for high tea and in one hundred and eighty seconds of the Queens incredible seventy years reigning as the Monarch of Great Britain and the British Commonwealth we saw the human face of the most powerful woman in the world. More importantly, we learned a truth which has been a mystery to many for generations, what the queen carries in her handbag, why did we never guess before? We know know the truth, as Paddington always carries a marmalade sandwich in his hat, the queen always has one on standby in the iconic handbag!
Today is Trinity Sunday, when Christians around the world celebrate God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, a concept that is often considered to be quite difficult to understand. Put simply, in the beginning there was God. I know that we have explored space and nobody has ever seen heaven, or the place where God Lives. Charles Darwin bravely convinced the world in the nineteenth century that we have evolved from monkeys and are mere primates that have evolved, rather than being created by the hand of God and for many in the world, that was the only evidence they needed to prove that God doesn’t exist. I can live with all the scientific developments quite happily and yet accept that God is a force in the world today, a force that directs my life into doing good and serving others, and when I look at the mess the world is in, I can’t help but think that is a good thing.
For some other faiths having one God is enough, we complicate things by believing that Jesus is God in human form. This is where my faith comes to life and makes sense, the Bible tells us that Jesus told his disciples, his closest group of friends “if you have seen me, you have seen the father” and that make Jesus critical to my faith journey. In two minutes and thirty seconds on Saturday evening, we saw the human face of our Queen, alright, I know it was all staged thanks to some very clever people doing magic with computers, but the Queen was real, and high an powerful as she is, for a couple of minutes we saw the fun side of her, could you imagine Vladimir Putin doing that? For three years, some two thousand years ago, we saw the human face of God in the form of Jesus the Man, we can read about the things he did, we can learn about God through his story and the remote God, somewhere, we know not where, became real.
That possibly all makes sense, but what about the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost that we used to talk about when I was a boy. Last weekend we thought about the wonderful events of the Pentecost experience as the Disciples, filled with the Spirit of God were able to do work in his name. I truly believe that I can do very little in my own strength, but with God working in me and through me, I can make a difference in the world. I sat and watched the coverage of Sunday’s parade on catch up on Monday, where around ten thousand people took part and I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at how many people filled The Mall afterwards. The Queen is only as powerful as she is, because she influences millions of people around the world, by her example. The Christian faith can only make a difference in the world, if filled with the Spirit of God, we do what we can do in the Love of God, The Grace of Jesus Christ, and The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit!