"Verily verily I say unto you, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God." (John 3)

One of the many beautiful things about John's Gospel, is the theme of the Light of God coming into the world, as well as the people of the world - at least some of them - coming to the Light. I guess the most powerful example of this would be the healing of the blind man in chapter 9. As the story progresses, he not only finds his physical sight, but gradually comes to realize that the Man who has given him this sight is Himself the Light of the World. And the more he is able to see spiritually, the more he is able to see physically.

The Pharisees in the story go the opposite way. Although they are quite capable of seeing physically, throughout the story they become all the more spiritually blind. And Jesus says to them, that even though the Light has come into the world, that men have loved darkness rather than the Light.

This morning we see a Pharisee, Nicodemus, attempting to come to the Light. We are, I think, inclined to sympathize with him, because the questions he asks are truly universal in nature. "Master, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no man could do these things which you do unless God is with him." Nicodemus has come to Jesus "by night", that is, his mind is in the dark, and he's not trying very hard to escape the dark and come into the Light - because the True Light is a great deal more than a good teacher. He's really hedging here, and Jesus realizes this. Thus He's pretty rough with Nicodemus and says to him: "Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God."

Jesus says a few lines later that unless one is born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. He cannot enter it, nor is he even able to see the Kingdom of God unless he is born again.

One of the reasons the Church has read this lesson on Trinity Sunday for so many years, is that one really must be born again to begin to deal with the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. When Jesus talks about being born again in order to see the Kingdom of God, what He is in essence saying is that the Kingdom of God embodies the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity -- and that to understand it, we must first believe it. - not the other way around. With the Trinity, belief leads to understanding - of a sort.

As far as New Testament is concerned - and arguably the Old, the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity is what Christian theology is all about. That is, if we are to consider ourselves Christians and want to see and enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we have to acknowledge the Three in One and the One in Three. I don't mean that we have to understand it, but we have to acknowledge it - and we have to worship it - and to do so we must be born again.

That is, we must be willing to look at things in a new way. Jesus once described Himself as new wine, and He said that we were foolish to try to put new wine into old wineskins, because the fermentation process of the new wine would cause the old skins to rupture, and thereby spill the wine. New wine demands new wineskins, and the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity demands a metanoia or change of the spirit in order to appreciate it.

When the wind blows and lists, we cannot see it, or know where it begins, or know where it flows, but that doesn't prevent us from taking advantage of it. Thus with the Trinity we need to be a little less tied to the workings of this world, so that we might be more a part of the spiritual world which belongs to God.

I'm not quite sure why the Exodus passage was chosen for today, unless it is to attempt a metaphor or explanation of the Trinity. God's voice came to Moses from the Bush, and the writer tells us that Moses was afraid to look upon God. WE might consider how God's presence here consists of a bush with branches and limbs etc., as well as the light of the fire which can be seen, as well as the heat which can be felt. We might consider this and conclude that such a phenomenon is analogous to the Tirnity - just as the sun consists of gas, light, and heat.

The problem with this is that it shows us just how difficult it is to speak of the Trinity. While the Burning Bush or the sun present pretty good analogies of the Trinity, we need to be careful. Because what the Church Fathers sought to avoid in their attempt to describe the Trinity, was the idea that God was like a sort of "three-in-one" oil - that would clean, lubricate, and polish.

What they instead sought to describe was that God was one, but One in three distinct persons. Therefore when we speak of the Trinity, we need to be careful to use the definite pronoun "the". That is, we do not speak of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We speak of God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in order to prevent the idea that the individual persons or persona were at all transitory - that at one moment God is the Holy Spirit, and at another moment He is the Father, etc.

What I mean is that we've used the idea of H20 as water, ice, and steam to describe the Trinity. The problem is that H2O cannot be water, ice, and steam all at the same time. And the Doctrine of the Holy Triniry seeks to preserve the distinctions between the three persons, and to assert that God is eternally present in each.

Now, why make such a big deal about this? Does such a distinction of the three Persons help us understand God any better? Probably not. But we must remember that the doctrine of the Trinity is not an attempt to explain God, but an effort to say how mankind ahs experienced God. It is an attempt to define Him, as opposed to an effort to explain Him - which would be beyond the ken of even the greatest theologian.

Perhaps more important however: to disregard the distinction of the three persons - is to engage in a heresy called modalism: that God can only take one mode at a time - and modalism, in a very subtle way, downplays God's greatness.

For God to be God, He has to be complete within Himself. We, very obviously, are incomplete; we need an object for our love. We profess that God is love, (and notice how the three-in-one oil analogy breaks down here; or the sun as rays, heat, and light) because if God had to depend upon someone or something outside Himself to be the object of His love, then He would not be complete within Himself and hence, not be God. Thus there must be a personal relationship within the being of the Godhead.

If God is infinite love, then He requires an infinite object of love. We therefore say that the Father eternally loves the Son, the Son eternally loves the Father, and the Spirit is the bond of affection between them and holding them together. One God in three Persons, and in unity of substance. God must be both the subject and object of Love in order to be complete and absolutely divine.

So if we are puzzled with the idea of the Trinity, we must face an even greater puzzle without it. For if we are personal beings - created in God's Image - then He must be personal (relational) as well, and this can only happen if we think of God as three distinct persons. John Wesley once expounded on this greatest but most elemental and essential mystery of the Christian faith. Wesley wrote: "Tell me how is it that in this room there are three candles, but one light, and I will explain to you the mode of the Divine Existence." [Repeat]

If you have trouble with the Trinity, don't beat yourself up - but don't cease to wrestle with it. Nicodemus kept trying, and he arrived at a stage where He thought Jesus to be so important that he disregarded his own pharisaical laws in order to assure that Jesus received a proper burial. He never ceased to strive toward the Light and to love the Light. His attitude describes just what ours ought to be in the face of this great and tremendous myste