By Lucia Lloyd, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Heathsville, VA
No Small God
Matthew
28:18-20 (NIV)
Then Jesus came to them and said,
"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I
am with you always, to the very end of the age."
John 3:1-17
Happy Trinity Sunday! When I started thinking about Trinity Sunday, the first thing that came to mind was an experience when I was teaching a course on world religions at Rappahannock Community College. I had arranged for the class to take field trips to various places of worship so that the students could listen to members of the religions we were studying instead of just listening to me. On the day our class went to a mosque, our Muslim host told the class that Muslims believe in one god, unlike Christians, who believe in three. A student named Bill interrupted him and said, “No, Christians believe in the Trinity, three in one.” Our host said, “Three gods: The Father, and Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.” Bill opened his mouth, and I leaned forward to hear what he would say. There was silence. Then Bill closed his mouth again, and our host went on with his talk.
My strongest feeling at the time was the feeling of relief that it was Bill in that difficult situation and not me! If you had been in that class, what would you have said during that long pause? Many of us have a very difficult time trying to explain the Trinity in any way that is comprehensible. The analogies I have heard seem to suggest that the three persons of the Trinity are three parts of one whole, or one thing viewed from three perspectives. In some ways those analogies may make the Trinity easier to understand, but they all seem inadequate. Scripture, and the creeds, and the teachings of the Church keep insisting, “God is one and God is three.” We come to a paradox.
Many of us, even those of us who have been faithful church members for years, struggle with whether we can accept such an odd doctrine as the doctrine of the Trinity. We are not alone in that struggle. That struggle has been going on since the very beginning of the Christian Church. Even in the first centuries of Church history, various people have proposed more “reasonable” or “comprehensible” doctrines, including the ideas that Jesus was “a mere man” and not God, or that Jesus was divine but not really human. But every time they suggested an easier explanation, the Church insisted on the harder doctrine of the Trinity.
At various times in my life skeptics have expressed to me the view that people make up religion as a way of explaining things they don’t understand. But I am skeptical of the skeptics. My experience with faith has been exactly the opposite. I have been a person of faith all my life, sometimes confidently, sometimes praying, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” In all that time, faith has never given me explanations for things I don’t understand. Every time I feel as if I might have an answer, I find that with it come half a dozen more questions.
In fact, it seems to me more accurate to say that people make up atheism as a way of explaining things they don’t understand. If you don’t understand how Jesus can be both fully human and fully divine, atheism enables you to explain it away by saying that Jesus was “a great moral teacher.” And there is something comforting about not having to deal with any mysteries we don’t fully understand.
But the Bible does not let us off the hook that easily. The Bible contains many things: parables, poems, histories, commandments, stories, proverbs, letters, words of encouragement, songs, and questions. What the Bible does not contain are easy explanations. The book of Genesis does not give us an explanation of why the serpent is in the Garden of Eden. Job asks God for an explanation for his suffering, and God refuses to give him one. Instead, God gives him a revelation that God is all-powerful, and that God cares for him.
So if we want more explanations and answers than we have, maybe we can identify with Nicodemus in today’s gospel lesson. As soon as Nicodemus meets Jesus, the first words out of his mouth are, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” I get the impression that Nicodemus, like many of us, really likes to know what’s going on. His background as a Pharisee has made him used to knowing exactly what is right and what is wrong, who God is, how God should and should not be worshipped. I imagine that he is coming to Jesus like a dutiful student, expecting to be praised for getting the answer right. And he does get the answer right. Jesus does come from God. But Jesus does not praise him.
Instead, Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” At first it might seem like Jesus is changing the subject.
But I think what is happening is that Jesus senses that Nicodemus wants to define him, to put him in a box. And Jesus sees the need for Nicodemus to break through the satisfaction of having “the right answer.” Jesus says the goal is not just to know, but to see the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God cannot be all figured out by the human mind.
Now certainly our minds are important. Jesus commands us to love God not only with all our hearts, but also with all our minds. One of the things I love about the Episcopal Church is that encourages us to use reason, as well as scripture and tradition, in our relationship with God. But there is only so far reason alone can take us.
Sometimes the scholars who have the largest intellects are even more aware than the rest of us that the intellect is not the only thing that matters. One of the most eminent theologians of the 20th century, Karl Barth, wrote about himself, “The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at him because he tries to grasp the truth about God in [writing] a book of Dogmatics. They laugh at the fact that volume follows volume, and each is thicker than the previous one. As they laugh, they say to one another, ‘Look! Here he comes now with his little pushcart full of volumes of the Dogmatics!’.... Truly, the angels laugh.”
