For millennia many a preacher has tried to explain the Trinity in novel, assessable ways using images of triangles, circles, shamrocks or water’s ability to appear as solid, liquid, gas.
So fraught with challenge to understand this tricky concept that even Martin Luther, who was something less than shy as a church reformer, once said this:
To deny the Trinity is to risk our salvation;
To try and explain the Trinity is to risk our sanity.
My goal with this message is to keep both intact 😊.
Today’s text certainly has Trinitarian bona fides. Jesus is described here as someone who came from God. The winds of the Spirit blow where they choose, symbolizing the active presence of God in our world. The basic ingredients for grasping the three in one as God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are all here.
But it’s the conversation in our gospel today of John 3:1-17 I find myself most drawn to.
Nick
The scene begins with Nicodemus, a Jewish religious teacher, going to see Jesus at night. Their conversation happens under the cover of darkness. This suggests Nicodemus isn’t entirely comfortable being seen in public with Jesus. That perhaps he is not yet enlightened. This is, after all, the story of Jesus and Nick at Nite.
Nick approaches Jesus with a sense of curiosity about the charismatic young new teacher able to draw large crowds. No one can do these signs you do apart from God, Nick says. Christ, in return, presents a riddle.
No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above, Jesus shares. Nick, leaning on what he knows of his faith tradition can’t help but go for a plain, literal meaning of what he just heard.
Nick wonders, can a person enter into their mother’s womb a second time and be born? Nick seems confused. Christ clarifies. What is born of flesh is flesh.
The wind blows where it chooses.
You don’t know
where it comes from,
or where it goes.
Such it is with everything born of the Spirit.
Nick, still not quite getting it, replies flatly, how can this be?
Jesus replies, are you a religious teacher? How do you not get this?
Christ goes on to share with Nick language you likely know by heart in John 3:16 – for God so loved the world. It is an broad, expansive understanding of the divine. Verse 17, it’s lesser-known sibling, continues:
The world. Said differently God isn’t just for some, but for all.
For Nick, a devout Jew, this would have challenged him. It would have stretched what he was taught about his religion growing up.
For rebirth is a spiritual experience available to all, but perhaps most needed by religious people who might think they do not need it. Religion often becomes a matter of the correct observance of particular practices. When these practices become routine, they can hinder us spiritually. When this happens the need for spiritual transformation, for a birth into the new, is due.
As the conversation between Nick and Jesus concludes it’s hard not to wonder, given Nick’s background with tradition, and given this challenge, how did Nick respond?
Did his understanding of God evolve?
Or would he be forever stuck –
saying,
doing,
believing,
The way it had always been?
Fortunately, Nick’s narrative isn’t yet done.
Nick appears again in John 7. The chief priests sent temple police to arrest Jesus. Some were saying arrest, arrest, arrest! Others wanted to leave him alone. In the middle of this Nick tells the gathered crowd that our law doesn’t judge people without first giving them a hearing, does it? No longer shrouded in darkness, Nick now rallies around his savior in a very visible, very public way.
Nick’s final act in this trinity of scenes is in John 19. Here he brings spices to embalm Jesus’s dead body. He now fully identifies as a Christ follower. Of the twelve disciples one betrayed and eleven were still hiding. But not Nick. Nick is coming out, in public, as a dedicated disciple for all to see.
Soon
In two weeks our congregation has the opportunity to come out, in a different kind of way. St. John’s Lutheran Des Moines is part of a new coalition of a dozen LGBTQ+ open and affirming Des Moines area congregations that is starting to get organized. Other congregations in this coalition include:
- Capitol Hill Lutheran
- St. James Lutheran
- Plymouth United Church of Christ
- Urbandale United Church of Christ
- Downtown Disciples of Christ
- New Beginnings Disciples of Christ
- Grace United Methodist
- Walnut Hills United Methodist
We can be part of this group because of the good work done by St. John’s in the past year. Three months ago we voted to become a LGBTQ+ open and affirming Reconciling in Christ congregation, where all of God’s children are welcomed, embraced and loved. And we weren’t shy about it. The vote passed with 98% approval. Not too shabby.
The first thing we open and affirming Des Moines congregations are doing together is a shared worship service during Capital City Pride on Sunday, June 9.
The service will be –
- Outdoors,
- At 10am,
- At the Pride Mainstage,
- At the corner of East 6th St and Locust,
- About a mile away.
Across our dozen congregations and the broader community we expect over 500 people will join us for worship. To get a good spot arrive around 9:45am, bring a lawn chair, and perhaps some sunscreen too.
We will sing together, pray together, celebrate holy communion together. All among a group of believers passionate about what it means when we say for God so loved the world. All of it. In all sorts of bright rainbowy kinds of ways.
There will be joy.
There will be laughter.
Smiles will abound.
Then, after worship, you are invited to stick around and join St. John’s in marching in the Pride parade. We’ll gather just a few blocks from there, the parade begins at noon. Last year 39 people came out to march with St. John’s. This year we’d love to have more. Our Bishop, Amy Current, will be joining us there. It will be all kinds of fun.
If you plan to march in the Capital City Parade, or help out at our Pride booth downtown that weekend you are invited to wear a St. John’s tie dye t-shirt. If you already have one great. If not just ask our Events Specialist Amanda Landers-Each and she’ll get you one. While supplies last 😊.
And if outdoor worship isn’t your thing? No worries.
You can join us here at St. John’s at 600 6th Ave June 9th at 10am, where we’ll host a livestream of the Pride service and also participate in holy communion. Or you can join us at home, or anywhere else via livestream that day as usual, and worship with us that way too.
That day you have a trinity of worship options. A holy trinity to be sure 😉.
Apply
Each of us, in our own way, can identify with Nick at Nite. We find ourselves drawn to Christ.
We want to –
learn,
understand,
grow into more.
Yet we too at times default to –
saying,
doing,
believing,
based on how it has always been.
Perhaps we too feel challenged when asked to care for and support one another in ways that are different and new.
Fear not, beloved.
For Nick at Nite,
becomes Nick during the day,
becomes Nick the disciple,
Serving Christ, boldly, until the end.
So join us,
in two weeks,
as you are able,
outside for worship,
There will be –
singing,
color,
sun.
Our journey,
to love God,
and our neighbor,
as led by the Spirit,
swirling around us,
in ways that challenge us,
to love more fully,
to love more boldly,
to love more publicly,
Is what it is, to be a follower of Christ.
And *that* journey, my friends,
has only just begun.
