I was reading this week in the Telegraph, about Girl with half a brain who had become fluent in two languages. Busra, a girl of seven who had half her brain removed, including its speech centre, has astonished doctors by becoming fluent in two languages. Her doctor said her recovery highlighted the flexibility of the brain, even after the most traumatic surgery.


The remaining half of Busra's brain has compensated for the missing speech centre
Busra was diagnosed with Rasmussen syndrome, a rare, progressive disorder that affects just one side of the brain, at the age of three. Surgeons at Utrecht University Hospital in Holland decided that the left hemisphere, which included the speech centre, had to be removed. The gap was filled with marrow fluid during the hemispherectomy.
Earlier this year, Dr Johannes Borgstein, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Rotterdam Hospital was treating Busra for tonsillitis. "She was fairly well and we had decided not to take out her tonsils but realised that she had this enormous case file," he said.
"We generally have just seven minutes for each patient but I thought I had to take a look through it. The word hemispheric kept occurring and we then came across an MRI brain scan and that is when we saw that there was only half of her brain left.
"Apart from a slightly awkward handshake the first impression was unremarkable. Fluently bilingual, she had been arguing with her little sister in perfectly-constructed Dutch, then turned to answer her mother in Turkish." Dr Borgstein said Busra's sight was impaired but that she could hear perfectly with both ears, the right side of her brain having compensated completely for the lack of the left side. "It was amazing. I had to tell my students to forget all the neurophysiological theory they were learning," he said. "If this little girl could achieve so much with only half a brain what could we not do with a complete one?"


Now why do I mention this on Trinity Sunday? Well, quite simply I would like to draw you attention to the honesty of the doctor who was prepared to say
"It was amazing. I had to tell my students to forget all the
neurophysiological theory they were learning,"

If we are honest, certainty is the property of fools, not the learned. Those who are more intellectually secure will usually admit that the more that we find out - the less we seem to know. Issues are only seen in simple terms of black and white by the simplistic and those who seek to lead them.

To be sure it is so much nicer when we can make pronouncements of simple truths. There are some certain simple truths, like - ‘water is generally wet.’ But when we start to speak about things which really matter - like God, then we soon find out that we run out of words and human language and thought fail to work.
As an example we see this in the creation story which was read to us from Genesis, which some have taken very simplistically to mean that God created a flat world in six days and then had a rest because he was tired. From being a beautiful picture to illustrate God’s creative energy and love for the world, it has become for some at best a theological strait jacket, at worst a blunt instrument to repel those who have a different understanding of the text or the science of creation. How important it is for us to remember that not everything we read in the Bible is a word from God out of context to be applied today without interpretation. Are the Psalms words of God for us today to be believed and accepted without criticism? Is there really a blessing for those who dash Babylonian children against rocks? (Psalm 137)

Truth is no more easily reduced to trite slogans than the scientific explanation of the creation of this wonderful world can be reduced to two chapters of Genesis.

Through history we can see times when people have imagined that they did possess understanding and knowledge of God. But, actually this is an illusion, faith is not built upon the measure of the human mind. Of course it is no more possible for us to understand God than to put the ocean into a bucket, fortunately it is not necessary.

Some of you will recognise a recurring theme in my preaching over the years, that people cannot be argued into belief. They can be attracted, they can be welcomed and embraced but they cannot be argued. People most usually come to believe through faith not through facts.

Preachers will often preach the certainty, the black and white. However, truth is much more often grey. Some scientists like to userp the place of God and pretend that science has all the answers, clearly it has not. The more we learn the more we realise that the less we know. This is not to say that we should stop the task of learning, but we must be more prepared to recognise that God is too big for us, human sin and pride aspire to lift us to God. Humility sees that God into the human mind will not go.

That is why the scientist in our story was important, he was prepared to say that there was so much about all that right brain, left brain theory which he had to unlearn.

The lack of knowledge which have as Christians to speak about God is nowhere demonstrated more clearly than in the doctrine of the Trinity. Trinity Sunday is a day in which we celebrate God and who God is. For two thousand years we have been trying to explain and understand who God is and we have used the word Trinity. The word as we know isn’t in the Bible, Jesus didn’t use it and yet now it is the touchstone of orthodoxy. It establishes what it means to be Christian.

Go through your telephone directory and look at all the churches which are listed. The ones which are Christian are those which have a Trinitarian faith. The Jehovah’s witnesses, the Christadelphians and others are not Christians, because they do not believe this doctrine.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not emphatically stated in the scriptures. Yet, by implication, it is stated many times. The early Christians soon discovered that they simply could not speak of God without speaking of the three ways in which he had revealed himself to them. This does not mean that there are three Gods. It means that there is one God who has shown himself in three ways: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The word "trinity" is a term used to denote the Christian doctrine that God exists as a unity of three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of the persons is distinct from the other, yet related in essence. Each is divine in nature, but each is not the totality of the Godhead. Each has a will, loves, and says "I", and "You" when speaking. The Father is not the same person as the Son who is not the same person as the Holy Spirit who is not the same person as the Father. Each is divine, yet there are not three gods, but one God. There are three persons individual subsistences, or persons. The word "subsistence" means something that has a real existence. The word "person" denotes individuality and self awareness.

