Trinity Sunday – Rublev’s Icon of the Trinity
Sermon Preached by Rev’d Tracey Gracey on Sunday, 1 June 2026
How can God be one and yet experienced as Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
Theologians have spent centuries trying to find the right words to explain this.
Councils have debated it.
Creeds have been compiled.
And yet the Trinity remains, in many ways, a mystery.
For the Trinity is not something we seek to understand, but something we pray, worship and encounter.
The Trinity is a way of speaking about our experience of God.
The God who creates.
The God who comes among us in Jesus.
The God whose Spirit continues to inspire, guide and transform.
Throughout history, Christians have used many different ways to reflect on this mystery.
Some have written books.
Some have written poetry.
Some have composed music.
Others have painted icons.
For many Christians, icons became a way of engaging with that mystery.
An icon is more than a piece of religious art.
It is designed to invite reflection, prayer and insight.
Not to explain God, but to help us experience God.
One of the most famous icons of the Trinity was painted more than six hundred years ago by a Russian monk named Andrei Rublev.
He painted the icon around 1410, drawing on the story in Genesis 18 where three mysterious visitors come to Abraham and Sarah near the Oak of Mamre.
Over the centuries, Christians came to see in these three visitors as a reflection of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Rublev simplified earlier versions of the icon, removing Abraham, Sarah and much of their story so that the focus fell on the three figures and what they might reveal about the mystery of the Trinity.
Interestingly, the word “Trinity” never appears in the Bible.
Nor do we find a single passage that fully explains the Trinity as it later came to be understood.
Rather, the understanding emerged as Christians reflected on their experience of God.
The God who created the world.
The God they encountered in Jesus.
And the Spirit of God continuing to guide, inspire and sustain them.
The language of Father, Son and Holy Spirit became a way of holding those experiences together.
Rublev took that language and explored it through an icon.
Not to explain the Trinity.
But to invite people to reflect, pray and contemplate the mystery of God.
Invitation to look at the icon
What do you notice?
What draws your attention first?
The faces?
The colours?
The gestures?
The space between the figures?
The cup in the centre?
The way the figures seem connected?
What is it that captures your eye?
What is it that captures your imagination?
Invitation to share with the person next to them
Did you notice that the figures are similar?
Their faces are almost identical.
This reminds us that while Christians speak of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are not speaking about three gods.
There is a unity within the diversity.
A oneness at the heart of the image.
Yet there are also differences.
Behind each figure sits a different symbol.
Behind the figure traditionally understood as the Father is a house.
A reminder of God as source, origin and home.
Behind the central figure, often understood as Christ, stands a tree.
Originally it is the Oak of Mamre from the Genesis story.
Yet Christians quickly recognised echoes of another tree.
The cross.
The place where God’s love is fully revealed and poured out for the sake of the world.
Behind the figure identified as the Spirit is a mountain.
Throughout Scripture, mountains are places of encounter, transformation and revelation.
Moses met God on a mountain.
Elijah heard God’s voice on a mountain.
Jesus was transfigured on a mountain.
The mountain reminds us that the Spirit continues to draw people deeper into the life of God.
Like these symbols, the colours invite us to look more deeply.
The Father is clothed in colours reminding us of the mystery of God who is always greater than our understanding.
Jesus wears colours that remind us of both heaven and earth.
The Spirit is clothed in a colour often associated with life, growth and renewal.
At the centre of the image sits a cup.
Everything in the icon seems to point towards it.
The figures lean towards it.
Their gestures direct us towards it.
Our eyes are drawn towards it.
The cup reminds us that at the centre of God’s life is self-giving love.
The love revealed in Christ.
The love celebrated whenever we gather around the Eucharistic table.
Rublev chooses not to paint the Trinity as a throne room.
There is no display of power.
No hierarchy.
No sense of competition.
Instead there is harmony.
A sense of peace.
The figures appear to be listening to one another.
Honouring one another.
Giving space to one another.
This is one of the reasons the icon has spoken to so many people over the centuries.
At the heart of the image is relationship.
The figures are turned towards one another.
Attentive to one another.
Connected to one another.
The Trinity is not presented as three individuals standing apart, but as a community of love, giving and receiving.
Most importantly, there appears to be space at the table.
As though the viewer is being invited to draw closer.
To take a place within the circle of relationship.
To share in the love and life of God.
The icon presents a different picture of God than many people expect.
Not distant.
Not demanding.
Not dominating.
But drawing others into love, peace and generosity.
Perhaps this is why Rublev’s icon has endured for more than six hundred years.
Not because it explains the Trinity.
It doesn’t.
But because it invites us to enter more deeply into the mystery of the trinity — one God we experience and relate to as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.