Trinity Sunday – May 26, 2024
John 3:1-17
Today in our church calendar, we celebrate Trinity Sunday – and we’re given, from John’s gospel, the story of Nicodemus and the very well known piece of scripture from John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
The story of Nicodemus is a story about God’s love for the world. The language of God, Son, and Spirit reveals unity of purpose in the full expression of God’s interaction with the world.
Jill Tarter, an astronomer, who is one of the pioneers in the field of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has shared how their understanding of what’s out there continues to evolve – “we see the world one way, and then we see something that changes everything we thought we believed” – and she says, “we reserve the right to get smarter”.
I love that statement – “we reserve the right to get smarter”. Nicodemus, in today’s gospel story, reserved the right to get smarter. He came to Jesus by night entering into a conversation with him and asking questions. It’s interesting that Nicodemus (who is not classified as a disciple) shows up several times throughout John’s gospel and he grows in his faith. At first, he brings questions and is confused – today’s story. He later invites others to slow in their judgment. He then finally risks publicly honoring Jesus, the one who was just executed.
Faith, at least in Nicodemus’ case, takes time. His journey with Jesus continues across most of the Gospel of John and, we might assume, beyond. He is reserving the right to “get smarter”, to risk asking questions, to be curious, to grow in grace and faith.
Jesus answers one of Nicodemus’ questions with “no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit”. Both water and Spirit are about life. We know we need water for our human bodies to live, in fact we are mostly water. So, what would it mean for us to understand that we are born of the Spirit?
Most of us think we know who God is, who God calls us to be, what God wants us to do. What if we were to stop telling God what we know, to recognize that God is bigger than our naming of God, and to listen for God’s Word to sweep over us without direction from us. What if we did not hold back but allowed the wind to take us to places not on our agenda? What would happen to us if we listened for God to call forth from us that which we did not recognize as being possible?
Throughout my life I have had people call forth from me gifts which I did not recognize as being mine to give. I am certain my experience is not unique. Someone names a gift in you as if it already existed, and as you live into their expectation, you experience the reality of that gift. God calls into existence things that do not yet exist. God calls forth life which we cannot bring about on our own.
What might God be calling forth from us now, today? Can we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the untamed wind of God? Can we listen for what we have, until now, been unwilling to hear? Can we see in one another not something to critique or judge but rather the image of the God who has given us birth?
The concept of the Trinity is how God moves, relates, dances, and manifests Godself in the world—always through relationships. In many ways, the Trinity is an entanglement that keeps unfolding back and forth, a sign and metaphor for our own ways of living together, being different and yet being a part of the same life. Everything is a big relation of deep belonging and entanglements. Franciscan priest and theologian Richard Rohr argues that caring about the Trinity requires orienting ourselves in a new way: “Don’t start with the One and try to make it into Three,” he writes in his book, The Divine Dance. “Start with the Three and see that this is the deepest nature of the One.”
Start with the Three and see that this is the deepest nature of the One.
If God exists in three persons, then each person has his (or her) own way of embodying and expressing goodness, beauty, love, and righteousness. As Rohr puts it, the Trinity affirms that there is an intrinsic plurality to goodness. “Goodness isn’t sameness,” he writes in The Divine Dance. “Goodness, to be goodness, needs contrast and tension, not perfect uniformity.” If God can incarnate goodness through contrast and tension, then it’s worth asking why we can’t. Or won’t. Why do we fear difference so much when difference lies at the very heart of God’s nature? As churches, as communities, and as countries, we will not survive unless we learn how to live gracefully and peaceably with difference.
Much anxiety stems from what we don’t know and can’t know, especially what might happen. Fearing uncertainty, we often focus on what knowledge we have as something to grasp. The Spirit moves like wind, blowing where it will. We cannot predict nor contain. When we think we’ve grasped God, we are overly confident in our knowledge. God is always more that we can ask or imagine.
Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. In the famous words of the poet Minnie Louise Haskins:
“And I said to the one who stood at the gate of the year ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the Unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’”
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.” That seems to be a wonderful description of what Christians mean when we talk about living by faith.
Like Nicodemus, let’s reserve the right to get smarter. May we be open to new life, abundant life, life lived in the power of the Spirit. Why not “go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way. So I went forth and finding the hand of God trod gladly into the night. And he led me towards the hills and the breaking of the day in the lone East.”
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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