Sermon for Trinity Sunday
“How can these things be?”
“How can these things be?” asks Nicodemus, not “what’s in it for me.” Therein lies all the difference, the difference between idolatry and true religion. Trinity Sunday is the great counter to all our idolatries, our idolatries of experience, of the practical and of our minds and imaginations.
There is really something quite wonderful about Nicodemus’ question. “How can these things be?” he asks. It is a real question, not unlike Mary’s question, “how shall this be seeing I know not a man?” A question about the Incarnation, Nicodemus’ question belongs to the Trinity. The two are inseparable; they go together, as John’s marvellous gospel reading makes clear.
What is wonderful about Nicodemus’s question is that he is open to the wonder and the marvel of the revelation of God. He is a learned rabbi in Israel. He comes, not openly, but secretly, by night to Jesus to ask him about the meaning of what he has heard and seen about Jesus. What can it possibly mean to be born again, he wonders? Can a man who is old be born again, literally as it were, from his mother’s womb. His initial perplexity has all of the characteristics of a kind of literalism. Jesus response is really quite wonderful. It is about opening out to him the meaning of the spiritual reality of the living God. Such, we might say, is precisely the mystery of the Trinity.
God is Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the holy and blessed Trinity. It is the central and most fundamental teaching of the Christian faith. Not just one doctrine among many, it is the central doctrine which gives coherence and credence to all of the other doctrines of the faith, expressed in the Creed.
What makes Nicodemus’s question so powerful is that it is not a subjective question primarily. He is open to the objective reality of Jesus Christ and to the living God who confronts him in Jesus Christ. It is precisely in this way that Trinity Sunday in the classical readings for this day confronts our modern idolatries of experience, of the practical and of the intellectual.
