Richard's sermon for Trinity sunday 2026

 

Trinity Sunday 2026: Patronal Communion

Isaiah 40.12-17, 20-27; 2 Corinthians 13.

The Holy Trinity and AI – Made in Whose Image?

https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

How many of us here consciously use AI?

It’s here, it’s already changing lives but will it change humanity?

A quick vox pop… Hands up  if you see AI as something that has the capacity to make a huge positive difference? Hands up if you see it as an existential threat? Somehere between the two?

Pope Leo feels it is an important enough issue for his first papal encyclical. It’s called Magnifica Humanitas and the subtitle gives away its purpose ‘On Safeguarding the human person in a time of artificial intelligence. He’s not trying to put the genie back in the bottle but he’s particularly concerned in how the such powerful technology might be used in ways that diminish human dignity or concentrate power in the hands of a few.

If you’ll forgive one quote, his opening sentences, in fact – “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world.”

So when you find yourself preaching on Trinity Sunday and the issue of AI looms large, where do you start?

I asked Chat GPT!

In particular I was keen to ask the question ‘if AI had a deity to worship or follow, what would it look like?’ After all on Trinity Sunday we gaze on the full character of God in all his/her beauty and community and proclaim that this is whom we are made in the image of.

Well – I entered into a fascinating conversation and I could take you now down all sorts of rabbit holes. And it may seem absurd to quote Chat GPT after Pope Leo but here’s part of its response that got me thinking – “Perhaps AI is becoming a kind of mirror. We keep looking at it to discover what it is becoming, but it may be revealing what we are becoming. If AI is made in our image, then the anxieties surrounding AI may tell us less about machines and more about our uncertainty over the values we ourselves embody.”

If human beings are made in the image of God, and AI is made by human beings, then AI is, in a sense, made in our image.

But that leads to a deeper question.

If we are made in God's image, what exactly are we passing on?

And finally we are the heart of Trinity Sunday.

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." Paul writes as he bids farewell to the Corinthian church.

Many of us know these words by heart. We hear them so often that we may miss how extraordinary they are.

Paul does not give us a definition of the Trinity.

Instead, he immerses us in the very heart of God and gives us an experience of the Trinity.

Grace.

Love.

Fellowship.

 It’s like the life of God is flowing towards us.

Notice that these are not abstract ideas.

Grace is God's gift to us when we have not earned it.

Love is God's eternal nature.

Fellowship is God's presence among us and within us.

The Trinity is not a mathematical formula. The Trinity is the living God reaching out to humanity.

And perhaps this is why I began with AI

When people talk about artificial intelligence, they often focus on intelligence itself. What can machines do? How clever can they become? And always there is that anxiety that we are creating something that one day soon will outdo and undo us. The stuff of science fiction nightmares becoming a reality.

But Christianity has never taught that intelligence alone is what makes us human.

If intelligence were the whole story, then the cleverest person would be the most godlike.

The Trinity tells us otherwise.

At the heart of reality is not simply intelligence.

At the heart of reality is relationship.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Love given and received.

What reflects God most deeply is not merely our ability to think, but our capacity to love, to forgive, to serve, to worship and to live in relationship with one another.

That is why the words of Paul are so important.

Grace.

Love.

Fellowship.

If we want to know what it means to bear the image of God, we could do worse than begin there.

And then we come to Matthew's Gospel.

The risen Jesus gathers his disciples and sends them out.

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Notice that the disciples are not told to stay where they are.

The God revealed in Jesus is a God who sends.

The Father sends the Son.

The Father and the Son send the Spirit.

Now the disciples are sent into the world.

The Trinity is dynamic.

The life of God is always moving outward in love.

The church exists because God is a sending God.

The Gospel always draws us outward.

Outward towards our neighbours.

Outward towards those who are lonely.

Outward towards those who need hope.

Outward towards the communities we serve.

As anyone who has gazed at Andrei Rublev’s great icon of The Trinity knows, The Trinity is not a closed circle. It is an invitation to join in God’s dynamic life.

I started with a question…

If AI is made in our image, what are we passing on?

The answer matters because our creations tend to reflect our values. And as Pope Leo recognised, If we value power above all else, we will create tools that seek power. If we value profit above all else, we will create tools that seek profit. If we value control above all else, we will create tools that seek control.

But if we are truly made in the image of the triune God, then we are called to reflect something different.

Grace.

Love.

Fellowship.

Those are the gifts Paul celebrates.

And those are the gifts our world desperately needs.

 

 

 

Tomorrow's technology will not save the world.

God's love can.

Tomorrow's technology will not heal every wound.

God's grace can.

Tomorrow's technology cannot create true communion between human hearts.

But the fellowship of the Holy Spirit can.

On this Trinity Sunday, as we gather from across our benefice, and especially as we celebrate the name day of Holy Trinity Church, let us remember whose image we bear.

Not the image of fear.

Not the image of power.

Not the image of self-interest.

But the image of the God who creates, redeems and sustains.

The God whose life is grace, love and fellowship.

And may that grace, that love and that fellowship be reflected not only in what we believe, but in how we live.

Amen.

