Experiential Trinity

I’ve sometimes wondered 

if anyone has done a study on church attendance on Trinity Sunday, 

to see if there is a dip in attendance on this particular Sunday.

My imagination pictures 

tedious sermons about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity 

full of heavy duty theologizing 

causing parishioners’ eyes to glaze over and brains to go numb.

 

Well, my thought is that the Trinity 

is not a theological doctrine or concept to be studied and understood, 

but something to be experienced.

You can’t talk effectively about the Trinity 

outside of experience of the Trinity.

 

So let’s look at the Gospel for today.

The passage from John 3 is full of the Trinity, 

but I’m going to say that it’s not in the form of theological concepts.

Instead it is about a spiritual process at work.

 

This has tremendous significance for those of us 

                                    who think of ourselves as followers of Jesus, 

and this is much more practical and connected with everyday life                         

            than being able to articulate the finer points of the doctrine of the Trinity.

 

In the dialog between Nicodemus and Jesus, what we observe

is not Nicodemus’ eyes glazing over, 

but his mind being blown, being blown completely away.

Jesus yanks the theological rug out from under Nicodemus.

 

You see, 

Nicodemus comes to Jesus secretly and alone for a private conversation.  

            And that right there is a good indication of his interest and willingness 

to do some serious and personal exploration of what Jesus is about.

 

In his role as a leading Jewish religious figure 

he could not have this conversation in public 

because in that context he would have to be defending the official theology.

 

But here in private is the opportunity to be much more personal, 

and so Jesus goes right to the heart of things.

Nicodemus says, 

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God…”

And Jesus zeros right in.

“You know I’m from God?

You can see the Kingdom of God revealed in me?

You can’t see that without having been born from above.”

 

And at least this is a better translation than the ones that say “born again.”

But even “born from above” falls short of the meaning 

of the Greek word here, which is the key to this whole passage - anwqen.

 

In reading, if something is referred to “above” 

we know that means something preceding in the text.

“From above” is like going upstream to the headwaters.

anwqen, translated as “from above,” refers us to the Source, 

to the beginning, to where it all began.

 

“In the beginning was the Word, 

and the Word was with God, 

and the Word was God.  

He was in the beginning with God.  

All things came into being through him, 

and without him not one thing came into being.”

 

You can’t see the Kingdom of God without being born from the Source.

Well, Nicodemus begins to feel the challenge to all his theology here.  

He, after all, is a son of Abraham, a son of Israel, a son of the Covenant.

His lineage, both spiritually and physically,

 has developed and been adhered to faithfully over the centuries 

by the remnant that came 

through the 40 years in the wilderness with Moses 

and the remnant that came through the Babylonian Captivity 

and who were now engaged in careful practice 

to preserve this lineage of the Children of Abraham 

by the exclusiveness of the way in which their religion was lived.

 

But the birth lineage that Jesus has just presented to Nicodemus 

is that of creation, going back to the Source, 

and the ramifications of that 

threatened the whole religious structure Nicodemus had worked out of.

The birth lineage of creation is inclusive of all, 

radically different from the exclusiveness of Nicodemus’ religious lineage.

 

Now Nicodemus reveals his predicament.

            He has lived his whole life oriented to this particular religious heritage.

How could he start over, how could he accomplish being born all over again 

into this totally different way of holding life?

Impossible, 

as impossible as it is for a grown person to enter the womb again 

and go through physical birth again.

 

So Jesus obliges him by blowing his mind even further, 

by exploding his theology even further.

You enter the Kingdom of God by being born of water and Spirit, 

through creation, 

through the Spirit brooding over the waters of the deep at creation.

 

Gen. 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth 

when they were created…

5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth 

and no herb of the field had yet sprung up

—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, 

and there was no one to till the ground; 

6 but a stream would rise from the earth, 

and water the whole face of the ground— 

7 then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, 

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; 

and the man became a living being.

 

And the Spirit/breath/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.

You can’t discern any past location or future location.

The Spirit/wind/breath of God is indiscernible in past or future, 

only in the now, the present.

The Source, the beginning, the creation is present now.

No distant lineage of Father Abraham to be traced, 

but the Source, the Creator, the Father now and immediate and direct 

generating children being born into the Kingdom of God.

 

No wonder Nicodemus says, “How can these things be?”

Just as you might be saying, “This isn’t the theology I learned!”

 

But understanding is not necessarily what we are looking for here.  

After all, there is nothing we need to do or understand 

in order for us to be born from above, from the Source.

