This past Tuesday around greater Madison, and throughout the Midwest, we were reminded of the power of the earth, and our smallness in comparison. While our monastery grounds and some of our neighborhoods had trees and power lines toppled, other neighboring regions witnessed tornadoes and floods. As we felt the thunder shake our homes on Tuesday, perhaps we can more easily channel some of the intensity of today’s reading from Isaiah: The Most High sits on the throne, and just the hem of God’s robe fills the entirety of the temple. The temple fills with smoke, the structure shakes with the thunderous voices of the seraphs -fiery, flying serpents. And not only are there two seraphs, but they speak to one another, saying, “Holy, holy, holy.” In the presence of smoke, shaking, speaking serpents, and just the comer of the garment of God, Isaiah panics, overwhelmed and overcome. A classic Old Testament encounter with the terrible, powerful, presence of the God of all. Just a little more intense than Tuesday’s storm.
But then in our Romans passage, Paul speaks to us about a different kind of God. A God who we can call “Abba,” which can be understood as a more personal , “my father,” according to Biblical scholar Geza Vermes. What’s more, Paul invites us into an intimate and warm relationship with God the Christ as our Parent who adopts us.
And finally, in today ‘s reading of John chapter 3 we are invited to interpret the Holy Spirit as a mysterious wind who ‘s source and destination is unknown and unpredictable. This windy Spirit is what Jesus invites Nicodemus to be filled with when born again. And here we are, gathered this Holy Trinity Sunday to make sense of it, and meditate on this Triune God: intimate Christ, loving Parent, powerful God, massive presence, terrifying Creator, fiery windy Spirit, Holy Wisdom , and Abba. Easy enough.
I’m sure for many of you who grew up in a Christian tradition, or even if you came into the tradition mid-life or recently, the Trinity was one of the more perplexing doctrines concerning the nature of God that just doesn’t quite fit into our human understanding of how the world works and categorizes itself. The Divine Mystery of God the Trinity has had countless attempts to be explained – for example, at the first Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, where other doctrines were rejected in favor of the consensus that Jesus Christ is fully God, not created by God, and of one being with God. And in the same way, the Holy Spirit was to be seen as “Lord and Giver of Life.” In more concise terms, you may have heard the Trinity described as one in essence, and three in persons. Yet in our physical human experience, the essence of who we are is our personhood, so it is mysterious to claim that three persons exist in the essence of God. Many of us are not alone in our experiences of being dissatisfied with the doctrine of the Trinity, or simply giving up and saying “it is what it (mysteriously) is.”
And while the lack of a fully satisfying doctrine of the Trinity over the past 2,000 years of theological reasoning may leave our certainty-hungry minds hopeless for answers, perhaps there is a purpose for a space to linger in the mystery of that which is far greater than our personhood, and our essence. Like a number of you in this room, I tum to Franciscan friar Richard Rohr in moments like these. Author of The Universal Christ , Falling Upward, and many others, Rohr writes, “the ‘Blessed Trinity’ is supposed to be the central-even the paramount-doctrine of the Christian belief system. And yet we’re told, at least I was told as a young boy in Kansas, that we shouldn’t try to understand it because it ‘s a ‘mystery.’ But I believe mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand; rather, [mystery] is something that you can endlessly understand.”
In other words, if thousands of years of seeking and understanding God still leaves us a gap for mystery, what would it look like for us to endlessly understand in the gap of mystery?
We are not alone in our experience of dwelling in mystery in the presence of the strangeness of God. In fact, in today’s reading Nicodemus was literally in the physical presence of God, and was still perplexed in the mystery of Jesus. A Pharisee, Nicodemus came to Jesus because he could not understand how anyone but the presence of God could fulfill the prophecies and work miracles like Jesus had. The teachings of his tradition and intellectual reasoning failed him amid the reality that he was witnessing in Jesus, God the Christ. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the darkness of night, away from his life of meticulous adherence to the Pharisaic interpretation of the Torah by day. In response to his confession that Jesus must be of God, Jesus replies that to see the Reign of God, Nicodemus must be born from above, or born again, in other translations. Nicodemus then makes the obvious observation that one cannot enter back into their mother’s womb after being born. And his last words in this encounter with Jesus are, “How can this be?” The story leaves us hanging. Nicodemus has heard Jesus’s invitation into a mysterious but vital re-birth, But just by his final questions we get a sense that Nicodemus leaves himself in the gap of mystery.
So we thought the Trinity was mysterious enough … Now take the command to be “born again” in the Triune God.
In the spirit of endlessly understanding mystery, I want to invite us to step back from the semantics and our tendency to orient toward certainty, and just for a moment, step into the feelings and imaginations and embodiment that mystery allows us to explore. Imagine for a moment, What does being born feel/ike? We can’t remember our own, but maybe we have witnessed birth, or we know the implications and impact of it. To see the reign of the Triune God we must be born again, born from above. So what does being born feel like? What does new life do?
Birth on this earth is a first breath of oxygen. It is a first cry. It is vulnerable. Birth relies on the care of parents, doulas, doctors, relatives, before and beyond the first breath. Birth is bloody, and risky. Birth is an introduction into a whole new way of being, from the womb, to the world. When we were born, we changed the lives of those around us. And from first breath, we have grown, we have been strengthened, nourished by the earth, nourished by love, and we eventually give back in many ways, to witness and support many new births to come.
Nothing quite compares to the witnessing of a new life being born. And I don ‘t think we can simply gloss over the fact that Jesus chose to compare entering into the fullness of the Reign of God with the image of being born. It is beautiful, vulnerable, risky. It is breathing into a whole new world, it changes the lives of those around us, and it takes a community of love to sustain.
To be born again is not just a moment of rededication- to be born again, from above, is not limited to one moment in time that we can label as our altar call moment. Rebirth is a full, filling of the Spirit, the nourishment we receive in this new world filled with God the Wind of the Spirit, as we ourselves grow into lovers and future midwives of the rebirth of the world to come. And it is not stagnant. Rebirth propels us to walk into God ‘s call to sustain love and promote justice in the world, as Isaiah calls out, “Here am I, send me!” And as Nicodemus risks his reputation and way of life, and as Paul reminds us that as adopted children of God, we suffer with Christ and are glorified with Christ.
There is a lot to take away from today’s scripture readings. In our attempts to comprehend the Trinity of God, we encounter a Creator God that is immense in power and fear and presence, God the Parent who adopts us and intimately knows us in our humanness, God the Christ who personally invites us into the privilege of precious birth again, and God the Holy Spirit who fills us anew, again and again. The invitation into such complexity and intimacy as birth in God is a gift from a God often beyond our comprehension. We belong in the intimacy of God, rebirthing in the complexity of the Trinity. And while our doctrine of the Trinity is our best attempt to map out the God we encounter in Scripture and Life, it is just that – our best human attempt to house the complexity and greatness of God in our temples, but only the hem of God’s robe can be contained as it shakes the walls of our comprehension.
Finally, the complexity of the Trinity of God, which Richard Rohr describes as “the Divine Dance,” Rohr renames the Holy Spirit as “Implanted Hope.” We need this if we are to continue breathing past birth and rebirth, as we are called not only to the moment of rebirth, but to actively live out the example of Christ.
So, as beloved, adopted, chosen, children of God, whether we find ourselves echoing the words of lsaiah, “Here am I, send me!” or remain deep in holy mystery like Nicodemus, echoing, “How can these things be?” or anywhere in between, may we encounter the gaps of mystery as a gift to endlessly understand, in the divine dance of the Triune God.