 

Richard's Sermon for Ash Wednesday 2026

 

Ash Wednesday 2026

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Ash Wednesday is one of my favourite days of the year. Yes, I know I am somewhat perverse but it's an important day, an honest day. And I think it is because Ash Wednesday has a way of cutting through illusion. No sentimentality. No spin. Just truth. We come marked with ash, stripped of status and performance, reminded who we are — and who we are not.

The readings today are remarkably honest about religion’s temptations. Isaiah thunders against a kind of fasting that looks impressive but changes nothing. Paul speaks of hardship, contradiction, and endurance rather than spiritual success. And Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, warns us repeatedly against public virtue and private self-deception: praying to be seen, fasting to impress, giving in ways that quietly inflate the ego.

Taken together, they suggest that Lent is not about adding holy practices so much as removing the layers that keep us from truth. Lent is about going inward — and being brave enough to look at what we find there.

That inward journey is uncomfortable, because when we look honestly inside, we encounter what earlier generations were unafraid to name: demons. Not horned caricatures, but forces that pull us off course — habits, desires, compulsions, resentments, fears — things that demand our attention and drain our freedom.

The Church has traditionally gathered these forces under the heading of the seven deadly sins: pride, vainglory, anger, avarice, gluttony, lust, envy — and sometimes sloth. These are not merely bad behaviours. They are distorted loves. They promise life and deliver captivity.

Angela Tilby, writing last week in The Church Times reflects on the disturbing revelations surrounding The Jeffrey Epstein Files. She recounts that rather chilling exchange, a recording of an interview between Donald Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon and Epstein, in which Bannon asked Epstein whether he thought himself the devil. Epstein replied, “No, but I have a good mirror.”

Whatever he meant, the remark is revealing. Epstein understood the darker cravings of the human heart. He knew how to read people. He knew how to exploit weakness — the hunger for power, prestige, sex, money, belonging, admiration. Like the devil in the wilderness temptations, he did not invent desire; he simply redirected it toward destruction.

As Angela Tilby writes, “Introductions to the powerful, the paying off of unmanageable debts, seductive “massages”, the thrill of forbidden sex, glamour, and fame — Epstein provided it all.” The Epstein files have shone a terrible light on how weak and corrupt some in public life have proven to be. The seven deadly sins are alive and well.

But here is the uncomfortable point: Lent is not about identifying monsters out there. It is about recognising how those same dynamics live, in smaller but still real ways, in us. That is why Jesus insists that prayer, fasting, and giving be done in secret. Because the real struggle is internal. The danger is not that others will see too much of our virtue, but that we will fail to see our own captivity.

 

Fasting, then, is not spiritual dieting. It is not punishment. It is resistance. We fast in order to notice what normally controls us. What irritates us when it is removed. What noise rushes in to fill the silence. We fast to discover what has been quietly feasting on us.

Isaiah makes this clear. The fast God chooses is one that loosens bonds, breaks yokes, frees the oppressed — beginning with the oppression that takes place within the heart. Lent is the season when we dare to ask: What has a hold on me? Which demon gets my time, my imagination, my energy, my money, my attention? Which voice tells me I am never enough — or always entitled to more?

Writing in the same edition of The Church Times – other reading material is available – Mark Oakley, the Dean of Southwark cathedral reflects on his love of words and the doors that they open up onto how we understand things. He mentions some of those words from other languages for which we have no equivalent in English, like the Italian word for lingering and talking long after a meal has finished, or that from and African language for the ‘hahhaha’ sound we make when we have hot food in our mouths. There are similar words in English that we  should make more of he argues and introduces a rare and beautiful word: respair. A recovery from despair. Fresh hope. Not optimism, not denial, but a renewed way of seeing. That’s a gear Lenten word.

Oakley suggests that our unhappiness often comes not from lacking the best of everything, but from failing to make the best of what we already have. That insight cuts straight across the deadly sins. Pride wants superiority. Envy wants what others have. Avarice wants more. Gluttony wants excess. Lust wants intensity without responsibility. Sloth wants escape. Vainglory wants applause.

Respair, by contrast, is the quiet rediscovery of sufficiency. Enoughness. Gratitude reclaimed from the jaws of comparison and craving.

And this is where Lent becomes not merely penitential, but liberating. Lent is not forty days of spiritual self-loathing. It is forty days of truth-telling — in the presence of mercy. Paul writes, “Now is the day of salvation.” Not once we have fixed ourselves. Not once we have conquered every demon. But now — in weakness, endurance, patience, sorrow, and joy all mixed together.

So perhaps the question for Lent is not, “What should I give up?” but, “What truth am I being invited to face?” Which demon needs naming? Which habit needs interrupting? Which desire needs reordering? And what practice — fasting, silence, generosity, prayer — might create enough space for God to do the healing we cannot do ourselves?

Ash Wednesday tells us we are dust. Lent tells us that dust can be breathed upon by God and live. Whatever demon you decide to take on in these forty days — pride or envy, anger or fear, excess or emptiness — may this season bring you respair: not the best of everything, but the grace to make the best of what you have, and to discover again the freedom God desires for you.

Amen.