Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17

“Making the Trinity Personal” Richmond’s First Baptist Church, May 30, 2021 Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17

When I ﬁrst told the story of Nicodemus to my son, it was very familiar to me, and being a storyteller, I thought I told it pretty well. He was four years old. When I ﬁnished, he said, “Mom, why does Jesus give the Pharisees such a hard time? They were just a group of boys trying to follow the rules.” Suddenly schooled by a four year old, I knew I wasn’t telling the story right. I had to go back to the beginning and think it out for myself. Maybe I’d got the story wrong.

I mentioned this to Rabbi Jack Spiro at dinner at Richmond Hill one night. I learned as a girl in Jerusalem that to talk to people of other faiths invigorated my own and deepened my respect for others. My Muslim and Jewish friends did not need me to be Muslim or Jewish. They need me to be a good and thoughtful Christian. Rabbi Spiro said that my four year old was right to be dismayed. The Pharisees were a learned and respected group. Jesus himself may have been a Pharisee. The Apostle Paul certainly was. The Pharisees set the foundation for lively rabbinic study as we know it today. I had to go back to this story with fresh eyes--never a bad idea when it comes to scripture. I have been fascinated by the story of Nicodemus ever since.

The way I now see it, It was a dark yet cloudless night. Jesus was ﬁnally alone and standing off by himself. This was exactly what Nicodemus hoped for as he made his way toward him, not even sure what it was he was seeking. It was impossible to get Jesus alone during the day. Oh, there were conversations as the crowd moved across the hills of Galilee--people would step out of the crowd to try and one-up Jesus. But, Jesus, a consummate rabbi himself, would have the last word over and over again. People came from miles away to be part of this. This banter would have been familiar toJesus and Nicodemus. They lived in a culture of Rabbinic rabble-rousing --one upmanship with an audience that sharpened both wit and skill.

In that tradition “It is written” would have been the throw down for a ready comeback. The crowd’s eyes would dart back and forth between the two in dialogue--and everyone had a team favorite. Make no mistake: rabbinic debate was a spectator sport. Even the body language would say it: Stand back. Watch. Learn.

Nicodemus would have been able to stand his own. He is described as a leader of the Pharisees-- but debate is not what he is after on this dark and cloudless night as his sandaled feet make their way purposefully over the cobblestones. He is compelled and propelled to seek Jesus. By what? By Whom? He was not in it for the ready win. He wants to know more; he has lost interest in trying to be right and has a deeper thirst for more.

Nicodemus sees Jesus standing alone, perhaps even waiting for him; Nicodemus is walking away from the grandiosity and toward curiosity. He is willing to go back to the beginning of what he knows, opening his mind and heart.

Nicodemus gets right to the point. Perhaps they’ve spoken before. This doesn’t feel like this is their ﬁrst conversation. Could they have studied Torah together?

He strips it all down to the basic truth as he understands it: “Jesus, you come from God.”

And Jesus responds. “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.”

Now this is very important: Jesus is not saying “Nicodemus, you don’t get it.” I think it is very likely that Jesus is saying, Nicodemus, you DO get it: If you see this, you have glimpsed the kingdom of God.

Nicodemus is trained to argue this from every side. “How can anyone be born after growing old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” This is not a naive question. But on this night he lays down the skills of rabbinic rhetoric and listens to the still small voice within that led him across those cobblestones to Jesus.

We can go back to the beginning of what we know and stand under that dark and cloudless sky with Nicodemus, willing to untangle our certainty and opinions. This is how we are born again. Every time we turn back toward God through prayer or honest conversation, every time we are willing to learn and listen and shift our point of view, we are born anew.

And here stands Nicodemus, letting go of the need to be right. He tradescertainty for deeper understanding.

They talk as old friends, and perhaps they were. “Do not be astonished,” says Jesus. “The 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.” “Nicodemus,” he seems to be saying, “You don’t need to have this all ﬁgured out. You do not need to have all of the answers. Just stand here with me.”

Jesus closes the conversation tenderly with words meant to be embracing and inclusive and loving, then and now--words that are bread for the journey and manna in a desert of doubt: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” These are words of invitation and afﬁrmation and inclusion. “Nicodemus, you see me. You know me. You already have what you seek. You have the answer you are looking for.”

Nicodemus was not looking to get it right. He was working to get it real. And on that night when Jesus was waiting, it was real.

*******

We can’t pretend that the Pharisees were the only ones to get lost in the tangle of right answers. The problem persists through the centuries to right now.

Leo Tolstoy is known by many of us as the author of War and Peace, but you may be surprised to know that he was a deeply thoughtful Christianimaginatively exploring his faith in stories. He wrote a story about a bishop who got lost in the theological answers he’d been taught in seminary.

This bishop was traveling at sea with some pilgrims. The wind was favorable and the weather fair. As the bishop strolled on the deck, he came upon some pilgrims who were listening to a ﬁsherman. He was pointing at something in the distance. When the bishop asked about it, the pilgrims said he was telling a story about three hermits who lived alone on an island and did nothing but pray. The bishop asked who taught them to pray? When no one could satisfactorily answer this, he summoned the captain and said he would like to go visit these three men to make sure that they knew how to pray properly. The captain discouraged this. “We will lose too much time if we do that, and besides it is low tide and the shores are rocky, we will have to anchor and wait while you are rowed ashore. The bishop simply would not be dissuaded: “I will pay you for your time--and what is a delay compared to the souls of these three men?” The island came into view and the three men could be seen on the shore with their arms raised up to heaven. The boat jolted as the anchor was dropped and the sails furled. A skiff was lowered for the bishop and his oarsmen.

