From my book A Most Amazing Man (Year B), also found in the non-Lectionary version A Man Like No Other 3, a meditation anticipating Trinity Sunday this weekend.
Read
Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ John 3:5–9
The meditation of Nicodemus
I didn’t know if I was coming or going.
One moment he was talking about himself,
the next, of God,
and the next, of the Spirit,
almost as though they were same thing.
I’d seen already that God was working through him,
even if my fellow Pharisees struggled with the idea –
how else could you explain what he was doing?
But as we talked together he seemed to imply more than that:
that he spoke for the Father himself,
and somehow, in his own person, brought the Spirit among us.
I was baffled, mystified,
yet he didn’t seem surprised –
if anything, the opposite.
Oh, he teased me a little,
pointing out that, as a teacher of Israel,
I, of all people, should have known such things,
but, if I understand him correctly,
he didn’t so much expect me to unravel the mystery
as to accept that I can’t;
to realise that it is a mystery, and always will be.
God as three persons –
could he seriously be suggesting that?
It’s preposterous, surely,
even blasphemy,
yet somehow I’ve not been able to dismiss it from my mind,
for in a strange way it seems to make sense.
He did show me God, as no other has done,
and the Spirit moved not only through him,
but also through those followers of his,
almost as though he’d passed it on
and was still with them after he’d died.
It’s hard to believe,
impossible to believe:
that God is three in one yet one in three.
Yet do you know what?
I really think it’s true!
Prayer
Almighty God,
teach us to live with the mystery of who you are,
to recognise that though we can never fully articulate,
let alone understand,
the wonder of your being,
we can experience it nonetheless,
responding to you each day as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
However much it defies logic
and stretches imagination to the limit,
may we know and honour you as God above us,
God beside us,
God within us,
three in one yet one in three.
Help us to worship you in all your splendour,
glimpsing in your varied faces the Lord of all,
your glory filling the universe
yet touching our lives,
your purpose transcending space and time
yet enfolding us in eternity.
Almighty God,
different yet ever the same,
we praise you.
Amen.