Sermon onJohn 3:1-17
Pastor Jennifer Garcia
“How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.
It’s an appropriate question for Holy Trinity Sunday. Indeed, how can these things be? How can God be simultaneously Three and One?
No one has the answer, not really. And when we try and explain it, we often end up in heretical territory.
We can try to find analogies for the Trinity:
· God is like water—gas, liquid, and solid, three states of the same substance.
· God is like a shamrock—three leaves, but the same shamrock.
· God is like an egg—the shell, the white, and the yolk, but all one egg.
And all of these have an element of truth, but none of them are completely accurate.
We get stuck when we get too heady about complex theological concepts like the Trinity.
That was Nicodemus’s trouble, too. He approached Jesus looking for head knowledge, and Jesus’ responses were…not straightforward.
It kind of feels like Jesus was playing with Nicodemus.
Nicodemus came to him privately after dark and started flattering him (or maybe being sarcastic—it’s hard to tell), but with the implication that he wanted Jesus to confirm his relationship with God.
And Jesus responded, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Nicodemus looked at him quizzically, like it didn’t quite compute, “What do you mean ‘born from above’? That’s not possible—please explain to me the exact logistics of that.”
And Jesus responded by talking circles around Nicodemus, referring to water and Spirit and flesh and wind.
You can almost see Nicodemus sweating, trying to keep up, and the twinkle in Jesus’ eye when he teased him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”
As if anyone could have understood these things.
But Jesus took some pity on him and, though it’s still not exactly straightforward, his monologue at this point at least reassured Nicodemus that God loves the world and sent Jesus to save it.
Nicodemus might not have walked away with a precise description of Jesus’ identity and plan, but it seems he got at least the seeds of understanding.
Nicodemus is mentioned twice more in the Gospel of John:
· Once when he sort of stuck up for Jesus among the authorities, reminding them that Jesus should get a fair hearing.
· And again when he brought a hundred pounds of spices to tend Jesus’ body after his death.
Something happened to Nicodemus between this initial nighttime meeting and when he cared for Jesus’ body.
We don’t get a full account of it, but it probably had very little to do with Nicodemus’s intellectual knowledge.
When Nicodemus came to speak with Jesus that first night, Jesus spoke to his heart, not his head.
Nicodemus wanted answers, and Jesus gave him puzzles and riddles that stir up awe instead of precise understanding.
Jesus talked of wind and Spirit and mystery.
But the bottom line was that famous verse and the verse that comes after it: “For God so loved the world…”
God loves the world in this way: God sent God’s Son, (and since we’re talking about the Trinity today) mysteriously also Godself, not to bring disapproval and punishment, but to bring wholeness and life-giving relationship with God to all of creation.
That’s not something to catalogue, label, or dissect. It’s something we can’t fully understand with our heads because it doesn’t make logical sense. But if we feel it with our hearts, it can evoke awe, worship, and love.
God created Nicodemus and the rest of us with hearts and not just heads. Head knowledge isn’t bad—it’s important to think critically and be well informed. But it’s not all there is. We are whole beings with intellects, intuitions, and compassion. We are meant to use these gifts God created us with.
When we insist on intellectually understanding everything, we are missing other parts of our intelligence.
Mysteries of faith like the Trinity are not for us to fully wrap our heads around but instead to tell our hearts things about God’s character.
Things like: God is relational—One in Three and Three in One. God loves the world, and therefore us. Thanks be to God! Jesus came to teach us God’s traits: healing, wholeness, compassion.
In insisting on head knowledge alone, Nicodemus was missing the Mystery. Maybe Jesus was teaching him to open himself to the mystery of God.
We can learn from Nicodemus’s mistake.
We grown-ups often try to trust head knowledge alone. Maybe part of being “born again” or “born from above” is to adopt child-like openness and curiosity.
Madeleine L'Englesaid that “if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
Children often have not lost the connection to their other ways of knowing.
It’s no wonder Jesus told his disciples that the Beloved Community belongs to those who are like children.[1] In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus says something to that effect, and we can draw a lot of conclusions from those passages.
But one thing I read there is an admiration Jesus has for the creative thinking of children, the willingness to not take themselves or the world entirely seriously, the capacity to be filled with joy at God’s wonders.
For the grown-ups in the room, we have a lot to learn from that, and it can teach us something about God’s nature.
G.K. Chesterton, who’s birthday is this Wednesday, wrote this:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”[2]
We grown-ups sometimes take ourselves too seriously. We sometimes lose our capacity for delight.
We just finished our Easter season of proclaiming joy, and we’ll definitely keep including our moments of joy in our weekly email newsletter.
But what if we practice playing this summer? It’s the perfect season for it. What if we try to recapture some of that “do it again” energy that we may have lost over the years?
You’re all invited to host a play date. After all, why should play dates be just for kids?
Whether you like to craft, hike, sing karaoke, watch sports, or something else, talk to me about planning a play date. You pick the activity and the day, and everyone is invited to sign up and try it out with you. Some may involve movement, and some will be seated. Some may cost money, and some will be free.With enough play dates, there’ll be something for everyone to enjoy.
Kids are often brave about asking others on the playground or in the neighborhood to play with them. Let’s be brave too and ask each other to play.
And you don’t have to limit your playing to church activities. In the spirit of our Sabbath theme, let’s do a summer slow-down for the month of July. It’s the middle of the year, so let’s take some time to catch our breath. We'll still have worship, Messy Church, and Caring Hands, but let's try to minimize team meetings and whatever else we can. Let's cut everything down to the essentials for a month.
I invite you to make that your intention in your personal life, too. What can you say no to for a month? What can you open up space for? Let’s use that time to rest and play and dream. Let’s try to be human beings instead of human doings. Let’s have some unstructured fun.
That’s one way we can open ourselves to listening to all the ways of knowing God gave us.
This summer and always, let’s get more familiar with our relational, loving, Three and One, “do it again!” God.
God’s hand is outstretched, asking, “will you play with me?”
Let’s say, “Yes!”
[1] Compare Matthew 18:1-5, Mark 10:13-16, and Luke 18:15-17.
[2] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy