[Sermons] Trinity Sunday

[Malcolm Young]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Here's the sermon for Trinity Sunday.  It's a tough but lovely day to  
preach although I always think that the hymns do a better job of  
reaching the truth on that day than does the spoken word...

Yours,

Malcolm

__________

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California (www.ccla.us).  If you think that this would be helpful to  
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Other sermons in written and audio form can be found at  
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Malcolm C.  
Young                                                                    
                           Isa. 6:1-8

Christ Church, Los Altos, CA Sermon  
P17                                                                      
                                     Canticle 2

Trinity Sunday (Year B) Sermon – 8:00 a.m. & 10:00  
a.m.                                                                     
                                         Rom. 8:12-17

Sunday 7 June  
2009                                                                     
                         Jn. 3:1-17


Nicodemus, Knowledge, Love and Risk
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that  
everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal  
life.” (John 3).



We live like Nicodemus.  We feel drawn to the sacred, toward the Holy  
One, the source of our life and meaning, but at the same time we  
worry about the practical effects of this dangerous attraction.  We  
wonder if this will put our safety, power or authority in jeopardy,  
whether we will lose more than we gain.  Yes, we come to Jesus not  
knowing who he is or what his relation is to the Father.  We make our  
appearance before him in the dark, without letting anyone know where  
we are going.  Out of the silent spaces in our lives he speaks to us  
about knowledge, love and risk.



1. Knowledge.  Nicodemus is like a first century Supreme Court  
justice (who has already been seated on the bench).  He has dignity,  
wisdom and authority as a leader of his people.  But he lacks  
knowledge and seeks it in Jesus whom he believes commands the power  
bestowed by God’s presence.



In the late 1950’s an American pastor named Howard Mumma briefly  
served the American Church in Paris.  During that time he became  
acquainted with a man in a black suit who originally came to hear  
Marcel Dupré play the organ but began hanging around to listen to the  
sermon.  It turned out that this was the novelist and intellectual  
Albert Camus (1913-1960), one of the twentieth century thinkers whose  
name is most closely associated with existentialism and even atheism.  
(You probably remember, The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall.)



Over time, Camus confided to this minister saying “I have been coming  
to church because I’m… seeking something to fill the void that I am  
experiencing – and no one else knows.  Certainly the public and the  
readers of my novels, while they see that void, are not finding the  
answers in what they are reading… I’m searching for something that  
the world is not giving me.”[i]



Like Camus in this apocryphal story, like us actually, Nicodemus  
comes to Jesus seeking wisdom.  In both style and content Jesus  
explains that no knowledge can give us any kind of power over, or in  
the face of, God.  Jesus uses words that have two meanings like the  
Greek word “anothen.”   This word can be translated either as “again”  
or “from above,” as in “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they  
are born again or born from above” (Jn. 3).  When we can’t even say  
which way Jesus uses this word, it ironically calls into question the  
certainty of people who describe themselves as born again Christians



If this were not enough, when Nicodemus persists in wanting to take  
him literally, Jesus explains that people born of this spirit are as  
impossible to pin down as the wind that comes and goes (Jn. 3).   
Jesus says that the words we use to describe spiritual reality will  
always be imperfect.



The Bible uses a startling variety of pictures to describe God.   
These include natural images like the whirlwind or cloud, and animals  
like the hen, eagle or lion.  God is described as physical objects  
like a tower, shield or garment.  At times God seems like an  
impersonal creative force at others God has human features such as a  
face, eyes, arms and hands.  God walks around and has a voice.  God  
exhibits qualities like skill, intelligence, anger, memory and  
forgiveness. God is like a potter, farmer, shepherd, father, and a  
mother giving birth.  But none of these pictures is enough by itself. 
[ii]



The British theologian Kenneth Leech understands Christian history in  
just this way writing, “The rejection of ambiguity is the  
characteristic of heretics in all ages.  Heresy is one-dimensional,  
narrow, over-simplified and boring.  It is straight-line thinking,  
preferring a pseudo-clarity to the many sidedness of truth, tidiness  
to the mess and complexity of reality.  Orthodoxy by contrast is  
rooted in the unknowable.”[iii]  Perhaps this is an over- 
simplification, but I believe the truest pictures of God are always  
open.  They always acknowledge the mystery of God’s freedom.



2. Love.  In the face of these sometimes even conflicting pictures of  
God, we like Nicodemus, may wonder where to begin.  In response Jesus  
says one of the weirdest things in the Bible.  “And just as Moses  
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be  
lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn. 3).



Even if, like Nicodemus, you know the story about Moses that Jesus  
refers to, it still may be difficult to make sense of this (Num.  
21:9).  As the people of God escaped Egypt through the desert many of  
them were dying from snakebites.  So God instructs Moses to make a  
bronze image of a serpent on a pole.  Whenever a person who has been  
bitten looks at it that person is healed.



Jesus compares this action with his own death on the cross (using  
another word “hupsosen” that has two meanings – to exalt and to lift  
up).  Seeing Jesus on the cross somehow heals us.  There are a lot of  
theories about how Jesus’ crucifixion sets us free from the forces  
that destroy us.  Some people believe that Jesus pays a kind of debt  
to God on our behalf.  But I’m more inclined to think that Jesus’  
death was a consequence of the way he lived.  If you are absolutely  
uncompromising in love, if what you want matches what God wants so  
perfectly, people will seek to kill you.



