A Sermon for Trinity Sunday
A Sermon for Trinity Sunday
St. John 3:1-17
by William Klock
Everywhere Jesus went the crowds followed him. Everyone had a problem. Some were deaf, some blind; some were sick, some dying; some were demon-possessed, some were weighed down by sin. They knew that this is not how the world is supposed to be. Everyone knew it then. Everyone knows it now. And that’s why everyone longs for the day when the world is set to rights and the tears are wiped away. And that’s why the people flocked to Jesus. Wherever he went, there was a little bubble of the world as it should be. Wherever Jesus went, there was a little bubble of God’s future in the present. Wherever Jesus went, there was a little bubble where the tears were wiped away.
And this man named Nicodemus—John says he was a prominent Pharisee and ruler of the Jews—Nicodemus watched from a distance—in the streets, in the temple court. And as he watched, he saw the hopes of Isreal being fulfilled. He saw that little bubble of God’s future wherever Jesus went. And he believed. It’s just that he wasn’t quite sure exactly what he was believing. Have you ever felt that way? You see God at work. There’s no question about it. But it’s not something you ever expected. And so you believe, but you don’t really understand. That’s where Nicodemus was at. He wasn’t one of the simple people who just needed some physical manifestation of the kingdom like the blind and the deaf and the demon-possessed. He knew the scriptures. He knew how the God of Israel was supposed to fulfil his prophecies. And Nicodemus could see that Jesus was fulfilling them. But Jesus wasn’t doing it the way people expected. So Nicodemus went to Jesus in the night, after the crowds were gone, when Jesus was alone with his disciples. Knock! Knock! Knock!
And Peter—or John or James or whoever—opened the door and was totally surprised to see him there. Everyone knew who Nicodemus was and he was the last person the disciples expected to be knocking at the door. But here he was, probably with at least a servant or two. You didn’t close the door on someone like Nicodemus, so pretty soon he was inside and seated with Jesus and the questions began. Nicodemus wanted to understand.
“Rabbi,” he said to Jesus, “we know that you’re a teacher who has come from God. Nobody can do these signs that you’re doing, unless God is with him.”
If you listen carefully, you can hear the unspoken question in Nicodemus’ affirmation. It’s the theologian’s equivalent of “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” It was like this for everyone. The disciples saw, they heard, they believed, but when Jesus pressed them with questions, they still gave the wrong answers. Peter knew with absolute certainty that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of the living God. But when push came to shove, he drew his sword and was ready to usher in the kingdom with violence. Despite three years with Jesus, the disciples were still full of all the wrong ideas the Jews had about the Messiah and his kingdom. Nicodemus was no different. It’s just that he knew he was missing something and he was here to sort it out with Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t give him the answer he wanted—because Jesus knew that no matter how clearly he connected the dots for Nicodemus, that wouldn’t solve the problem. Nicodemus needed something more. And so Jesus answers Nicodemus’ question with those words so familiar to us, but so perplexing to him: “Let me tell you the solemn truth. Unless someone has been born from above, he won’t be able to see God’s kingdom.”
This is John 3. The beginning. Jesus gives the answer to all the questions. And consider how the disciples had three years to mull it over. And as we’ve heard in our Gospels all through Easter- and Ascensiontide they still couldn’t wrap their heads around it. Jesus told them he had to leave so that something better could come and they were confused and upset and afraid. Jesus was a walking manifestation, a walking bubble of the kingdom. How could anything possibly be better than that?—apart from the kingdom filling the whole world—but how’s that going to happen if Jesus is gone? They had to be born from above, too. But that’s just it. In being born from above, they themselves would become walking bubbles of God’s future in the present. That’s what we celebrated last Sunday at Pentecost. The God of Israel sent his Spirit to indwell his people. They were born from above—and suddenly, when that happened, it all made sense. Peter preached that great Pentecost sermon—something that would have been impossible the day before—and from there the disciples went out to make God’s kingdom known to the world.
