Trinity Sunday
Nicodemus is an interesting character -- certainly an interesting name. It is Greek, and means 'Victory for the People,' or some variant of that. Nike + Demos.
So, Victory for the People comes to visit Jesus secretly, at night, to ask him for the secret meanings of the teachings Jesus has been making in the daytime. What does it mean to be born again by water and the spirit? What's your project, rabbi?
He leaves the encounter profoundly affected. In John's telling, this pillar of the establishment decides to associate himself - even if in secret for a while - with the weird band of people looking for renewal, rebirth, and hope. Inner conversion, yet also Victory for the People.
What of all this outward glory, in the other texts? A vision of the prophet of a God who is so holy and distant, and yet who summons him to embark on a life of telling this glory and its implications for the lives of the people? Psalm 29, with its oak trees writhing in the blast of the holy, and all the people in the temple rolling about in some collective holy frenzy in the presence of all this glory. Hallelujah!
What is the relationship between this supposedly inner experience of the holy - causing conversion of heart over time - this secret knowledge discussed by night, and the collective and very public life of the people of God? Is one 'born again' (in Nicodemus's literal challenge to Jesus) for one's self, as some sort of individual movement toward holiness? Is the conversion meant to be collective, all the people - and political systems, and ecologies, and other public collectivities - all the people making the journey together?
Yes. Which drives the other? Inner becoming outer? Collective becoming embodied individually? Yes?
'Trinity' Sunday is a name given to this first Sunday after Pentecost in much of the Christian tradition. We just gave thanks for the gift of the Spirit of the Lord coming again and again. If the Christian proclamation is largely about Jesus - the person and ethics, the Divine Word made flesh, the proclamation of God's reality made unavoidable in resurrection - then it is also a proclamation that says: all these ways of knowing and encountering God are profoundly connected, and encouraging of each other. They are not in competition with one another. As Jesus says: if they're not against us, they're for us.
You've heard me speak of the Trinity as a dance, gathering all wallflowers into the motion. The quiet encounter of Nicodemus at night; the oak trees writhing in glory: each have a place. Inner conversion; ascetic spirituality; visible worship in the beauty of public, collective holiness; solidarity with the vulnerable; seeking of justice; public proclamation of the kingdom of God (with words and in deeds) -- all are dancing together. The quiet sublime and the ecstatic encounter hold hands, and say - with Isaiah - 'here am I; send me.'