How do elephants hide in cherry trees?

They paint their toenails red.

Have you ever seen an elephant hiding in a cherry tree?

Shows how well it works.

Where do chimpanzees cook their toast?

Under the gorilla

What does the sea say to the sand?

Nothing, it waves

How do you get three people into one?

That’s the riddle for today, the riddle for Trinity Sunday. It’s the riddle that was tried to be explored and expressed in the Athanasian Creed. You all know the Athanasian Creed, don’t you? Oh, You don’t. Well, it just so happens I have a few copies here…

Because it is the Athanasian creed and because it would be totally appropriate on this Trinity Sunday to get to know the Athanasian creed, we are going to say the Creed together now:

Athanasian Creed

Whoever desires to be saved should above all
hold to the catholic faith.
Anyone who does not keep it whole and unbroken
will doubtless perish eternally.

Now this is the catholic faith:

  That we worship one God in trinity
  and the trinity in unity,
  neither blending their persons
  nor dividing their essence.
    For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
    the person of the Son is another,
    and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
    But the divinity of the Father, Son,
          and Holy Spirit is one,
    their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.

  What quality the Father has, the Son has,
          and the Holy Spirit has.
    The Father is uncreated,
    the Son is uncreated,
    the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

    The Father is immeasurable,
    the Son is immeasurable,
    the Holy Spirit is immeasurable.

    The Father is eternal,
    the Son is eternal,
    the Holy Spirit is eternal.

      And yet there are not three eternal beings;
      there is but one eternal being.
      So too there are not three uncreated
              or immeasurable beings;
      there is but one uncreated
              and immeasurable being.

    Similarly, the Father is almighty,
    the Son is almighty,
    the Holy Spirit is almighty.
      Yet there are not three almighty beings;
      there is but one almighty being.

    Thus the Father is God,
    the Son is God,
    the Holy Spirit is God.
      Yet there are not three gods;
      there is but one God.

    Thus the Father is Lord,
    the Son is Lord,
    the Holy Spirit is Lord.
      Yet there are not three lords;
      there is but one Lord.

  Just as Christian truth compels us
  to confess each person individually
  as both God and Lord,
  so catholic religion forbids us
  to say that there are three gods or lords.

  The Father was neither made nor created
            nor begotten from anyone.
  The Son was neither made nor created;
  he was begotten from the Father alone.

  The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created
            nor begotten;
  he proceeds from the Father and the Son.

  Accordingly there is one Father, not three fathers;
  there is one Son, not three sons;
  there is one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.

  Nothing in this trinity is before or after,
  nothing is greater or smaller;
  in their entirety the three persons
  are coeternal and coequal with each other.

  So in everything, as was said earlier,
  we must worship their trinity in their unity
  and their unity in their trinity.

Anyone then who desires to be saved
should think thus about the trinity.

But it is necessary for eternal salvation
that one also believe in the incarnation
of our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully.

Now this is the true faith:

  That we believe and confess
  that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son,
  is both God and human, equally.

  He is God from the essence of the Father,
  begotten before time;
  and he is human from the essence of his mother,
  born in time;
  completely God, completely human,
  with a rational soul and human flesh;
  equal to the Father as regards divinity,
  less than the Father as regards humanity.

  Although he is God and human,
  yet Christ is not two, but one.
  He is one, however,
  not by his divinity being turned into flesh,
  but by God's taking humanity to himself.

  He is one,
  certainly not by the blending of his essence,
  but by the unity of his person.
  For just as one human is both rational soul and flesh,
  so too the one Christ is both God and human.

  He suffered for our salvation;
  he descended to hell;
  he arose from the dead;
  he ascended to heaven;
  he is seated at the Father's right hand;
  from there he will come to judge
            the living and the dead.
  At his coming all people will arise bodily
  and give an accounting of their own deeds.
  Those who have done good will enter eternal life,
  and those who have done evil will enter eternal fire.

