I experienced a bit of deja vu when I realized that I was scheduled to preach today. Last year I preached here on Trinity Sunday, too. This is becoming a tradition.

There are no references to the Trinity in the Old Testament reading, of course. In fact, there are very few references to the Trinity in the New Testament. In today's readings, Paul's letter gives mention to all three members of the Trinity, but only peripherally, in order to make a point. In the Gospel reading from John, Jesus mentions God, the Father, and the Spirit, but the emphasis is on being born again in the Spirit.

In the first reading, Moses is tending his sheep for his father-in-law, Jethro, who is a Midianite priest. Moses is at the base of Mount Horeb, also known as Mount Sinai, and encounters the angel of God in the burning bush. He is understandably frightened.

Moses is an unlikely candidate for a holy man. He killed an Egyptian he found beating a Hebrew slave and hid his body in the sand, then escaped to Midian, which was near the Great Salt Sea, north of the Red Sea, and became married to Zipporah, a Midianite woman. The Midianites were related to the Israelites through Abraham's third wife, Keturah, just as the Edomites were related through Esau, Jacob's brother.

The burning bush catches the attention of Moses, as it was clearly meant to do. God calls from the burning bush, and Moses answers "Here I am." His "Here I am." is echoed in the story of the prophet Samuel, who is called by God to service while still a boy sleeping in the temple.

God tells Moses to remove his sandals because this is holy ground. No one is certain where this holy mountain is, and though there is a mountain known as Mt. Sinai today, it is probably not the same mountain. Wherever the holy mountain is, Moses will return here to receive the Ten Commandments from God after the Hebrew people are rescued from Pharoah.

It is only after God tells Moses who He is that Moses covers his face because he is afraid to look at God. Moses is afraid because to see God was to die, according to ancient tradition.

In the second reading today, Paul tells the Romans Christians to live according to the Spirit, not the flesh. Paul's continuing message is that we are adoptive children of God through Jesus Christ, and because of this, we are no longer slaves to the flesh.

Paul mentions crying out "Abba! Father!" The word Abba is actually Daddy in Hebrew. The word for father is Av. Jesus taught His apostles to say Daddy rather than Father, because it is much more a term of endearment. We are much closer to God the Father than we know. While Av is more formal, Abba is what young children cry when they want their Daddy. There is an intimacy in the word Abba that cannot be found in Av or Father. Paul points out that the Spirit within us bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

In the third reading, John's Gospel, the Pharisee, Nicodemus is too nervous about his position as a leader of the Jewish community to visit Jesus by day, for fear of being seen by the other Pharisees. He visits Jesus during the night to ply Him with questions. Nicodemus seems to be a believer, but also a bit of a skeptic. He is willing to acknowledge the miracles, but cannot understand being "born of the spirit." His question about crawling back in his mother's womb is a bit pointed, yet he has the humility to acknowledge that he does not understand, and asks for clarification.

The answer Jesus gives Nicodemus probably only confuses him more. Jesus mentions Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, using it as analogy to his future crucifixion. Not even the apostles are capable of understanding or accepting his coming death. It is no surprise that Nicodemus misses the point.

The incident with Moses and the serpent on a staff referred to here is to be found in Numbers 21:8-9. It is rather a strange account. The Hebrew people are again complaining about no food, no water, and whatever food they have being lousy. God punishes them by having poisonous serpents bite them. They come to Moses admitting their guilt and begging for help. God tells Moses to put a poisonous serpent on a pole and raise it up, and whoever looks at the serpent on the pole after being bitten by a snake will survive. Moses makes a brass serpent on a pole and lifts it high above the heads of his people so that they would survive the poison of snake bites. This smacks of Egyptian serpent magic, yet here is Moses, performing this act of mercy. Ironically, the Hebrews have been told to form no graven images, and now they have a bronze snake to look at.

