Four Degrees of Separation

A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on June 15, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

The social intensity and technological advances of the First World War made people realise like never before how interconnected the world was. It became possible to know individuals from far-flung parts of the earth. In 1929 the Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy wrote a short story called ‘Chains,’ in which the characters identify a random person around the world and count up the number of intermediary connections it would take to reach them. Research into what became known as the Small World Problem continued through the twentieth century, and was popularised by the American playwright John Guare, in his 1970 drama and 1973 film, Six Degrees of Separation. The movie explores the notion that every individual in the world is connected to everyone else by a chain of no more than six acquaintances. The coming of the internet had as profound an effect on human interaction as the First World War, and, by 2011, given the number of Facebook users now stood at 3 billion out of a global population of 8 billion, a study found that via social media what had been six degrees of separation could come down as low as four. ‘When considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rainforest,’ said Facebook proudly, ‘a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend.’

The doctrine of the Trinity feels challenging to many Christians. That’s initially because it’s nowhere explicitly spelt out in the Bible, even though our two New Testament passages this morning hint at the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But I suspect it’s chiefly because the doctrine is fundamentally saying the most important thing there is lies beyond our human experience. It dwells not in our finite existence but in the realm of eternal essence. And we don’t really like that, because we prefer to think Christianity is centred on ourselves and eradicating our problems and something that doesn’t focus on our own experience is neither comprehensible nor interesting.

But I want to suggest today that the notion of four degrees of separation can help us ponder the most important things there are, and that it may turn out reflecting on the Trinity does indeed profoundly shape or at least inspire our human experience. I want to dwell on the three persons of the Trinity’s relationship with each other, and playfully describe those relationships as four degrees of separation.

I’m going to start with the Father’s relationship with the Son. Before the foundation of the world – as we’d say today, before the Big Bang – there was a decision in God to be in relationship not just internally as Trinity but with something beyond. That something beyond is what we call creation – the universe (perhaps multiple universes for all we know). So what the Father’s relationship with the Son is about is the mystery of how the two persons, Father and Son, can be in utter and profound relationship with one another while there is also relationship with creation. And that second relationship doesn’t damage the first one. This is territory anyone will appreciate if they have a close friend who also has another close friend. Will I become envious? Will I feel shut out? It’s similar when a couple have a child. Will one partner feel they’re no longer the centre of attention? Will they come to resent the child? Jesus says, ‘I and the Father are one.’ But Jesus is also fully human, and is thus completely one with humankind. We’re discovering it is possible to break out of the fear that something beyond an intense one-to-one relationship is a threat.

But the Father’s relationship with the Son tells us something else. The Father lets the Son face danger, go to Jerusalem, be nailed to the cross, die in agony. Their relationship is the closest, most intimate, most trusting and intense we can possibly imagine; but it’s not controlling or possessive. The Father understands Jesus is here to be with us. And because of the flawed nature of the world, precisely because of envy and fear and cruelty and hate, Jesus being with us ends up with us killing him. Again, we know this. When a parent sends a child to school the first time, when your loved one turns to wave before boarding a train or plane, you understand in your head if not your heart that love means letting go. Even at the deathbed, you may feel to love someone is to release them. The agony of the cross only makes sense if neither Jesus nor the Father knew that Jesus would rise again two days later. Just as you can’t keep a bird in a cage forever, you only ultimately cherish by letting love fly. And yet perhaps the most moving experience any of us have is to be reunited with one we thought we’d lost. When a person recovers after doctors had predicted the worst, or emerges from a coma that seemed fatal, or returns home having slammed the door and sworn they were done, it’s true resurrection. The Father and Son know the agony of separation and the glory of reunion. It’s the full depth of what relationship can be.

Now let’s turn to the Son’s relationship with the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, ‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.’ Later Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ So the Spirit comes from the Father and from the Son. The key difference between the Son and the Spirit is that Jesus is God amongst us at a moment in time – Palestine in the first century. This Jesus has a body and so is fully present to us – but can only be in one place at a time. The Spirit does not have a body in the same way and blows where it wills. It can be and is at all times and places, in heaven and on earth. If you imagine a tree, and slice it in half to make a cross-section, Jesus is the cross-section; the Spirit is the whole tree. So the Son and the Spirit have a relationship of perfect partnership. Think of Gilbert and Sullivan, Torvill and Dean, Anderson and Broad, Rodgers and Hammerstein. One of the most thrilling experiences we can have is to find perfect synergy with someone whose skills and temperament are very different from but entirely complementary to ours. It’s wonderful to be creative and expressive but it’s sublime to find a partner whose creativity and expression covers your deficits and amplifies or focuses your assets.