Incidentally, this is why the story of Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus is our Gospel today. Long before there was a Trinity Sunday, this was the Sunday after Pentecost and today’s Gospel was chosen to explain the events we read about last Sunday. When Trinity Sunday came along there was no reason to change the lesson, because here we see the Trinity revealed: the Son reveals that the Father must send the Spirit to give life to and to renew his people.
But back to Jesus and Nicodemus: “The central truth you’re missing is that you’ve got to be born from above,” Jesus says to the Pharisee. Nicodemus understood so much. He knew the world is not as it should be. He knew that the Lord had chosen and called his people to be a light to the world. And he knew that his people had failed—over and over and over. That’s why the Pharisees were so zealous for God’s law. If everyone in Israel would just shape up. If they’d just remember all the wonderful things God had graciously and mercifully done for them and love him return by keeping his law. If they would be faithful. Then God would return and set everything right. The Pharisees were an “on earth as in heaven” people. And Nicodemus saw God at work in Jesus, but he was struggling to reconcile what he saw in Jesus with what he expected of God. Jesus knew this and so he says that what’s missing—not just what Nicodemus is missing, but what all Israel is missing—is this new birth. And, Brothers and Sisters, it’s really important that we understand that as much as Jesus is saying, “You, Nicodemus, must be born again—which is how the ears of modern Christians have been trained to hear this in individualistic terms—Jesus’ stress is on Israel, on the whole people: “All y’all must be born again,” as they might say in Texas. In verse 7 he says, “Do not be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’” Israel as a people had been born the first time when they passed through the waters of the Red Sea and Jesus is saying that now Israel has to be born a second time. This is why John was out in the wilderness calling people to repentance and baptising them in the Jordan, but still stressing that water wasn’t enough. Israel had been baptised with water before. What Israel needed now was water and the Spirit. Jesus walking around a little bubble of God’s future in the present—that’s what Israel was always supposed to be—so that the nations could see them and know the goodness of God. And what Jesus is saying is that it’s the Spirit who will finally make the people what God had intended them to be all along. As Jesus has said over and over in various ways: he, Jesus, was sent by the Father, but that it would be the Spirit—the “Helper”—who would come after, who would testify to them about this truth, and then that through them this Spirit would testify to the rest of Israel and even to the nations. This would fulfil what the prophets had spoken: a new people, a new Israel through whom the Lord would fulfil the mission he’d begun with Abraham—a mission to fill the world with knowledge of his glory as the waters cover the sea. This new Israel, full of God’s Spirit, would finally be that bubble of the kingdom, the manifestation of God’s new creation here in the midst of the old, so that the nations will flock to the God of Israel to give him glory.
But Nicodemus just sat there looking puzzled. Ditto for the disciples. Because the Spirit hadn’t yet come to testify about Jesus. So Nicodemus asks, “How can someone possibly be born when he’s old? You’re not telling me he can go back a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, are you?” And as Jesus answers him, this is where he switches from saying things like “Unless one is born again” to “Unless all y’all are born again”. Because it’s not such much about one person being born again or even about a whole bunch of individuals being born again. It’s about Israel as a people being born again so that she could be put back on track to fulfil her mission to reveal God to the nations. Now, this idea of new birth would have resonated with Nicodemus, because to be a Jew was all about being born as part of Abraham’s family. Other things like circumcision and sabbath and diet were really important—especially to a Pharisee—but those things were important because they were the markers of Abraham’s family. They drew a clear line between those who were in the family and all the uncircumcised, unclean gentiles who were most definitely not—the one’s people like Nicodemus expected God to destroy with fire and brimstone when he came to set the world to rights.
And what Jesus is now saying is that being born into Abraham’s family the way the Jews thought of it wasn’t enough. In fact—and this really comes out in Paul’s letters—it never had been enough. And Nicodemus should have known this. For two thousand years people were born into Abraham’s family and the kingdom still hadn’t come. For two thousand years people were born into Abraham’s family and still the gentiles hadn’t experienced the Lord’s blessing through them on the huge scale envisioned by the scriptures. Just the opposite, in fact. The Prophet Zechariah spoke of a day when the gentiles would be grabbing hold of Jews by their coattails and pleading with them, “Take us with you, because we hear that God is with you!” But because of the way most of Abraham’s children were living, the nations mocked them and taunted them saying, “Where’s your God?” It takes more than bring born of the flesh of Abraham. It even takes more than being born of water, as Isreal had been in the Red Sea. As a Pharisee devoted to exhorting his fellow Jews to be better keepers of the law, Nicodemus should have known that it wasn’t working—that the people needed something more. He, of all people, should have been looking forward to the day when the law would no longer be written on tablets of stone, but engraved on the very hearts of the people by the Holy Spirit.