Included in the doctrine of the Trinity is a strict monotheism which is the teaching that there exists in all the universe a single being known as God who is self-existent and unchangeable (Isaiah 43:10; 44:6,8).


Clearly this teaching is absurd from the point of human logic, it makes no human sense! All of the clever illustrations (Clover leaf, the sun as heat, light and energy etc. ) which we have heard since Sunday School, they all fall short of explaining how logically God can be three and yet one. Indeed some of the best illustrations used in sermons serve only to illustrate serious heresies
such as modalism!

If we are honest it is something which is more clearly explained in terms of that great Christian word, mystery. It is a mystery of our faith. We know why we use the term because it expresses our experience of a God who can be present in Jesus, whilst at the same time, the voice of God is heard to speak from heaven and the Spirit descend as a dove. But nevertheless it is a mystery.

The Trinity does not actually attempt to explain God. It only explains what we know about God, that which he has revealed to us in a very elementary way. In the same way in our Lent course this year we were reminded that God is like an iceberg. To describe the tip of the iceberg above the water is not to describe the entire iceberg. So we Christians affirm the Trinity, not as an explanation of God, but simply as a way of describing what we currently know about God.

This is honest and it should not make us frightened.

In 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 it says
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Please note - Knowledge will pass away. Human knowledge will be revealed to be a lot less important than some might care to believe. There are three things which are considered important, faith, hope and love. – thank God we do not have to understand!

Like that scientist it is OK for us to wake up one morning and realise that so much of what we thought is complete rubbish. Indeed to be able to do so is the sign of a learning and open mind.

This message is frightening to many I know. How can the Christian gospel be communicated in a state of confusion and mixed messages? Many preachers devote themselves to black and white because it is so much easier to communicate, it is wrong, it is intellectually and morally dishonest, it is ultimately bound to be found out and disgraced. It is a short term fix but it merely confirms the sentiment of Augustine that there are many sheep outside the church and many wolves within.

As Christians we need to have the honesty to say that we see but a poor reflection of God as in a mirror, we see through a glass darkly. Our knowledge of God is imperfect, we know in part and the rest is guesswork. Moreover we will never know all the answers until we see God face to face.

It must be recognised that the disciples found themselves confused after the resurrection. They were still confused after Jesus had been around for some time. There is a lot about Jesus which is confusing. Not just how he can be God and man at the same time, or how he can die and get back up again, or how he can have a body which eats fish and passes through walls. They were understandably intellectually confused. In one commentary on today’s passage it says the disciples were in

‘a situation of cognitive dissonance par excellence’
Walsh and Keesmaat.

In other words they were mixed up! They were confused. They did not pretend to have all the answers. They were unsure, they were human!

Jesus gave the disciples the sacrament of the Holy Communion because he knew how difficult faith was and how it needed to be nurtured and sustained.

The fluctuation between worship and confused indecision is the struggle of every Christian. This is a common psychological experience.

So can our ministry as a church go forward into mission when we admit our weakness in understanding and theology and doctrine? Can we dare to compete with the dogma of those who can give the complete ‘God in a box.’

Well yes! I believe the answer is that it is only when we are honest and truthful that real faith can be communicated. Mystery and Mission are words which do easily fit together. We can speak of the mystery of God instead of simply producing another ‘God for Dummies’ book.

Mystery and Mission. The two words can be considered contradictory, because what people want is easy answers. However, we do not have easy answers unless we compromise the integrity of our faith which is more complex than human mind can know.

The whole point about a mystery is that we do not understand it. It is not to be understood with the mind, but rather embraced with the heart.

That is why religious experience can be a powerful thing and we need to think through this more clearly.

The icon is a window through which the faith of the human heart can rise to God. Music helps lift the soul in a way that defies the logic of the mind.

When we are open to the mystery of God we are motivated not by a need for answers to our human questions. This is about reverence and awe. The stripping of the beauty of our churches and religion by various reforming movements, has often left people adrift without reverence and awe.

We need faith not facts, because God is ‘Thou who art beyond the farthest mortal eye can scan,’

When Jesus speaks of ‘going out to make disciples,’ he is not speaking of quick fix conversions, he is encouraging the disciples to go and nurture others into the experience of discipleship.


When we think about God we are not supposed to pretend that we know everything. We are supposed to proclaim with the hymn ‘O Lord my God when I in awesome wonder….’ That awe is what worship is about.

Bishop of London, Bishop Richard Chartres, writing on the Holy Trinity,

"You can't have a God. If you have, possess a God, if you talk about My God, my own little possession that helps me, my asset, then what you have is not the true and living God, father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but an Idol, a God made in our own image. And, brothers and sisters, much of the history of religion, even in the Christian Religion, is an attempt to make Gods of ourselves, by launching ego-projections into the middle distance - plop - and then having an affair with that ego-projection. That's what religion has been, so very often."

Amen