This being born is not something we accomplish, 

just as physically babies do not accomplish their own birth.

When the time is ripe 

the mother’s body automatically ejects the baby, pushes it out, 

even without the mother’s conscious part in determining when.

 

How can these things be?

            It is not necessarily theological understanding but experience.

 

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” 

this reading from John 3 goes on, 

“so must the Son of Man be lifted up,” 

a reference to the crucifixion, 

“that whoever believes in him may have eternal life,” 

whoever trusts in him.

 

It’s not a matter of understanding 

or accomplishing being born of our own efforts, 

but of trust.

 

And then we wake up to 

the realization of the Truth of what Jesus was saying here, 

because of our experience of the divine, 

our encounter with God, our communion with Abba, the Father.

 

So Nicodemus comes away from this interview with Jesus 

with his theology messed with and his mind reeling.

What does he do with this?

 

Well, he can’t go back to the old thoughts and beliefs now.

Jesus ruined that possibility.

To return to his old theology 

in which he had worked so hard 

in following the Covenant of Moses 

as a child of Abraham and a leading Pharisee, 

to return to that worldview would be a return to ignorance.

What has been seen can’t be unseen, can’t be ignored any more.

 

Later in John’s Gospel 

Nicodemus in his leadership role with the Jewish religious leaders attempts to make a statement in defense of Jesus, chapter 7, 

and they jump all over him.

 

This is a perfect example of what Jesus was talking about 

regarding the clash between his teaching and the world.

What does he mean by “the world”?

The World, in this context, is a concept, a reality claim that insists on 

an understanding of identity as individual 

                                                and separate one from another 

– having those who are in and those who are out, them and us.

But God so loved the world, that it would do no good 

to leave the world to its own devises, with these separations and divisions.

 

And then in John’s account of the crucifixion, 

while most of the disciples are in hiding, Nicodemus shows up again

to join the women and Joseph of Arimathea, 

expressing his devotion to Jesus at the time of burial.

Nicodemus had become a faithful disciple.

 

Our encounters with God, with Jesus, ought to be sufficiently disturbing 

so that we can no longer hold onto 

views, opinions, beliefs, biases, prejudices 

the way we did before, 

because of being shocked by the irrefutable reality of Creator God.

 

The reality of creation is a reflection of the Creator, 

not our mind’s conceptual constructs.

 

It is so good for us when we get jarred out of our mind sets.

Then we can see so much more.

Then we, like Nicodemus, are opened to reassessing our perspectives.

Then we are in a position to burst forth in spiritual growth, 

being born anew, being born again, being born from above, 

being born from the Source.

Then healing can take place within us.

 

I go to such lengths with this passage, 

because it is a key passage in the Bible, 

one that unfortunately has been a dividing point theologically 

rather than leading to opening awareness 

to the ever present and available salvation from our ignorance of God 

that this passage offers.

 

And here’s the challenge for us here at Nativity.

Does the theological stance that you hold 

divide you from others, separate the Body of Christ into them and us?

Then this is a theology of the tradition of the Pharisees,

like what Nicodemus used to hold.

 

What might it be like for you right now if you encountered Jesus 

            in a private conversation about your basic perspective on life?

What if, in one sentence, Jesus ripped holes in your whole belief system?

                                                He could, you know.

Would you trust him in bringing you to birth again 

into the Kingdom of God possibly realized in a whole new way?

 

If you are feeling uncomfortable right now, 

then you know how Nicodemus felt.

And in all love, I want to say to you that it is good to feel such discomfort, 

for it is in such agony of spirit, of looking within 

and standing revealed in our narrow-mindedness or our prejudices, 

our exclusivity,

that we are in a very good place spiritually.

Then we are in a place where the Spirit can blow and create us anew.

 

Ready or not, the Spirit has, of course, already been blowing,

stirring things up here in each of our lives.

 

Let you minds be blown away, and even your theology,

so that you can awake to a new way of being 

with Jesus, with one another and with yourself, 

in the Love of God. 

Transitions

This is Transition Sunday – on several levels

 

1.    Liturgically it is the Sunday between the Feast of the Ascension this last Thursday and the Feast of Pentecost, the 50^th Day of Easter next Sunday,

            a time between two significant events in the Jesus Story.

2.    We just got some good news that puts us in between so many months of COVID shutdown and restrictions and mask wearing and new CDC guidelines that are pointing to an end in sight for this pandemic, at least here in this country – for now.

I find myself humming “Ding, Dong, the witch is dead, 

                                                the wicked old witch, the wicked old witch.”