When Nicodemus starts talking about what he knows, Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” We are used to hearing the phrase “born again,” especially from evangelicals, but imagine yourself as Nicodemus, hearing that idea for the first time. It really is a bizarre idea, isn’t it? Nicodemus asks the natural question, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” I imagine Nicodemus with an expression of revulsion on his face at the whole idea of a grown man entering a second time into his mother’s womb to be born.
And maybe the shock value of this expression is part of Jesus’ point. Maybe that is Jesus’s way of getting Nicodemus to see that the old categories don’t quite work anymore, telling Nicodemus that there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in his philosophy.
It is probably fortunate in many ways that we have no conscious memories of our births. The experience of being born is probably our most traumatic experience of not knowing. When a pregnant woman goes into labor, the baby in her womb, unlike everybody else in American hospitals, does not sign a consent form agreeing to undergo the experience. And that is a good thing. When we were in the womb, we would certainly not have consented to lose everything we had ever known: no more warmth, no more oxygen supplies to the bloodstream, no more automatic food supply. I imagine being born must have felt to us like dying.
But the paradox is that if we had stayed there in the womb, in the place that we knew, in the place that felt like the safest place possible, we would eventually die. But if we go through the process that feels like death, in which we leave everything that is known and safe and secure, we will live in a way that we could never have imagined.
And that is what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus, and to us, when he says we have to be born again. If we cling to only what we know, and understand, and are familiar with, we will not have room to grow, and we will die. But if we are open to things we do not understand, if we are willing to tolerate the uncertainty of faith, then we will live in ways we could never have imagined.
Many people talk about being “born again” as a conversion experience. Certainly it is important for each of us to make a commitment to God, and to a life of faith. But my experience of faith is that I have to be born again, and again, and again. When someone asked Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple if he was saved, he replied, “I have been saved. I am being saved. I hope to be saved.”
The paradox of the Trinity is hard to understand. But there is another paradox, because the Trinity exists so that we can know God. God the Father gave us Jesus not only as a savior, but also so that we can see how Jesus could live a life of faith in the flesh. And God the Father gives us the Holy Spirit which works within us to give us a knowledge of things that are beyond our comprehension.
Someone once told me that if God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped. I like that. If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.
We want to feel we have a grasp of God. But God is not small enough to be grasped in our hands, because, as the children’s song tells us, God has the whole world in his hands.
We don’t get to go back in time and re-do conversations we’ve had in the past. But I know now what I would say to that question our Muslim host asked about the Trinity. I would say first that I do experience God as the creator of the universe, and I see God at work in oceans and mountains and sprouts growing in the ground and dogs and stars. I experience the creator of the universe as something transcendent, beyond the limitations of my mortal and deeply flawed life. Second, I would say that I do experience God in Jesus who taught us to love our neighbors, to care for the poor, to forgive those who hurt us, to welcome the excluded, to seek truth and righteousness above all else. I experience God in Jesus who healed the sick and fed the hungry and taught the searching and touched the impure, who came down from heaven to live beside ordinary people, and to show us what God’s love can look like in a real human life, who faced death, and who rose again to show us that even death cannot conquer God’s love. Third, I would say that I do experience God working in my own life, despite all my flaws, and I experience God working in the lives of the worshipping community, as the Holy Spirit enables us to pray, to love, to grow in faith, to give generously, to experience divine peace, and joy, and courage, and hope. And I would say that God beyond me, God beside me, God within me, are all different, and all the same.
That is how I experience God. And while I am sympathetic to those who want a more clearly constructed definition of Trinitarian theology, it does seem like asking, “Sure it works in practice, but what I want to know is, does it work in theory?”
So what Jesus tells Nicodemus, and us, is this: if you don’t understand everything about God, that’s okay. Worship. Pray. Love your neighbor. Forgive. Read the Bible. Give to the poor. Receive the sacraments. Live your faith. Because there is another paradox. Faith is not just a choice, but also a gift. You are here this morning because your soul is that little baby who is being born into a new life you do not understand. It is a frightening experience, but also a joyful one. No matter how small or inadequate you
06/07/09
Note: If you are still confused about how a gay Christian can feel they are 'right' with God I encourage you to read the section of the web site entitled "Gay and Christian? YES!"