Sunday 11th June 2006The Most Holy Trinity

Fr David Cherry

Isaiah  6  :  1 – 8 ; Romans 8:12-17 ; John 3:1-17 

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

A few weeks ago I went to a conference on the Exx of St Ignatius. After the lecture, the Jesuit, asked for any questions.  I woman began and went completely off the subject. She didn’t have a question and lost her way. She was so pleased to be well enough to be there.  She told us of terrible illness and heartache and at the end she said:  God has been faithful to me.  I just want to congratulate God.  And the packed church irrupted into applause.  I don’t think I was the only with tears in my eyes.

On Trinity Sunday we remember the nature of God who has revealed himself in and through a covenantal relationship.  God promised and bound himself to us.  The record of that relationship is in the Bible; a great love-letter from heaven.  Except it didn’t flop down from heaven.  Rather it was written out of the lived human experience of people like you and me; who found God in their midst; and who was faithful in love.  And it is out of the lived experience of the Church that doctrines emerge like the Trinity.

If you want to know what the life of the Trinity looks like, it is utterly natural and ordinary...wherever the creative Spirit is at work, sanctifying, restoring, strengthening.

So there is no mystery to be solved.  I have no visual aid; no shamrock with three leaves to explain the Holy Trinity; no ice to represent the Father, water to represent the Son, steam to represent the Holy Spirit.  This is not a puzzle, but it is a mystery, the mystery of what it is to have a God who, since Genesis, has been erupting from within human experience, overcoming human frailty and fear, rivalry and violence to bring about his life of love in a new ecclesial community of flesh and blood.

Think of last Sunday, Pentecost Sunday.  Please God, anyone who popped in, will have sensed the presence of the Divine Spirit among us as we processed around and then celebrated the Baptism of Luke Alexander and then were brought into Holy Communion.  May it please God, it will always be noticed in the way we treat one another and give each other licence to get things wrong, freedom to change our minds and see things differently.  For to know what the life of God is like, you have to experience it and you need to expect it in human experience; you need eyes to see and ears to hear.  

This is what Nicodemus hasn’t grasped in today’s gospel.  Another translation for the Greek ‘born again’ is ‘born from above’. To be born ‘from above’ of the Spirit is not to have some secret knowledge or even less some esoteric theory to be grasped. Neither is it dependant on any decision I make. It is not about what I do that counts and it is beyond my control for the Spirit blows where it lists.

It is about how God’s Spirit is taking us over – how God is happening to one.  The woman at the conference had passively experienced God. 

There is great emphasis these days among evangelical Christians on what I must do.  Some fail to notice that being born again is something that happens to you. To place the emphasis on what I do is nothing short of idolatary.  I cannot save myself by my choices or by my actions.  It is all about a marvellous God and what God is doing.  You must be ‘born from above’ rather than born again through a choice once made.

The church only came to its understanding of original sin by experiencing the life of the Trinity and realising : oh so this is what sin is – it is the opposite of this kind of love, the opposite of what we are experiencing now.; the opposite of kindness and forebearance; the opposite of giving way in love; the opposite of Persons in Communion.

They realised that they, through the Spirit in them, the same Spirit that was in Christ inhabiting them and taking  them over, possessing them; they were becoming less rivalrous, less guarded, less defensive, less over against others.  For that was life ‘after the flesh’; and St Paul tells us something absolutely obvious – that to live vying for control will lead to death, death of the Spirit of Christ in you, but also death of society and harmony.
 
As Persons drawn together in love and unity our brothers and sisters began - as we do now – to notice, acknowledge and ‘celebrate the life of God happening to them.  They were being born ‘from above’, ‘of the Spirit.’  And so are you and I.

They were ‘Undergoing God’ (the title of a book by James Alison to be published this September) who is making you and me like himself: a society of Persons – like God.  - as the Preface for today says; three persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendour, yet one God, ever to be worshipped and adored.   

If you want to know what the life of the Trinity looks like, it is utterly natural and ordinary.  The life of God is to be found where love and mercy break through into patience, kindnesss, gentleness and where the fruits of the Spirit are found; where justice and peace embrace.  The life of God, life after the Spirit, is found where community is found, mutual love; the life of the Trinity is found among all people of every race, language and Creed; wherever the creative Spirit is at work, sanctifying, restoring, strengthening.

May our life together be so strengthened as we celebrate Holy Communion, the visible Sacrament of ordinary things which strengthens and sustains this life.  The celebration of the Feast of Corpus Christi this week is to do just that.

But today, let us congratulate God on being God.  Let us notice the gifts of the Spirit – awe, wonder, wisdom, our sheer delight that God is God, giving thanks that we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear but we have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba Father.

“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”