The story goes of a man who attended church and heard the minister preaching about the Triune God. After the service the man approached the pastor and said: “I enjoyed your service, but I’m not convinced about what you said. I just can’t get my head around the idea that there are three Persons yet one God.
The pastor asked the man: “What size hat do you wear?”
Puzzled as to why this was relevant, the man answered: “Size 7—why do you ask?”
The pastor replied: “I was just wondering how you expected to get this great, almighty and majestic God of heaven and earth into a size 7!”
How do you go, at getting your head around God?
As we commemorate Trinity Sunday, we would need a very large hat size to get our heads around the Person and nature of God. We see this in today’s Old Testament reading, where God gives Isaiah a glimpse of his glory and holiness, his sheer magnitude and awesomeness—the Temple can only contain the train of his robe. God is so far beyond our natural human capacity to know and understand that we need him to reveal himself to us in his word. How can we understand how God is one, yet at the same time three distinct, equally divine persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit? The simple answer is that we can’t—the concept of a Triune God is beyond human logic and understanding. We are not called to understand, but simply believe this is who God has revealed himself as.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus shows us that God does not want us to primarily know concepts about him, but to know him personally. For that to happen, God needs to take the initiative, and be the active agent.
This is what Jesus was teaching Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel. Nicodemus was a member of the Jewish ruling council. As such, he would have been highly educated in the Old Testament scriptures. As a Pharisee he would have stressed the strictest observance of the law and loyalty to the rituals and traditions of the elders to achieve righteousness and salvation. In efforts to have a supposedly pure interpretation of God’s law and obey it the Pharisees formulated over 600 of their own human regulations which they thought would help them never put a foot wrong. From a human point of view, Nicodemus is a pretty good bloke; a fine, upstanding leader of the religious community who would protect it from the unholy sorts in society.
Perhaps that’s why Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night—for if anyone was seen publicly with this Rabbi who welcomed sinners and tax collectors and ate with them—well that would be a black mark against one’s name. He addresses Jesus quite courteously: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” But despite his religious performance and academic excellence, Nicodemus is about to discover that he hasn’t yet got his head around God.
So Jesus helps him: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” There is no way that human beings, with a sinful nature from the moment of conception, are able to see the Kingdom of God and live. In Psalm 51, King David confessed: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalm 51:5). When Isaiah saw the doorposts and thresholds shake and the temple filled with smoke, he cried out: “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!” (Isaiah 6:1-5).
That is the reality for all people in our natural condition. For people to be able to see the Kingdom of God, we need to be completely remade all over again, but not being born the normal way a second time, as Nicodemus himself said. Even if that were possible, a rebirth in the flesh would reproduce only the same sinful flesh, not the new life in the Spirit that is needed to know and live with God.
Jesus said: “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” The new birth needed is so far removed from our earthly existence and natural human capabilities that it must come from above; effected by God by sending the Holy Spirit. On Trinity Sunday we can rejoice that the Triune God has first ministered to us so that we know him. God sent his Son and still sends the Spirit through his ascended Son to work faith where and when he wills.
Faith in Jesus as Lord and Christ is given, strengthened and nurtured by the Spirit apart from whom no one can say “Jesus is Lord”. Wherever the word is, the Word made flesh, Jesus, is, and wherever Jesus is, the Father sends the Spirit through him to bring spiritual blessings from Heaven. The Apostle Paul shows the relational connection the members of the Trinity have with each other when he wrote to Titus: “God saved us…through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:5-7).
That’s the story of our baptism, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of each divine service, this is the Name that is proclaimed. By this we confess that the Triune God is already with us apart from our asking for him to come, and a reminder also that we come into the presence of this Triune God as his forgiven, redeemed, holy and precious children, not by any righteousness of our making, but by virtue of his grace given to you in your baptism. Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” But being born again from above is so much more than being baptised for a gold ticket to heaven—for Jesus also says: “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” That is present-tense language. That is talking of the ‘now’. How do we see the Kingdom of God now? What even is the Kingdom of God?
A kingdom is wherever a king rules over his people. When Jesus proclaimed the Good News in Galilee he said: “The time has come, the Kingdom of God has come near.” (Mark 1:15). The Kingdom of God is wherever Jesus, the King, comes down to earth from out of this world, and reigns over his people. Wherever his word and sacraments are present, there Jesus is also, and the kingdom of God goes to work.
Trinity Sunday is more than knowing the right doctrine and confession. It is not just knowing about God but knowing God, through the new life he gives to us. Jesus said: “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.” (John 14:23-24). That is why the Father still sends the Holy Spirit through his Son—so that you know the Father, and the Son, and the Father and the Son know you, and make their home in you.
As Christ and the Spirit whom the Father sends speak to us through the words of the bible, they gradually wean us off of the worldly wisdom, ways, supports, pleasures and things we trust in, and to instead grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18), through whom we come to know God and learn his will for us and for all people. The action of the Triune God in giving people faith and growing faith is a lifelong journey of numerous insights along the way. We do not suddenly wake up one day and get our head around a perfectly packaged understanding of who God is and what his mysterious ways are. God plants the seed of faith in us and like a flowering bud carefully unfolds it according to his time, so that we can see with the eyes of, and think with the mind of, Christ.
That happens for Nicodemus. At the end of John’s Gospel, when Jesus’ body is being prepared for burial, Nicodemus is there again. He has brought 75 pounds in weight of costly spices with which to prepare Jesus’ crucified body for burial. It’s extravagant but fitting for the extravagant love of God in Christ crucified. It seems Nicodemus was beginning to get his head around God, as he carefully wraps the body of the Son of God, who gave his life for the world. This bold act of public service is in complete contrast to his earlier visit to Jesus, secretly, under the cover of nightfall. It seems that a change had slowly unfolded in Nicodemus—a shift from knowing things about Jesus and personally knowing Jesus and his mission to the world.
There are a lot of people out there who can’t get their heads around God. There are many in the world who can’t understand that being good isn’t good enough to see the Kingdom of God, but rather they need to be born from above. But God so loved the world that he is personally, intimately, powerfully involved in it. God wants all people to know the Father, which is why the Father continues to send the Spirit to point to his Son as the Saviour of the world. Trinity Sunday could just as easily be called ‘mission Sunday’ as we hear of the Triune God working in such perfect relationship together as God reveals himself to a spiritually dead and broken world.
May we resist the temptation to fit God into our boxes, our frameworks, the hats we wear, no matter what size they be. As God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have made their home in you, may they give you confidence to give a reason for the hope you have—the sure and certain confidence of God’s love for all people displayed in Christ Jesus, a love which no circumstance or power can separate us from—not even a Cross or sealed tomb. That hope, the core of the Christian gospel, is right here in today’s text: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And hope in that promise is our righteousness; our right standing before God, through faith alone. That hope; that faith worked by the Spirit is the end of futile human strivings to keep the law to be pleasing to God and approved by him by our performance, achievements and character. For it was when we were unrighteous, unholy, undeserving, that the Kingdom of God came to us and reigned in our hearts, to make us holy through belief in the truth.
Maybe some of us have been as good as Nicodemus. But it was when we were not good, when we could not get our head around God, that he so loved the world by giving his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. He shows us divine favour and mercy despite our failings. He loves you despite the guilt and shame of your past. He has come to you and made you his home, and will dwell with you until he takes you to the home he has prepared for you in heaven, forever. Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning and will be forevermore. Amen.
