Scripture Text: John 3: 1-17 (Trinity Sunday)

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ²He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, 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.” ³Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? ¹¹“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 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. ¹⁷“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Nicodemus had lots of questions.  It didn’t say anything about his faith in Jesus or whether or not he believed.  He was just trying to get it all nailed down.  We are no different.  I mean, this Trinity thing that we celebrate this Sunday in what will be the last high holy day in a triumvirate of holy days where Jesus makes space for us, fills us with the Spirit, and gives us a model for what is the wholeness of God that we experience in our lives.  But what is the Trinity?  I mean, truthfully, it’s not even really in the Bible.  (Every year, the lectionary passages don’t QUITE explain it.  This year, it just capitalized on a bunch of questions.)  But, see, there wasn’t some “do this” proclamation that laid it all out for us.  No one was ever invited to the top of a cloudy mountain to receive the answer about the Trinity.  Is it three or is it one?  Is it separate or on top of each other?  And how do you tell what part of it is present in a moment?  It’s all so very confusing.

Well, think about these questions.  Where does the sky stop and the earth begin on the horizon?  Where does one mountain stop and another begin in a sprawling mountain range? Where is that place that the ocean definitively meets the beach?  Not the place where you walk toward it and thrust your feet into the water.  Where is that place where there is only water that becomes only land?  And where, as the earth spins on its axis, does light begin?  Where is the first light of the day?  The truth is, we can’t see any of those.  We can’t see them because our minds won’t discern them as separate and because, to be really honest, they’re not separate at all.  So, why are we so intent on trying to put things in categories—good and bad, light and dark, us and them?  None of those things really exist apart from the other.  I think the notion of a Trinitarian God, a God who is seen in different ways to different people and yet is the same God, is a lot like that.  Roman Catholic Bishop Christopher Mwoleka put it very well when he said that “Christians have made the basic mistake of approaching the Trinity as a puzzle to be solved rather than as an example to be imitated.”  The Trinity is not an entity; it is rather a tool, a way of understanding who God is and who we are called to be as fully human.  Like that ocean that we see as it rolls onto the beach, there is not a place where one aspect of God stops and another begins.  It’s as if Christ in all his comings and goings was trying to say just one thing: “Come, follow me…this way…in whatever place you see me.”

For several years, I co-lead an Interfaith Scripture Study when I was at St. Paul’s United Methodist with one of the rabbis from Temple Emanuel in Houston.  With participants from both Temple Emanuel and St. Paul’s, we would study various Scriptures and share in both our diverse and common understandings of them.  As time permitted, we would often end the study sessions with either an “Ask the Christians” question or an “Ask the Jews” question (with NOTHING off the table).  One day during the “Ask the Christians” episode, I got the always-dreaded question: “Explain the Trinity to us and tell us how it is not polytheistic, how it is not a depiction of three Gods.”  OK, I responded, you do realize that that is one of the most difficult things to explain and, I will tell you, that most of us Christians don’t really get it anyway.  But, here goes…So I took a really deep breath and just started talking.  And this is how I explained it…

In the beginning was God.  God created everything that was and everything that is and laid out a vision for what it would become.  But we didn’t really get it.  So, God tried and tried again to explain it.  God sent us Abraham and Moses and Sarah and Hagar and Ruth and Naomi.  God sent us Judges and Kings and Prophets.  But we still didn’t get it.  God wove a vision of what Creation was meant to be and what we were meant to be as God’s children through poetry and songs and beautiful writings of wisdom.  But we still didn’t get it. 

“So,” God thought, “there is only one thing left to do.  I’ll show you.  I’ll show you the way to who I am and who I desire you to be.  I will walk with you.”  So, God came, Emmanuel, God-with-us, and was born just like we were with controversy and labor pains and all those very human conceptions of what life is.  Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, was the Incarnation of a universal truth, a universal path, the embodiment of the Way to God and the vision that God holds for all of Creation.  But we still didn’t get it.  We fought and we argued and we held on to our own human-contrived understandings of who God is.  And it didn’t make sense to us.  This image of God did not fit into our carefully-constructed boxes that we had so painstakingly laid out.  This version of God was turning tables and breaking rules.  And so, as we humans have done so many times before and so many times since, we destroyed that which got in the way of our understanding and made our lives difficult to maintain.  We got rid of it.  There…it was finished…we could go back to the way it was before.

But God loves us too much to allow us to lose our way.  And so, God promised to be with us forever.  Because now you have seen me; now you know what it is I intended; now you know the Way.  And so, I will always be with you, always inside of you, always surrounding you, always ahead of you, and always behind you.  There will always be a part of me in you.  Come, follow me, this way.

Now we know the way.  Jesus did not walk this earth so that we could merely emulate what he did so that we could please God.  Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, Emmanuel, came to show us the way, to point out the journey that each of us is called to travel to become one with God.  And God’s Spirit, always present, always sustaining us, empowers us to become part of that Trinitarian unity and journey with God to God.  It is we—the we that we were always meant to be. 

The truth is, the Trinity IS a little undefined because God is undefined.  We don’t know everything about God.  God will never be fully known because God is God.  And, as you know, we always get in trouble when we are trying to define things, trying to put things in what we perceive as their allotted place.  We do this with thoughts and ideas.  We do this with our time.  We do this with other people.  And, yes, we humans do it with God.  There’s always more to God than what we can define.  We are not called to define God; we’re called to follow. 

“Come, follow me…this way…in whatever place you see me.”

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so do not waste too much time protecting your boxes. (Richard Rohr)

Grace and Peace,

Shelli