Trinity Sunday 2012

Trinity Sunday 2012 “You must be born again!” John 3:1-17

Nicodemus was religious. He was a theologian, a judge, and a well-respected authority with power, position and prestige. He knew all of these things about himself. He also knew he was lost.

Nicodemus knew he was lost in religion and trapped in his position as a religious authority.

He did not always know he was lost. It was only when he heard about Jesus that he recognized there was something wrong. There was something wrong with a religious system based on credits and debits. There was something wrong with a theology that taught that God was so pure, holy and transcendent that God had to use angelic intermediaries to give infallible and inflexible Law to human prophets to impose on weak, fallible human beings.

Most of all, Nicodemus recognized he was lost and trapped in his own pride of position. He was the religious expert. As an expert he had a position on the Religious Council that decided who was righteous and who was unrighteous, who God favored and who God cursed, who lived by the Law and who should die by the Law.
Nicodemus could not afford to be in doubt about anything. He feared being wrong. But, when he looked at Jesus he found himself gazing into the perfect mirror of Divine Love and saw himself for who he was: lost.

Nicodemus came to Jesus secretly by night- but he came. He approached Jesus from the place of fear- fear of the other religious experts who might condemn him. Nevertheless- he sought Jesus. He initiated a conversation. He asked questions.
Nicodemus knew he was lost and he suspected Jesus had come to seek the lost, to find the lost, and to restore the lost to union with God.

As a religious expert, Nicodemus had just enough knowledge to recognize the inadequacy of knowledge. As a religious authority with the power of life and death in his society, Nicodemus had just enough power to recognize the inadequacy of power.
What Nicodemus longed for and hoped for was what Moses and the prophets had experienced and proclaimed: God is real. God is personal. God is love. God is Jesus Christ.

Jesus brought forth his preaching, teaching and healing in the context of Moses and the prophets but not within the religious categories Nicodemus had studied and enforced.

Jesus is Divine Love, mercy and compassion in human flesh. Jesus performed miracles from the place of love. What Jesus offered was completely different and absolutely unique. It was so different and unique that the knowledge and power Nicodemus held could not comprehend it.

Jesus offers himself as the solution to a problem Nicodemus and all others of his generation, and ours, failed to identify. The problem is separation from God that produces a life characterized by fear, self-will and pride.

The solution is a new life. The solution as Jesus presents it to Nicodemus is: you must be born again.

The new birth is a spiritual birth. It is the reunification of the lost with the One who has come into the world to seek the lost, to find the lost, and to restore the lost to Divine Love and holiness.

Nicodemus thought and acted from the place of law within the categories of rewards and punishments. Jesus stood before Nicodemus as the perfect mirror of Divine Love to reveal to him and to us how we have separated from Divine Love. Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, as he speaks to us, with mercy and compassion to offer us a new life.
The new life is reunion with the Father, through the Son, by the Real Presence of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus clarifies for the people of his generation and all generations that the One God is infinite and eternal love. That love eternally expresses himself as the one who loves (the Father), the Beloved (the Son), and the love that forms the essential Divine Being (the Holy Spirit). The reality of God revealed in Jesus is active, dynamic, creative, life giving and personal.

God the Father created us to live and move and have our being in this dynamic expression of eternal love. Our choice to separate from God cuts us off from that love and that life. Jesus restores that love to us by inviting all people everywhere to be born again into the new life of eternal love.

Despite the fear Nicodemus felt that night, he met the perfect love of God in Jesus Christ. He heard the Word of God speaking the mercy and compassion of God. He questioned. He pondered. And, he made a real choice.

He chose to be found in Christ. He chose to be born again by the action of the Holy Spirit. He chose to surrender his self-will and pride to our Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation.

The Plan of Salvation is the steadfast holy love of the infinite and eternal Trinity inviting all people everywhere to be reunited to the Father, through the Son by the new birth in the Holy Spirit. Amen.