What the Blessed Trinity means today

 “…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.” (John 3:16)

Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17

John 3:1-17

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

(Year B: Trinity Sunday, 30^th May 2021)

May I write this in the name of the Father and of the Son and of Holy Spirit. Amen.

What a prayer to begin with!  Each word is important and especially the last word, Amen. We say Amen so often in our prayers. Amen translates, roughly, as ‘so be it done’ or ‘this is so, this is true’. Jesus uses ‘Amen’ many times to drive home a point: ‘Amen, Amen I say to you. 

Today is Trinity Sunday – the Sunday after Pentecost when we celebrate and focus on the Blessed Trinity. We all know from our Sunday School or catechism that the Blessed Trinity is the teaching that God is one God in three persons without beginning or end.  It is central to our belief as Christians. Many teachings were disputed and doubted over the ages but this one on the One-ness and Three-ness of God is not negotiable. It was at the centre of the debates, clashes and even schisms in the early centuries.

What is the Trinity? It is the belief in God as a communion of three persons – eternal, co-equal and distinct. It is a challenge and a mystery but it is the truth that distinguishes us from other world faiths. The key to understanding the Trinity, I suggest, is the historical fact that the eternal Word became flesh – one of us – in time and in a particular place. God became matter and the rest is – to use a phrase – history.  Of course, one is not saying that the Trinity or the Second person of the Trinity was conceived, born or came into being at some point in time. No, the Trinity always existed and always will. Rather, the Son of God took flesh and in so doing became ‘one of us’. Matter is good because matter has been taken up into God and we have been divinised – in other words made godly. This ‘divinisation’ is not the preserve of baptised Christian believers; however, we are set apart by our baptism which was in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. ‘‘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” declares Jesus in John 17:16.  In other words, God could not contain himself in heaven as a closed communion of Three Persons. God had to share this communion of love not be creating us as singular individuals but as individuals in communion with our mother and father and with family and with society.

The teaching and belief in the Trinity is more than intellectual assent. It is the experience of living in communion with God the Father in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. It is the experience of encountering God in the most intimate and surprising ways in the communion of family, marriage, partnership and Christian friendship.  At the core of this teaching is the unity of all things and, at the same time, the diversity of life and persons. There is only one truth but many paths to that truth according to the gifts of the Holy Spirit who draws all of us into communion with the Father and Son.

Three take-away points

1                    We do well to pray to God as Trinity and not just three completely detached persons. The ‘Glory Be to the Father …’ is an excellent prayer along with the ‘Our Father’. It anchors us in praise, petition and renewal.

2                    Believing in the Blessed Trinity makes demands on us. We cannot be indifferent to a world racked by pain, conflict, disease and brokenness. We are called to reach out and open our hearts and minds to those whom God sends to us or who cross our paths.

3                    Finally, we should never be shy to explain what we believe in and what our values are even if we fail, sometimes, to live up to them. Our faith and our lived experience is the light of the world if we let it be so by God’s grace.

And now let me conclude with a profound prayer in one Word: Amen!

(words above = 692)

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Further reading: notes and questions, verse by verse

Preliminaries

As often is the case in the Gospel of John, the scene for an important teaching is a conversation between Jesus and someone who comes to him.

1-2:  Nicodemus slips out at night to see Jesus

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’ 

What did a leading religious figure do when he wanted to have a conversation with Jesus? He slipped out at night. May be he met Jesus in a secret location or, perhaps, where he was staying (or both). He was afraid and, yet, curious. Are there times and places where we can have safe conversations with Jesus in our own hearts?  Sometimes, we need to have an honest conversation – on our own – with the Saviour of the World and our best friend ever. Would we risk it? Nicodemus had a lot to lose. He was not only a leading member of the Sanhedrin but he belonged to the Pharisee party.

Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue. (John 12:42)

We hear of Nicodemus again in John 7:50-53. And we meet him again in John 19:39 where he gives Jesus a royal burial. No doubt, according to John, we can conclude that Nicodemus was a ‘stand out’ guy who did not lose his soul in the group think. He stepped out – cautiously at first – and inquired of Jesus and thought it through and decided to follow him.

3-7   Spiritual re-birthing

Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. ’Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.”

These lines are rich in imagery as they bring to mind sight, Kingdom, birthing, ageing, water, spirit and flesh.  The conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus is in full flow.  The Kingdom of Heaven is within each of us if we could see it. We must be reborn in the spirit to enter it. This reminds us of our own baptism. However, it also prompts us to recognise the Kingdom which is already here among us and within us as well as beyond and above us.

8-10   The Holy Breath of God blows where it wills

 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 said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

The breath of God is the Holy Spirit. The love of God is breathed forth as the mutual love of Father and Son giving life and love to the whole world.

11-15   Belief as the way to life

Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

Nicodemus is still immersed in a this-worldly perspective. It is like a form of 1st century religious atheism. He needs to make a step and leap in trust. The truth is that he cannot make this leap without help from above. When Jesus is lifted up the cross we are lifted up too. The breath of God from the Cross generates new life.

16-17   The point of the Gospel

‘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. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

God has sent Jesus not to condemn but to save. If there is a judgment of any person to be made we must leave that to God. We all face judgment. Jesus stands beside us as does the Holy Spirit the helper to plead for us.  In this we are confident of being reborn and of seeing the Kingdom of God.