Trinity Sunday 2021

You know I find it funny that in the Anglican lectionary for this year, our gospel reading is John 3:16. So on Trinity Sunday we’re supposed to teach about what is probably the most complicated, mysterious, and unfamiliar topic in Christianity using what is probably the most memorable, well-known, and overused Scripture in Christianity. John 3:16 and the Trinity. What do they have to do with one another? Answer: everything. And we’re going to talk about why.

First, what is the doctrine of the Trinity? What do Christians mean when they say that God is triune? The doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one true God of the universe, and he exists as three distinct persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. While distinct from one another, each person of the Trinity is fully and completely God. They share the same nature. The three persons are one God, and the one God is three persons. At the most basic level, even if we can’t fully understand it, this is what we believe as Christians. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God in three persons.

What does this mean? It means that before the creation of the universe. Before the first chapter of Genesis, God existed as a community of love. At the core of his nature and identity is the existence of an eternal loving relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit. For eternity past, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have perfectly loved one another, honored one another, served one another, celebrated one another in perfect relationship. Perfectly in step with each other. So when we embrace the doctrine of the Trinity, we’re embracing the fact that loving, honoring, serving are not just things that God does, they are his very nature. It’s who he is. Why? Because he is not just one. He is one in three.

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God is by nature relational. In this beautiful doctrine we are reminded that God did not create you and me because he wanted to be loved. You know, that’s how a lot of people think about God. He created people so that they would love and serve him, as if he wanted an ego boost. But that’s not it at all. God didn’t create you and me because he wanted to be loved. He created us because he is deeply and wonderfully and perfectly loved as Father, Son, and Spirit. God is love. And from that relationship of love that exists at the center of his being, he created you and me not too add to it, because what could we possibly add to perfect love? No, he created us not to add to his love but to share in it.

We exist in order to know and experience the same degree of love that the Father has for the Son, that the Son has for the Spirit, that the Spirit has for the Son, etc. etc. You and I and your kids and your family and your neighbors and your coworkers, all of us were created in order that we might be participants in the life of love that God has known for eternity past.

You see, that was the vision at the start of creation. The vision was for the love that flows between the Father, Son, and Spirit would characterize all of life on earth. All the earth was invited at creation to know life as God knew life. But very quickly things went poorly. We didn’t want to be a part of that relationship. Rather than live a life focused on others, we wanted to live a life focused on ourselves. Our needs, our desires, our glory. And so rather than the world of loving relationships that God desired to give as a gift, the world is at we know it today: filled with broken relationships. We left the world of God’s design for the world of our design.

So, what does this have to do with John 3:16? Well the great hope of the people of Israel was the promise that God made them, that God was going to bring to pass his original intention for the world. God was going to take the throne of his creation once again, and he would institute his rule on earth. His kingdom was coming and the world would be characterized by his perfect love. And so in Jesus’s day, the fundamental question was “How can we become a part of his kingdom? How do I get to see it?” That was the essential question.

And the most popular and celebrated answer to that question was given by a group of people called the Pharisees. Nicodemus was a pharisee. Pharisees were immensely popular during Jesus’ day. They were the local heroes in many ways. They were honored by the people because they had the answer to the question, “How do we become a part of God’s kingdom?” The pharisees taught that if you followed the laws of God, if you did these things on the list, and if you did them faithfully, you would see the kingdom of God” Do these things and do them well, and you’ll know the blessed life of heaven, when God takes the throne. That was Nicodemus’ answer to the most important question of his day.

But that wasn’t Jesus’ answer. You see, in this meeting, undoubtedly Nicodemus was coming to Jesus to hear his pitch for entering the kingdom of God. What did Jesus teach his pupils? What was his list of things he had them follow? What was his formula for obedience? But Jesus responds to Nicodemus by saying, the way you’re approaching me betrays that you have no idea what I’m all about and what I’ve come to do.

And so many people approach Jesus like this. We approach Jesus like he is just a teacher. We wrongly believe that Christianity is primarily about learning from Jesus. Learning how to live. How to love. How to be good neighbors. How to fight for justice. How to care for the earth. How to steward our money. Jesus teaches us how to live, and when we follow what he teaches, when we do these things we see the kingdom of God. We enter the kingdom of God. When we do these things we enter the blessed life of God.

But Jesus emphatically says that is not what he’s about. Unlike Nicodemus or any of the other religious teachers, Jesus did not come to give a list of things we need to do or behaviors we need to follow or teachings we need to obey so that we could enter the kingdom of God. Jesus says that he did not come to make small, incremental changes to our lives and behaviors. He didn’t come just to educate us on the things that we should be doing in our lives. No, he came to utterly remake you from the ground up.

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Jesus didn’t come to teach us new tricks to add to our lives in order to make them better. He came to destroy our old lives and give us new ones. He came that we might be born again.

Now, that phrase is deeply unpopular both within and without Christian circles. Born again. It conjures up images of a particular group of people with particular emphases and a particular spirit and attitude that is not all that appealing. Born again people are weirdos, and even as Christians we often want to avoid that label. But Jesus, makes it the essential label for being a part of God’s kingdom. It’s not optional. To see the kingdom of God, we must be born again.

But what does it mean?Well, Jesus pulls from a passage in the prophet in Ezekiel to define for Nicodemus what it means to be born again. He says in verse 5:

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

As I said, Jesus is pulling an image from the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel to describe what it means to be born again. In Ezekiel, God is telling his people that he will rescue them from their enemies, he will redeem them and bring them back into a healthy and loving relationship with himself, and he’ll do something to them. And this is what he’ll do to them. Ezekiel 36:25:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

So what are the two things that God is going to do? First, he’s going to cleanse us with water. So what does Jesus mean by being born of water? He’s talking about being washed clean by God. Clean from what? From everything that would disqualify you from being a part of God’s kingdom and family. Clean from everything that makes you unloveable. Clean from everything that generates shame in your life. Clean from everything that you want to keep hidden from others. Clean from the awful things you have done, and clean from the awful things that others have done to you. The first thing that defines what it means to be born again is God comes and washes you clean. Notice the actor, the subject of the verb. God will, he will come. And he will wash you clean. That’s the first thing.

The second things is this: God will put his Spirit in us. Jesus says that we must be born of the water and the Spirit. God will put his Spirit, where? In our hearts. So not only does God cleanse us, but he remakes the seat of our desires, affections, and loves so that we love what he loves, we desire what he desires. This doesn’t mean that we’re made perfect, it means that we desire holiness, that we desire to live a life with God, walking in step with him, aligning our trajectory with his. In the ancient world, heart was the place of our will. It’s where our drives and motivations originate. And so what God does is he puts his Spirit in that space, and that turns our hearts which are hard as stone against God and his ways, and the Spirit turns it into a heart that longs for Him and his ways, that delights in him, that celebrates him and longs to follow him.

This is what Jesus says it means to be born again. It means that God washes us clean and God puts his Spirit in us. And when, and only when, these things happen, do we see and experience and take part in the kingdom of God. It’s not about doing the right things, Nicodemus. It’s not about being educated in the right way. It’s about being washed by water and indwelt by the Spirit.

The question is, “How do we enter the Kingdom? How do we enter the life of love that exists between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit?” According to Jesus the only true answer is, “When God washes you clean and puts his Spirit in you.”

And this is why the message that Jesus proclaimed is called good news. Because he came to do exactly that. Jesus did not come to tweak your life, to give you something to add to your life to make it better. He did not come educate you on a better way to live. Jesus came to wash you clean and to put the Spirit of God within you. He came to destroy your old life with all of its ugliness and stench of death and give you a new life that is bursting with joy, hope, and love.

Jesus came to invite you into the kingdom of God. Jesus came to make you worthy of that kingdom. Jesus came to invite you into the eternal loving relationship of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And to make you worthy of that eternal community of love, he does not provide minor adjustments. He remakes you from the ground up. Which means you can never be too far gone. There is no degree and quantity of sin that is beyond the reach of Jesus, because he doesn’t reform the old into the new. He destroys the old and creates the new.

We jump down to John 3:16, the famous verse:

“For God so loved the world, [please understand that this word “so” is not a sentimental “so,” it’s not John saying that God sooooooo loved the world, it’s the Greek word houtoes, in this way, God loved the world in this way] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God extends his love to the world, through the giving up of his Son on the cross, so that we would live eternally in that love. The beauty of the doctrine of the Trinity is while it is beyond the reaches of our comprehension, the loving relationship that it describes is our present hope and future reality, because what Jesus has done for us.