John
3:1-17
Blessed
Trinity
06-03-12
I
read a sermon by Thomas Long this week.
He started it off by telling this story, “In a magazine article
recently, a forest ranger in Wales described the most common question that
visitors to his park ask the forest rangers. Many people, he said, come to the
park to hike one of the beautiful trails that wander through the forest, trails
designed to display the magnificent trees and plants, to let the hikers
encounter the array of wildlife in the forest, and to take hikers on to
hilltops for breathtaking views of the countryside. But the most frequent
question that visitors ask the forest rangers is not "Where does this
trail go?" or "How long does it take to hike it?" or "Do we
need bug spray on the trail" but instead "Excuse me, can you tell me
where the trail starts?" It makes sense. No matter how lovely or
breathtaking a trail may be, if you don't know where the trail starts, you
can't hike it.”[1]
When
we think of God, where do we start? Where does that trailhead begin? Let’s start where we should always start, in
scripture. The doctrine of the Three in
One God, the Triune God, the Trinity is not something that is spelled out in
the Bible. The word ‘Trinity’ is not
found in the Bible itself. The doctrine
is something that was fleshed out later as the church started to develop. There are places where we can point to in
scripture though and demonstrate this idea and see where this doctrine came
from.
At
the end
of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus gives the disciples what is called the Great
Commission. He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given
to me. Therefore
go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you.” Jesus tells us to
baptize people in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. Then in 2 Corinthians Paul ends
his letter with a benediction.
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
You can see a trend here with when Jesus and Paul refer to the whole name of
God they say Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
My
theology professor at Duke, Geoffrey Wainwright is a spitting image of Alfred
Hitchcock, and is quintessentially British too.
He always said, "When I say, God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit." He drilled it into our
heads that when we talk about God, if we are going to talk about the Christian
God we worship, that God has a specific name and that name is Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. If you remove one piece of
that name of God, you no longer have the God we worship.
The
name of God is really important. We can
go all the way back to Moses and the burning bush to see that. Moses wants to know the name of God so he can
tell Israelites who is sending him. He
asks God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them,
‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his
name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to
say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”[2]
If
you know someone’s name then you understand a little bit of who they are. Try to describe someone without using their
name and you can get only so far. For example, can you guess who I am thinking about? There was a musician who was known for his
guitar skills. He is known world wide
for his licks and runs. His mastery of
the instrument set the tone of new style of rock and roll. He is seen as a revolutionary musician. Would you know who I am talking about? What if I told you he was black and had hit
albums hit the 60s. He has influenced many
throughout the his life. Do you know who
I am talking about yet? There are still
too many people that come to mind. The
person I am thinking about is Chuck Berry.
Not Jimi Hendrick or even B.B. King.
Yet, if I started with his name you all would have been with me from the
start. There is power, understanding and
acknowledgement when you know someone’s name.
The
fact is we know the name of God and that is what we celebrate today. Our God’s name is the Father, Son and the
Holy Spirit. Three different persons in
one God. They are all the same yet they
are different. They serve different
purposes yet they are all one. It is a
confusing and mind numbing doctrine but that is our limited human brain trying
to make sense of God.
When
we start with God’s name we learn more about who God is and what he does. If we look at the scripture story today we
get the familiar story of Nicodemus talking with Jesus. But Nicodemus comes searching for something;
something that many of us come to Church searching for. He comes to Jesus at night after being
astounded by the miraculous signs. He
comes because he wants to know more. He
comes because he wants to be apart of the God who is making the ministry of
Jesus possible. He, as a religious
leader, can sense that there is something important going on here but he can’t
put his finger on it. He is introduced
to a different way of seeing God, talking about God, and is confounded by the
language. Born again? Born of the
Spirit? Many of us feel the same way
when we first started to learn about God.
When
we stand at the trail head we see things for the first time and we can be
easily distracted by the beauty and the language those who have been on the
trail for a while use to describe it. Yet
if we look at Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus we can see that Jesus still
pushes us in a weird way. As Jesus
explains what is like to follow God he is demonstrating the community that God
exists in. The Father, Son and Holy
Spirit live in community with one another.
We are invited into that community.
One of
the misconceptions of our modern day Christian language is that we constantly
are telling people that they need to invite Jesus into their lives. Jesus needs to come into their life. Yet the reality is that Jesus is not telling
Nicodemus that if wants to know God better that all he has to do is ask Jesus
into his life. No instead he talks about
being born of the Spirit. The reality is
that God doesn’t want to be invited into your life, God wants you and invites
you to be a part of God’s life. God
wants us to be a part of the community and the relationship that makes up the
Holy Trinity.
But
this is the joy and love of God that we need to remember. There are lots of images out there of what
God is thought to look like. Some see
God as a clockmaker who created the world, wound it up and then let it go. He is the creator but doesn’t interact with
the world any more. Others see God like
a cowboy that John Wayne or Clint Eastwood played. He is one who brings down justice with a cold
and swift fury. He is sitting on a
cloud, like Zeus, waiting for us to mess up before he sends down lighting to
punish us. But that is not true. God is active, vital, and loving this world
right now. What is amazing is that God
invites us to join him in that work.
I
want you to reach back into the dark recesses of your brain and remember a
popular piece of clothing from back in the 1990s. I know it is hard to go back a decade in a
half, but do so. Remember these bracelets
that came out with WWJD on them. They were started by a youth pastor in Michigan
to help his youth remember to think about what Jesus may be asking them to do
in situations. It caught on nationwide
and soon everyone was wearing them. To
think about what Jesus would do in a certain situation is a noble and great
idea. But it almost makes God out to be
a life coach not God. All we have to do
to be a follower of God is to think about what he would want us to do in this
situation. While on a youth trip to
Lake Junaluska one summer the speaker there asked another question which I
found what a much better way of thinking about it. He told us we should be asking, What is Jesus
Doing?
When
we place our lives in the midst of God’s life then the world seems different,
changed, and we see things anew. That is
because we are seeing things through God not our own eyes. We are walking through life while dwelling
inside the community of the God we worship.
It is hard to do that and not feel for the people that God’s heart
breaks for. It is hard not to feel
compassionate about feeding the hungry, helping the sick, and reaching out to
the least of these. It is hard to sit
back and watch people be oppressed and taken advantage of. That is because when we place ourselves in
the midst of God’s relationship with God’s three persons, we are changed.
We
can see this the best at the communion table.
I truly enjoy doing communion through intinction because of what it
represents. The physical act adds so
much to the sacrament it self. Think
about it. When we come to receive
communion what do we do. We get up out
of our seats and we come forward. We put
our hands out and receive the gift of the bread and wine. “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many,
are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. The bread which we break is a sharing in the
body of Christ. The cup over which we
give thanks is a sharing in the blood of Christ.”
The
God we worship is a God of community, a God of relationships, a God of constant
and unconditional love. The Three in
One, Triune, Trinitarian God we worship is named the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. We are invited into that
relationship. We are welcomed into the
love and compassion that the three persons have for one another and us. As we stand at the trailhead we realize that
the trail we are walking is the one God is walking. When we are ready we step forward in the work
God is already doing, the relationship that God is already living out, and the
love that God is already expressing.
When we are born again, born of the Spirit, when we finally want to give
our lives over to God, we are invited into community, into relationship. We are welcomed into God’s life, God’s
community and the relationship that is the God we worship, the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
And
all God’s people said…Amen.
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