Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8 & John 3:1-17

This Sunday in the church year, the Feast of the Holy Trinity, focuses our attention on the three persons in the Godhead.  That brings up many problems, for the doctrine of the Trinity is implicit rather than explicit in Scripture, both in the stories of the Old Testament in which God is shown to the people of Israel, but also in the stories of the New Testament.  It is possible to find references to the triune God, the threefold nature of God, in Scriptures, but only because we read back what has been taught to us into the passages of Scripture.  The actual doctrine comes from a later period in the Church’s history.  What is clear doctrinally in the New Testament is that the Spirit through every age brings believers to faith in Jesus as the one in whom God has acted. 

The best way I have found to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity in terms of our own experience is using the equilateral triangle.  We know from Math classes, even those of us who were Mathematically challenged, that all the sides in an equilateral triangle are the same.  What you discover about one side of the triangle applies to each of the other sides.  You really only have to find out about one side in order to know enough about the triangle to work out a problem.  We understand God from our experience of Jesus Christ.  We read about him in Scriptures.  We apply what we know of Christ to our experience of God the Father and the Holy Spirit.  

Over the centuries scholars have argued about the personality of God.  Such arguments have, on the whole, been detrimental to our sense of spirituality.  Arguing over doctrine and dogma became more important than how we experienced God working in the world.  Facts, knowledge about God, became more important than how we express our faith.  Explaining the unexplainable became more important than feeling God's presence, than our experience of who God is and how God works in our lives.  In short, it made an intellectual pursuit out of something that must be experienced. 

Isaiah's vision in the Old Testament lesson certainly comes from his experience of God.  It gives us a portrait of God as Isaiah saw it and experienced it.  "I saw the Lord," he said.  "Sitting on a throne high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple."  He is overcome with awe at what has been revealed to him, at the wonder of God.  It causes him to see himself with a sense of inadequacy.  He sees how far short of God's creation the whole world has come.  He comes to a new awareness of the immensity of God. 

This is a print of a painting by Chagall entitled "Isaiah's vision."  When I look at it, I see a rather Jewish looking God, high and lifted up.  His prayer shawl reaches down through space.  In the distance is the earth, the New Jerusalem.  The sun and the moon are dark in comparison to the glory of God.  Chagall portrays God’s holiness in a way that most of us cannot find words to describe or even fully comprehend. 

Nicodemus, in the Gospel, is searching for God.  He is struggling with faith.  Like so many of us, he would like to know everything there is to know about God.  He wants Jesus to explain to him who God is.  Jesus does not intellectualize.  Rather he explains to Nicodemus how to go about experiencing God's grace.  "No one," he tells him, "can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."  You can know all about God, but until you experience God, until you accept God's free gift of grace, there is no revelation of who God is.  You don’t know about God until you allow God in and experience that grace.  Until that point of entry your faith is merely academic. 

For Nicodemus as for all of us, the acceptance is the beginning.  The beginning of a life-long journey to come to an understanding of who God is, to form in our hearts and in our minds an image of God.  The beginning of recognition of how God works in human history, of how God works in and through each of us.           

Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night asking questions furtively, cautiously, was there when Jesus was taken down from the cross.  He helped to lay Jesus' body in the tomb.  Like Nicodemus it may take us a lifetime of following Christ before we ever come to the point where we understand, where we know God in our hearts.  But the grace given in baptism is the beginning of that search. 

Spirituality - our search for God - is more than human effort.  It is more than reason.  It is more than our pursuit of God.  It is more than mindset.  It is revelation.  It is intuition.  It is God reaching out to us.  It requires our trust as well as our knowledge.  What Trinity Sunday challenges us to do is to examine our image of God and to allow God to be revealed to us so that we can approach God and grow spiritually. 

What is your image of God?  Who is this God in whom you put your trust?   Who are you worshiping Sunday after Sunday?  Scripture cannot adequately express that for us.  Each of us must come to terms with who God is and how God is revealed to us personally. 

In my study this week I read a story of the late president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.  He liked to invite ambassadors to his country to the celebration of their national feast days.  They would sit for hours watching people dance their traditional dances.  One ambassador complained that it was a waste of time.  The president replied that the core of African culture is the celebration of life.  The expression of his people of that celebration was dancing.  You cannot understand or know the people of Africa without entering in to such celebration. 

How does that relate to our experience of God?   It can certainly help us to understand the relationship within the Godhead of the three persons.  The Greeks used the term pericwrhsis to define that relationship.  It is the root of many common English words, for instance, chorus and choir.  It is also the root word of the word carol, which means to dance in a circle.  Dancing is part of human nature. Perhaps it is inborn.  If you doubt me, watch little children as they play.  We are created in God’s image.  Is it in God’s nature to dance?  The ancient mystics described God's inner life as a dance.  In fact they described it in terms of a circle dance, a carol.  They experienced the persons of the Trinity as being in relationship one to another in their divine life as dancing together.  What a wonderful image that is!  Can you imagine that divine dance between the persons of the Godhead?  Can you imagine us as part of the dance, as part of the dance with all of creation?  Let us be a part of that dance.  And above all, let us not be afraid to let God be revealed in and through us in whatever way God chooses.  Amen.