Josi: 1In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw
the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his
robe filled the temple. 2Seraphs were in attendance above
him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and
with two they covered their feet, and with two they
flew. 3And one called to another and said:
Dan: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole
earth is full of his glory.
Josi: 4The pivots on the thresholds
shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with
smoke. 5And I said: Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a
man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet
my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!
6Then
one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been
taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7The seraph
touched my mouth with it and said:
Dan: Now that this has touched your lips, your
guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.
Josi: 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
Dan: Whom shall I send, and who will go for
us?
Josi: And I said, Here am I; send me!
Today's second reading really is a dialogue. It's probably one of
the more famous dialogues in the entire bible, and we thought
there might be some benefit in presenting it as a dialogue. If
you follow along, you'll find that the words come straight from
the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible but we've left out
the Jesus said
and the Nicodemus said.
Josi will
speak Nicodemus' parts and I will speak Jesus' parts and the brief
introductory narration. I'd invite you to listen now for the word
of God. The gospel of John chapter 3 verses 1-17.
Dan: 1Now there was a Pharisee named
Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2He came to Jesus by
night and said to him,
Josi: 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.
Dan: 3Very truly, I tell you, no one can
see the kingdom of God without being born from above.
Josi: 4How can anyone be born after
having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb
and be born?
Dan: 5Very 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.
Josi: 9How can these things be?
Dan: 10Are you a teacher of Israel, and
yet you do not understand these things? 11Very 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. 16For 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. 17Indeed, God did not send the Son
into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world
might be saved through him.
Last week was Pentecost on the liturgical calendar. It was a day of
celebrating the initiative of the life-giving Holy Spirit. This
week is another festival day. It's the last time that the table and
the pulpit will be dressed in anything but green, the color of
ordinary time, all the way until the Sunday before Advent. This
Sunday's festival is a little bit less well known and a little bit
less understood but I guess that's kind of the nature of the day.
This is one of the Sundays of the church year when all the
mathematicians and all of the philosophers go, Huh?
You see,
it's the day that's especially set aside to celebrate and to
remember the mystery of the Trinity. The God we know and serve is
one God from the beginning of time until the end of time, but that
one God is made known in three persons… so 1+1+1=1 but at the
same time it equals 3; but also one.
Now the discussion of the trinity came about a couple hundred years
after the scriptures were written down, so it's not like we're going
to be able to look at the Bible and have it say this is how to
understand the trinitarian God.
The Bible doesn't really work
that way. But we can come to the text and ask what light it might
shed on the God we know as Creator, Christ and Spirit.
Our first reading, from Isaiah, gives a picture into the majesty of
God. We start out with an image of the hem of God's garment filling
the temple. When we remember that the temple was roughly equivalent
to three football fields placed side by side, it's an amazing
picture of grandeur. Earlier this week, when Shirley read the
passages to start thinking about music for the service she said
and that's just the hem… Where's the rest of it. How big
is it?
Good questions… And what about these seraphim with
six wings who cover their eyes and feet and fly and sing Holy, Holy,
Holy…
Even though Isaiah wrote down his vision in hopes that other people
might experience God through reliving his experience, it's still
hard to put pictures around the words. But the reality of what this
text is showing isn't only about the grandeur and the character of
God. It also brings into focus the transforming power of being in
God's presence. Isaiah started in a place of Woe is me. I have
unclean lips.
But then the seraph touched the coal to his lips
and Isaiah was made into a willing and able servant, one who was
sent out to speak the word of God. Isaiah didn't claim to
understand God completely. In fact as I read the passage, it's
almost the opposite. He told the story to communicate how much of
God he couldn't begin to fathom. But what became clear to Isaiah
was that he was made holy so that he could share God's holiness with
others. His own sense of call, his purpose in life, flowed directly
out of his understanding of God.
That may be one of the main reasons to wrestle with the concept of the trinity–because now, as then, our call and purpose flow out of our understanding of God.
In the gospel text, Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, came to Jesus in
the night looking for clarification. He didn't think Jesus was God,
but he did want to find out more about who Jesus was and what to
expect from him. But the visit didn't go how Nicodemus
expected… not at all. He started out saying to Jesus we
know you're from God because of the things you do
… He
wanted Jesus to talk about himself, but instead Jesus talked about
being born, and the wind, and the Son of Man and God's gift to save
the world. The answers almost went as far as being non-sequitur.
Nicodemus didn't understand when Jesus talked about being
born… and we're not exactly sure either.
Some translations, like the one printed in the bulletin say no
one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.
Some of translations use born again,
a few use born
anew.
I'm not going to argue for one translation over the
others because it's likely that Jesus was deliberately being vague.
