I don’t understand.
It doesn’t make sense.
Impossible – how can this be?
The visit from Nicodemus that we just read about in John’s gospel can’t be the only time someone says that to Jesus. In fact, I’m sure people said those things to Jesus all the time. Pretty sure people are still saying this stuff to Jesus, or about him, regularly.
“You’re not making sense, Jesus. What on earth are you talking about?”
Because Jesus doesn’t really make sense.
It’s not sensible that almighty, infinite God would decide to be a limited human person in the first place.
It’s worse – so much worse – when Jesus starts talking about himself, the Human One, the
“Son” being one with God “the Father”, or – like today – about being born of the Spirit, ascending and descending from heaven, or really anything else about who Jesus – or God or the Spirit is – or who they want us to be.
I went to graduate school for this, I’ve spent half my life studying and teaching and trying to figure out and explain this Jesus and Father and Spirit stuff – and I don’t for one minute blame Nicodemus – or any of us! – who listen to Jesus and can only say, Huh?? What’s that supposed to mean?
And here we are, you and I, on the day the church annually celebrates one of the most head-scratching things we’ve ever heard about God. This idea of Trinity.
Of God who is three distinct persons, all of whom interact with us, all of whom interact with each other, all of whom are indivisibly, completely, identically one being.
No, please do not ask me to explain it any further than that. It only gets more impenetrable and illogical when I try.
Because, I think, we are not supposed to explain it.
Jesus never actually tries to explain it.
He just describes the experience.
(Which also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but then experience isn’t really logical.)
I think today is really a day when the church celebrates our fundamental inability to understand or explain God.
(Whether that’s what we thought we were doing when we first put it on the calendar or not.)
Today, we read a story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus to try to figure out what’s really going on in Jesus’ obvious connection to God – and how he gets a whirlwind of confusing metaphor and challenges to which he very naturally responds “How can this be? This doesn’t make sense.”
And Jesus tells him, “we speak of what we know, and testify to what we have seen”. In other words, this is the story of our experience.
You’ve got to start with believing the “earthly”, seen and lived experience the person here and now is telling you about, if you expect to believe the heavenly things – things you can’t see for yourself.
Because Nicodemus, and you and I, don’t have any way to evaluate and measure and explain the full, raw, complete reality of God.
All we have – what we have in abundance, among us, and in the stories we’ve inherited from generations of God’s people and from Jesus himself – is the earthly things. The experience we have seen and known for ourselves – personal, lived experience of parts of the whole reality of God.
You – each of you – have some part of the experience of the whole reality of God. You can tell me what you have seen, and know. I can tell you what I’ve known and see.
And when we put it all together, it… won’t really make sense. Won’t fit logic and reason. Won’t be something we can understand.
We can’t – any of us, nor all of us together – explain God. Or fully understand who God is, or what or how (or when or why) God is.
We can only tell, and hear, and receive the story.
Jesus’ story, your story, my story, Nicodemus’ story.
Our experience of God that we won’t ever be able to really explain, or understand. Just know.
I know many of us have experiences we know, but can’t adequately explain – a powerful joy, or grief, or connection to someone, or some place, that isn’t logical or sensible, but is profoundly real. A decision made – about a job, a friendship, a community – because your gut knows something your head can’t explain. Seven years and change since I got here, I still can’t logically explain why I find this Trinity community such a good fit, but I know I belong here.
I suspect many of us have experiences of God – of Spirit and inspiration and empowerment; of a loving authority or awe-inspiring glory or infinitely creative almighty; of a teacher and role model and unshakable friend. Experiences we would find it hard to explain to the world. Often, experiences of God that are hard to identify and name and describe even to ourselves in heart and spirit, never mind in words to others.
So we choose to embrace the nonsense, the incomprehensible, the can’t-possibly-be, and call it Trinity. To be faithful to what we see and feel, and can’t explain; to believe the One who cannot really be described by us, or to us. Just known.
Instead of an explanation, Trinity – this idea of three is one is three is one God – is a story.
A short, summary story of thousands and millions of people’s experience of God.
Of the partial things we know and see, that tell our guts and hearts that God is whole. Whole beyond our logic or imagination.
We tell that story every Sunday in our worship together when we say the Creed.
“I believe,” we say, and in words we’ve inherited from generations before us, we describe God as Creator, Almighty, Father-in-some-sense; describe God as God’s own Son, a constant miracle of divine and human life and death and life anew; describe God as Spirit, connecting us and making miracles out of us, too.
We don’t explain. But over and over we commit ourselves to believe what we may never understand.
And by committing, by believing, by telling the story we can’t explain, over and over, we make it ours, and make ourselves a part of God’s story. Make ourselves into a living part of that truth, that glory, that love, that miracle, that indivisible relationship that makes no sense, but matters.
Because, after all, you can’t explain love. Or understand it.
We can only live it.
And with Nicodemus, with Jesus, with everyone else over two thousand years and more who has never understood God, we do just that.
Just live the story we don’t have to understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment