Sermon by Felicity Thompson, Seminarian, 5/26/2024, Trinity Sunday
First Sunday after Pentecost - TRINITY SUNDAY
When I was asked to preach this morning, I understood the assignment. I read the gospel, did the research, gathered information, prayed then started writing. There was one word that kept tripping me up. I’m going to try to explain it. Today is TRINITY SUNDAY and I need to explain what TRINITY in our context means. A theologian well known to us at St. David’s, Father Chris, you’ve heard of him -right? He explained the Trinity, (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) like this - imagine water as a solid - ice, water as liquid, and water as gas - vapor.
Did I get that right?
Just in case there is a quiz after this. Here’s an easy way to remember: Why did the ice, water, and vapor go to therapy? Because they had too many heated arguments and needed to chill out and resolve their issues in a more fluid manner!
Alright church! Let’s get into our gospel.
The title of my sermon this morning is - You must be born again!
A professor of the New Testament, Marcus Borg wrote a book titled, Speaking Christian. Marcus Borg suggests our experience of God is shaped by the language we use when we describe God to one another and speaking about God to others. He suggests Christianity has its own language, rooted in the Bible - we speak language that is familiar to us with words like - trinity, resurrection, redemption, repentance, ascension, salvation, sin, grace, love, faith and God.
Borg continues with this, that we now live in the midst of a culture and context that is not Christian. Or as Otis Moss would say, we are “Post Soul”. We encounter people who have not been raised in church. They were not raised to speak using words out of the Bible. So when we use Christian language with an unchristian culture, they have no clue what we are talking about. Jesus came to start a community of believers. Jesus encountered a culture and context that is not Christian. Is that why people didn’t understand Him? ... For God so loved the world …
Now let’s talk about Nicodemus. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. He is a Pharisee. He is a teacher. This man, who has a seat at the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a Jewish legislative and judicial council that existed in ancient Israel at both the local and central levels. The term comes from the Greek word synedrion, which means "council" or "sitting together". The Sanhedrin was made up of 71 elders. These elders were local elites, members of the high-priestly family, scribes, and lay elders. Headed by a High Priest, these men were the teachers of the law. This is the council that met to crucify Jesus and Nicodemus argued, “you shouldn’t crucify him without giving him a chance to defend himself”.
After Jesus died on the cross, it was Nicodemus who went to Pilate and asked for the right to take Jesus' body. Nicodemus is a believer of Jesus. This man, Nicodemus, comes to Jesus at night. He follows when it is convenient. He believes when it is safe. He can confess Jesus as long as nobody knows.
Some of you may know Nicodemus. I wonder if there is a Nicodemus here this morning. Haven’t we all been Nicodemus at one time? We are all Nicodemus about one thing or another? Don’t we all carry the mantle of Nicodemus in our past, right now and in our futures? We all know somebody who believes in Jesus as long as it is convenient, as long as it is safe. Jesus says, “Nick, you can’t enter the kingdom of God unless you are born again!” Like the church today, Nicodemus has no clue what Jesus is talking about. … For God so loved the world …
Like the Trinity, Marcus Borg states the term born again is a term Nicodemus and a lot of people in the church don’t understand. You see Born again is a term in a language we recognize and know, but we are comfortable with. When we talk about our faith, those outside of church don’t speak the language we speak inside church. And we are not likely to use terms we are uncomfortable with.
Being born again is like a spiritual rebirth. It is a radical transformation, a renewal of the heart and mind by the power of the Holy Spirit. We know that for us, it is impossible to enter our mother’s womb and be born again.
Yet Jesus says, we must be born again. At an informal Bible study this week, this word “mystery” came up. The term, “born again” is a mystery. In Christian belief, a mystery is something that cannot be known by the nature of things but is not something that is unknown.
This idea comes into play when Christians embrace their understanding of God. For example, Ephesians 1:9–10 describes the mystery of God's will as the uniting of all things in heaven and earth under Christ. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son …
In a survey taken of people who identify as Christian, 86% were comfortable with saying they are members of a church. 71% can comfortably say, Jesus is my Lord and Savior. 63% claim to be saved. 49% call themselves disciples of Christ. 23% identified themselves as born again. 3 out of 4 Christians are uncomfortable with claiming to be born again. We are Episcopalians, we are uncomfortable with the term born again. Yet Jesus says we must be born again. So what does it mean to be born again?
Be confident that you believe in God. Be confident that you pray. Be confident that you own a Bible. Be confident that you identify with Christianity. Be confident that you are a member of St. David’s Episcopal Church and that you are also born again. Be confident enough to say, “I am born again”.