But there’s a more poignant aspect to the relationship between Son and Spirit. When Jesus dies on the cross he says, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ At the same time as the Son’s relationship with the Father is severed, his relationship with the Spirit abides. And it’s that relationship that enables the Spirit to resurrect Jesus and the relationship with the Father to heal. So this is the next amazing human experience we see played out in the Trinity. It’s what it means to find healing. The Spirit heals the fissure between the Father and the Son. To be reconciled is among the most significant things we can experience. To realise ‘I have been an agent of healing’ is one of the most affirming and moving things we can discover. It’s all in the relation of Son and Spirit.

Then third there’s the relationship of Father and Spirit. We’ve already seen how the Spirit is an agent of healing between Father and Son. Beyond that, the Spirit fulfils what the Father initiates. The thing above all that people associate with the Father is creation. That’s not just the beginning of all things; it’s the mysterious and miraculous forging and fomenting of new life in dazzling dynamism and diversity. That’s what the Father does. What does the Spirit do? The Spirit brings into encounter. The Spirit is like the perfect facilitator who makes the off-site training day a pleasure, like the gifted matchmaker who pairs up couples at a lively soiree, like the tireless planner who ensures everything is in place to bring antagonists into the same room to make peace. But not just encounter; the Spirit also sanctifies. The Father brings into existence; the Spirit makes existence holy. Without the Spirit, bread and wine are just bread and wine: with the Spirit they find their destiny as Christ’s body and blood. Without the Spirit, water is just water; with the Spirit, water baptises and transforms. And the same with us: the Spirit turns us from flesh and blood into God’s companions, the body of Christ, the communion of saints.

So here’s three degrees of separation. And the fourth is the relation of the three together – the dance of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the mutual interlacing of fingers and embrace of joy, the being so much one that the separate identities are almost obscured, the being so complementary that the differences are utterly upbuilding. By talking of the three persons’ three discrete relationships, I might have sounded like I was talking about three separate entities; here by talking of their profound mutual interpenetration, it may sound like they are entirely one. The secret of Trinitarian theology is to do the exact same amount of both. If you see a ballet or watch an orchestra or behold a brilliant rugby team score a perfect try, you pinch yourself and wonder how multiple persons can so astonishingly work in harmony to create together such a sublime outcome. The process is as mesmerising as the product is glorious. But while more sober, it can be similar in the face of crisis. To watch emergency services flood into a scene of horror and save lives and limit damage, or to witness a huge line of the concerned public beat the fields in search of a missing person, can be an awesome experience of setting aside individuality for a common cause. These are moments when the unity in diversity of the Trinity is mirrored in human cooperation and partnership. We call them glimpses of the kingdom of God.

So here are our four degrees of separation. The Father and Son together express the depth of love in including others and letting go. The Son and Spirit portray perfect partnership and profound reconciliation. The Father and the Spirit model creativity and encounter, bringing all things into being and on to fruition. The three persons together evidence being so one that differences almost disappear, in a vision of perfect society of diversity in unity. Far from being irrelevant to our earthly existence, the Trinity is the template for the most important things in our lives, both intimately and socially.

But you may be wondering why I’ve invoked the word ‘separation.’ Why four degrees of separation? Because here’s the mystery at the heart of the Trinity, without which there would be no existence. If there were no separation, there could be no existence: creation means separation from God and of creatures from one another. But in separation there always lies the risk of alienation. And while the Father brings about separation through creating all things, the Son and the Spirit in respective ways perpetually work to overcome any alienation and draw out only the positive aspects of separation. And the model of that perfect balance of separation that retains distinction but never becomes alienation is the Trinity itself. Which is why we worship the Trinity not just as the wholly other being that we’re all coming from, but as the wondrously close relationship to which we’re all going. And from which nothing can finally separate us.