So Jesus says to Nicodemus, “I’m telling you the solemn truth. Unless someone is born from water and the Spirit, he can’t enter the kingdom of God. Flesh is born from flesh, but spirit is born from Spirit.” This is what John the Baptist was getting at out in the desert. God was about to lead his people in a new exodus. As Israel had been led through the waters of the Red Sea to become a covenant family, so John was calling people to pass through the waters of the Jordan—a step of repentance and faith—and into a new covenant. They all needed a baptism of repentance. They need to turn aside, not just from their disobedience, but from their misguided expectations of the kingdom and of the Messiah. But remember what John promised. When people asked him if he was the Messiah, he said that he was only the forerunner. “I baptise you with water,” he said, “but he will plunge you into the Holy Spirit.” And that’s just what Jesus does. As we remembered last Sunday at Pentecost, Jesus takes those who have repented, who have turned aside from every false god and from every false king and from every false “ism”, he takes those who have instead grabbed hold of him in faith by passing through the waters of baptism, and he plunges them—us—into the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit transforms and renews and regenerates us. He takes our old, dead wood and grafts us into Jesus the vine and new life courses into us to bear fruit. The Spirit makes us those walking bubbles of God’s new creation—what God’s people were always supposed to be. That’s what it means to be born again or born from above.
Brothers and Sisters, think of your baptism as something like Israel at the Red Sea. There was the parted water and God calling Israel to pass through to freedom and new life on the other side. There was no receiving the law in Egypt; they had to cross to the other side of the sea to find covenant, to find relationship with the Lord. And so we stand at the waters of baptism today. In them Jesus gives his promise: Repent, turn aside from every false way, trust me, follow me in faith and you will find forgiveness of sins and new life through the Spirit. To pass through the waters of baptism is to take hold of Jesus’ promise and to be born again of water and the Spirit—and to be made part of this new covenant people ready and equipped to live and to proclaim his kingdom.
But, again, this didn’t fit what Nicodemus knew. “How can this be so?” he asks. And Jesus asks a bit incredulously, “How can you not know this? You’re one of the teachers of Israel!” Nicodemus knew the story. He understood how Israel had so miserably failed in her mission. As a Pharisee he was abundantly aware of this problem. Jesus tells Nicodemus: God has heard your cries and is visiting his people and he’s doing it in me. I’m the son of man, the one spoken of by Daniel all those years ago. I can tell you reliably the things of heaven because I’m the one who has come down from heaven. Nicodemus is pretty incredulous. He came wanting to know, but he’s not liking what he’s hearing and so Jesus is basically telling him, “You have to trust me.” That’s what it’s all about. Sometimes this faith stuff doesn’t make sense, but keep trust Jesus and the Spirit will eventually make sense of it. And in keeping with that Jesus reminds him of the time the Israelites grumbled against Moses—which was really just veiled grumbling against the Lord. And so the Lord sent poisonous snakes into the camp. The snakes bit people and many of those who were bit died. But the Lord also gave Moses the remedy. He told Moses to cast a snake out of bronze and to mount it on a pole. Anyone who would look up to the bronze snake would be healed. It didn’t make sense. How would a bronze snake on a pole heal anyone? But it did—by faith.
So Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, in the same way the son of man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may share in the life of God’s new age.” Jesus is pointing to his own crucifixion. As the snake was the affliction of the people lifted up for them to look at, so Jesus would take the affliction of Israel on himself—he would suffer the punishment for their sins—and be lifted up on the cross. He would be lifted up for everyone to look upon—to see the horror and the gravity of their sin, to see that the wages of sin is death. But they would also see Jesus taking it all on himself and in that, the horror and ugliness of his being raised up would become an act by which he is ultimately glorified. In the cross we see the love of God made manifest in Jesus. And Jesus says in the familiar words we all know, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”
Jesus corrects the central error in the thinking of Israel in his day. They were hoping and praying for the day when the Lord would come, not just to vindicate his people, but to judge their enemies—to rain down fire and brimstone on the Romans and all the other gentiles. But instead Jesus tells Nicodemus that he’s come not to condemn, but to save all who will look to him. All. The Jews thought the Lord, when he came, would vindicate them for their faithfulness, but Jesus says to Nicodemus, “Even the most righteous of you need this new birth, this salvation if you want to know God’s vindication. And it’s not just for you.” The Jews looked forward to the condemnation he would bring, but Jesus says he’s come not to condemn, but to save. And this is where the part about being born again of water and the Spirit comes into play. Being born of water and the Spirit supersedes biology and genealogy. In Jesus God opens his arms to welcome Jew and Gentile alike. It was the Jews first, because if the Lord is faithful—and he is—he had to first fulfil his promises to his own people, but most importantly, in that act of faithfulness, the nations would take note of the God of Israel. In Jesus, the nations would see that the God of Israel is not like the puny, selfish, fickle, and powerless gods they have known, and they would then flock to this God who is truly good and faithful. This is what God’s future looks like, not just Israel set to rights and everyone else set on fire. God’s future is for everyone who sees Jesus and his people wiping away the tears and forgiving sin, who believes, and who becomes part of it—whether born of Abraham by the flesh or born of Abraham by faith—all born in God’s Spirit.
Abraham’s family is integral to the story and the plan, but Jesus reminds us that genes and DNA were never really what made anyone part of Abraham’s family; it was about faith. It was faith for Abraham himself and it was faith in God’s promises for all who followed after: for Isaac and Jacob, for Joseph and Moses and Joshua, for gentiles like Rahab and Ruth, and even for the great kings like David and Solomon. And God’s promise was that through his covenant people, through these people who knew him in faith and were reconciled to him by faith, he would bless the nations. It happened here and there in the Old Testament. Rahab and Ruth are two of many small-scale testimonies to that, but here we finally see the Lord’s promise coming to full fruit. It’s what we celebrated last week on Pentecost as Jesus sent the Holy Spirit on these men of Israel gathered from around the world. They had heard Peter preach about Jesus and what he’d come to do. They rallied to Jesus in faith and in response Jesus poured his Spirit into them. Finally, through Jesus, Israel became the source of blessing she was intended to be—not by flesh, but by the Spirit—as these men and women took the good news to the nations: Jesus is Lord. He has conquered sin and death. In him is the forgiveness of sin, in him is life, in him God has returned to his creation as King. And in him—the incarnate Word—God makes himself known. In Jesus, God incarnate, we have the restoration and fellowship with our Creator that he has been working towards ever since the day we rebelled and were cast out of his presence. In Jesus, God’s kingdom—his new creation—has been inaugurated, in us and through us in the world. Brothers and Sisters, we are that people the God of Israel was working to create and to make new all those millennia. Jesus and the Spirit have finally made us that bubble of God’s future in the present, the bubble where the world is set to rights and where the tears are wiped away, the bubble that shows the world the faithfulness and goodness of God. May we be that people—God’s future in the present, the heralds of his new creation—may we be faithful in being this Spirit-renewed gospel people who make known God’s glory to the world.
Let us pray: Almighty God we praise you this morning for the grace you have shown us. Even as we rebelled against you, our good Creator, you were setting in motion our redemption: Father sending, calling, electing; Son speaking, coming, dying, rising; and Spirit uniting, renewing, regenerating, empowering. In the redemption of the world we see the glory of the Trinity and the majesty of the Unity and in gratitude we fall before you with the angels to sing, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God almighty.” By your grace, keep us strong in faith, O Lord, but keep us also faithful in our witness and our ministry to make your redeeming love known to the world. We ask this through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns together with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.