Nicodemus is mentioned twice more in the Gospels. He appears once in John 7:50-52, where he argues that Jesus should receive a fair hearing, long before Jesus is arrested at Gethsemane, and then, after Jesus has died on the cross, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea prepare the body of Jesus for burial. This is an act of charity no one would expect. This bathing and anointing of the body was a task for family members. Moreover, anyone touching a dead body was ritually unclean for twenty-four hours. Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, was really doing a mitzvah, a good deed, in helping with this task, especially considering the Passover holiday began on the evening of Jesus' arrest.

Today, the understanding of the term "born again" seems to vary considerably from congregation to congregation, or even from person to person. To someone in dire straits, who realizes that the only way to survive spiritually, physically, and emotionally is to get help from God, the idea of repentence and rebirth is attractive. A desperate person often knows he or she really needs a new life in God.

What of Nicodemus, however, who was a devout Pharisee, doing his best to live in purity and in adherence to Mosaic law? Perhaps his adherence to Mosaic law was the primary reason he could not understand what Jesus was saying. Repentance and rebirth would seem problematic to someone like Nicodemus. Perhaps there is a bit of Nicodemus in each of us here. The notion of receiving a new, purer spiritual life may seem appealing, but dying to our old self is not as attractive when we assume we are already righteous. Everyone wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there.

It is hard not to sound like the proud Pharisee rather than the humble Publican, as in the parable Jesus told in Luke, Chapter 18. It is hard not to congratulate ourselves on how righteous we are, when we are blind to the distance in which we have missed the mark. We have to remind ourselves that Jesus said the Publican in the parable went home justified, not the Pharisee.

What does being reborn really mean? Do we have to wait until we die and are resurrected, as Jesus was, before we are "born again"? Each Christian denomination has its own slant on the term "born again. Many feel uncomfortable with the concept, because it seems to have been co-opted by Evangelical Christians with poofy hairdos, loud voices and instant altar calls to salvation.

Our Nicodemis reading contains John 3:16--perhaps the most important scripture to Fundamentalists: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life." They tend to ignore the correct translation of the Greek word we translate "believe" actually means "to be committed unto." They forget John 6:54 that states that receiving the eucharist is a crucial condition to obtain eternal life, and other scripture where following Jesus and the commandments are crucial to obtaining eternal life.

We may want to avoid the association with the term "born again" because when asked "Are you born again?" the person asking is under the assumption that if we reply "yes," that we hold the same beliefs they do, while that may not be the case, or if we answer "no," then we are obviously going to go to Hell.

Jesus told Nicodemus that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above. Jesus also said no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. Some people have taken this literally to mean that unless a person is baptized in water, and then receives the Holy Spirit, that person cannot reach heaven. A friend of mine, who attends a Pentecostal church, told us that they insisted he had not yet been "born again" because he had not yet spoken in tongues.

I think to understand the term "born again," one has to actually read more than this brief Gospel reading. In epistle after epistle, one can find the same common theme: As Jesus Christ died to the flesh, so we die to sin when we follow Him; and as Jesus was raised from the dead, so we are reborn anew of the Spirit. I think this is what Jesus meant when he talked of being born again.

Jesus said "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit." In order, then, to be born again, from above, we need to be born again in the Spirit, since we have already been born in the flesh if we live on this planet. We must have a spiritual awakening, something that takes us away from centering our lives around this world, and this world only. That is why publicans and prostitutes were getting to heaven before the Pharisees, they knew they really needed help, and they were willing to change their lives completely. Are we?

It is never mentioned whether or not Nicodemus heard of the resurrection and believed. We don't know if he ever understood what Jesus was talking about when he mentioned being born again. He was obviously sincere, or he would never have defiled himself in touching a dead body. I hope he finally did understand. I like to think that the answers Jesus gave him resonated with Nicodemus enough later so he finally understood when word came of the resurrection of Jesus. I like to think that Nicodemus finally understood what being "born again" really meant.

Amen