Sermon June 7 2009

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
“The Mystery of the Sacred”
We affirm and celebrate the mystery God.
Creator of vast galaxies,
yet still creating with passion in our midst;
Source of all life and goodness.

This Sunday after Pentecost is known as Trinity Sunday—a celebration of the mystery of God. The trinity is a celebration of mystery because this way of understanding God is not logical, so it keeps us from thinking we can God so well we don’t have to listen anymore.

Trinitarian doctrine is about describing how it is that humanity has experienced God throughout the thousands and thousands of years of human history. God has always been known in diverse ways—creator, law-giver, God of the land of Israel, God without boundaries, in a human called Jesus, in the men and women who gathered to understand how God as revealed in Jesus—through the wind, fire and leading of the Holy Spirit. God is expressed as people like Paul were transformed and established a following for the ways of Jesus.

We do celebrate the mystery God because it means that God isn’t bound by limitations that we imagine exist. When people make a false distinction between God’s creation of the universe and the continuing creation that we all know and can see, we are imagining a limitation for the God that has made possible all that we are. God continues to create—God has set in motion a process of creation that is without limitation. God has created within all creation a way of adapting to the changes that happen around us. God has created and continues to create moving us into a future that only God knows.

I have a feeling that we often think of God, creator, father or mother, God of the Old Testament, as “The God,” whereas the other aspects or persons of God may be seen as slightly less than the “Big God.” But the idea of creator, progenitor/father, source of life/mother, is simply meant to describe the most ancient way that people encountered God around them. The earliest questions about existence were answered by these encounters: Where did we come from? How did we come to be here? Who is responsible for our existence? How does it all work?

So as people understood more and more how the living things around them fit together—they knew that God loved this creation. The ancestors of the people who eventually wrote the books describing God’s creation, knew God in such a way that meant God was delighted by the living world that surrounded them. They saw the joy and approval that God felt in the beauty around them. They also saw that some of the actions of humanity were not within the beauty that God has intended and heard truth in stories of God’s anger and judgment. The God of the ancients has come to be known to us through the word’s of witness in the First Testament—especially those in the first 5 books of the Bible.

The kind of wonder and power that we feel when we ponder the act of creation means that we may put those actions of God above all of the other acts of God that people have experienced—yet we cannot forget that God’s act of creation continues as plants and animals, microscopic living things and even people adapt and develop.

God has created—God creates—God always will create.

We confess Jesus the Christ,
as the Wisdom of God,
and embodiment of love.
Our compassionate healer
and peace within our restlessness.

In some us, Jesus as human and Jesus as God, is beyond what our minds can grasp. It is, to be honest, beyond what most, MINDS, can grasp—it is, however, not our minds that need to understand, but our hearts and souls, even our physical selves. It is in John’s gospel today that we hear confusion about God and humanity—or spirit and flesh—and how we describe our experience of God within Jesus, within ourselves and even within other people.

Yet when we speak of God within flesh, we are describing how God speaks to us, to our minds—like when we talk about Jesus’ teaching his disciples or when we describe Jesus’ authority when commanding creation. It’s still mysterious—the eternal God within mortal human flesh and the eternal teaching understood within short-term contexts, like stories and particular encounters with Jesus.

The writer of John’s gospel, after receiving the stories of Jesus, saw in him the incarnation of God—even as God created the world. The prologue to John’s gospel describes the Word of God—another name for Jesus—eternally existing with God and creating with God. And God created, according to Genesis, by word, by logos or logic in Greek, or in another language, by Wisdom. The author of John heard these words in Proverbs and realized that Jesus, as experienced by his followers, inhabited them.
1Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
2On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
4‘To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
30I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
31rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
Though wisdom is described as a woman—because the word wisdom in Greek is feminine, Jesus, was so connected to God that he revealed this to those who followed him.

His expression of God was so unmatched that people came to him to experience God. They didn’t necessarily understand it, but they felt God in his presence. Nicodemus is an example of how people tried to understand who Jesus was as he walked through their lives.

