A Meditation on Mystery
Trinity Sunday
By now, I would imagine that most of us who preach and teach on a regular basis, or even those of us who listen to sermons and lessons on a regular basis, have encountered the apocryphal (although, at least according to Roger Olson, more likely true than not) tale of theologian Karl Barth’s exchange with an audience member at one of his lectures in the early 1960’s. According to the story, when Barth was asked to summarize his theology in a single sentence, he responded with the words of a song he “learned at [his] mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.’” Because this story has been repeated so often, usually with various adornments and embellishments for maximum rhetorical effect, it’s understandable that we would take it with a grain of salt. Yet, like so many good stories, apocryphal or otherwise, it reveals an important truth: at the heart of Christian teaching there is often a tension between the deepest mysteries and the simplest convictions, and part of growing in our faith is in seeking a harmony between the two.
Today is Trinity Sunday, a moment in the liturgical year when preachers struggle to find that harmony, as they feel the burden of articulating to their congregations the beautiful but difficult truth that our God is one and yet three, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist as one Godhead in three persons. We could all point to examples of analogies that range from the merely clumsy to the potentially heretical in such sermons. Often, even the best-intentioned pastors who venture to proclaim the doctrine of the Trinity walk away from the pulpit frustrated, wondering if they have done more to confuse their congregations than to shed light on a puzzling doctrine.
Because of this challenge, I find the passages offered by the lectionary for this week strangely comforting. The way that these scriptures explore the kinds of mysteries that give even the most accomplished exegetes pause is both illuminating and encouraging. The biblical figures we meet within these passages are no slouches: Isaiah, one of the most prolific of the Old Testament’s writing prophets; Paul, a former Pharisee turned brilliant theologian, whose book of Romans contains some of the most powerfully articulate formulations of Christian belief found anywhere in scripture; and of course, Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, whom Jesus himself refers to in this passage as “Israel’s teacher.” These characters are not perceived to be dullards, and yet it’s hard to overlook the fact that even their probing minds struggle to comprehend the deeper realities of God’s presence, God’s nature, God’s work in this world.
First, Isaiah. His encounter in the temple at Jerusalem, a theophany that points toward his commission as a messenger to God’s people, is shot through with the kind of imagery that transcends cold, or even measured, rationality. Smoke and thunder, fearsome yet beautiful angelic beings fill the scene, while at the center of it all is God, high and lifted up, the hem of his robe stretching out to fill the temple. Isaiah’s response in this moment is not one of scholarly contemplation but of abject terror born out of worshipful reverence. As he ponders the scene before him, he realizes that his world has been shaken to its foundations. He’s not sure of much, but he knows that he is a sinner, in need of redemption. And he learns, in the moments that follow, that this God whose face he is unable to look at is the One who can offer such redemption, making this broken servant whole before sending him to proclaim to an unreceptive audience all that he has seen and heard.
Paul, likewise, who encountered Jesus in a similarly overwhelming moment by the road to Damascus, reflects in his letter to the Romans what the powerful presence of God in the life of the believer looks like. Here, Paul explores the mystery of the Holy Spirit, not in ways that speak to the pride, even arrogance, he had exhibited as a Pharisee. Rather, he is speaking from the perspective of an adopted child, calling out to his Father. Instead of magisterial doctrinal formulae—which Paul is often quite capable of sharing—here, we are given the simple utterance, “Abba, Father!” It is a cry of dependence. It is a cry of love. It is a cry of one who knows, as Paul will state just a few verses later, that the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. It is a cry familiar to anyone who has tried to reckon with the awesome mysteries of who God is and why this God would be involved with something as feeble as humanity.
Finally, when we turn to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, we see a Messiah, a teacher who has come from God, responding with extreme patience to the puzzlement of an obviously educated, otherwise confident searcher after the mysteries of God’s kingdom. Jesus’ discussion here, even as it traffics in metaphor and analogy—childbirth, wind, the snake that Moses lifted up in the desert—doesn’t presume to give easy answers about what God’s kingdom consists in, or how the Spirit of God moves in this world. If anything, Jesus highlights the mystery in order to emphasize the importance of faith. Nicodemus, with all his learning, found it difficult to grasp the truths that Jesus was articulating during the course of their nighttime conversation. This shouldn’t be surprising. Nor should it be seen as a bar to Nicodemus’ entering into God’s kingdom. After all, a baby doesn’t have to understand the process of childbirth to receive life. The Israelites in the wilderness didn’t have to comprehend why looking at the snake would save them from death. These are works of God, as mysterious as the wind’s origins, but no less powerful for the fact. So, too, when the Son of Man is lifted up, in the most mysterious way possible, on a shameful Roman cross, the victory achieved by these means is the power of God, a gift to those who would receive it rather than a machination that has to be dissected.
In each of the passages discussed here, the Trinitarian reality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is encountered by someone schooled in the things of God, and in each of these passages the mystery remains the most central, most essential part of this encounter. One can imagine that, following each of these encounters, those involved join with the Psalmist and with all those in the temple, able only to utter the one word doxology: “Glory!” There is a time for theology. There is a time for wrestling with the difficult doctrines of the church. There is a time when the principle of faith seeking understanding should drive our reflections. But none of these should keep us from receiving the gift and believing in the mysterious power of a God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who lives and moves among us, and whose love redeems us.
