JUNE 15, 2003
John 3:1-17
The purpose of Trinity Sunday might be assumed to be a time when the Trinitarian view of God is defended and proclaimed as essential. The idea of God as Father (Creator), Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit (The Presence of God's Spirit within and among us.) might better be viewed as an effort of the early church to understand and explain what they meant when they used the terms of God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. We are no more able, than was the early church, to define God. As they did, however, we can also speak of how we experience God. Given the long period of time we have had to learn from and build on, their understanding and experience, we should be able to expand on their expressions of experiencing God.
What we know about our universe, the nature of conception as a basis for the creation of new life, and how to work with God in "fixing" and "creating" a wide variety of values, far exceeds theirs. They could appreciate the rainbow as much as we do, but they didn't understand what caused it. They could be mystified by the changes in weather as much as we but their knowledge of what causes changes was much less than ours. They appreciated the wonders of the universe, but they had never visited or taken pictures of parts of the universe beyond our earth. We are a privileged human family, and we have every reason to expect that future generations will be even more privileged in understanding, and thus reasons for "awe" than are we. But it is all a matter of process!
There is a scriptural assumption and consequent teaching by institutional religion, that one must do certain things and have certain experiences in order to have a level of spirituality that brings about an eternal and meaningful relationship with our Creator, i.e. God. The story of the encounter of Jesus and Nicodemus as told by the author of the Gospel of John is very clear at this point. One must be born again--of the spirit--in order to have spiritual life. Religious persons and institutions of narrow vision have made certain techniques and methods essential to acquiring such spiritual enlightenment. Baptism and other methods of making public confess of spiritual birth are typically accepted as part of what is necessary to be "spiritual". It is not at all uncommon to be asked by sincere "believers" in our society if we have been "saved".
I wish to emphasize that human beings have a need to be saved from any attitude or behavior which is not of reverence, respect, or love. Having a sense of being forgiven and experiencing another opportunity to do better is a wonderful thing. But there is a a better way. The ideal is that from infancy, one is taught to be reverent of a Wonderful Creator, and respectful of the natural world, including other human beings. The ideal is that from infancy persons experience the wonderful values of receiving and giving the gift of love, unexplainable as love may be. If we were all perfect in experiencing and expressing reverence, respect, and love, there would be no need for "a new birth".
The problem is that we tend to become misdirected in our quest for values. It is possible to become so misdirected that we need to stop, turn around, and start over. That is what Jesus was telling Nicodemus. The best values of life are not related to "flesh", valuable as many of them are. They are related to "spirit". When "spirit" is neglected, and interest in and reverence for God is not a primary focus of life, a "new birth" is needed. Otherwise the greatest values of life will never be fully appreciated.
Human experience testfies to the fact that there was so much truth in what Jesus taught by word and example, that many have come to believe that he was God in human flesh. (Take note of the growth of Christianity in the world and the impact it is made in 2000 years.) The essential message of the early Church was that Jesus was an expression of God and thus part of the Trinity. It is likely that if we could just sit down with Jesus for a heart to heart chat, that he would tell us he never aspired to be God but that he only wanted to share with others the wonderful experience he had come to know with God. He wanted others to know the same experience that he had come to value so highly that he was willing to give his life, if necessary, in order to clarify and amplify the message. Jesus attributed this to an understanding of God as parent, of love as the highest value, and his wonderful experience of being freed from religious law in favor of freedom afforded by the natural law of love.