The hermits stood on the shore and greeted the Bishop. “Greetings,” responded the bishop, as he introduced himself. “I have come to instructyou in prayer. Now tell me what it is that you know about prayer.

“Not much,” said one, “We pray like this,” and the others joined in, “We are three and you are three, have mercy upon us.”

“Well this is encouraging,” thought the bishop to himself, “they know something about the Trinity,”

“Now tell me what it is that you know about the Trinity, said the bishop. “Oh we know nothing about the trinity,” said one. “We know nothing about much at all,” said the second. And the third said, “We just raise our hands in prayer to God and we pray this: “ We are three, and you are three, have mercy upon us.”

“Well I think I need to teach you about the doctrine of the Trinity,” and he did. And then he said, “I need to teach you the Lord’s Prayer.” And he did, Well… he tried. This proved to be a little trickier. It took awhile. The Bishop spent hours and finally, as the sun was setting, and he was convinced he’d done the best he could, he allowed the oarsmen to row him back to the boat. He thanked the captain and the other pilgrims for waiting. He felt good about what he’d done. Long after the others went tobed, he stood on the deck looking out at the sea. As he marvelled at the way the moonlight seemed to cast a path on the sparkling waves, he was startled to see three figures moving toward him on that path of moonlight. And then he was very startled to see that it was the three hermits, RUNNING on the water. Surely his eyes were deceiving him. But then the three figures began waving their arms and called out to him. “Bishop… we forgot the words! We forgot the words that you taught us!”

“Oh,” said the bishop, as they reached him. The words. He took a deep breath and bowed his head brieﬂy. When he looked up he said, “The words you must pray are ‘We are three and you are three, have mercy upon us.’

The Trinity is a doctrine. But a doctrine, without our participation, is like one hand clapping. The Trinity is God’s 3 point sermon, God’s bridge to humanity, God’s segue into the present moment. The Trinity can be personal. I know when and where I learned it. There are childhood summers that sing through time. The summer I stayed with my grandparents in Fairmont, West Virginia, is one of those summers. I remember all of it;--the smell of that inflatable wading pool and the way the crinkled blue bottom poked the bottoms of my feet. I remember spaghetti dinners on the forest green picnic table. I remember making rainbows with the watering hose as we watered hollyhocks. I remember the smell of rain on the slate stepping stones after an afternoon storm, I remember sitting on the front porch at twilight waiting for the dark to bring the fireflies.

And I remember Vacation Bible School. My grandmother didn’t drive so we would walk over to Sixth Street and down to Fairmont Avenue and then over to Ninth Street. She would drop me off at church where I felt welcomed and never abandoned. I remember the smell of paste in small white jars and the feel of the blunt shiny metal scissors. I remember the sharp corners of the cardboard box of assorted Nabisco cookies that I presented to the teacher when it was my turn to bring snacks. I learned the words to Jesus loves me. I still have the small white plastic cross that I was given for perfect attendance. It still glows in the dark and it still feels right in my hand. That cross is an early assurance that I belonged to a community of faith that I would grow into. It is the starting point.

It was here that I learned about the Trinity. Not at Bible school, but one day on the way home. My grandmother asked me what I learned about Jesus that day. “Well,” I answered. “I learned that he loves me, this I know,because the Bible tells me so. Oh, and this….and if you are cutting out Jesus, you should cut on the solid line and fold on the dotted line.” She looked at me and smiled with all of the warmth and acceptance of God. I could tell that she knew that I had not gotten that part right when it came to Jesus. I’d cut on the dotted line. And her smile said that it did not make one bit of difference to Jesus.

“Oh, Annie. The most important thing you need to know about Jesus is that he is your best friend and he is always right behind you.” We stopped at the Tastee Freeze on Fairmont Avenue—even though it was before lunch. As we stood waiting for our cones, I would jump high in the air and spin around fast. My grandmother knew I was trying to catch Jesus. “Nope,” she laughed. “Don’t you know he’s faster than that?”

“Why can’t I see him,” I pressed.

“He is invisible. Jesus is the Holy Spirit.”

“Why is the Holy Spirit invisible?”

“Because the Holy Spirit is God.”

As I leapt from stone to stone toward the back door when we got home,she called me over. She asked me to pick a clover. “Look,” she said. “One clover: God. Three parts: Father. Son. Holy Spirit.” She sang the words we sang this morning: “Holy. Holy. Holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed trinity.” No dialectical discourse--just simple acceptance of a simple truth. As I tell it, I can still feel it.

I developed a simple and working theology that summer that would provide the scaffolding for a growing faith. Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible tells me so. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty, God in three persons, blessed Trinity...and it is okay if you cut on the dotted line when you were supposed to fold.

It was a good start. As life becomes more complex, our faith becomes more complex and we can get tangled in our own right answers. We forget we can take a step back. We can untangle what we don’t know by going back to what we know is true. We can dial back the dogma and return to simple truth with fresh eyes. God is love. God is Good.

The Holy Spirit is the great franchiser of God’s love. And works through this church and in each one of you. Father, Son, Holy Spirit; If you knowone, you know them all.

References: “The Three Hermits,” by Leo Tolstoy.