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The Lessons Appointed for Use on the
First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday Year B RCL
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29 or Canticle 2 or 13
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17 click here for texts 
The feast of the Holy Trinity, hum! After last Sunday craziness at the feast of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, this looks from a preaching standing point like a funeral.
At Redeemer, we had outdoor mass with baptisms, two brothers, 6 and 10, were baptized with water abundant enough to drown anyone. Music was upbeat and at the end of the mass we ended up with a roll call of all the countries represented at Redeemer, twenty three of them, and people jump and shout for each one of them, when we call United States everyone went crazy which makes me think that immigrants love this country in spite of its shortcomings. Followed by BBQ, Dance group presentation, bouncy for children with plenty energy to free United States from Arab oil. Culminating with a water balloon fight. I heard that the neighbors were actually happy with the madness at Redeemer, I guess is the summer itch we all feel, to which we give embodiment of some sort. The text that describes the first Pentecost in Jerusalem tells us that people thought they apostles were drunk swaying under the powerful wind and fire of the Spirit.
Then we have the feast of the Holy Trinity, the sobering theological feast of all the three persons of the Godhead. I say theological, because if the gregarious feast of Pentecost is all about experience and communication, the feasts of the Holy Trinity is mostly an intellectual reflection of the Church on Jesus’s frequent mentioning the Father and the Spirit and their relationship. The Trinity was theological leap of faith for a church coming from the strict Jewish monotheism. To this day the Jewish creed says: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.."Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God! The LORD is One!"
Jesus never sought to clarify that relationship in theological terms, he basically refer to it in terms of relationships, for us was sufficient to know that each of them three divine persons are united in a way that can only be understood if we are to examine the ontological, the foundational relationship of a pregnant woman to her not yet born child - Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. John 14:10 The Father living in me, only a mother can understand that. Which means that only women can understand, from that knowledge that is not of the head, but of the entrails, the spleen, what Jesus meant. Trinitarian theology then was initially the response of men to this words, where they sought to comprehend up here what they could not understand down here, in the entrails.
That does not means that all of the Trinitarian theology and understanding is wrong, but rather that the reflection is not and will never be complete. That theology, by definition is the faulty reflection in a muddle mirror. Paul writing to the troublesome church in Corinth says to those who claim to know much of the this New Way the following: Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.1 Corinthians 13:12, now is now, and then is yet to come, when can see God not as reflection, then is when we will be able to bathed our souls into the eyes of the Holy One, being loved and loving in return, perfectly, the same way the each person of the Holy Trinity loves each other.
We hear often that the Church in the Third World is growing numerically, while is in great deal of trouble in our part of the world, otherwise look at around you and see how many empty seats we have. The mega churches grow mostly at the expense of what is called the historical communities like ours. Mega-churches are the result of American-inspired entrepreneurial spirit and plus another host of conditions that fueled their astronomical growth. Small communities have more difficulties responding to the ever changing environment where they are set in. The historical churches loaded with a heavy tradition component, suffer among other things the fact that they are already composed of small communities, a group of loyal supporters that have become their stockholders of things as they are and in the best of cases resistant to change.
But I suspect that the fundamental reason, the core issue why the Third World churches grow is because they posses so little in terms of material wealth that they know very well that they radically depend on God. They do not have the delusions of power we suffer of in the affluent Northern countries. Part of the American mythology is that you can be what ever you put your mind to. Although this does wonders for “a pulling by the bootstraps attitude”, which is of great deal of help among the urban poor the ultimate truth is that this is also a mirage.
It is not Holy Scripture, but a German social theorist writing for a German newspaper in Yorkville, New York who said : "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." I am referring to Karl Marx. The point it is that although attitude is half of the solution, the other half is an interplay of our historical conditions that have created the urban poor in the first place and even chance and opportunity. Poverty is a cycle that can only be broken with the help of God.
I got this story from Babara Crafton, an episcopal priest now residing in Florence, Italy: a woman very successful in her career, a woman who “have arrived” if you will, after finding that all she had, money, car, house, a handsome intelligent husband, beautiful children, it did not give her happiness. Some hole in her heart could not be filled with things or people, she wanted to understand the meaning of life, why are we here? Where are we going? What is the whole point of living?. She took a year off work and went on a spiritual quest that took over the continents and islands and all sorts of books, she organized as she was, she devoured the knowledge provided to her, catalogue it and put it in well aligned mental shelves up here, while the bottom understanding, the one that comes from down here, still was hungry, telling her that she had really not arrived. Somebody mentioned to her about a wise man living in a cave at the foot of the Himalayas and of she went. Knocking at his door, knuckles almost white of the freezing cold, the wise ment answered and invite the questioner woman to come in, she says to the old wise man - I do not want to come in, I just want to know the meaning of life, I have come from afar and that is all that I want from you. The old man insisted in inviting her for tea, until he finally says -unless you come in for tea I wont tell you the meaning of life- The woman reluctancy enters the small hut inside this cave up in the freezing Himalayas and sits down for a cup of tea. The old man begins pouring the tea in an old colorless cracked mug and keeps pouring even after the cup is full and begins to burn the woman’s hand. The woman shrieks and start insulting the man: you old fool, you do not what you are doing, you know nothing! To what the old man says to her: correct, I know nothing and neither you! Your cup is so full that nothing more can fit, come back when your cup is empty and you will find the meaning of life.
When Nicodemus comes to see Jesus, he comes at night, which is probably
the writer’s way of saying that he was in the dark or didn’t get it.
Nicodemus is interested in Jesus and what he’s teaching, but he can’t
get past his usual way of seeing things. “How can I be born again?” he
asks. “I’m already a grown-up.” But as Jesus always seems to be doing,
he tells Nicodemus that if he wants to meet God, he’s going to have to
let go of those old understandings and see things in a new way. “The
wind/spirit blows where it wants to,” he answers Nicodemus, “and you
can hear it, but you’ll never know where it came from or where it’s
going.” God is always doing more surprising things than we can imagine,
right in our midst, if we’re willing and ready to notice.
That's probably the biggest hint we get about the Trinity—God is always
more, and more mysterious and surprising, than we can imagine. The
early theologians talked about the three in one as a circle dance—God
who creates, the human face of God, and the way God continues to come
into our lives, unbidden and unexpected. We experience God in different
ways because God is most fundamentally relational.
What Nicodemus learns is that if he thinks he knows who God is and what
God is all about, then he's several cards short of a full deck. He
cannot predict what the fullness of God is like from just the few cards
he has. He has to be willing to let go of his fixed and unchanging
ideas. He has to be willing to engage the Spirit and be surprised. We
discover God in wrestling with what the Spirit brings—the very wind
blows us off our secure footing. (Barbara Crafton)
The truth is what we know nothing and nothing can we do without God,
who like a artist on a tightrope is balancing the always conflicting
needs of the Universe. God is inviting you and me to be part of his
very small community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, numerically small
and yet everywhere. To enter this community the only thing we need to
do is to be willing to accept the invitation to dance, to drink tea
with God, knowing fully well that our feet will become fully alive only
when we let Him lead, that our cup is empty and that we know or have
nothing that interest Him other than our love. That He will take us all
as we are even when nobody would, shabby, dumb, sinner and will
transform us from the inside out and will make us shine like the sun.
God does not call the able, but he makes able those he calls.
In this sobering Feast of the Holy Trinity, The Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit, The Very First Family, The Very First Community- let us
model ourselves after them, and lets try to be better fathers and
mother, better sons and daughters, better disciples, better spiritual
brothers and sisters, let us love each other aspiring to the perfection
only found in love that unites them, The Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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