The details of the birth were secondary. His primary concern was
that the birth is the work of the Holy Spirit. What's born of the
flesh is flesh, what' s born of the spirit is spirit. Like we
talked about last week for Pentecost, the spirit is the life breath
of God… and the Spirit is the one who gives newness of life.
Everyone who believes knows the work of the spirit and according to
Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, it's precisely because of the
work of the spirit that people are able to see the kingdom of God at
all, even if it's only in glimpses here and there.
It's nice to have 2000 years of hindsight when we get to verse 13.
Nicodemus probably didn't realize that Jesus was speaking of himself
when he said: No one has ascended into heaven except the one who
descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
If Nicodemus could hear
it, Jesus is the one who could tell him about heavenly things
because he's the link between heaven and earth. The revelation that
was the Son of Man wasn't a theological exposition, it wasn't
academic knowledge, and it wasn't abstract. It was a concrete
demonstration of what love looks like in action. From teaching in
the temple to welcoming outcasts and sinners, from forgiving a
prostitute to rebuking the Pharisees, from being born in a stable
among shepherds and angels to dying on a cross among crowds and
thieves: the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ
was a revelation that offered both abundant and eternal life.
And then in the last two verses of today's text, Jesus told Nicodemus that God the Creator, the Loving Parent is the one who is really the hero of the story because that's who initiated all of the gifts. God created the world and God loved the world. God knew we wouldn't be able to fend for ourselves and God knew that we weren't going to be able to make things right without the Spirit as an advocate and without Christ as a tangible model. So God took initiative to reach out to the world in love, by offering the redemptive gift of Christ and the sustaining gift of the Holy Spirit: each one a revelation of God's self.
These are the three who are one. The spirit who blows where it will and who is the giver of new life, the Christ who is the tangible link between Heaven and earth and who shows us what the love of God looks like, and The Creator, the one who spoke creation into being and also initiated the redemption of creation.
These are the three who are one. But it's still hard to understand the trinity. I've heard it explained as an apple... the core, the fleshy part and the skin together make up a whole apple. I've heard it explained as an egg the yolk, the white and the shell together make up the whole egg. I've heard it explained as notes on the piano: when you play a C, it sounds fine, but when you add an E and a G you get the three part harmony of a major chord, more full and more rich sounding than any of the notes alone. There are lots of different images that have been used to describe the trinitarian God all of them are metaphors and many of the images are helpful.
Oddly enough the way I've found most helpful to think about the
trinity is literally an image, and I brought it with me today. It' s
called the Icon of the Holy Trinity and the original was painted
almost 600 years ago by Andrew Rublev. Now to be clear, icons aren't
God. 
They don't represent God. We don't pray
to them. There are other traditions that use them differently, but I
see icons as a representation of someone's experience of God. The
person who made the icon is trying to share their experience in the
hope that the picture will be helpful in someone else's journey of
coming to know God. I wasn't sure if most of you would be able to see
this so I also printed it on the back of the prayer list.
In the icon, representative figures for the three persons of the trinity are inclined toward each other with hands, heads and feet. As I look, my eye wants to continually move between the three of them and continual dynamic movement is one of the things that characterizes the trinity. The relationship between the three is often referred to with the Greek word Perichoresis which comes from peri- which means around, and choreo- which means dance. The idea is that each member of the trinity participates in relationship with the other two by freely offering one's self and freely receiving with gratitude what the others offer. To dance is to be dynamic in movement and also to work together in partnership.
But perhaps more than the dynamic partnership that the icon shows, the other thing that's so helpful for my understanding is the circle that's made by the three figures. You'll notice that the circle has an opening in the front. It's almost as if when I look at the icon the figures are welcoming me and welcoming us to join the dance, the movement and the partnership… to receive what God has freely offered, because God has offered so much of God's self through Creation, the redemption of Christ, the new life of the Spirit. And then also to respond by freely giving ourselves back to God.
Now in addition to being Trinity Sunday, here at the United Parish it's also the day we celebrate the anniversary of our chartering as a church. So in a couple of minutes we'll be celebrating where we have been and where we are going as a church. The church was founded by multiple denominations in partnership. It grew by people reaching out in fellowship and responding to God's invitation. Our call and our purpose is, and from what I can tell always has been to be in the kind of relationship of receiving what God has offered and then responding by giving back our time and energy and even financial resources so that the love of the Trinitarian God can be shared in this congregation and in this community. After all, we love because we have been loved. We give because we have been given so much and we go because we're in dynamic partnership with the one who sent us. Amen
The foregoing sermon was given by Rev. Dan Holland on Trinity Sunday, June 7, 2009, at the United Parish of Bowie.
© 2009 Daniel Holland
