John 3:1-17 CEB There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a Jewish leader. He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could do these miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom.” Nicodemus asked, “How is it possible for an adult to be born? It’s impossible to enter the mother’s womb for a second time and be born, isn’t it?” Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said, “How are these things possible?” “Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things? I assure you that we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you don’t receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Human One. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the Human One be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. There have been so many attempts to try and explain the Trinity. We can discuss an egg with its shell, egg white, and yolk. We might point to an apple with its skin, meat, and seeds. Maybe, you could even talk about the Trinity using men’s soap, with body wash, shampoo, and conditioner all in one bottle! There’s even my favorite example from C.S. Lewis who compares trying to understand the Trinity with a 2D world trying to wrap their heads around a cube, a 3D object. The Trinity often resists our efforts to explain how God can be one but also be made up of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Trying to compare how it all works always comes up short because we find ourselves comparing our Triune God to objects rather than something relational. Objects cannot surprise us like people can, like relationships will. Our God is no different, and we would do well this Trinity Sunday to remember that our God is always looking to surprise us.
To better understand the Trinity, we have to look at something relational, not eggs, apples, soap, or shapes. That’s why we went with the wonderful hymn, “Come, Join the Dance of Trinity,” from our Worship and Song Hymnal this morning because it describes these three dancing together, to the rhythm and tune of love. The idea of the Trinity can sound complicated, and sometimes it seems like something best left to theologians and scholars, something that we acknowledge but something that has little relevance to us church folks. We are people living life, dealing with the challenges of each day, and so we need a theology that can keep up and help us deal with everything our journey through this world throws at us. That’s why I love this invitation in the hymn’s opening lines, “Come, join the dance.” Rather than some dusty theological term, the Trinity describes God in motion, swaying and dancing, the very pull and push of the circle in motion, opening up and letting us come in and for the divine power to spill out. Have you ever wondered why God cares? After all, God is God Almighty, a being all-powerful and eternal, so why should God give one spit about this tiny dirt ball spinning through one small corner of the cosmos? One of the psalmists, after looking at everything that God has made, wonders aloud, “[What] are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4 NRSV) While Ego might convince us that we are the center of the universe, the sheer size and majesty of God’s creation and God’s own power make this self-importance laughable. Why then does God love us? Our reading today declares God’s love in the oh-so-famous John 3:16 passage, “God so loved the world.” Not only does God love us, but now, we are told that God loves us quite a bit, so loved us and this world in fact, that God was willing to offer the Son, God’s Son, God’s only child to ensure that God can continue to love all of us for the rest of eternity. Why would God do this? On paper, it makes zero sense because we certainly do not seem to be doing much to deserve this love at all. God gives rules, we break them. God decides to have a relationship with us, and we spit in God’s face. Jesus even points to an example of this. There they are, these Israelite people, wandering through the wilderness toward the promised land, after having been delivered from slavery in Egypt. They had seen miracles and signs and wonders unlike anything before or since, and still, they told God, “‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food’” (Numbers 21:5 NRSV). God sends poisonous snakes among them, and really, that should be the end of the story, right? After all, it's not like people are in short supply, so why not just forget this little mistake and start again with others who might be more grateful? Except, again, God has mercy where no mercy was deserved, and instructed Moses to make a bronze snake to be lifted up, and all the people have to do to receive healing from snake bites is to look at it and be healed. God, who by all rights should punish, gives mercy instead. How do we explain this mystery? It’s surprising that Almighty God loves us and cares about and for us! This divine mystery of the Trinity helps us make sense of it. We have talked about love a lot in 1 John and many other sermons besides, and I know we have talked about agape, this word that describes how God loves, sacrificing everything, even life, to care for another. This kind of love needs an object. Now, ponder this with me. God is eternal, so God existed before everything and everyone. Did God still love before there was anything or anyone to love? If God were one person, that’s a harder question, but if God has never been alone because God has always had someone to love, each person of God has always loved the others, wholly and completely. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, each one also loves the Holy Spirit, who in turn loves each of the other two persons of God. God has always been in a relationship and always has had someone to love. Beautiful to think about, but here is where things get strange! You would think God would just be content with this, but the Triune God lets love spill out from these relationships, this love, this desire to give wholly and selflessly cannot touch nothingness and leave it unchanged. You cannot love nothing, so once love spills out and mingles with nothing it becomes something, it becomes all of us, all of this. God created all of us and everything, not because God had to but because God wanted to have more to love. So you see, God cares because God created us to love us, to be the objects of divine care and joy. We distrust this. Nicodemus distrusts this. He comes to Jesus in the night, not during the light of day, but in darkened hours with fewer eyes watching. Nicodemus the Pharisee comes to Jesus to get the scoop about God, to find out how he can earn a place in God’s kingdom. Jesus tells him he must be born from the Spirit, from above, as opposed to below. To be born from below is to be born from the earth, to earn one’s place by the sweat of the brow and many honors and accolades that people heap upon you. In other words, to be born from below is to earn our place in God’s dance. It is to show God that we can keep up and that we have the right moves. We hope that if we obey enough rules, and show our piety through our living and our practices we can earn the right to be called a Christian. After all, we are often distrustful of free things. We wonder what the catch is when the bill comes due. Even as disciples of Jesus Christ, we still hedge our bets through our living, our morality, and our piety. That way, we think, when God eventually calls on us to pay, well, we’ll have some cash on hand, ready and waiting. Otherwise, grace would be free, and we all know that nobody takes care of anything they get for free, they just take it for granted and take advantage! You have to charge a little bit, make them buy-in, and keep folks responsible. I bet God will do the same, we think, and when God asks for an accounting, well, we can bring up how good of Christians we are. We’ll show we didn’t take it for granted! Jesus, though, says to see God’s kingdom is to be born from above, and to be born from above is to be like those Israelites in the desert. No earning the cure, no paying to recover from the poison. All you need to do is look up, at the one on the cross, the one who paid your way. It's free. No cost. Nothing you can ever do to earn it or deserve it. You can’t reserve your spot or pay a bit extra to get VIP treatment. God invites us into the dance because God wants to dance with us. In fact, the only way Jesus can compare it is to wind of all things. Now, here in Wyoming, wind is kind of an everyday occurrence. It might be more notable if it stopped blowing! We accept it as familiar and normal, but Jesus reminds us that wind is surprising. Jesus tells Nicodemus that “‘God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’” You cannot see the wind, but you can hear and you can feel it. You don’t know it's there until it starts howling in your ears and tugging at your clothes. Wind surprises. God surprises. It scoops us up and pulls us into the dance. It pulls people who have not earned their way. It scoops up people who don’t live moral or even pious lives. It pulls in saints and sinners with reckless abandon. God’s dance pulls all of creation into it because God wants everything to dance with the divine, to feel the love, joy, and energy that has come from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit moving with each other in love and devotion. You can’t earn your way onto the divine’s dance card, your place is already there, God’s just waiting for you with hands on either side, ready to spin you into the rhythm of love. The only thing you can do? Hold out your hand to the folks around you because to be in a relationship with folks, all kinds of folks, well, that’s just mastering the moves you learned from swaying and stepping with our Lord. Amen.
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