Trinity Sunday 2024
Preacher: The Very Rev'd Dr Paul Shackerley
Date: Sunday 16th May 2024
Service: Cathedral Eucharist
Text: John 3. 1-17
Nicodemus visits Jesus at Night. Is he an agnostic searcher of faith?
An artist was shown this symbol by her friend, who was a Christian. It’s sometimes referred to as the triquetra (Pronounced: Tri-kwet-ra), the symbol contains three leaf-like shapes that interlock, making three corners, and sometimes with a circle in the middle representing eternal life. The circle is the same symbol of exchanging wedding rings when couples make their vows, they symbolise eternal love and commitment within a relationship. That all shows the relationship between Christ and his bride, the Holy Church. It is a simple representation of the Trinity and is most often associated with Celtic art, such as the Book of Kells – written and painted four Gospels created in Ireland or Scotland.
The friend said to artist friend that it was a symbol of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, to which the artist responded ‘whatever!’ The artist didn’t see the mystery of the Trinity in the symbol at all. The artist wasn’t a Christian and had no interest in Christian theology. Instead, she went on to say ‘I like the symbol because of the contrast between the hard and the soft. The curved lines of the circles and the points of the triangles.’ She went on, ‘you see. The circles are soft and easy to experience but then the hard edges of the triangle come and interrupt you, making you consider what you are seeing.’
When we relate the artists understanding of this symbol of the Holy Trinity to the character of Nicodemus, might we suggest that he knew from firsthand experience what it was like to experience soft circles and the interruptions of hard edges that made him consider what he was seeing in Jesus, and how he understood the Hebraic law and understanding of God. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, in secret. He didn’t want his Pharisee colleagues know he was meeting Jesus, because they were out to trap him. But Nicodemus was inquisitive and questioning. Jesus’ teaching was the hard edges of the triangle that interrupted his comfortable view of God. The Good News of Jesus was disruptive news of the Pharisees, and others. He felt trapped in his life as a Pharisee with their strict beliefs, rules, and regulations. It seems they were strangling his spirit, like the sharp edges of the triangle. For this reason, our fondness for Nicodemus grows. We never know if Nicodemus ever experienced the new birth Jesus spoke of. It is though he is ‘half in’ and ‘half out’, an awkward place of paradox between living the life he had with its laws and regulations that strangled life, against desiring the new birth he craved yet questioned. The human quest in search for God, meaning and peace.
He has two subsequent cameo appearances in the rest of the Gospel of John. In John 7, against the advice of "the chief priests and the Pharisees," Nicodemus defends Jesus, advising his colleagues to hear and investigate before making a final judgment against Jesus. And again, in chapter 19 when Jesus is buried, Nicodemus brings an extraordinary amount of myrrh and aloes for the embalming of Jesus' body according to Jewish custom (Jn. 19:39). Even given John's affinity for extravagance, that amount is extraordinary. Nicodemus misunderstands what’s going on. He had come to Jesus very early in the gospel, seeking to learn more, but went away unsatisfied. He didn’t get it. He comes again now, also by night, to help bury Jesus, and although the amount of spices is a very extravagant sign of his respect of Jesus, it’s also obvious that he has no clue what is going to happen. He still doesn’t know who Jesus is. Both his defence of Jesus and the extraordinary amount of burial spices is almost too much and too late. Reading between the lines, it seems as if Nicodemus could never quite emerge from his old life into his new birth. And neither can we, except aided by the Holy Spirit. An appropriate reminder and promise for Trinity Sunday.
While the artist had no idea what the Trinity means, I think her description can be helpful. Encountering one God in three persons and three persons in one God can often involve this interplay between the hard and the soft, the pointed and the smooth, the difficult and the easy. We have in this story, a character called Nicodemus, a teacher of the law, coming to Jesus at night with lots of questions, confusion, and uncertainty. How much does this sometime reflect our Christian discipleship. He has heard and seen the ministry of Jesus and believes He is a “teacher come from God” (verse 3). Yet, in this late-night conversation, Jesus takes Nicodemus into the hard and the soft conversation about eternal life and faith, the pointed and the smooth, the difficult and the easy, the limits of his understanding and the beginning of God’s grace.
In the conversation, Nicodemus encounters also a hard truth about himself, fearful of letting go with the familiar and safe. The ways of God bringing life “from above” are a mystery to him, as it is for us when faced with Holy Trinity. Like Nicodemus, we struggle to understand the hard questions of faith, God, suffering, war, and many other matters of human existence. Although Nicodemus has taught the stories of Israel, although he has read how Ezekiel called the Spirit of God to come from the four corners of the earth and bring the bones of Israel to life and learned the Hebrew Scriptures by heart, he still does not understand who Jesus is, or his message. He is limited in his understanding and Jesus presses into that limitation, bringing Nicodemus to the hard truth that there is an end to his understanding, and there is more, because God’s love and grace precedes understanding. He is faced with the hard triangles in the image of soft circles of love, forgiveness, and grace. Perhaps the reality of Nicodemus’s search for the divine is best described as ‘agnostic’, a searcher for faith and God’s love.
The hard ways of God reveal the softness of His heart. God’s grace enters that which is painful, that which is difficult, and brings about life and hope of resurrection. If you like, God is painfully creative. God the Father sees the world He has created; fallen, rebellious, broken, disregard for the planet, riddled with violence. God the Father, however, will not abandon His creation. Instead, He sent His Son into the world to bring new life, and the Holy Spirit to empower us in discipleship and Christian witness to the world. Life from above, born by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are not abandoned or left alone by God.
Perhaps, the most we can say on this Trinity Sunday is that some mysteries are puzzles to be solved. Others are questions to be answered. However, perhaps the holy mystery is really about a love to be experienced. Like Nicodemus, we also experience the contrast between the hard and the soft. The curved lines of the circles and the points of the triangles. The circles of our lives that are both soft and easy to experience but also know the hard edges of the triangle that comes and interrupt us, making us consider what you are seeing in the life of God among us, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The poetic and inclusive words of one of my favourite hymns, perhaps encapsulates the mystery of God the Holy Trinity as a love to be experienced.
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
like the wideness of the sea.
There’s a kindness in God’s justice,
which is more than liberty.
But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.
For the love of God is broader
than the measures of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more simple,
we should rest upon God’s word,
and our lives would be illumined
by the presence of our Lord.