This is the catholic faith:
one cannot be saved without believing it
firmly and faithfully.

Any creedal statement that’s got ‘as was said earlier’ in it has got to be questioned. Did I say it was the Athanasian creed, well actual it’s not really his creed, because creeds were written by committees, by councils, and their purpose was the suppression of some heresy or other. Their purpose was to put down something that other people say. The Athanasian creed is seeking to give us an answer to that riddle: how do you get three people into one?

The problem with trying to solve riddles logically, like Athanasius has just done, is that’s not what riddles are for.

How many psychotherapists does it take to change a light bulb?

27 – one to change the light bulb and 26 to share the experience.

In fact the answer doesn’t matter, what a riddle does is to convey something more, or tease someone at a deeper level.

How many Anglicans does it take to change a little bulb?

CHANGE?, What do you mean change.

Solving riddles isn’t the point of riddles. They are about passing on some kind of message through a short story. And the Judea-Christian tradition is built on stories. Everything Jesus wanted to teach about the nature of God, he did through story, without mentioning God. His listeners were challenged to discover God’s presence in their everyday lives. Every story Jesus told contained a glimpse of God. It was complete because it was authoritative yet it was also partial because no one story can do justice to God.

But we have lost that style of communication. Ever since the advent of doctrines and creeds, we seem to have spent an ever increasing amount of time discussing the finer points of the Trinity, or of the Filioque Clause or the Accidents and Substance of bread and wine and other such concepts. While these may challenge our mental and intellectual abilities in our search for some kind of God of the Head, they have moved us away from engaging our imagination, and more importantly they have moved us away from building the relationships that are central to our faith stories about our God in Relationship.

As we moved away from the value of story one commentator says: God became a god who was apprehended through creeds, theological definitions and moral codes. From then on our human stories only had value if they supported the established doctrines.

The doctrines are coming first and our human stories are being put behind them. The doctrines, put together by groups of men hundreds of years ago in a desire to quash someone else’s view, are more important than the stories of our relationship with God. That must be the wrong way round.

Jesus called his disciples and continues to call us today into a relationship with Him. We are invited to ‘Come and See’, we are invited to ‘Follow Me’. There’s no dotted line on which we have to sign before we are allowed to come and see or allowed to follow. It is an unconditional offer, made to each and every one of us, and made especially to those on the margins of society. In Biblical terms: the widow, the orphan and the alien; or in our modern parlance: the poor, the homeless, and the vulnerable. This is why the activities of the G8 in Germany this week are so important. We need to recover the idea that it is our stories that carry our belief; that as the story is told, so the belief is shared. We shouldn’t be deflected from this by any argument that suggests stories belong to a time long past, to a pre-scientific age or to childhood. Just look at the television ratings for the nightly soap stories that appear on our TV screens. It is clear that our need for stories is just as strong as ever. The task of theology, like the task of a successful soap-opera, is to intertwine our human experiences with the big questions of human experience and the world around us. The experiences of growing up, of failure, of making choices, of determining priorities and of family life in the raw. All these are combined with questions of ultimate value and purpose.

However, unlike its TV equivalent, theology also uses the ancient core themes, disclosed in our faith stories. Things like faith, hope, reconciliation, forgiveness, healing. All these help to make sense of our lives. Every story has a faith aspect. Every story is theological because of the story in Genesis of the creation of human beings – or if you prefer doctrinal statements, the doctrine of Imago Dei. Through that story, through that event, we are, as one writer puts it, paragraphs to the same story.

The story of God as Trinity takes these one stage further: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit: paragraphs to the same story. The same story as each other, the same story as us. God of relationship, for relationship, in relationship. A model for us made in God’s image, made of relationship, for relationship, and in relationship.

“And would you seek to know God?” asks The Prophet in Kahlil Gibrans’ amazing little book of the same name. “And would you seek to know God? Be not therefore a solver of riddles, but look around you and you will see God playing with your children.”