Tied to One Another in the Love of the Trinity
Trinity Sermon by Jamie Howison on Isaiah 6:1-8 and John 3:1-17
In the words of N.T. Wright, “Trinity Sunday is where you find yourself when, having been swept off your feet by the rushing mighty wind of Pentecost, you get up, dust yourself down, and survey your new surroundings.” It is a brief pause between that Pentecost story of the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the beginning next Sunday of the long journey through Ordinary Time, and unlike any other feast day in the calendar, Trinity Sunday celebrates not a person, event, or story, but rather a doctrine. The celebration of a doctrine might sound like a rather dull idea at first glance, but if you think in terms of Bishop Wright’s idea that it is a day to “survey your new surroundings,” it begins to get a little more interesting. Specifically, it is a day to consider what it means to be a people who believe in the Triune God, who creates, redeems, and sustains… and not just us as Christians, but the whole of creation.
When it comes to selecting the readings for the day, the architects of the lectionary are faced with a bit of a challenge, as there is no point in the scriptures where the words “Trinity” or “Triune” appear. The doctrine is firmly rooted in the bible—it in no way contradicts the scriptures—but it is really only articulated over the course of the first three hundred years of the church’s life. Why is this so? Well, to begin with, the disciples and early followers of Jesus had a strong and foundational belief in the one God, specifically as understood in Judaism. Yet they also understood Jesus to be from God, and then gradually began to understand the depths of that. This is shown in Peter’s declaration, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” and then even more robustly in the words of Thomas when he sees the risen Christ and says, “My Lord and my God!”
To this is then added the experience of Pentecost, which rolled forward into every facet of the life of the early Christian community, namely that God was also present to them in and through the Holy Spirit; guiding, comforting, leading, and sustaining them.
And so began the attempts at articulating this belief that while there was but one God—they are monotheists rooted in Jewish theology, after all—yet there were three “persons”: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The writers and theologians of the first three centuries used an array of imagery and poetic metaphor, drew on the categories of Greek philosophy as well as biblical teaching, and slowly made their way to the language of the Nicene Creed, which we will proclaim together this evening.
But this still left the architects of the lectionary with the challenge of appointing readings for the day; not only for one Trinity Sunday, but for each of the three years in the lectionary cycle. In the end they turned to the sort of texts which would have informed the early church as it tried to speak to the idea of a Triune God, which is what we have in our readings tonight.
From Isaiah we have a reading that speaks to the holiness of God, but also to God’s sovereignty. It is interesting that the text opens by identifying it as “the year that King Uzziah died,” for in Isaiah’s strange dream-like vision he will say, “my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Human kings will all die, but this King—this Lord of hosts—transcends death. Of course Isaiah is not completely sure that being in the presence of such holiness is a good or safe thing, as he says, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”
This, however, seems not a particularly big deal for God in the vision, as one of the seraphs flies to Isaiah, touches his lips with a burning coal, and proclaims him forgiven. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”
And so it is a calling story as well as a text on the holiness and sovereignty of God, and in a way the story of Nicodemus is also a kind of a calling story. Nicodemus is a Pharisee, and apparently Jesus has caught his interest and attention. He comes to see Jesus by night, quite probably so that no one would see him in the company of this Galilean peasant rabbi, and he opens with some niceties: “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.” Jesus, though, is singularly disinterested in this sort of polite discourse, and says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” “Born from above” is the translation in the New Revised Standard Version, but it is important to note that the Greek word anothen can mean “from above,” “again,” or “anew.” So maybe the most dynamic translation would be “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew from above,” which speaks both to a dramatically new beginning and to the fact that it can only come from God. Or, even more to the point on Trinity Sunday, it can only come in and through the Spirit, for Jesus speaks quite explicitly of being “born of the Spirit.”
So what that gives us between the two readings is a proclamation of the holiness and sovereignty of the one God, who is also made known in both Jesus the Christ and in the Holy Spirit. And what is the work of the three who are yet one? It is classically summed up in John 3:16 and 17:
‘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.
And this is a kind of calling story, albeit one quite different from the story of Isaiah’s vision. Why does Nicodemus come to Jesus? Curiosity? Doing a little investigative work to see if Jesus is going to be a problem? Or is he thirsting for more, and wondering if Jesus might be able to help? Whatever his motives, as I’ve mentioned he begins with that bit of nicety, of which Jesus will have no part. “Nicodemus,” Jesus essentially says to him, “what you really need is a whole new beginning; something like a complete rebirth. And you’re not going to be able to manufacture that yourself, my friend. That’s something that you have to allow the Spirit of God to work in you. If you’re ready for that, then buckle your seatbelt, because God is doing a whole new thing here, for the sake of the whole world.”
Jesus is calling Nicodemus to drop his guard, set aside his religious presuppositions, and open himself to a whole new way of being one of God’s children, which is not an easy thing to do when your starting point is a fixed commitment to your present way of believing. As John tells the story, about midway through this stops being a conversation and becomes a monologue; Nicodemus falls silent to the point of pretty much disappearing from the scene. But in a detail unique to John, Nicodemus does appear again, on the day of the crucifixion, to help Joseph of Arimathea place the body of Jesus in the tomb. John says the Nicodemus came “bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about a hundred pounds… [and that with Joseph] took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.”
Think on that. A hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes is a considerable financial cost, but beyond that Nicodemus is now going public in his care for Jesus. Whatever else was called out from him on that dark night, there is now courage to not hide in the cover of dark. Somehow the God Nicodemus has served as a Pharisee is connected to the Spirit which has birthed courage in him, in service to the battered dead body of Jesus. Somehow it is all connected, which is the point of Trinity Sunday; in the world created, redeemed, and sustained by the Triune God, everything is connected. I close with these thoughts from the biblical scholar Cláudio Carvalhaes:
For Christians, this is how God moves, relates, dances, and manifests Godself in the world—always through relations. In many ways, the Trinity is an entanglement that keeps unfolding back and forth, a sign and metaphor for our own ways of living together, being different and yet being a part of the same life.
With Isaiah, with Nicodemus, with Joseph of Arimathea, and all who have trodden this path before us; tangled and tied to one another in the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
