Trinity Sunday

After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. (Rev. iv. 1)
 
            
Today is Trinity Sunday, the beginning of Trinity Tide. Trinity means three, and Trinity Tide is an invitation to enter the threefold life of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. On Trinity Sunday, a door is opened from Heaven to earth, and we are summoned to go up or to move above ourselves into the source of all reality and goodness.
Christianity is a religion founded on the facts of Divine Revelation. Its God is a God who wishes to be known. (The Christian Year, p. 142) Heaven’s door is opened to man in God’s revelation of Himself. Christians believe in one God. The Bible teaches us that one God lives, knows, and wills. The substance and nature of God is one and simple. But the same God who wishes to be known reveals Himself to the minds of men. God is being or life; He is the I Am revealed to Moses. God is Word, Logos, or Truth; I Am informs all life with meaning and purpose. God is Spirit, the lord and giver of life. The life is the Father, who begets His truth – the Son, by the Spirit. The Spirit proceeds from the Father to the Son and from the Son back to the Father. Through the Spirit of love, the Father lives to think, and Son thinks to live. One God is life and thought through love. One God is Father, Word, and Spirit. There are not three gods but one God. The inner relations or operations of the Godhead we call Persons of the Trinity.

No doubt, this doctrine is confusing and difficult to comprehend. God is a mystery. In this life, we can never hope to understand God as He understands Himself. But because we worship a God who intends to be known, we must struggle to understand something about Him. St. Paul says we know in part (1 Cor. xiii. 9) St. John tells us that No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath made Him known. (St. John i. 18) For Christians, the knowledge of God comes through the Father’s revelation of Himself in the life of His Son, His Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. A door is opened from Heaven to earth in the life of Jesus.

In Jesus Christ, we begin to learn that God not only exists or lives as the Father but knows as the Son and loves as the Spirit. In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, we come to know the Son of the Father by the Spirit. In coming to know the Son, we discover our own place in relation to God the Father, as His potential children. We were made to become the sons and daughters of God the Father. In Jesus, we can come to see and know who and what we must become if we would be God’s offspring once again. In Jesus, the knowledge of God is made man. This knowledge as the way, the truth, and the life enables us to return to God.
 
Christians believe that the God of Scripture intends not only to be known but to be loved. Christians believe that God the Father sends His Son in the flesh to repair, redeem, and return Man to himself through the Spirit of His love. This morning, Jesus reveals to us the way of return. We read that a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews, named Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. (St. John iii. 1) We all come to Jesus by night, under the darkness of our own fallen human condition, in the quiet of the truth about our sinful selves, neither seeing nor knowing how to be reconciled with God. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that coming to Jesus at night symbolizes that honest state of obscurity and ignorance in the Christian soul who seeks to know and love God. (TA: Comm. John iii.) In the night, Nicodemus approaches Jesus. Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. (St. John iii. 2) But Jesus, sensing Nicodemus’ ignorance, insists, verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God. (St. John iii. 3) Man must be born again, a second time, from above, and by the Spirit, if he would know the way home to our Father. Nicodemus is confused: How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb? (Ibid, 4) Nicodemus knows that he exists, knows, and wills in an earthly manner, but cannot fathom how he can be born again and live, know, and will in a spiritual way.

Jesus tries to help Nicodemus to understand what moves and defines His life. Jesus will help Nicodemus move from the flesh to the Spirit. Jesus continues, verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (St. John iii. 5-7) As Water cleanses the body, the Spirit must cleanse the soul. As water cleanses Christ’s body, Spirit forever keeps him spiritually pure with God. Man is born of the flesh, is a fallen son of Adam, and must be cleansed of his filth by Water. Man is a spiritual creature and so must be made pure inwardly by the Spirit to become a son of the Father once again.

Jesus continues, Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (St. John iii. 8) Jesus says that the wind comes and goes mysteriously like the air we breathe and can never be traced or captured. The Spirit is invisible also and moves in secret, hidden ways. Jesus says, If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? (St. John iii. 12) Nicodemus is a religious ruler in Israel who should remember that the Father informs the world through His Word and moves it by His Spirit.

We speak of what we know, and bear witness of what we have seen. (Ibid, 11) The Word of God made flesh, the Son, knows all things from the Father by the Spirit. Nicodemus does not yet know that no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in heaven. (Ibid, 13) Man has fallen from God; he cannot know or will the good. The Son of Man must come down from Heaven to take on man’s fallen flesh and redeem it with the Spirit’s Love on the Cross. That which is born of flesh is flesh; that which is born of Spirit is Spirit. (Ibid, 6) Man’s flesh can return to the Father only if he is born of the Spirit to embrace Christ’s Death as what alone conquers sin, to be born again, to know and will the good, and to be lifted into Christ’s Resurrection and Ascension for reconciliation with the Father. Behold a door is opened, as God makes all things new.

God, the Holy Trinity, invites us to participate in His life through the very faculties we use daily to exist, know, and will much lesser goods. Behold a door is opened. Cardinal Von Balthasar reminds us that only on the basis of the Divine Trinity can there be something like Grace in our lives. (H.V.B. Sermon on the Trinity) Our God, the Holy Trinity, offers us His Grace to conquer sin through the knowledge of the Son and the quickening of the Spirit to return to the Father. This calls for nothing short of our willingness to born from above. Being born again means that we can exist, know, and will to be redeemed and saved by one God. The Father, who is God, lives to reveal Himself to us in the Son through the Spirit. The Son, who is God, knows us as the Father’s potential children through the Spirit. The Spirit, who is God, desires and wills the Father’s goodness in us in the Son. As such, we shall be saved by the only source, meaning, and activity capable of making something abundantly good out of our fallen natures through the intimate life, light, and love of God the Holy Trinity.   

Amen.   
©wjsmartin
 
 
 

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