Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17 Romans 8:12-17
We were all born. Whether it happened a long time ago or fairly recently doesn’t matter. As soon as we enter into the world, we are a part of it as living and breathing human beings. Most of us have a birth certificate to prove the date and place, with the name that we have been given. But we don’t carry it around all day to prove it. The fact that we’re alive is more important than a piece of paper that mentions it. Last week we celebrated the birth of the Church, Pentecost. It was that first Pentecost, after Jesus’ Ascension, when the promised Holy Spirit came upon the disciples as they gathered, which gave ‘birth’ to the Church, the Body of Christ on earth. So what about our proof of being ‘reborn’ in Christ? How do we give evidence of our existence as living members of the Body of Christ, reborn through faith?
Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who came to visit Jesus by night, was challenged about this. He was a religious teacher. But it took some reassessment of his spiritual understanding for him to see why he could not be complete without the renewal inside him by the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Baptism with water was already an ‘outward sign of an inward grace’, of a turning towards God, recognising him as Lord. But baptism by the Spirit, or being born of the Spirit, takes our faith to the next level. Those words of Jesus that he says in John 10: ‘I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly’, are an expression of the same thing. It’s not enough to have an academic knowledge of the divine; you need to make it your own, in your heart, to allow faith to have an effect on your life. That’s where the evidence lies; not just on paper but in the way you live your faith.
Paul talks about that, in his letter to the Romans, saying: ‘So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.’
In Judaism, God was already known to the people for who he is as Almighty, the One True God, but through Jesus, God becomes their Father. And through the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, they can have a relationship with him and the Trinity. In that famous Rublev Icon, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the figures are placed around the table in a way that invites the onlooker in. No more distance, but relationship and intimacy, between us and the divine, who has been revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three persons, one Holy Trinity. As mind-boggling as it may seem, that is what God invites us to! We may wonder how all this happens. Some Christians have a dramatic spiritual experience that comes like a flash of lightning and that makes God’s presence known to them very distinctly. For others it’s a much more gradual process, more as dawn followed by sunrise rather than a light-switch moment. It doesn’t matter which journey one travels in that way, as long as it leads to the completeness of being ‘born of water and the Spirit’, as Jesus says to Nicodemus.
The signs of life that we project as re-born Christians should be the proof that we have been made new in Christ. Those signs are love, kindness, generosity, humility, patience and self-control. We can’t show that to others on paper! We can’t just wave about our baptism certificate – rather, we should wear it on our sleeve, as it were. That way, obviously, we are alive in Christ, as it makes a difference for all to see. So let’s be open to the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Then we can show the world that we’re really alive, in the way we are connected to God, the Three in One, as he guides us into the ‘heavenly things’. Amen.