But regardless of how you think Jesus’ death works, many more people  
agree that it works.  In Jesus we experience a kind of new freedom  
which is like the difference between being dead and being made alive,  
or born again, if you will.



Throughout history people have tried to philosophically deduce the  
attributes of God beginning with principles of perfection.  They do  
this by imagining what perfect power or vision or imagination or  
wisdom looks like.  The picture that most often wins out however is  
the one based on perfect love.  We call it the Trinity – three  
persons mysteriously extending themselves, creating the world in  
their mutual love.  The seventeenth century French philosopher Blaise  
Pascale (1623-1662) writes that faith isn’t a matter of assenting to  
intellectual propositions but a way of immersing yourself in a  
different reality.  Faith is love of God.  It is the experience of  
being one of God’s children.[iv]



This week at Bible study we talked about these readings and one of  
our younger participants told us how she felt afraid to really give  
herself over to God because it might lead to suffering.  Our oldest  
member then described what it felt like to lose her son.  She said  
that we can understanding events like this in one of two ways.   
Either you look at the world as a series of things that you learn to  
love and will all be tragically taken away from you, or you can see  
it in a Christian way as she did when she chose to experience her  
son’s life as a gift that she did nothing to deserve.



Jesus teaches us that only through love will we begin to have a true  
experience of God.  Living by love may put us in danger, but it is  
the only way to become what God created us to be.



3. Risk.  Let’s get back to Albert Camus.  This celebrity author  
finally became so close to the American preacher that he asked to be  
baptized.  Apparently Camus had tears in his eyes when he said, “I’m  
ready.  I want this.  This is what I want to commit my life too.”   
The only problem was that Camus hoped to have a quiet private baptism  
and the American clergyman wanted him to become a visible and active  
member of the congregation.  At that point Camus was not ready to  
risk being rejected by his admirers and existentialist friends.   
Unfortunately he never got another chance.  Not long after the pastor  
returned to America Camus was killed in a car crash (1960) at the age  
of forty-six.  The remarkable thing about Nicodemus was that he did  
have another chance.



After this seemingly unsatisfactory encounter with Jesus, Nicodemus  
made very different decisions.  Later in the gospel when his fellow  
religious authorities sought to arrest Jesus, Nicodemus insisted that  
according to the law he deserved a hearing.  They accused him of  
either ignorance or regional partiality and replied, “Surely you are  
not also from Galilee, are you?  Search and you will see that no  
prophet is to arise from Galilee” (Jn. 7:50-2).



Then at the very end, after all the disciples had abandoned Jesus,  
Nicodemus and James of Arimathea take his body down from the cross,  
anoint him with oil (as a deceased friend or as a king) and bury him  
with dignity (Jn. 19:38-42).



Although Nicodemus hesitates in the same way that we do, he also  
becomes a kind of model for us as Jesus’ disciples.  Nicodemus moves  
from fearful curiosity, to tentatively speaking up, to putting his  
life on the line for the one who taught him that God loves the world  
(Jn. 3).



What kind of risks will you take this week in the world to respond to  
God’s love?  What will you risk to be reconciled to or help another  
person?  What will you risk to bring good news to someone who needs it?



At Christ Church we have taken risks for the sake of our faith.  Only  
a few years ago we started Ventana School out of our commitment to  
care for people who were not yet part of the church.  Now we are  
ready for our next risk as we work out how we might include new  
people in our worship together, how we might be the church for a  
whole new generation in a whole new century.



In conclusion one of my favorite twentieth century religious figures  
was the rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972).  In his book Man Is  
Not Alone he writes about the God “who is more than all there is, who  
speaks through the ineffable, whose question is more than our mind  
can answer; [God] to whom our life can be the spelling of an answer.”[v]



Like Nicodemus we too might have a lot of questions for God.  But  
these aren’t what are most important.  What matters most is how you  
risk your life to answer the question God puts before you.


[i] I’ve wondered about the truth of this ever since I first  
encountered it.  Howard Mumma, “Conversations with Camus,” The  
Christian Century 7-14 June 2000 (644-7). http://www.religion- 
online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2013
[ii] This reminds me of an old book by J.B. Philips (1906-1982)  
called Your God is Too Small.  Whether we receive communion or  
diligently read the Bible every day of the week or give millions to  
charity or give yourself away to alleviate suffering among the  
poorest of the poor – our picture of God is too small.  We can only  
know as much about God as God chooses in various ways to reveal.

[iii] Quoted in Garret Keizer, “Reasons to Join: In Defense of  
Organized Religion,” The Christian Century 22 April 2008, 29. http:// 
www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3537
[iv] Leszek Klakowski, Why is there Something Rather than Nothing?:  
23 Questions from Great Philosophers Tr. Agnieszka Kolakowska (NY:  
Penguin, 2007) 126.
[v] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of  
Religion (NY: Macmillan, 1976) 78.
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