Sermon: Trinity Sunday

Date Preached: Sunday June 7th 2009

With compliments to Rev. Richard J. Fairchild

There’s a story of a little girl who was asked to write an essay on “birth”. She went home and asked her mother how she’d been born.  Her mother, who was busy at the time, said ‘the stork brought you darling, and left you on the doorstep.’ Continuing her research she asked her dad how the same question.  Being in the middle of something, her father similarly deflected the question and said, ‘You were found at the bottom of the garden.  The fairies brought you.’ Then the girl went and asked her grandmother how she’d arrived. ‘You were picked from a gooseberry bush’, said grandma. With this information the girl wrote her essay.  When the teacher asked her later to read it in front of the class, she stood up and began, “There has not been a natural birth in our family for three generations...”

Well when Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of being born from above he certainly wasn’t talking of a natural birth.  As he tried to explain to Nicodemus, this was spiritual - a birth that was, and is, somehow, supernatural.

And I want us to think about this today - I want us to think about the ‘unnatural birth’ as we give our lives to Jesus and come to know the Godhead – the Trinity – a community of Persons made One through their mutual love - about the mystery that’s involved in this – the mystery of God who saves us, by becoming one with us, dying for us - & the God who lives and works in us and fills us by his Spirit.

Experiencing God’s love is a marvellous and mysterious experience. It’s like looking at the picture (on the back of your notes) of the old hag - and yet also the young woman. There is one reality - yet there is more than one reality.... And so it is with God.

God who is high and lifted up in his temple (as we read in Isaiah); the God who speaks and brings forth all of creation, the God who is judge, lord, ruler, king - the God who is in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.

this God is strange to us, beyond us, other than us

this God we dare not touch

even though we know this God and he knows us,

even though we see the signs of this God all around us

 

And then we have the God who is in Christ.

the God who is lowly, and humble

who reaches out and touches,

the God who serves others, the God who walks the earth with us, and cries and laughs with us;

Jesus who calls God Abba, Father, Daddy..

Jesus who was tempted like us in every way

Jesus, who got hungry and thirsty

Jesus who surrendered himself to die - for us

Father, Son – and God the Holy Spirit -

• God the bringer of visions and of dreams, new language

• God the source of strength and of hope,

• God the supplier of healing words and of comfort filling prayer

• God the wind, the breath, the air we breath

• the transformer, the one who gives new birth, new life,

• God the presence within us and the presence all around us

• God who calls us, draws us.

We are the children of God, says Paul, and when we cry Abba -, Father, we’re told it’s the Spirit of God who bears witness with our Spirit that we are indeed his children, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

As a Christian I don’t know all about God that there is to know – often it feels like I’m only scratching the surface, paddling in the shallows when there’s an ocean to swim in -

- because God is always greater than our little knowledge of him. But we do know what God has shown about himself – God in three persons, blessed Trinity

CS Lewis - in his book Mere Christianity tries to describe part of the experience of three-fold knowing - this three-fold loving - in his description of a Christian at prayer.

“What I mean is this.” he writes, “An ordinary simple Christian kneels down to say his prayers.  He is trying to get into touch with God.  But if he is a Christian he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God: God so to speak, inside him.  But he also knows that all real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the Man who was God - that Christ is standing beside him, helping him to pray, praying for him.  You see what is happening.  God is the thing to which he is praying - the goal he is trying to reach.  God is also the thing inside him which is pushing him on - the motive power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal.  The whole threefold life of the three-personal Being is actually going on in that ordinary act of prayer.”

What we often lack in our lives is a sense of the mystery of God.  We keep trying to develop one simple mental picture of God: one simple portrait of what our life in God is like or ought to be like.

Most of us are happiest thinking that things are either black or white, this or that - and we go to incredible lengths to fit things around us into one or the other category. But today’s a day that reminds us that God isn’t bound by any category, any system of thought or classification, and nor is our life in him.

God is just and holy - demanding perfect obedience -

yet God is merciful and forgiving - willing to forgive

I am a sinner - unworthy to touch the hem of his garment. Yet I am a child of God - intimately acquainted with his Spirit; a joint heir with his Son of all the riches of heaven.

When I became a Christian, when I yielded myself to the outrageous claims of Jesus

• his claim to be the Son of God,

• his claim to be the way, the truth and the life,

- something profound happened in my life.

My vision began to change. I began to see new things in the world around me.

I began to see the presence of God in the lives of people around me – stirring them up to live in new ways, with new ideas about what’s really important. And I began to experience within myself a growing peace.

This is new life – in Christ – and it certainly isn’t natural (at least in the world’s terms) - nor did we learn it somehow by going to this or that school. It’s not something we earn by living better lives than others around us. It happens as a result of trusting God, placing our lives in the hands of his Son Jesus Christ, and asking him to fill us with his Spirit.

All believers have this experience, We’re promised all who hunger and thirst for righteousness, all who yearn for God, will be satisfied.

And as believers - as a result of our experience of the forgiveness and grace of God in our lives, we come to see that through the bible God has revealed himself, disclosed himself as three, yet one. Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

So this is the truth that Jesus spoke of when he spoke to Nicodemus – and (not surprisingly) Nicodemus had a hard time grasping hold of it. All this didn’t seem natural to him - & and it isn’t – it’s divine work.

It is the gift of the God - the Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.

(As we say in our 8.30 creed from 1 Corinthians 15: This we received and this we believe.  May it be so, both now and forevermore.

In the Strong Name of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.