He revealed God as he taught and as he healed them. He revealed God as he touched the lonely person and those in mourning. He revealed God when he gave the women and men around him a reasons to celebrate God and God’s joy at the lives of humanity.

Imagine the story from the perspective of Nicodemus.

“We kept hearing about this self-proclaimed Rabbi from the north; a gatherer of crowds and showy miracle worker. A common laborer I would have thought, untrained and unskilled in the important matters of religion. And yet, the more we heard, the more our curiosity and interest grew. There was something different and real at play here, something that finally made me search him out.

“So, under the cover of darkness, I found my way to Jesus and confessed my growing admiration. His response, if you could call it that, totally floored me. He wasn’t flattered at all! He calmly suggested that unless one is born anew, they couldn’t see the reign of God. Born anew, I thought, what has that got to do with anything practical or significant? “Can I enter a second time into my mother’s womb?” I asked, thinking I’d made a valid point. He persisted, though, with an increasingly astute teaching about spirit, water, and the loving nature of God; all of which made me think deeply about my own faith. “How can this be?” I wondered. To which he responded with an authority I’d rarely heard before: “Are you not a teacher of Israel, yet you do not understand such things?” For once, I was at a loss for words.

“Such matters of the heart and spirit have often escaped my attention. Not that they haven’t been there for me to consider and then teach to others. No, it has been more a matter of keeping the religious wheels turning and making sure all the “important” things are being done dutifully, practically, and, of course, on time. His candid words have shaken my foundations. Yet his wise presence has given rise to new hope.”

Nicodemus heard of his charisma—the gifts and teaching, but wanted to see it himself. And the experience he had illustrated Jesus’ perspective on the spirituality of God’s relationship with humanity and he expressed in such a way that opened Nicodemus eyes. Wisdom often presses us beyond what we think we know into areas where only the experience of God allows us to live without confusion. Nicodemus came to Jesus under cover of darkness because he didn’t know or understand—Jesus was there to shed light on his lack of understanding. I think he eventually arrived in the light because he was one of the faithful who helped in Jesus’ burial.

I think he didn’t understand completely—but he heard the wisdom of Jesus’ words. He heard God as he spoke to him.

And we open ourselves to the Spirit.
One who joyfully wings before us
to lead us on life’s journey;
God’s generous gift of comfort and truth.
We are people of the living, saving God,
pilgrims in our quest for wholeness and joy.
Entrusted with good news and filled with faith and love,
we will create communities of welcome and care,
we will seek to be lights
of justice, peace, and hope.

Though we often think of the Holy Spirit in connection with Pentecost as the women and men who followed Jesus experienced the wind and fire of the Spirit—we can look at the story of God’s work in humanity and realized that humanity had experienced the Spirit for thousands of years. The wind or Spirit of God blew over creation—even before the voice of God spoke. The wind or Spirit of God blew over the waters of the flood, revealing God’s creation once again. The fire and wind of God accompanied the Israelites as they crossed the desert. The wind of God entered the dead bones of Ezekiel’s vision of renewed life.

And the Holy Spirit came upon Mary as she conceived. The Holy Spirit came in the form of a Dove and claimed Jesus as God’s Beloved Son at Jesus baptism. Yet Jesus continued to accompany the women and men who had followed him after he had left them in bodily form—and so the Spirit had given them the opportunity of experiencing God in such a way that was unique to the newly forming church. They had heard Jesus’ words and felt Jesus’ presence—now that he had ascended, they felt it still. The Spirit of God was the only way to explain that experience.

The Trinity is an understanding of God that is unique to Christianity, though in many cultures divinity as a triad was common. What is unique about the Christian Trinity is that it is one God who exists in three persons without being three beings. Over the centuries many theologians have written millions of words about this teaching. What is important, to me, about the Trinity is that God’s existence is a community and we are made in that image—just as God works faithfully, steadfastly, compassionately and graciously in diverse ways and we, too, work best and most faithfully as community—much better than trying it alone.

To the glory of God, three in one and one in three. Amen.