The Son is the Redeemer of all creation.
The Holy Spirit is the Advocate for all.
The Father is the One who is above all the world.
The Son is the One who is with us in the midst of the world.
The Holy Spirit is the One who is within us.
The Father is the Origin of all who live.
The Son is the Goal of all who live.
The Holy Spirit is the Guide of all who live.
I found this description of the Trinity while I was scouring the internet for creative thinking about this Sunday. It comes from the blog “Blue Eyed Ennis”. At the end of the page, there was a photo of a dog with an ice pack on his head. That’s pretty much how I feel when I think about trying to explain the Trinity. It’s something I’ve been wrestling with since I was about 9. I can pinpoint that age because that’s when I was going through my baptismal preparation classes with the minister at Warrenton Baptist Church. Part of why the theology of the Trinity gives me a headache is because I desperately want to have a better understanding of it than I did when I was 9. I want to have a grown up understanding, an adult understanding, a mature understanding. But then again, Jesus always said to have the mind of a child.
In the Gospel reading from John (3:1-17), we have Jesus educating Nicodemus on the ways of this Trinitarian God. Traditionally, Nicodemus has gotten a bad rap. He has been understood as the “curious one”…one who could only talk to Jesus at night, while defending his Pharisee brothers during the day. But the other places in scripture that Nicodemus appears are when he argues that Jesus has not gotten a fair trial, and when he takes spices to the tomb for Jesus’ body. One scholar argues that Nicodemus is really a work in progress. That he starts off questioning and perhaps skeptical, but grows in his understanding and love of the message of Jesus. Perhaps the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus that we have in this John passage is in the midst of that progress. Perhaps it’s the kind of conversation we’d have with Jesus if we were trying to understand a new teaching.
So let’s take a look at the conversation…
Nicodemus is a Pharisee. This means he is one of the Jewish religious leaders. As part of this group, and as part of his Jewish identity, he believes he is among God’s chosen people. In order to be Jewish, you needed to be born of a Jewish mother. And yet, here is Jesus, also a Jew, saying that to be a child of God—to be among the chosen—biological lineage isn’t what matters…what matters is that you are born in the Spirit…that you receive God in your heart. In other words, anyone can be a child of God. We interpret Jesus’ teaching to mean baptism and repentance.
Being a child of God is no easy task though. It calls us to a new model of life. It calls us to be inclusive and welcoming. It calls us to love one another. It calls us to confront injustice. Being a child of God is about being a disciple. Being a child of God is an experience of growth. We begin with questions and skepticism, we grow through healing and reconciliation, and we age and mature through the resurrection.
Being a child of God is also about living in community. We don’t live in isolation, oblivious to the sorrows and joys of the world around us. We live among them. We move and live and have our being in the challenges and triumphs of our neighbors. Being a child of God is about new birth in the Spirit that isn’t subject to human control, but is deeply affected by the human condition.
So what on earth does all this have to do with Trinity Sunday and trying to understand the theology of the Trinity?
One of my favorite Trinitarian blessings is “May God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer know you and be with you each and every day of your life”. It’s the one I give at the altar rail when someone wants a blessing. It’s the one I gave my parents and Matt when I was ordained. It’s my favorite because it says something about who God is and what God does. God is the Creator—God creates and gives life. God is the Redeemer—incarnate in Jesus, freeing us from the sins, slavery and bondage of this life, and revealing the love of God. God is the Sustainer—powerful, breathing, and alive through life’s journey.
God is a community. And part of our responsibility as children of God is to also live in community. As children of God, we are called to be good stewards of our creation, forgive one another and ask for forgiveness, and be present to one another in life’s journey.
The 7th century theologian, John of Damascus understood the Trinity as “perichoresis”—“dancing around”. He imagined the Trinity as three dancers, holding hands and dancing in harmony, with a shared purpose and mutual love. As children of God, people born anew in water and Spirit, we are invited into this dance.
So maybe Nicodemus wasn’t just trying to get clarification about the inclusive nature of Jesus’ teaching, but maybe he was also trying to find his place among the ever expanding children of God. Maybe he wanted to know if he’d be invited into the dance.
In You—Holy One—we live and move and have our being.