Holy Trinity Sunday
Acts 10:44-48; I John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17
(Barbara Brown Taylor told the following story in a Christian Century column of Feb. 21, 1996)
Once upon a time there was a woman who set out to discover the meaning of life. First she read everything she could get her hands on—history, philosophy, psychology, religion. While she became a very smart person, nothing she read gave her the answer she was looking for. She found other smart people and asked them about the meaning of life, but while their discussions were long and lively, no two of them agreed on the same thing and still she had no answer. Finally she put all her belongings in storage and set off in search of the meaning of life. She went to South America, Europe, Africa. She went to India and China. Everywhere she went, people told her they did not know the meaning of life, but they had heard of a man who did, only they were not sure where he lived. She asked about him in country after country until finally, deep in the Himalayas, someone told her how to reach his house—a tiny little hut perched on the side of a mountain, just below the tree line. She climbed and climbed to reach his front door. When she finally got there, her knuckles so cold they hardly worked, she knocked.
“Yes?” said the kind-looking old man who opened the door. She was so happy and relieved she thought she would die.
“I have come halfway around the world to ask you one question,” she said, gasping for breath. “What is the meaning of life?”
“Please come in and have some tea,” said the old man.
“No” she replied. “I mean, no thank you. I didn’t come all this way for tea. I came for an answer. Won’t you tell me please what is the meaning of life?”
“First, we shall have tea,” the old man repeated and she gave up and came inside. While he was brewing the tea, she caught her breath and began to tell him about all the books she had read, all the people she had met, all the places she had been. The old man listened (which was just as well, since his visitor did not leave any room for him to reply), and as she talked he placed a fragile tea cup in her hand. Then he began to pour the tea. The women held the cup and continued to talk and the old man continued to pour. She talked and talked and he poured and poured until the tea ran over the sides of the cup and spilled to the floor in a steaming waterfall.
“What are you doing?!” the woman exclaimed when some of the hot tea burned her hand. “It’s full, can’t you see that? Stop! There’s no more room!”
“Just so,” the old man said to her. “You come here wanting something from me, but what am I to do? There is no more room in your cup. Come back when it is empty and then we will talk.”
Meanwhile, several thousand miles to the west, a ruler of the Jews named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. This time there was no tea ceremony but the outcome was the same. Nicodemus came looking for answers. Jesus started pouring declaring that Nicodemus had gallons of answers available to him.
Nicodemus appears to have been a spiritual man. He also was a bit careful about established religious practices since he came to Jesus at night, probably at a time when the local religious authorities were not around observing Jesus. Nicodemus clearly saw in Jesus signs of something more than just right rituals and proper prayers. He saw in Jesus the presence of God. Jesus responds by declaring, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”
Other translations of the Bible use the phrase “be born again.” Either way the statement clearly confuses Nicodemus. Birth to him is a once in a life time event. Jesus tries to help him out by calling attention to the spiritual dimension of life, the mystery of the divine that enters our world and our lives. It is common to read this text as an invitation to go looking for the Spirit. It is tempting to build on the experience of last Sunday’s Pentecost text, to take the roar of a rushing wind and tongues of fire that give voice to the Gospel and say “Yes Lord, bring it on. Show us the signs that will convince us. Let us feel the Spirit’s presence.” Although I’ll be honest. An emotionally centered personal encounter with God is not something that the Scandinavian Lutheran in me is real comfortable with. Yet, since the 17th century Puritans, this has been the most common form of understanding for being “born again.” In this congregation there are many who know well the experience of the emotionally emptying and then a potentially exhilarating filling. Jesus named for Nicodemus and for us a moment in our lives that becomes pivotal to who we are, what we believe and how we live. At our synod assembly this weekend, Bishop Wayne Miller referred to such a moment as a “Jesus event”. For some it is captured in the words of the hymn, “I was lost but now I’m found.” For others it is Biblical images. Being as dry as dust in a dessert waiting for one drop of water or feeling like the dry bones scattered in the valley awaiting the breath of life. Jesus said, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
The wind blows. Scientists tell us that the wind blows clockwise around high pressure centers and counter clock wise around low pressure centers but a meteorological map is not the image that we associate with wind. The wind blows and what captures our hearts and imagination is the way the wind lifts our kites and fills the sails of the boat. The wind we experience sweeps through the trees and brushes the fall leaves across our yards. Winds swirl the clouds and breathe life into hot stifling days. We feel the wind, see its affect on the world around us. Jesus speaks of the wind blowing and suddenly we realize that this is not a weather report but a glimpse of the divine.
