May 27, 2018 - First Sunday after Pentecost - Trinity Sunday

Hospitality of Abraham or
Trinity by Andrei Rublev

Pastor Ray's preached today on the limitation of language and as it regards our understanding of a three-in-one God. He used Andrei Rubley's Trinity as an example and offered symbolic details about the Trinity that words alone could not capture.

He observed that same limitation happened when talking about people. He related a conversation where he asked a wife to describe her husband who was in hospice,

The wife first used adjectives to describe her husband, kind, loving, head strong... but as she ran out of adjectives Pastor Ray asked her to go on. She told a story about her husband. Stories are another way to move beyond the limitation of language.

Trinity Sunday's Gospel includes a familiar story and, of course, the celebrated John 3:16 verse. Verse 8 "The wind blows where it chooses" ties back to Pentecost revelations with the wind reference that focuses on God's life breath. This is part of a long tradition of a passion to observe God's breath. In Genesis 2:17 God breathed man to life, "Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being". And God's life breath was the also the wind in the house where the disciples were. God breathed to life the church which was born from Christ on the cross and took it's first breath on Pentecost.

Considering the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in the context of Pentecost this year is useful as well. First of all the night around them takes on a new meaning. This is a time where the seen world - Nicodemus's "what is" rather than "what could be" world - cannot be verified with sight. The story reveals how important this is to Nicodemus when the dialog opens. He makes a spiritual claim from physical evidence, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him". Jesus responds,"Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

Nicodemus tries to apply this response from Jesus to the world he knows by asking, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?". The answer Jesus gives is incandescent,  "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit." Jesus conveys here that those open to the possibility of God being manifest in the world are the ones who can truly see God's kingdom.

Nicodemus and Jesus
Henry Ossawa Tanner

What is heavenly and what is earthly? Jesus maintains, "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above." and continues with a beautiful insight to contemplate, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." .

Everyone can hear the rush of the Pentecost wind blowing, but those open to the possibility of God made manifest in the world through the Holy Spirit can also recognize this as God breathing life into the church or world. On Pentecost and the week before I described this openness as a choice and gave some factors last week that may play a part in that choice. This verse, however, hones in on precisely what is going on. Jesus uses the words born of the spirit.  Birth is not something we choose. The wind blows where it chooses states it perfectly. The Holy Spirit (God) blows where God chooses.

What Jesus says next is challenging:

"Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 

Jesus alludes to, but does not specify, the earthly things that Nicodemus does not believe so they must be surmised. Nicodemus may not believe Jesus as to who perceives or enters the kingdom of God. Also Jesus may be insisting that Nicodemus is wrong by believing Jesus is a teacher who has come from God because of the worldly signs. Actually there are very few things that Jesus has asserted here that Nicodemus may not believe.

Perhaps Jesus is teaching that "perceiving or entering the kingdom of God" and claiming Jesus is a teacher from God should considered as speaking of earthly things. Speaking about the kingdom of God would normally thought of as speaking of heavenly things. This may be another way of saying the kingdom of God is at hand, and that rightly perceiving or entering this kingdom is a better understood as an earthly thing.

Jesus also insists, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." These two verses are not mutually exclusive but to consider them both true creates a complex relationship in what it means to be born of the Spirit - a relationship that is further commented on in the verse that follows.

Jesus references a story from Numbers 21:4-9 where Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. Again, another image tied with Pentecost. The bronze snake resonates differently his Sunday given the recent fiery, snake-tongue Holy Spirit that was encountered last week. The bronze snake is an image rich with associations.

This Numbers story is about the unbelief and mis-perceptions of the Israelites in the wilderness. They were discouraged and grumbling about their current journey. Poisonous serpents came as judgment into the Israelite's camp. People began to die. They recognized their sin and came to Moses to confess and ask for God's mercy. When Moses prayed for the people, God instructed him to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole to heal people.

From that serpent the Israelites learn lessons about faith. God instructed the Israelites to look up at the bronze serpent to heal themselves. This is obviously not rational to them. The serpent on the stick may be a reminder of their sin which brought about their suffering but, as a remedy for snakebites, this makes no sense at all. However, when they look up to the bronze serpent they are healed. God graciously provides an earthly thing to function as a heavenly tool.

Many years later, when the Israelites were in the Promised Land, the serpent had become an object of worship (2 Kings 18:4). Unfortunately there is always a temptation to take the things that come from God and twist them into idolatry. We must not worship either the tools or the people God chooses to use (as John is described in John 1:6-13), but always bring the honor and glory to God alone.

The implications of Jesus saying And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up makes the idolatry question trickier to navigate. Believing Jesus is God does not preclude believers from making Jesus into an idol. As I prayed about this possibility I had the good fortune to find another reason how worshiping Jesus as an individual can be detrimental to Christian faith.

I also looked into  visual similarities between the serpent on the pole in the biblical story and the Rod of Asclepius, the medical symbol and found the symbolism and context are different. The biblical account is primarily a religious and historical narrative, emphasizing divine healing and obedience, while the Rod of Asclepius is a symbol associated with the ancient Greek god of healing, Asclepius, and represents the practice of medicine and healthcare.

In summary, the biblical story in Numbers and the Rod of Asclepius have distinct origins and meanings, even though they both involve a serpent on a pole in the context of healing.
 

I listened to Pastor Amanda of Central Lutheran on a podcast about Jesus' Ascension, The podcast gave it's audience an opportunity to learn more about the importance of the Ascension and contemplate what would have happened had Jesus not ascended to heaven.

I have never been comfortable with the Acts 1:9-11 Ascension account. I fancied it as a supernatural reason to explain what happened to Jesus' body. Imagining Ascension as a physical event was awkward for me and questions naturally arose. Is the physical body of Jesus really going to heaven as physical as earth? Do I have faith in that kind of heaven? I shied away from contemplating the Ascension, from picturing Jesus as depicted below, and from all those uncomfortable questions.

Pastor Amanda presents a different and powerful view of the Ascension's importance to us today. After the Ascension God's mission, that Jesus continued in the world, moves from a resurrected one to a collective and mutually accountable body of Christ.

She points out the Ascension tends to be downplayed because it is far easier for people to "star gaze". A new insight for me that rings completely true. We like our stars and prefer looking to one savior rather than looking to the body of Christ as it exists today to bring about the kingdom of God.

I recognized myself at the end of the podcast as mostly being a star gazer. My vision of the Ascension, as just described, attests to my star gazing. My mind's eye attempted to look only to the physical body of Jesus in the sky and not to the body of Christ on earth.

All this inspired me to read John 3:16-17 and understand these verses from a different perspective and a more Trinitarian view:

First the translation often quoted and held dear:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him"

Replacing the masculine pronouns with God John 3:16-17 reads like this:

"For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Son, so that everyone who believes in God may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through God"

John 3:16-17 is a New Testament verse that Jesus, as an individual, did not write. On this Trinity Sunday replacing the pronouns feels like a subtraction of an individual identity that allows me to imagine God's more collective identity through the current body of Christ and to expansively reflect on the immensity of God's love.