The Trinity of Love

The Rev’d Devin McLachlan

Trinity Sunday (31 May, 2026) & APCM

St Bene’t’s Church, Cambridge

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One of the interesting tasks of being the bishop's interfaith officer is that occasionally I have to explain to Muslim and Jewish neighbours how it is that we are monotheists.

It causes sometimes a little more confusion when I say that the Trinity is the smallest number by which monotheism is possible.

At least in a universe where God is love.

At least in a universe that is not cold and singular,

but which is inevitable in its being and creation and wonder.

Now, if I'd given this sermon 20 years ago, you would get at this point a very long discourse on Homoousios and the Aryan heresy.

We're here in Cambridge. We've had a lot of curates and ordinands over the time and many of you have probably heard that sermon already. Many of you could give that sermon, with great theological nous.

So what I'll just touch on,  is that those constructions of the trinity which have failed the test of orthodoxy —     built from prayer and meeting in community to try to understand what is going on with the nature of God.

The understandings of the Trinity which the church has rejected are the ones which fail the test of love.

They're constructions of the Trinity where there is God and then there is a demi-urge, where there is a hierarchy of time and being within the persons of the three persons who are one God.

God is always love. God from before the creation of time itself, much less the creation of that first speck of matter, is already in relationship.

The I and the thou of the father and son, the We that the spirit constructs between father and son…

God is always in relationship. To be singular and loving is to be Trinity. If you are my age or older, you might remember that incredible gestalt shift that travelled up north when Archbishop Desmond Tutu incorporated into his anti-apartheid preaching and theology the Zulu proverb:

Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu

A person is a person through OTHER persons.

As it is in the Trinity, so it is in humanity, made in God’s image: only possible to be our selves because we exisit in relationship and connection.

As Archbishop Tutu wrote:

Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation.

It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself…

We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another,

whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world.

When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.[1]

That ubuntu is a call to justice and mutual dependence, yes. Ubutnu is a call to dwell in the Trinity, and to re-imagine the Church:

Ubutnu is the reason why Trinity Sunday is an excellent occasion for the APCM (and a rare one as well — most years, Trinity Sunday falls beyond the deadline for an APCM set by canon law).

Because this is the Sunday when we reflect on our interconnectedness — the generous gifts of time, treasure, and talent that make St Bene’t’s possible. And because on this APCM Sunday, we need to continue to be aware of the obligations of Ubuntu beyond this congregation.

St Bene’t’s is an incredible church. It has had an amazing thousand years of history. It has had gifted, charismatic leaders such as Br Sam and Anna Matthews and Michael Ramsey.

It is filled with wonderful, loving, marvelously eclectic and incredibly gifted people. We’re an inclusive church, welcoming and loving and safe. There are very few churches in England like it. (There are some. But I wish there were more…)

But St Bene’t’s is not the object of our worship. St Bene’t’s could exist or not exist, and God would still be, and we would still be called into relationship with God who is always love, who has always been love, even in the dark silence before creation.

Thanks be to God.

The sacrificial generosity of our time, treasure and talent has all been to send us out into the world, rejoicing in the power of the spirit, carrying out the ministry that God has called each of us to at our baptisms.

The offering of your time, of your financial giving, of sharing your gifts, has all been to that same end, that same purpose, which made the Trinity inescapable, which made Creation inevitable, which made Christ’s death and resurrection ineluctable, which made the gift of the Holy Spirit ineludible:

Love. We meet here each day, because God loves us, and in loving us, God invites us to respond with love:

umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu

We are made people through other people. We are made Church through the whole body of Christ. We are made in God’s image by the very image of God — and that Image is perfect love.

So first we will break bread together, and share in the body of Christ: being made one body by sharing in the one bread, broken for us.

And having prayed together and received the sacrament, and been sent out into the world, we’ll then meet as a whole community, made one by sacrament and love.

We’ll elect leaders to serve as wardens and PCC members and synod representatives, we will receive the many and excellent reports from our different ministries, including the work of the PCC, and the state of our fabric, but also our important ministries with children and young people, our mission giving, the wider councils of the church in synod, safeguarding and community building by the social committee.

And we’ll delve into the finances of the church – which are relatively healthy, although we are still confronted with a gap between our expenses and what the congregational has been able to give. 

It can feel like a lot of work and administration. That’s true of a lot of theological writing about the Trinity as well!

But the core message is still the same — it is love.

Put things in order, the apostle tells us, and live in peace. and the God of love and peace will be with you

Today at our APCM we put things in order, examining the ways by which we are enabled to come together to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and love our neighbour as ourselves.

There it is. I cannot think of a more important thing for me to say to you, as your vicar, than this:

God, the Holy Trinity, is Love:

And God has made you, as you are, in God’s image — to love and to be loved, to dwell forever in God’s love.

[1] https://www.beliefnet.com/inspiration/2004/04/desmond-tutus-recipe-for-peace.aspx