The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
There is a standing “inside skinny” to days such as these, that is days in which we celebrate Trinity. Trinity Sunday is the day that senior pastors or rectors often invite a guest to preach, perhaps someone with more academic acumen, or if such a person cannot be secured, a guest preacher from another discipline or even denomination. If this fails, perhaps the newest minted priest would be in line, or if one is fortunate enough to grab one, how about a seminarian? This, of course, is more in the camp of tongue and cheek humor about a day on the church calendar when we explore the fullness of God’s expression in that very familiar, but often confounding, concept of the Trinity.
Today I promise I won’t try to deliver an exposition on an ancient doctrine agreed upon some 300 or more years ago into the experience of the Christian church, an agreement of faith, if you will, designed for proclamation and unity of communities of faith scattered around the Roman World, a world of varied cultures, tongues, practices, and experiences. Instead perhaps you and I can explore the path of our delightful invitation to discover the fullness of God’s presence in our lives, as we explore a bit of the tangled dance of Nicodemus.
We stand today in the shadow of the Pentecost experience, the experience of varied tongues and cultures gathered in a holy waiting as the promised ADVOCATE of power came rushing like wind and fire. A holy moment was fashioned when lives were lit up and languages and cultures joined in one perfect union with God, each understanding fully those they could not understand before.
When I was young, my cousin and I played together daily. We were fortunate to have joined each others’ families for vacations or trips. We especially enjoyed trips to Philadelphia and Washington, DC. On those trips to more metropolitan areas we discovered that people were diverse in colors, creeds, and languages. We took to making adventures of our own, pretending we were from other places, countries, pretending to speak a foreign language with one another so that others would think we were different. One day, while strolling through the Smithsonian Institution, we were speaking our made-up tongue, of course not understanding a bit of what we were saying to each other, but giving one another direction. When in the fluid tongue my cousin responded to a direction and leaned over into an exhibit, touching a piece of it, an alarm suddenly sounded. We looked at each other surprised, confounded, and suddenly realized it was us – the alarm was about us. Our dialogue of misunderstanding had led us into unchartered waters.
Nicodemus stands today in an engagement of opportunity to explore and experience the fullness of what is standing before him which is God’s fullness of love and mercy. The problem in this interaction, of course, is that he and Jesus are speaking different languages. The educated “professor” and teacher of holy things has come near to try to grasp who and what this Jesus person is, and he seems to be struggling. Jesus tells this curious professor that to grasp the fullness of God’s revelation, one must be “born from above.” This is a metaphor for an invitation into the deep mystery of God’s person, the mystery that changes human lives, that shows old men and women they can still dance and dream, that invites beings whose eyes have grown tired and dark that new possibilities for sight are at the end of their noses. The mystery of God’s person that invites the human heart to change in such a powerful way that prisoners, repentant and changed, are teaching Sunday school, alcoholics and drug-addicted humans are extending a hand of hope for sobriety to others, warriors are sitting at tables of peace. All of this is because their being has entered into the fullness of God’s hopeful experience for their lives.
Instead of hearing a metaphor of invitation into this mystery, Nicodemus hears an improbable mechanism of biology. The Greek translation “one must be born from above” also translates “one must be born again.” For Nicodemus, an old man who has seen much, to be born again, to be born over again, just doesn’t make sense and it just can’t happen. Nicodemus cannot proof text what it is that Jesus invites him into; it just doesn’t add up. But the truth of the matter for Nicodemus and for you and me is that WE are invited into the fullness of God.
We are invited to dance as the music calls us together to dance. We are invited to speak a language of love that unites us in our understanding of one another. We are invited to know a God who creates us to delight in us, who desires to live with us in a way that touches us, heals us, redeems us, who desires to live in us a life force that brings light to the dimmest of eyes and bounce to the slowest of steps.
This Trinity Sunday we join to speak the truth of the fullness of God in whom we live and move and have our being, as the Prayer Book is want to say. We speak a truth that is not a proof text of something that exists or a formula of something that “works,” but rather an experience of authenticity. God is speaking authentically to our lives, and our lives are answering back to one another in the same. It is a truth called “holy authenticity.” Born from above, we are one with the fullness of God and we dare to let our life speak! If our life oozes compassion, then compassion is the truth we speak. If our lives ooze justice, then justice is the truth we speak. If our lives ooze forgiveness, then forgiveness is the truth we speak. If gentleness, then we cannot help but live gently authentically. If healing, we cannot help but live authentically as a person of healing.
To enter the Kingdom of God, one must be born from above. Amen.