Why the world doesn’t understand it - the problem is in the original language. It was written in Greek gennáō means to be born. The confusion comes with anōthen; it can be translated in three ways. One translation is again, implying we have another opportunity. Nicodemus doesn’t understand Jesus. Nicodemus knows we cannot go back to our mother’s womb and be born again. That’s the way it is in the flesh but not so with God. Jesus was talking about a spiritual rebirth. What you thought could only happen once, God gives us a way to try it again. We serve a God who gives us one chance after another, again and again and again.
Recognizing my failures is not the end of me. My mistakes do not define me. No matter how much I mess up, Jesus gives me, Jesus gives all of us another chance, AGAIN! When Jesus died on the cross, all of our sins were forgiven, wiped away, finished and paid for - so being born again is being covered in the blood of Jesus. No matter how much we mess up, God gives us AGAIN. … that whosoever believeth in Him …
Anōthen also means anew. Anew implies change - what it was before and what it is now is not the same. When you are born anew you are changed. You may look like you know Jesus for 90 minutes on Sunday. But what about the rest of the week? When you look at yourself in the mirror, you know you don’t hang out with the hoodlums you used to hang out with. You just don’t have the appetite to do those things you used to do. Born anew means, God has changed you. God has brought about a change in your life and you understand the change. … that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish …
You cannot change anyone. People have to want to change. What makes somebody want to change? Most people only want to change when they feel the heat. Most people only want to change when they realize what they are doing is getting too costly. When what you're doing is hurting the people around you, you ought to change. Born anew doesn’t mean I am changing my life because I got caught. Being born anew means I have a God consciousness that convicts me when I am outside God’s will. Being born anew is wanting God to look at me and smile - that I am getting my life together because my motivation for changing is because I love the Lord.
Anōthen meaning from above - something in me has been birthed. Something that reached down and touched me. Until that hand reached down and touched me, I didn’t realize I wasn’t living. The Holy Spirit up there. The Holy Spirit is everywhere. If I can connect with something greater than me, more powerful than me, stronger than me, I can live down here. Nicodemus, you’ve got to be born of water (baptism) and the Spirit. Being born of the flesh is not enough. It doesn’t matter how much you make, how many degrees you have on the wall, how many likes you have on a social media post, we all need something from up there to touch us down here. …For God so loved the world …
Nicodemus still doesn’t understand being born again, being born anew, being born from above. It’s like the wind, it blows and goes where it wants to go, and you can’t control it, you can’t command it, all you can do is feel it. Being born again is like the wind. The wind does not listen to you when it wants to go where it wants to go. Don’t be fooled by the people who declare who is saved and who isn’t. The people who say we will go to heaven and your group won’t. Don’t be fooled by the people who say who’s in and who's out. If God wants to blow on one part of town, we cannot control it. We cannot control the wind; we can only feel it. Salvation is something we feel. I cannot explain it to you. That’s what’s wonderful with what God does. I cannot explain God’s love, I can only feel it. It cannot be explained, we can only experience it. … For God so loved the world …
My first year in college, Calvin College, my roommates asked me why I was going to church. I rarely went to church because I usually did my homework on Saturday night. They began to scientifically prove to me that God is not real. “Why do I go to church?” Because I want to. “Can I see God?” No. “Can I measure God?” No. “Can I touch God?” No. “Can I smell god?” No. “How can God be real?” That messed me up!
A few weeks later the Holy Spirit set me up. One of my roommates came to me with a toothache. I said, can I see it? Can I measure it? Can I touch it? Can I smell it? “No, no, no! You can’t see it, you can’t measure it, you can’t touch it, you can’t smell it. I can’t explain it,” - she said, “but I can feel it.”
How many of you feel Jesus working in your life? I am born again because God gives me again. All you have to do is believe that Christ died for us and it’s through his death that we can live a better life.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." God's love is not limited or exclusive; it embraces every individual regardless of their background, regardless of their past mistakes, regardless of their shortcomings.
This encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus begs us to examine our own hearts and lives. Are we willing to embrace and experience the transformative power of God's love? Are we open to a spiritual rebirth? And as we think about these questions, remember that God's love knows no bounds and that through Christ, we have been invited into a new life filled with hope, joy, and the promise of eternal life.
Knowing this, let us move forward, believing in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who walk with us in a world that longs for the hope, renewal and redemption found only in Jesus Christ.
Let’s end with this: John 3:17, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Amen