Crescent Hill Baptist Church

Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky

Trinity Sunday
June 11, 2006
W. Gregory Pope

A GRASSHOPPER ON A MILKWEED BY THE TRAIN TRACKS

Isaiah 6:1-8
John 3:1-17

A grasshopper is sitting on a milkweed plant near the railroad tracks. A train blows by and creates a huge ruckus. The milkweed starts to bounce, bob and weave. The grasshopper looks around. He has no idea what’s happening. There’s obviously something big going on, but it’s beyond the grasshopper’s understanding.

God is, for us, at least that incomprehensible. However we imagine God, God is bigger. That’s why it’s so hard to talk about God. To define God is to limit God, and God is Infinite Mystery.

There are two primary types of mystery. There are mysteries which are like problems that can be solved. Like a murder mystery whose mysteriousness must be dispelled in order for the truth to be known. Mysteries I encountered at camp like how Liz Buster made disciples of the girls in her cabin who would dress like her and wear their hair like her. Mysteries like why you would eat meatloaf at camp, or dip your potato chips into chocolate and vanilla pudding, or your carrots into grape juice. The kinds of mysteries that must be solved in order for the truth to be known.

Then there are other mysteries which do not conceal the truth but whose truth is itself the mystery. You do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery. (Buechner, Wishful Thinking, Harper Collins, 1993, 76).

God is this second type of mystery, the kind that cannot be solved. And some of us do not live comfortably with mystery that cannot be solved. Those of us who are uncomfortable with mystery and yet believe so strongly in God have a tendency to end up distorting faith as certainty and, if we’re not careful, speak of atheists as pagan idiots. Our need for certainty may lead us to ignore our own doubts and belittle the honest searching of others.

When Bill Johnson asked around the campfire what something meant regarding the nature of God, Nate Creech screamed in honesty: “I don’t have a clue!” Nate was so much smarter than his older brother Adam, who was so unwise as to douse the ministerial staff with buckets of water. (One day soon he will learn the foolishness of his ways.) Some of the things we say about God are at least that dumb, and often as weak as Duncan Twyman’s attempt to hit someone with a water balloon at a short distance! (Which believe me is weak.)

Now, when we speak of God as mystery we are not referring to God as Something or Someone that doesn’t make sense. Rather, we are referring to that which makes more sense than we can put into words. (Ronald Byars, Christian Worship, Geneva, 2000, 96)

The poet Alfred Tennyson writes of God and theology:

Our little systems have their day
They have their day and cease to be
They are but broken lights of Thee
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.

The ultimate truths about the unfathomable mysteries are beyond our limited minds. Flannery O’Connor said, “Mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.” She is right. We shy away from what is beyond our understanding. We keep our distance from anything we can’t explain. We want to control our lives to the point of squeezing the mystery right out of our lives.
A man goes to his pastor for advice on some difficult questions. The pastor says, “Go outside tonight, look up at the stars, and God will help you know what you need to know.” The man does it. The next morning he calls his pastor: “I went for a walk and it started raining. I got wet and felt like a fool.” The pastor responds, “That’s not bad for the first time.” Seeking to understand God can sometimes leave us all wet, feeling like a fool, or at the least, like a grasshopper on a milkweed by the railroad tracks with a train speeding by.

A man named Nicodemus goes to see Jesus the rabbi for advice on some difficult questions. Nicodemus is a good person who does the things you are supposed to do and doesn’t do the things you’re not supposed to do. He’s chair of the religion department at the university and a mover and shaker in the ministerial association. He has a weekly column in the local paper. Being a professional expert on God is still good work if you can get it. Nicodemus is adept at articulating the intricacies of religion and detecting the logical shortcomings in other people’s faith.

Most of us recognize Nicodemus the Pharisee. We’ve treated our own opinions as God’s. Sometimes we speak about God as if God is no harder to understand than anyone else. We have beliefs that we’ve held for so long we think that if they aren’t God’s, they ought to be. We share Nicodemus’ ability to judge what others think on the basis of how close it is to what we think.

It’s surprising that Nicodemus comes to see Jesus, because as far as the ministerial association is concerned, Jesus is a nobody. His only status with the local clergy is as a pain in the neck. Just last week he overturned tables during a big stewardship campaign at the temple.

Nicodemus approaches Jesus late one night. This causes many preachers to be unable to resist the temptation to title sermons on this passage “Nic at Night.” (You can see I was above that! I chose a more distinguished title.) Nicodemus is obviously uncomfortable being there. So he begins, as debaters often do, with a compliment, “Jesus, we know that you are a remarkable person with rare gifts for teaching. You do extraordinary things.” He’s having trouble getting to what he wants to say. So Jesus helps him and cuts to the chase: “What the whole thing boils down to, Nicodemus, is that unless you are born again, you might as well give up.”

Thinking literally, Nicodemus responds, “What do you mean? How are you supposed to be born again when you’re pushing sixty-five? How can you be born from above and change your ways of thinking and acting and believing when you’re so set in your ways?”

Jesus, in words that make him sound like a Jewish Zen Master, explains, “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes. That’s how it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Jesus is playing on the Greek word pnuema, which means both spirit and wind.

By the campfire one night I talked to the kids about mystery and what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit and the wind. We could feel the wind upon our faces. We could see the effects on the swaying trees, but we all eventually agreed we could not see the wind.

Jesus’ said God’s Spirit is as uncontrollable and unknowable as the wind. The new life that Jesus brings is elusive, mysterious and entirely God’s doing. To follow Jesus is to dive into the ocean of mystery and swim in the waters of wonder.

But some of us find it near impossible to swim in those waters. When Jesus talks about being born again, and the Holy Spirit being like the wind, and the unknown, Nicodemus says to Jesus, “How can this be?” And he becomes the patron saint for all of us who need to understand before we can believe.

So swimming lessons become necessary, because faith calls for an understanding that God is beyond our understanding. None of us is an expert on the Almighty. When it comes to speaking of God, you cannot pontificate, you can only point (Buechner).

And that makes worship an act of mystery. Deep down I think it is mystery that draws most of us to worship. We come to worship in the hope that there is far more than just what we can know. Worship cannot be easily explained or experienced. Dostoevsky, the great Russian novelist said, “The one essential for us is being able to bow down before the infinitely great.” We need to know there is something bigger than ourselves, beyond our comprehension. And so we worship.

A young man is sitting in worship. He’s the age of a college student, looking for a reason to go on. His hero has died. The good king Uzziah ruled Judah for forty years. He’s the only king Isaiah has ever known. So Isaiah has tears in his eyes as he sits in worship.

Frederick Buechner describes what happens next:

Candles are flickering in the distance and clouds of incense thicken the air with holiness and sting his eyes. High above him, as if it has always been there but is only now seen for what it is (like a face in the leaves of a tree or a bear among the stars) there is the Mystery Itself whose gown is the incense and the candles a dusting of gold at the hem. Winged creatures shout back and forth the way excited children shout to each other when dusk calls them home. Then the whole place starts to shake beneath his feet like a wagon going over cobblestones.

Isaiah may have come hoping to see God, but he is astonished by this glimpse of the God who comes to see him.

Isaiah cries out: “O God, I’m done for! I’m a goner. I’m sunk.” He wants his lips cleansed, because it’s with his lips that he’s been a hypocrite. He has claimed to be worshiping God when he really hasn’t had a clue about the greatness of God.

One of the winged creatures touches his mouth with the fire of forgiveness.

And the Mystery Itself says, “Who will it be to go for us?”
With charred lips Isaiah says, “Me,”
And the Mystery says, “Go.”

(Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, Harper Collins, 1979, 55)

Isaiah is changed forever because he offered himself to a Mystery he could not fully comprehend. In worship, he encountered a God of holiness and grace, larger than words, greater than his sin. He heard a call to go as holiness and grace into the world, and said yes. He didn’t fully understand everything that took place, but it was enough.

For some of us, we want an experience with God we can fully understand. And without meaning to, we limit God to certain times, places, and activities. We try to domesticate God into a Sunday god or a church god or a Baptist god or an American god. Every once in a while you’ll hear a well-intentioned religious person ask someone if they know God. Isaiah would have quickly answered, “No.” God is infinitely beyond our knowing.

Nothing flashes the spotlight upon the mystery of God more than this Sunday when we ponder the notion of God as Trinity. Tri-unity. Three-In-One. One-In-Three. Trinity. It is not a biblical word, but it is a biblical idea.

The Trinity doesn’t explain God, but it does provide a window into God’s self. Images of Trinity abound:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost
Cosmic Lover, Redeemer, Sustainer.

All of them different ways of expressing the God above us, around us, and within us.

Though the mystery of God is inexhaustible, God is not the Great Unknown. We have been given clues into the nature of God. Through what Celtic Christians call the “Big Book” of Creation, and the “little book” of Scripture,” and the “living book” of Jesus the Christ, and the “never-ending book” of human testimony throughout the centuries, the witness is that

God is a providing Creator ever giving birth to the wonders of creation

God is like a loving Parent who watches over us and never abandons us.

In the human face of Jesus, the self-giving love of God is revealed, a love that will stop at nothing to redeem us, even death on a cross; a love so strong that even death cannot defeat it; a love as large as Easter.
“For God so loved the world, God gave . . .”

And as the Holy Spirit that surrounds us, God in Christ is forever present with us, filling us and all the world with God’s love, empowering us to live lives of justice, righteousness and peace.

God is the Creator, whose love was embodied in Christ, and is ever-present with us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Trinity.

I’m glad the Trinity confounds us. It is yet another reminder that God cannot be fully defined in human words. We see through a glass dimly. Our partial incomplete vision makes it clear how limited our understanding of God is. And if we can move beyond the frustration of mystery, it can be a magnificent gift. The unknowable grandeur of God makes it possible for us to live with a sense of amazement. The mystery of God invites us to give ourselves to awe.

How comfortable are you with mystery? I’m more comfortable with mystery than I used to be. Mystery teaches us to be careful about criticizing the beliefs of others. Mystery teaches us to be humble when we speak of God. As someone who speaks of God for a living I need all the humility I can get.

Eighteen years ago tomorrow, at the ripe old age of 20, I was ordained to the gospel ministry. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I’ve changed a lot since then. I see the preaching task of ministry somewhat differently today than I did eighteen years ago. Back then, I saw the preaching task as explaining the mysteries of God and scripture. Today I see the preaching task as looking through the windows of scripture and human experience in order that we might embrace the God of mystery whose never-ending love for us is the greatest mystery of all. And before that mystery we gather week after week to bow in awe and offer our lives.



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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425

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