Sermon
5-27-18 Trinity Sunday
Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our
Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.
It’s that time of year again, when our weekends from now
until the end of July are suddenly booked with graduations and their
celebrations. Cake… and cards, and cake, and poster boards full of
pictures and awards, and cake, and
signing yearbooks, and…. Cake. Seven
years ago, around this time, I was among the graduates across the country
receiving one sort of diploma or another. I and my seminary classmates,
however, had the onerous distinction of receiving our master’s degrees. But not
just ANY kind of Master’s degree. Upon receiving our hoods and diplomas, we
became…. Masters of Divinity…. !
(With heavy sarcasm) After four years of study, I now know
everything about God, including - but not limited to: how many angels can dance
on the head of a pin, whether or not our pets go to heaven, why bad things
happen to good people, why GOOD things happen to BAD people, and most
importantly, what WAS God thinking when he created mosquitoes and ticks?
Seriously though, there are just some aspects of our
Christians faith that seem to allude easy answers. And it just so happens that
today, on Holy Trinity Sunday, we celebrate one of the most perplexing parts of
our Christian faith. Libraries full of books and papers have been written about
the Trinity. Scholars and theologians have dedicated their lives to parsing out
and trying to pin down exactly what it means that we believe in a three-in-one,
one-in-three kind of God. The Trinity it is the kind of thing that makes your
head hurt if you think about it for too long. And we all know, summer is NOT
for thinking!
This is why I feel for Nicodemus from our Gospel reading;
because our friend Nick here doesn’t always “get it” either. Nicodemus is a
learned man, a prominent and respected leader in his community, probably with a
very deep and mature faith. Nick is no novice. This guy knows his Torah. And he
STILL has a hard time grasping what Jesus had to say about the kingdom of God.
Poor confused Nick can only throw up his hands and give voice to what we ALL
are thinking: “How can these things be?”
With every fiber of our being, we want our mysteries to
be defined. We seek know the unknowable and to measure the un-measureable. We
are driven to explore the height and depths of the earth because we don’t like
seeing blank spots on the map. Similarly, we persist in plumbing the depths of faith
– because if we can get a handle on God,
then perhaps the confusing world that we live in might actually make sense.
So, we end up coming up with some strange ideas about God
being a Trinity. Perhaps you’ve heard of a few of these: The Trinity is like an
apple. The Trinity is like H2O water, ice, and steam. The Trinity is like a
four-leaf clover. The Trinity is like how I am a daughter, a sister, a pastor,
and a friend. Really, reallyweird stuff if you think about it too much.
All these strange ideas we’ve come up with are just ways
we try to answer the important questions that have plagued humankind for
centuries: Who is God? And how do we see God at work in the world?
The many writers of the scriptures have spent their lives
wrestling with those very questions. For the prophet Isaiah, he experienced God
as a larger-than-life being on a throne. For the Apostle Paul, who wrote
letters, including this one to the Roman Christians, his experience of the
power of God literally blinded him while on his way to persecute followers of
Jesus. And Nicodemus is seeing but not comprehending as he stares the true
answer to “who is God?” right in the face.
Though their experiences are very different, they have
one thing in common. To them, God was not an apple, water, or a four-leaf
clover. God was a Someone whom they encountered, who met them face to face and
wanted a relationship with them. And
these people are never quite the same every again. Our encounters with God
change us.
While imagining God in Trinitarian form may be helpful,
you can’t have a relationship with a doctrine or set of beliefs. God does not
desire to remain an idea or belief or theological construct in the mind of us,
his children. How can we know this? Because God so loved the world – so loved
us – that he gave to us a way by which we can know him, deeply and directly.
For God so loved the world that God gave us Love Incarnate: Jesus.
In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God swept
away the curtain of mystery once and for all. No longer do we have to grope
around in the dark for bits and fragments of the divine. In Jesus, the light of
God has shown out in the darkness. In Jesus, God came to us in a way we can
understand. In Jesus, we all have become “Masters” of divinity because Jesus
reveals to everyone the very essence of “who God is.”
Who is God? God is love.
This time of year is also wedding season in addition to graduation
season, isn’t it? How many of you got up early to watch the royal wedding last
weekend? If you haven’t already, go listen to Anglican Archbishop Michael
Curry’s wedding sermon. Bishop Curry described the power in the love of God, as
the source of our being and the guide for our lives. He reminded the bride and
groom… and all of us who were tuning in around the world… that Jesus started
this revolutionary movement grounded in the unconditional love of God, which
has the power to save the world.
… “For God so loved the world that God sent his only son”
…to reveal to us a loving and forgiving God who wants to be in a relationship
with us. This is what we know: Jesus came to us in a way that we
would find most relatable – in a body that could laugh and cry, teach and
embrace, heal and feel pain. Jesus is our brother, because we both
share the same loving Father. Jesus is our Lord because he
calls us to emulate the life that he lived here on earth – an existence of love
and sacrifice. And Jesus is our savior because of his final
victory over the forces of sin and death through his death and resurrection.
But we can know all we think there is to know about God
and still completely miss the boat. Like Nicodemus. But Jesus didn’t not throw
his hands up in frustration and end the conversation at the first sign of
confusion. No – Jesus patiently teaches on, determined to get his message
across.
I suppose we should give poor Nick some credit,
because he had enough wisdom to know that there was something different about
this Jesus. So, Nick took a chance and arranged this secret meeting that would
forever change him.
Our friend Nick may not have fully absorbed the
significance of his encounter with Jesus, even when confronted by “John’s
greatest hit” John 3:16. But we do know that he WAS changed by his experience
with Jesus that night. Because Nick pops up again at the END of the Gospel of
John, at Jesus’ trial before the Jewish council. In fact, he was the only
naysayer in their otherwise unanimous “guilty” verdict. And later on, John
writes that Nicodemus helped Joseph of Arimathea give Jesus a respectful burial
when his body had been taken down from the cross. He is not quite the man that
he used to be. And we too, when we encounter the Risen Jesus, are never quite
the same afterwards.
Jesus didn’t walk this earth to answer every question
we’ve ever had about God. God is still at work in the world in ways we cannot
yet understand. The wind of the Spirit will blow where it will, and carry us
with it. But we can’t go wrong with Jesus as our trailblazer and navigator.
Are you ready for all the awesome things that the God who
created you has in store for you?
Are you ready for THE
Master of Divinity to take your hand and guide you down the paths of your life?
Are you ready for the Holy Spirit to lead you into
freedom from fear into a spirit of love for the world?
This is not graduation. This is only the beginning. Oh,
the places you’ll go (with the help of our Trinity God).
You better buckle up, Buttercup, because it’s going to be
one exciting ride - or should I say a “three-in-one” - exciting ride. Thanks be
to God. Amen. AMEN.
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