But don’t declare victory yet.                        We are still in between, in transition.

 

3.    To mask or not to mask, that is the question. – apologies to Shakespeare

            There are several details to work out, 

                        and the good advice is don’t through your masks away yet.

 

4.    And then there is that in between place for Nativity in the calling process,

            a time of transition that has been going one for nearly two years now.

 

Let’s go first to the liturgical transition that this Sunday represents

            and see how that addresses our other transitons.

 

The event of the Ascension marks a distinct break 

between the physical appearances of Jesus 

and a whole new way for the Resurrection Jesus to appear.

We could say that the Ascension puts closure 

on the old familiar way of looking at Jesus.

 

Up until then the Resurrection appearances of Jesus were localized.

He had a solid body, which he invited them to touch, 

but that solid body could some how show up in a locked room.

At other times he showed up but was not recognized, 

and then when he was recognized, he disappeared.

 

But it was all a time of transition preparing the disciples for a shift

from the physical experience of Jesus, 

which was bound by the limitations of space and material presence, 

to Resurrection presence 

which is unbounded in time and space.

 

No longer bound by a mortal body, 

the Resurrection Jesus now thoroughly pervades all life, 

all of the universe, all of creation.

 

Now if I had been one of those disciples,

I’m not so sure I would rejoice at the thought of the Ascension.

Who wants to give up what some would call “the real thing” 

for an unknown, unseen, untouchable, intangible 

resurrection presence of Jesus?

We humans have this great propensity 

for holding on to the Jesus of our past experience, 

closing off our receptivity to any new – to us – revelation of Jesus.

We would keep Jesus bound 

by the limits of our own experience and known perception of him.

 

But Jesus will not be held, he will not be restrained.

            So on the Ascension Day,

the disciples had no choice; 

and it was back to town to sit and wait and see what comes next.

                        nine days in transition.

 

True, they were sitting with the promise of Pentecost, 

but little did they know what that would be like 

or that they themselves would become Resurrection appearances of Christ.

 

The first reading from Acts is an interesting little bit of Church history.

While the Apostles are in this interim period

            they make an administrative decision:

                        picking a replacement for the Apostle no longer with them.

            That should catch our attention here, some parallels might be observed.

This seemed like a good idea:

            12 Apostles to represent the new Israel of God

                        in place of the 12 tribes.

Very scriptural…

 

Their criteria for Apostle candidates are appropriate and good.

They are looking for someone who was present with Jesus

            for the whole duration of his ministry,

                        and for his death and resurrection,

            someone who was eye-witness to it all, and especially the resurrection.

The search committee comes up with 2 names to present to the Vestry.

 

But now, notice how the choice gets made:

            they cast lots, drew straws, flipped a coin.

 

Ah yes, but first they prayed.

            They entrusted that choice into God’s hands,

                        just as it had been Jesus’ choice about the original 12 to begin with,

                                    not the result of nominations and elections

                                    for all the wannabe apostle candidates.

 

Well now, wouldn’t that be something to consider!

            …going through a search process, 

coming up with a final slate of candidates,

and then trusting the final choice to the Holy Spirit.

 

Well, I’m going to suggest something about this incident in Acts 1 

for your thought and speculation.

Maybe the disciples, as well intentioned and as prayerful as they were,

            got ahead of the process and acted prematurely.

What if they had stayed with the transition process of the Ascension

            as they waited for the promised Holy Spirit?

 

What if they had been aware that they weren’t quite ready yet

            for making such decisions about 

                        who qualified for being a bona fide Apostle?

 

Notice that this is the last mention of Matthias that we have in Acts.

He just disappears from view after this.

 

If they hadn’t been in such a rush 

to fill out the number of the Apostles to 12 again, 

like what it was before,

            maybe Paul later wouldn’t have had such a hard time 

convincing the Church that he too was an Apostle,

                        chosen by Jesus.

 

This example might be helpful to keep in mind here at Nativity

            in thinking about the calling process.

 

This is also a transition time for the wider Church 

            in how to be the Church in today’s world, 

                                    hopefully in a soon to be post-COVID time.

            transition in how to relate to the culture, 

how to connect with people

            some of whom think of Christians as religious extremists

and how to present the Church as relevant.

The way we have worshiped has been forced to change.

            and what will we take from that going forward?

 

And just like the disciples 

who may have preferred to hold on to the form of Jesus 

they had known and cherished 

and thus would have him limited and bound, 

we too may want to limit the way the faithful gather in community 

to what we have known 

and thus limit and bind the community of faith, the Body of Christ,

                        and how it is expressed.

