John 3:1-17 Holy Trinity Sunday
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. Since the time of Christ, people have tried to nail down the Trinity, but understanding the Trinity is like getting a cat to figure out integral calculus.[1] Can we ever fully express who God is as Father? Our words fail when we try to convey God as Son, crucified and risen. Try accurately defining the Holy Spirit and you might as well join your cat.[2] While it is helpful know what we believe, sometimes we limit our view of God by defining God. Words can never bear God’s fullness.
Richard Rohr devotes his book, The Divine Dance, to helping us gain some understanding. In expressing thoughts about the Holy Trinity, he cites other theologians, writing: For God to be good, God can be one. For God to be loving, God has to be two. Because love is always a relationship, right? But for God to “share excellent joy” and “delight”—and this is where his real breakthrough is—God has to be three, because supreme happiness is when two persons share their common delight in a third something—together. (98).[3]
Rohr references Dave Andrews, who phrases his thoughts about the Trinity this way: It takes one person to be an individual. It takes two people to make a couple. And it takes at least three people to make a community….Because the ultimate reality of the universe, depicted in the Trinity, is a community of persons in relation to one another, we know [that three] is the only way it is possible for people to relate to one another with the individuality of one, the reciprocity of two, and the stability, subjectivity and objectivity of three (101).
In other words, the Holy Trinity is about relationship. It is about love. It is about community. We are here today in community because we have a hunger, a deep need, to know God, to discover more about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But I don’t think we are here in worship together to figure out if all the words to the Creeds are factual and accurate. I think we are here to encounter God in all of God’s fullness.
Nicodemus was looking for the same thing when he went searching for Jesus. He was a Pharisee. That means that he knew the law, both the written law laid out in the scriptures, and the oral laws passed down to him through the generations. He did his best to do what was right. He was a religious leader, and most likely had heard about John the Baptizer’s testimony that Jesus was the Messiah, and the stories of the Holy Spirit descending from heaven when Jesus was baptized. He knew that Jesus said, “Follow me,” and that Andrew, Simon, Nathanael and others dropped what they were doing to go with him. No doubt he learned that Jesus turned water into fine wine for the wedding guest at Cana. You know how people talk, and the story of the Temple could not be contained. Jesus driving people out of the Temple and of doves flying everywhere, and tables crashing, and coins clanging as they hit the floor was front page news.
So, Nicodemus came under the cover of darkness to see Jesus for himself. Yes, this is where we get the phrase, Nick at Night. “Rabbi,” Nicodemus said, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered that it was not as simple as Jesus plus God equals two. Jesus was not something that could be figured out like a math problem. Jesus says something more abstract. “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Every time we think we have God all figured out, Jesus takes us to an entirely new realm. We have all heard the forms that this expression, born from above. One of the most common is born again. I lived for a bit in Alabama, and I fell in love with the people there. But we often had conversations that this genetic Lutheran found…interesting. Have you been born again?they would ask. Have you been saved? And exactly when was that? When did you make that decision?
No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above, Jesus said.
For those of you who have participated in birth, it does not seem to be much of our own personal decision to beborn. Being born is not something we choose. You might recall these words from the beginning of John’s gospel, that we are born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God (1:13). Jesus followed up with Nicodemus saying that, the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do know where it comes from or where it goes. In other words, it is not under your control. Like being born, you don’t cause it, or make it happen. Your chances of figuring this whole God thing out, of being in control, are as good as a cat’s chances of passing a calculus exam.
“Trinity Sunday,” writes one liturgical scholar, “…is a celebration of the experience of the God of the Bible as the human mind has reflected on that experience. It is, in a simple phrase, a celebration of the mystery of God….In the face of such mystery, language fails, and without words, the heart must in silence rejoice that God is God.”[4]
God’s love is so huge that it cannot be contained. St. Paul tells us that God has embraced us and made us heirs as God’s own children. Our reading from John reminds us that God so loved the world. That’s why we come, to be reminded, again. that God’s love is bigger than us. We know that intellectually, but illness that will not go away, people trying to squash you to boost their own ego, the persistent worry, “is there enough,” and the demands of the day tend to take center stage in our lives. We come when we are full of ourselves so that we may become instead filled with God.
All that is here is worship contributes to our experiencing of God. We come together to be stirred by our stained glass of the faithful from times long ago. The voices of the choir and notes ringing out from the organ express, without words, God’s love. Feeling in our hands the words of our book of worship and joining others through the same words of confession and praise that have been said this day, seeing the cloths on the altar, and the light of the candles, and tasting the bread, and sharing this together. We come to share God’s peace that transcends our own egos. We come to breathe in all of it. We come to experience love, breathing in the fullness of the God who birthed our world and us.
Breathe this holy air deeply so that we will not suffocate as our days wear on. Breathe deeply that when we walk out of our worship space, we may be God’s instrument to resuscitate someone looking for Jesus in the dark.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1]The first ecumenical council was the Council of Nicaea in 325, which produced the Nicene Creed, the first uniform doctrine of the Church.
[2]I really do like cats! They are very smart, especially compared to my dog, Winston.
[3]Rohr, Richard. The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2016. p.
[4]Pfatteicher, Philip. Journey into the Heart of God: Living the Liturgical Year. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 288-289.