god exists in relationship: holy trinity

The other reading I refer to is Romans 8:12-17.

The holy gospel according to john 3:1-17.

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus,

       a leader of the Jewish people.

       ²He 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.”

³Jesus answered him,

       “Very truly, I tell you,

              no one can see the dominion of God without being born from above.”

⁴Nicodemus said to Jesus,

       “How can anyone be born after having grown old?

              Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?”

⁵Jesus answered,

       “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the dominion of God

              without being born of water and Spirit.

              ⁶What is born of the flesh is flesh,

                     and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.

              ⁷Do not be astonished that I said to you,

                     ‘You must be born from above.’

                            ⁸The 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.”

⁹Nicodemus said to Jesus,

       “How can these things be?”

¹⁰Jesus answered him,

       “Are you a teacher of Israel,

              and yet you do not understand these things?

       ¹¹“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.

                     ¹²If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe,

                            how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?

                            ¹³No one has ascended into heaven

                                   except the one who descended from heaven,

                                          the Son of Humanity.

                            ¹⁴And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

                                   so must the Son of Humanity be lifted up,

                                          ¹⁵that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

       ¹⁶“For God loved the world in this way,

              that God gave the Son,

                     the only begotten one,

                            so that everyone who believes in him may not perish

                                   but may have eternal life.

       ¹⁷“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.

The gospel of the lord.

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Our readings for today are readings once again geared toward insiders.  It’s followers of Christ talking to other followers of Christ.  Ones who are being persecuted encouraging each other.  The need to encourage those facing persecution and hardship also sets the stage for some hefty dualism.  Encouragement against persecution means lifting up the reasons for persecution—faith in Jesus and profession of Christianity—and putting down anything connected with the larger world and therefore persecution.

Paul’s letter to the Romans encouraging them to live by the Holy Spirit, joining with Christ as heirs to call on God, our Abba, our Papa, also denounces the flesh—the very bodies God adopts in coming to us in the incarnate Word—Jesus.  And Jesus’ own conversation with Nicodemus calls into contrast flesh and spirit, human and divine.

It is far too easy for us as Christians to fall into a dualistic trap of thinking that there are insiders and outsiders; those who, in Paul’s words to the Romans “live according to the flesh” and those “who are led by the Spirit of God.”  Those whom Jesus counts as born from above and those who are not born again.

But even right here in this place, we live according to the flesh in these fleshy bodies and we seek the Spirit’s guidance, we are born from above through the waters of baptism and yet are put to death with Christ in those same waters—“we suffer with Christ so that we may also be glorified with Christ.”

We do not fit in the dualisms that so easily overtake Christianity and we are not the only ones.  Even as the scripture for today can set up dangerous dualisms, the day itself invites us more deeply into the mystery that is the Trinity.  Today is Holy Trinity Sunday.  The day we particularly celebrate and focus on the Holy Trinity—three in one, one in three.  The Athanasian creed, one of the three creeds we confess as part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, describes the Trinity (in part) stating,

“We worship one God in trinity

       and the Trinity in unity,

       neither confusing the persons

       nor dividing the divine being. …

As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge
       each distinct person as God and Lord, …

And in this Trinity, no one is before or after,

       greater or less than the other;

but all three persons are in themselves, coeternal and coequal;

       and so we must worship the Trinity in unity

       and the one God in three persons.”

The Trinity itself inherently resists dualistic thinking!  Not only is the Trinity not binary, the closest thing to a binary about it ends up being a good, Lutheran both/and paradox: three and one at the same time!  Why?  Because the Trinity is: relationship!

It is a relationship that doesn’t always make sense.  One God and three persons, or expressions.  Three persons, and yet one God.  It is not the easiest to wrap our heads around if we want to understand every little detail of the how of it, but then, no understanding of God has ever been that simple because God is bigger and more complex than us.

The basics of the Trinity—being three in one and one in three—is understandable enough for us to focus on the important question.  Not how? But why?  Why is our God triunal?  Pastor Neil Harrison, who is the ELCA person in charge of redeveloping congregations, has a favorite line: Relationship.  Relationship.  Relationship.  God, as the Trinity, is inherently relational.  The three cannot exist without their relationship with each other.  I’ve heard it described as a dance or as a jazz trio.  They only make sense in relationship to each other.  Without the other persons of the trinity, the Holy Spirit, Son, and Father don’t make sense.

As God becomes incarnate—fleshy—in Jesus, we are brought more fully into that relationship as well.  Jesus takes on human form so that humans can be in full relationship with the divine—so that there is no longer any separation between us.

And so we become the body of Christ—not each of us individually, but all of us in relationship together.  All of the Christians and Christian denominations together, in relationship, are the body of Christ.  Each of us with the both/ands of the dualisms we are so often given—with our doubts and beliefs, sinners and saints, fleshy and spirit-born.

God exists in relationship.  It is the only way to understand the full complexity of our God.  In relationship—with God’s self and with us.  And it’s hard to be in relationship when we’re categorizing and boxing things and people in, when we are creating more dualisms.  Our God breaks down the dualisms we both cling to and dread.  Light and dark, bad and good. 

And so I am reminded of the moment during Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when Sirius Black points out to Harry that “the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.  We’ve all got both light and dark inside us.”  We all, when we dig deeper are more than the dualisms and God is more than any dualism, God in the Trinity is the ultimate in relationality.  The ultimate model of relationship, bringing us as the body of Christ, the church, into that relationship as well.

And being the church together, being the body of Christ, means that our concern is for each other.  That we exist for those who are here today and for those who are not in the church.  Christ came for sinners, not for those who claim to be well and so the body of Christ, the church, this church exists for the sake of the whole world, for the ones who are broken, because, indeed, we are all broken and God is the one to make us whole.  That triune, relational God brings us together and our brokenness fits with each other’s to make up the body of Christ, which is broken for us each week.

Thanks be to God.