 

We are sitting here today between the saying good-bye to the past

                        and God-only-knows what is coming next.

 

Actually we could see all life as in transition,

            for each of us individually 

            and for the great, big, really big picture – the whole planet and cosmos.

 

We actually live on a knife edge 

            between what is passing away and what is coming to be.

There is a word for that knife edge:  NOW.

 

From last week’s Gospel, Jesus said to abide in his love.

And when we discover this love he has for us, 

            then don’t go back to the old mind set, the old way of seeing the world.

            Don’t get hooked by pressures from the world.

You can take a lot of hits from the world, if you are wakeful to this Love.

 

We are being loved by Jesus in the NOW, and being chosen by him

            so that, frankly, we can be of some good use in the world,

            so that we can be fruitful, create some results.

 

That is to say:  If we bear fruit, then expect to get eaten.

                                    Expect to be nourishment for others.

Jesus did this big time.

Look – we come here, up to this table, and eat him,

                        this literal giving of his life blood for us.

 

Well, back to the theme of being in transition.

 

We are always being faced with the necessity of letting go of one thing

                        and receiving something else.

            There is no way other than this.

Pat Johnson and I talked about this when I visited her a couple of days ago.

As much as she would love to stay here,

            she spoke of her move as a logical transition

                                    that she was coming to terms with.

 

We can make it much easier for ourselves if we cooperate with

            letting go of what is passing away and receiving what is coming to be,

because it’s going to happen with or without our cooperation.

 

Here in this Ascension-tide transition time is the golden opportunity

            to expand the horizon, to look at what all the possibilities might be,

            to play with different ideas about how to be a congregation,

                                    how to be a faith community.

Here in this transition time is the perfect occasion for exploring 

            what it means to be a church, 

            what is our charge, our reason for being.

Here in this transition time each of us individually 

            can look at what is the transition I am facing,

                        and pray to God for God’s merciful grace to help me through.

 

I’ll end with some words of encouragement.

 

The Gospel for the 7^th Sunday in Easter is always from John 17, 

            which is called the great priestly prayer of Jesus.

In this year’s selection from that prayer, 

            Jesus prays that his disciples, and all of us,

                        protected in his Name,

            will have our joy made complete. 

 

To be protected in his Name is to experience the liberation of Jesus 

from all the binding influences of the world, 

of the enculturation of this society we are surrounded by.

Jesus takes us beyond our self-limits.

 

And to be protected in that Name is to be in the place 

            where we know we are profoundly cared for and loved,

            where there is no fear about the future,

            where perfect love casts out fear.

More Love

This is the 6^th Sunday in the season of Easter 

            and an interesting conjunction of Mother’s Day, 

                        Rogation Days – which are earth centered days of prayer 

                                                leading up to the Feast of the Ascension on Thursday,

                        and yesterday commemorating Julian of Norwich 

in the church calendar,

            and all these loosely link together with the readings for today.

 

It’s been a full week since I got back here after a little break to see family.

 

The Diocese held our annual Clergy Conference 

                        by Zoom again

            but full of information, reports and group work.

We were looking at the Landscape report 

            which is the Diocesan version of the CAT survey for congregations.

 

And at the same time here I was engaging in conversations 

            with various members of the parish in response to reactions to                                     the message on the reader board of our church sign.

I’ve stirred up some strong feelings, 

                        some reflecting back to incidents from the past,

                        some sorting out what is political and what is morality,

            so I want you all to know that I am available for conversations,

                        and I hope you will engage those conversations with me.

As much as we may want to move on,

            there are still some conversations we need to have 

                        for reconciliation and unity in the love of Christ to be actualized.

This is a regular part of life in the faith community that we all share in.

 

So let me share some thoughts here 

            based on this continuing theme in the scripture readings 

                                                                                    during the Easter Season

                        about how we can come together.

 

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Dame Julian of Norwich,

            but she is commemorated on our church calendar 

                        for her writings which have become a spiritual masterpiece.

She survived a near fatal illness 

                        during the time of the pandemic known as the Black Death,

            and in that she experienced a series of visions which she wrote up

                        and that then were published 

                        in one of the earliest books in the English language.

The focus of her writings is on God’s love for us.

 

Here is a beautiful sample of her work:

For we are so preciously loved by God 

            that we cannot even comprehend it.  

No created being can ever know 

            how much and how sweetly and tenderly God loves them.  

