Year B

John 3:1-17

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Mystery and Grandeur of the Trinity

Today we celebrate the revelation of the one God as Trinity; Father, Son and Spirit. Through the saving ministry of Jesus Christ and the presence of the Spirit, the God of Israel is revealed as the Holy Trinity. The Rev. Scott Gunn, author of Forward Today publication wrote last week: “Can we understand the Holy Trinity? At a basic level, yes. The creeds do a pretty good job of summarizing things. Basic theological teaching, or a study of scripture, can unpack how God is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, but it’s also not the most complicated.

I mean, plenty of people enjoy watching a good cricket match without understanding all the rules! Or, to use a scriptural example, we don’t have to understand where the wind comes from to know that we need to pay attention to the weather forecast. How true was that for our community just recently? He say’s I hope you can simply enjoy the glory and majesty of God, for it is a day to bask in the glory of God”. Today we come face to face with the mystery and grandeur of the holiness of Almighty God. And each one of the texts brings us to celebrate and know God as the Trinity.

Isaiah’s dramatic temple vision is rich with theological meanings. From early times, this passage has been viewed as pointing to what later became the doctrine of the Trinity. It doesn’t exactly “lay out” a full-fledged view of God as triune or three-in-one but taken with other biblical passages especially from the NT, it anticipates what the early church gradually came to understand as the doctrine of the Trinity which was given wording in the Nicene Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.  Isaiah saw his vision in “the year King Uzziah died, probably around 736 BC when he is commissioned by God to deliver a message-a prophecy Judah.

In this vision, he describes the heavenly court or temple where he encounters the first person of the Trinity, the Lord of Hosts, attended by six-winged seraphs singing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. The seraph’s use this “threefold sanctus” to worship the “thrice holy” God whom Isaiah encounters in the temple. As the prophet views this splendor, he feels unworthy to look upon the Lord. Yet, here he is in the presence of God. He knows he is unworthy to serve, yet what other option does he have. This is not a time to say no. Therefore, when he hears the Lord call for someone to send as the bearer of the Word, Isaiah answers these famous words, “Here am I; send me!”

This passage reflects a profound sense of awe and wonder at the glory of God, as well as the transforming power of God’s presence then and now. Isaiah’s vision is intended for us as well, it points out how God relates and has a relationship with all of God’s children: each of us encounters the triune God each day in our own context; we each experience God’s word of forgiveness in our worship as we confess, and God calls each one of us to serve. We experience the Holy Trinity not just as a theological formula but as a real presence working in our lives as God did in Isaiah’s day and in the gospel today, as well as a part of the sacred scripture for Paul and John.

The very familiar gospel story of Nicodemus today shows us how God worked in his life through Jesus the second person of the trinity along with the help of the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit. For we hear Jesus, the Son of God, speaking of his Father, and of the unseen power of the Spirit. This isn’t the first time we have encountered Nicodemus, a religious leader and teacher of the Jewish law, who appears three times in scripture, all in the gospel of John. John tells us he comes to Jesus twice at night. Nicodemus obviously had come to realize that the presence of God was very clearly with Jesus because of his good works and he had questions for Jesus. But the circles in which he moved in did not consider Jesus respectable.

As a member of the Sanhedrin, the governing authority of Judaism it would seem he occupied that dangerous position betwixt and between. He had to weigh the possible effect that his words and actions might have for himself and others. Some have said his coming at night might look like he was not brave enough to be seen with Jesus during the day and that could be true but there’s another way to look at this. His coming at night might have been nothing more than indulging in a common practice of many Jews at the time. It was common among learned Jew’s to hold their discussions at night. Nicodemus may have simply wanted peace and quiet to ask the questions he had for Jesus.

We can’t really be sure but what we do know from this exchange is that he appears to be in the dark concerning his understanding of who Jesus is. Jesus proceeds to tell Nicodemus what is most necessary for salvation: He says “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”. Here Jesus is not talking about a literal new birth but a transformation of the self, not toward the world but toward God, the triune God. Of course, Nicodemus could not understand the truth that night but he does seem to come to some understanding of the truth over time because the third time we hear of him, we see him doing this truth when he joins Joseph of Arimathea in burying the body of Jesus.

What we learn from this dialogue is that God, as Father, offers us boundless love. God the Son is the one who came down from heaven and through him we have eternal life with God. God sends his son Jesus into the world not to condemn it, but to provide eternal life that the Spirit makes possible by inviting us to belief in Jesus and then making that belief effective. We are given strength as children of God, led by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body Paul says as he sums up the mystery of the Trinity for us today. We are to live in the Spirit rather than by the flesh, for it is by the Spirit that we can be adopted as children of God. 

The Spirit enables us to know and to call upon God as, our Father, just as Christ did. Through our belief in Christ, we receive a new birth and become joint heirs of God. In short, to know our Christian story of salvation is to know the truth about God as Trinity, and to know God as Trinity is to see the Father, Son, and Spirit all acting in the story of our salvation. “For God so loved the world….Can we understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity? At a basic level we can if we are led by the Spirit, but this really isn’t a puzzle to be solved, but a reality to enter into, then we can simply enjoy the glory and majesty of God.