Metaphor and Mystery
Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-17
6/07/2009
Jim Melnyk

Trinity Sunday brings up one particular question among many for me – how did I manage to not take a vacation and leave this one up to John or Keith? Seriously, though, the Trinity is one of the most complicated doctrines of the church – not spelled out specifically anywhere in Scripture, save a phrase or two late in the Biblical witness; and yet it is at its core a rather simple doctrine of faith as well – one that many theologians find they can summarize in one succinct word: Relationship.
        
The story of Nicodemus seems like a good choice by the lectionary framers to illustrate the day. God. For Jesus, like for all of Israel, it all begins with God. God is from the beginning. It is God who creates. It is God who longs for creation. It is God who loves. It is God who sends. For God so loves the world that God gives God's only Son. Jesus. The story shows us Jesus as a unique expression of God's love. The Word made flesh. One who teaches with authority and relates to even the least loved with compassion and grace. Ruach – Pneuma – Spirit Wind. The Holy Spirit of God, who hovered over creation at its birth and filled the first human creatures with breath, who blows where the Spirit chooses….
        
The story of Nicodemus is a story about what happens when the world of the literal and the world of metaphor and mystery collide. It is a storyline that is as real for us today as it was for poor old Nicodemus who had his literal world, and his orderly religion and faith, turned upside down and shaken out by a simple – or perhaps not so simple – preacher from Galilee. “Can one return to his or her mother's womb?”
        
Baptist pastor Nancy Hastings Sehested writes: “Nicodemus was under the influence of a [particular expression of a broader] religious tradition. [He seems to be caught up in a particular expression of that tradition] that taught a faith that was to be managed, protected and guarded. Yet his late-night visit with Jesus revealed some heart longings that had not completely left him. Perhaps he expected a dialogue in dogmatics, but what he got from Jesus was poetry.”
        
Sehested goes on to write, “Jesus beckoned Nicodemus into God's wonderland of surprise and topsy-turvy living. To enter meant nothing short of a total transformation and being born of God's Spirit. When this Spirit takes hold,” writes Sehested, “why, it can confuse the controlling and baffle the bigoted.” (Sojourners On Line)
        
In other words, when the world of the literal and the world of metaphor and mystery collide, it's the Sure-footed, it's the Absolute-minded, it's the Life-in-control, the I-know-what-it's-all-about sorts of people who get swamped, and the God-is-beyond-us, the Welcome-the-mystery, the Don't-need-proof, the Don't-need-to-know-it-all sorts of folks who find themselves on a wild ride into the mystery of God.
        
The whole idea of the Trinity flies in the face of the centuries-old faith versus reason debate. As Newsweek's religion editor, Lisa Miller writes in this past week's edition of the magazine, “Atheist writers Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have presented us with a choice: either you don't believe in God or you're a dope” (Newsweek, June 8, 2009, p. 30). Miller quotes Harris from his 2005 “Atheist Manifesto,” where he writes, “It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God, simply because that belief makes him happy” (ibid). Now I don't suggest that we're all here because belief in God simply makes us happy, but we are here. And not just us, but millions around the world who not only believe, but also sense there is something more that moves beyond us, something more that calls us, something more that shapes us, and that transforms us.
        
Miller's article is a review of Robert Wright's new book, The Evolution of God. Wright is a journalist who specializes in evolutionary psychology (I didn't even know there is such a thing!), and in his new book coming out this week he takes a new tact in looking at the faith versus reason debate, challenging his readers as “he grapples with God as an idea that has changed – evolved – through history” (ibid).
        
Miller writes, “Though [Wright] never comes right out and declares that the human propensity for morality – and, by extension, truth and love – is given by God (or is God), he comes awfully close. In an imaginary debate with a scientist, he compares God to an electron. You know it's there, but you don't know what it looks like or what its properties are. Scientists believe in electrons,” Miller paraphrases, “because they see the effects of electrons. 'You might say,' [Wright continues], 'that love and truth are the two primary manifestations of divinity in which we can partake, and that by partaking in them we become truer manifestations of the divine'” (ibid).
        
Now Wright's arguments may not be deeply scientific – they may even be overly simplistic scientifically, but he raises some points that should give us pause when we struggle with ancient dogma, or wrestle with the possibilities of an unseen, yet somehow experienced God. And really, that's what it's all about, isn't it? It's all about a God we experience rather than a God we can explain. We see the evidence of someone-something beyond us, and yet mysteriously within us. We find the willingness to love, we find the strength to care, we find the call to truth, we experience power from somewhere outside ourselves as well as deeply within – power to find ourselves transformed – and for so many of us, we know that experience to be God.
        
And yet any time we even begin to try to put that experience into words all we can truly be left with is metaphor and mystery. Jesus and Nicodemus talk about being “born from above” or “born again” and Nicodemus can't seem to get beyond the literal words of Jesus – though the story tells us he gets it later. Isaiah talks about a King, sitting high and lofty on a throne with smoke and fire and awesome creatures serving and standing watch. Paul talks about Abba – Poppa – Daddy – a parent-like God who adopts us as God's own children. The Psalmist tells us that God makes Lebanon skips like a calf, and Mount Hermon skip like a young wild ox! Imagine that!
        
But in the end, it's the experience of God that gets us – not the word pictures of ancient Scripture or even modern-day parables like The Shack. The words may capture our attention – they may even get us to take a closer look at this whole God-thing – but it's the experience of the Living God in our lives, and the experience of God in the lives of those around us that actually captures our hearts, that actually captures our minds, and captures our souls.
        
If we get ourselves all flustered over where in the world Jesus meant when he said “born from above,” or frustrated over the monarchal images used by a prophet living during the reign of kings in Israel (what clearer word-picture might there have been for his listeners?), or how Three persons can be One person, or One be Three, we've left the world of metaphor and mystery and joined the ranks of the literalists. We find ourselves trying to calculate the speed of light rather than enjoying the warmth of the sun, or wrestling over the scientific impossibility of how two can become one flesh rather than reveling in the dizziness of a lover's kiss.

The truth is this: the Trinity is one of the best, and perhaps even one of the hardest ways we've come to speak about a God who from the very beginning of time has loved us, who from the very beginning of time has called us, who from the very beginning of time has come to us, who from the very beginning of time has longed for us, and who from the very beginning of time has lived within us. The Trinity is about a God whose very personality – whose very genetic code (if I may wax metaphorical for a moment) is that of relationship.         

The Trinity is about a God of relationship who creates simply for the joy of relationship – who creates for the joy of love – and who creates us for that very same purpose. Trinity Sunday, though our hymns often speak about awe and majesty, is simply about the love of God made manifest. As St. Julian of Norwich wrote so long ago, “Would you know our Lord's meaning in this? Know it well, God's meaning is love.” (paraphrased)
        

©2009 Jim Melnyk