 

Love, in the Gospel for today, is, like it was last week, 

                        linked with abiding in Jesus, 

            that is, having your self-identity connected with Jesus, 

having your self-identity connected to Jesus.

And this, Jesus says, is the key to being able to keep the commandments.

 

In verse 10 we read that the commandments are kept 

because of dwelling in union with Jesus.

Jesus is saying, “If you remain in my love 

you will keep my commandments, 

just as I remain in the Father’s love 

and thus keep his commandments.”

 

To abide or remain – That means, 

don’t go back to the old mind set of thinking you are unloved.

Don’t get hooked by pressure from the world view about thisof being alienated and separated from one another and from the Creator.

That is not reality.

 

Remain in the love.

Remain in the mindfulness that God is love,

            and that as God’s creatures, God’s creation,

                        it is in God that we live and move and have our being.

As my old spiritual director would say, 

            “You can take a lot of hits from the world, 

if you are wakeful to this love.”

 

Agapay is the word for love in this Gospel reading.            As I said last week

it is this kind of love that is Godly love, unitive love, 

                        that which makes no distinction between lover and beloved.

In agape love that distinction is gone, has been transcended.

There is no longer lover and beloved, now only love expressing.

 

That is why Jesus could say so clearly and repeatedly 

that he and the Father were one, 

and why he would continually urge the disciples 

to remain in him and in his love, for that love was unitive.

That is why we can say that God IS Love.

 

Love, in fact, is the condition of the Kingdom of God.

To have come to the realization of this kind of love 

is to have eyes to recognize the Kingdom of God at hand.

 

John’s Gospel may seem to be belaboring the point, 

            but he wants to make sure that we get it,

                        that this love thing is pretty important.

And Love just keeps showing up in a lot of the rest of scripture,

                                                            as you probably have noticed.

 

Then there is verse 13:

            “No one has greater love than this,

            to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

 

I remember well what one former parishioner said about this.

He said he felt mightily challenged by this verse of the Gospel.  

How could he know that he could lay down his life for those he loved 

if at the breakfast table 

he could hardly lay down his newspaper for his wife?

 

On our own, if we are honest, 

            our love is not this pure agape love of such self-forgetfulness.

 

The Gospel says that Love is linked with bearing fruit, being useful to God,

            and it is also about being chosen.

 

Vs. 16            “You did not choose me but I chose you.

            And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…”

 

Chosen – We tend to think about being chosen as being selected out, 

over and opposed to others not chosen, something exclusive.

But that is not really what is going on here. 

The choosing is Jesus’ initiative, not a selecting out, but creation.

            “You did not initiate a choice, but I chose to create you,”

                                                Jesus is saying.

Choosing is the power of affirming the action of love.

 

First you are loved, 

then comes the capacity that you are given for loving others.

What I am getting at is a significant shift in our perspective 

                        or a way of thinking about stewardship, for example,

                                    stewardship as caring for something that is not our own. 

Stewardship in this way is living out of agaph love,

            living out of the orientation of union in God,

so that everything, even our relationships with each other, belong to God.

 

The implication in all this 

is what Jesus demonstrated by his own example

of his life and ministry, 

and of his own laying down his life for his friends, 

for us whom he calls friends. 

“It’s not about me.”

Stewardship is service that is not about me,

            but is a natural flow of love in recognition that all belongs.

All belongs.

 

Another spiritual master, whom I deeply respect, put it quite simply:

            “Love is not complex — it is simple and spontaneous. 

            Indeed, love is our essential nature.”

 

I have been in a life long process of discovering 

                                    that it is our basic nature to love.

For me,

how that love is expressed continually goes through a process of refinement, 

and I am far from finished with this refinement process.

And I can only cooperate with that work being done in me 

                        through the mercy and grace of our Lord Jesus.

love being expressed without needing in return attached to it, 

love that becomes ever more inclusive.

 

But this is the point, that it is our basic nature to love.

                        We have been created to love.

 

Let’s return to Dame Julian of Norwich.

 

One of her most beautiful quotes is about our meaning in life.

 

Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing?

Learn it well:  Love was His meaning.

Who showed it thee?  Love.

What showed He thee?  Love.

Wherefore showed it He?  For Love.

Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same.

But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end.

Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.

 

I think we all here are of one heart and mind about this kind of love.

So I say all this to encourage each of us 

                                                            to persevere in being refined in this love

And Jesus tells us today in the Gospel:

            Abide in my love.            

            I chose you.              

            Love one another.