Sermon | Year B - The Year of Mark

June 7, 2009 Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

That pesky Holy Trinity has caused so much confusion over the centuries. People have argued about it, been confused by it, ignored it, and have simply not thought about it.

There is one God; but the Father is God, and Jesus his Son is God, so how can both be God? Why would Jesus be praying to himself when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane? Then, throw in the Holy Spirit, and it gets very confusing. It is said that Son always was, but how can that be if he was born in Bethlehem? The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples at Pentecost. However, was there a Holy Spirit before Pentecost?

Questions always arise when it comes to the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is confusing; after all, how can a thing be one and three at the same time? The idea of it was struggled with particularly in the Middle East, North Africa and Egypt. That is one of the reasons that when Islam arrived that it initially had such appeal. There was no Trinity in Islam. There was only Allah and Muhammad was his prophet. One God, no three persons, no Trinity, and although Jesus was respected, he was seen not as God, nor as divine, but as a man - a great man to be sure, but just a man.

It has been said by some cynics, that if the doctrine of the trinity were eliminated from the faith, then the bulk of popular Christian thinking, preaching, writing, and singing, and the mindset these reflect, would not have to be changed much at all. This is because we do not pay much attention to the Trinity -- to what it says or to what it means. We know we believe in God -- the same God everybody believes in -- and that, pretty much, is that. After all, we think about Jesus a great deal, but we think less about the Father, and even less about the Holy Spirit.

As hard as it is for us to understand the Trinity, never the less, we Christians do have a different and distinctive way of understanding God, one that sets us apart from everybody else.

Since today is Trinity Sunday, the day we are called upon to pay special attention to the way God has been revealed in the Christian faith. Of course, God is bigger than anything we can say or imagine so all references to God will be incomplete. At the same time, this vision of the Trinity of God is true, and it matters, and it makes a difference.

We insist that God is not a mean old man with a beard; that God is not some unconscious force out of Star Wars; and that God is not some peculiar deity looking down on us from above unmoved by what we are. God is not something who created and then left us alone for the world to spin on its own. Instead, as Trinitarian Christians, we confess that God exists, and at His heart, as a relationship of love -- one God in three persons, the wellspring of existence.

The Trinity is not simply a description of who God is and his nature; it describes a God how God is in relationship with the world and each of us. Through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is lovingly and intimately part of the lives of each of us. Jesus explains it this way to Nicodemus: “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.”

Nicodemus comes to Jesus because he senses that Jesus has a truth that Nicodemus is missing. However, John makes a point of saying that Nicodemus comes at night. He comes when nobody can see him arrive. He comes because he does not want to lose his status and privilege. He is hoping that somehow he can put his mind to rest and keep on the same path he is going.

Jesus turns Nicodemus’ world upside down. Jesus is essentially saying that God the Father is not one who looks upon our works but upon the heart. The Father is one who looks upon us as his children. He loves the world; he does not hate it.

Since the Father loves the world, he is sending his one and only Son to save it. This is a radically different God from any worshiped in the world. Nicodemus has trouble understanding. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit live to love, create, redeem and uphold. As the Son saves us, the Holy Spirit sanctifies and strengthens us in faith.

In essence, Jesus is saying to Nicodemus that God is love. He is absolute and infinite love. God is fullness of love that needs nothing. God is continually pouring out that divine, creative love into the world. Whenever and wherever that love happens, it is God’s Word being actualized -- out there, objective and concrete. Moreover, it is through the Spirit within that we realize and experience whatever God’s love is doing. Therefore, we speak of the love of the Father, in the Son, through the Holy Spirit.

This is complicated, but it is important, too. It is important because Christians have insisted from the beginning that what they have experienced, through Jesus and by the power of the Spirit, is God’s own life and presence. Anything other than a Trinitarian description compromises that.

The Trinity reveals God not as a distant force or an angry and ambiguous power. Instead, God is personal and in relationship with us and the world to the point of sending his Son for us. Amen.