Nicodemus still doesn’t get it. “How can these things be?” he asks. A teacher and a leader of the people, he was well educated in all the questions of law, morality and good order. Nicodemus knew how to keep the Sabbath holy, how to fulfill the law and stand righteous before God. He knew how to live a religious and good life but there was no room for the spirit, no possibility that the winds could ever blow into his life. The windows were all closed tight.
Today is Trinity Sunday. Today is a day for opening some very tight and stuck windows. Today is the only Sunday of the entire church year where we focus on a doctrine of the church. The Trinity is an attempt to explain the mystery of God as three in one. Father, Son and Holy Spirit and yet one God.
Three weeks ago I preached about the difference between believing and believing in. We observed in story the difference between believing that someone could walk a tightrope across Niagara Falls pushing a wheel barrow and believing in them enough to actually get in the wheel barrow. Today is a day when the church has historically pointed to the ancient creedal confessions that have witnessed to what we believe about God and remembers that these creed were written by people willing to get into the wheelbarrow. The historically conditioned Nicene Creed, the mythically conceived Apostle’s Creed, and the orthodox defining Athanasian Creed. In our worship experience we too often encounter them as great walls of words that we say we believe. But the challenge to explain the mystery and wonder of God is more than just words. Our lessons for today remind us of the otherness of God in ancient visions of a heavenly throne, of our very personal encounters with God beginning in our baptism and the renewing visits of God’s spirit into our lives. The wind blows, the tea flows, but our cups are so full. Sometimes we need to be reminded by the spilling of the spirit that God wants us to open ourselves to receive what really matters most.
At the preaching conference we attended a few weeks ago, the preacher Thomas Long described the struggles we have in our modern overfilled lives. He told of a pastor who recently accepted the senior pastorate of a large well endowed ministry in New York city with a multitude of programs of education, music and social ministry. Two weeks after he arrived the market began to fall. His church finance committee frantically met and revised several programmatic plans. The market, of course, continued to fall. More financial meetings were called. Decisions were made and things would seem to be pretty solid only to find the next week that something else would need financial realignments. Week after week decisions would be made, things would feel pretty good and then as the Pastor said, another shoe would drop and there would be more meetings. More decisions were followed by more shoes being dropped. Finally the Pastor felt the church boards had made the right decisions to keep the ministry on a solid footing. The Pastor led his committee in a prayer of thanks for God providing a vision for continued ministry along with a request that God not drop any more shoes. He then went back to his office only to be immediately called by the director of the homeless shelter the church operated. He said the New York police were there and needed to talk to him. He hurried to the shelter where he was met by two police officers who said the police had just raided an illegal factory and had 200 pairs of fake Timberlane boots to distribute to the homeless. And another shoe dropped. The wind blows where it will.
God desires us to receive but our cups are so full. Full of anxiety and guilt, full of uncertainly and worries, full of business and demands, full of our self serving priorities and lack of faith. In the end it comes down to the familiar words, “God so loved the world…” The mystery of our faith expressed in the creeds is that we believe in a God who emptied himself of all that was divine to become one with us—to take on our humanity. A few weeks ago I told the Sunday adult class an ancient story of the day that Jesus decided to set aside his divinity and take human form. The story is told that Jesus was emptying himself of all that made him divine. First he emptied himself of omnipotence—being all powerful, then he emptied himself of omniscience—being all knowing; next came omnipresence—being all present and even being eternal. Jesus had almost completely emptied himself of all divinity when God the Father said “Stop, it is not possible to be human and be completely empty of all that it divine because there is one element of the divine that was placed in humanity from creation.” So Jesus entered the world with one expression of the divine that was also human, that part of humanity that is truly in God’s image. No longer all powerful or all knowing or all present Jesus nevertheless came to earth all loving.
That is the greatest gift of the spirit. But to receive it we first need to empty ourselves of all the things that overflow our cups each day. To admit that we cannot find all the answers ourselves The wind blows, the tea flows.
Are you feeling full today? God shows us a way. A cup, you see, does not exist just to receive. If all a cup does is receive it overflows. The cup fulfills its function when it gives, pours forth, provides drink, is shared. Our cups are filled to pour forth. Filled with abundance that we might share; filled with talents that we might enrich lives; filled with time that we might learn to serve; filled with suffering that we might learn hope, endurance and faith; filled with grace that we might forgive. Our cups are filled with God’s Spirit that we might live and grow in love.
Today is Trinity Sunday. Today the wind blows, and the tea flows.
Amen