Holy Trinity

John 3:1-17 Holy Trinity

On this first Sunday after the day of Pentecost, we celebrate the Holy Trinity.
Holy Trinity=One God, Three Persons-God (Father)-God(Son)-God (Holy Spirit)=all one God, yet three distinct persons. Any questions? Yes, of course we’ve got questions.

First, some background on “Trinity.” It’s not a term found in the Bible. It’s a term that we-the church have made up. Here’s how I picture it: some theologian years and years ago read his Bible and noticed this language- Jesus refers to God as “Father” himself as “Son” and tells his followers of the Spirit that will come after he returns to heaven. That theologian read this and said “I’m going to make this really simple to understand-I’ll call it the “Trinity” and tell everyone that it’s one God, three persons.” And from that moment on, people like you and I have heard this and said things like: “What the heck does that mean?”

Also, since then, some people have been offering all kinds of crazy explanations. They talk about how H20 can be water, ice, or steam-all are H2O, but in different forms. Someone once told me to think of a pie cut into thirds. It’s all the same pie, but three separate pieces. Or, what about an egg? You’ve got one egg with three distinct parts: yolk, white, and shell. So God is like H2O? God is like a pie? God is an egg? I don’t know how you feel, but these images leave me with more questions, and less understanding.

Leave it to us to take something that God has freely given us and make it really complicated and confusing…sometimes it seems that it’s just what we do best.

But it’s also good, because it makes us think. It makes us wonder. It makes us ask questions, even if those questions are as simple as just saying “What the heck does that mean?”

And if ideas like the “Holy Trinity” cause us to ask questions of faith, then I guess Nicodemus is the perfect person for us hear about today-he’s full of questions. The problem is, he’s afraid to ask them. Why? Because he’s under the completely incorrect assumption that everyone around him knows everything. He’s believed for a long time that he’s the ONLY one with questions about God and how God works. So, he’s afraid if he asks the questions that are rumbling around in his heard. He’s afraid that if he does, he’ll look foolish…so he goes to Jesus at night…when no one else will see or hear him.

Have you ever felt like Nicodemus? I know I have. In fact, I feel like Nicodemus all the time. When it comes to faith, I think most often I have many more questions than I have answers.
Sometimes we live under the false assumption that our faith is a faith of answers. For too long, this is the image the church has presented of itself…a house of answers, absolutes, and definitions, when in reality, if we’re honest, we are house full of people whose hearts are full of questions. In reality, if we’re honest, faith itself is almost always more concerned with the questions…lots of them.

Jesus didn’t come to give answers, at least not easy answers, but to inspire people to ask the questions that others were afraid to give voice to.

What does he say in Luke 11:9 when he’s speaking to his disciples who have posed a question about how to pray? He tells them: “Ask and it will be given you, search, and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you.”

The emphasis here, if we notice, is not in the answers, the destination, or the opening, but in the willingness to ask, to search, to knock on the door even though we have no idea what lies beyond our questions, our searching, or the door itself.

Nicodemus did all three-and he got a good, simple answer about who God is and what God does… “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.”

In fact, this is the answer God gives to the whole world about who God is. God is love. The kind of love that is willing to endure hardship, and struggle…hunger and temptation…rejection and despair…shame and injustice…suffering and death…all so that we won’t have to. God is the kind of love that triumphs over all of these things with a new life that no one can explain, but everyone can share. God is the kind of God who is so big that one term, one person, one word isn’t enough to adequately illustrate God’s largeness.

This week, after visiting someone at the hospital, I saw a sign in one of the stairwells with a quote from Aristotle that read: “We are what we repeatedly do.”

Now there’s a thought-provoking statement that begs the question: “What do we repeatedly do?”

Maybe we need to think more about this on this day when we remember a term we invented that just might make understanding God a little more confusing than God really needs to be.
When we repeatedly become a place that offers answers, before long we’ll have a hard time welcoming people who are struggling with difficult questions. When we repeatedly stifle the creativity of people who are seeking the new things that God is saying in our world, then before long people will stop searching for God here. When we become people who see our primary task as guarding doors and keeping them secure, then before long, we’ll stop knocking on them looking for God.

God doesn’t seem to mind if we ask questions…in fact, when we read the Bible carefully we just might find that Jesus loved it when people like Nicodemus who asked things like, and I’m paraphrasing here, “What the heck is life all about?” On the other hand, read the Bible closely and you’ll find that he had a very different relationship with the people around him who claimed to have all the answers…he had a special word for them, but that’s a sermon for another day.
Today, I’d like to ask: “What questions do you and I need to be asking God?” Better yet, what questions do you and I need to be asking ourselves about life with the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit, and no matter which words we choose…God, time and time again…repeatedly…chooses to love the whole world enough to give us everything?