Trinity Sunday Year B: Wild Mystery, Sacred Humility
Kateri Boucher
On this Trinity Sunday, we celebrate and honor the truly wild mystery at the heart of the Christian tradition: that our “one God” is really also three. It feels fitting, then, that these Trinity Sunday readings are filled with multiple meanings, mysteries, and seeming-contradictions. Secret conversations are had under the cover of darkness (John) and cryptic messages are carried by winged creatures (Isaiah). The magnificence of God is felt through the waters and fires and forests (Psalms) and yet distinctions are made between flesh and spirit, heaven and earth (Romans and John). What shall we make of it all? This week, we are invited to explore the strange spaces beyond and between the binaries. To situate ourselves as small parts within a greater whole. To face our lack of understanding with humility and awe. And to step out into the darkness so that we might better hear the secrets of the night.
Commentary
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[This passage locates itself temporally as “the year that King Uzziah died” (verse 1). The story of Uzziah’s kinghood is detailed in 2 Chronicles chapter 26. Verses 6-15 tell of Uzziah’s many conquests and strong army. But verse 16 marks a shift: “When [Uzziah] had become strong he grew proud, to his destruction. For he acted unfaithfully toward the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to make an offering on the altar of incense.” This act, intended only for consecrated priests, eventually leads to his death.]
King Uzziah’s death foregrounds this Isaiah passage.
Isaiah sees God sitting “high and lofty” and clearly quite big too, given that just “the hem of his robe” fills the temple (verse 1). Isaiah describes seraphs surrounding God, evoking images of birds or other flying creatures. The seraphs are praising God, affirming that “the whole earth” is full of God’s glory (verse 2).
Then, as the thresholds shake and the “house fills with smoke” (verse 4), Isaiah cries out “Woe is me!” and admits that he has been lost and that his “lips have been unclean” (verse 5). This act of humility before the divine stands in direct contrast to Uzziah’s pride.
One of the seraphs then flies down to Isaiah and brings him a “live coal” – which could be interpreted as a piece of the living fire of life (verse 6). Isaiah receives this cleansing act, and when he hears God asking who will go, he responds with the fullness of life: “Here I am!” (verse 8).
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This psalm is teeming with ecological references. Its stated intention, as named in the two opening verses, is to encourage the listener to give God glory and worship God’s “beauty of holiness.” (Interestingly, the psalmist writes, “Ascribe to the Lord, you gods,” as if other gods are the intended audience of these verses. This has also been translated as “you heavenly beings.” This is likely a remnant of Judaism’s polytheistic origins.)
Verses 3-9 depict the many ways that God (or the voice of God) is moving in the world. Beginning with waters and thunderstorms, then on to cedar trees, mountains (Lebanon and Hermon), fire, wilderness, and forests.
In verse 9, the psalmist writes, “And in the temple of God, all are crying, ‘Glory!’” This evokes the question: Where is the temple of God? Is it referring simply to a religious structure, or could it refer to the whole world?
Verse 10 reaffirms God’s relationship to water – this time evoking God as sitting enthroned “above the flood.” It also reaffirms that God’s rule is not temporary, but will exist forevermore.
It is not until the final verse that human beings are named or evoked. We hear that this powerful God of the waters and mountains and wilderness will give strength and peace to God’s people.
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This distinction between flesh and Spirit (verse 13) has been taken up and used in many harmful ways in these last 2,000 years, often causing people to turn away from the sacredness of our own bodies – our own living, breathing, bounded bodies – as well as from the sacredness of the “natural world” around and within us.
Many scholars have addressed this distinction and how it might be understood in a way that does not disparage the sacredness of the human body. Richard Rohr points us to the Greek word that Paul uses to refer to flesh, sarx. This word appears 147 times in the Bible and contains multiple complex meanings within it.
Rohr writes: “I think what Paul means by sarx is the trapped self, the small self, the partial self, or what Merton called the false self. Basically, spirit is the whole self, the Christ self that we fall into by grace. We are saved by a larger mystery in which we can only participate as one abiding member. The problem is not between body and spirit; it’s between part and whole.”
Indeed, if we only live according to our small self, then we will die one day. But if we can widen our scope and know ourselves to be part of the larger ecological body (verse 14), then our life will continue on.
Paul implores us to suffer with the Spirit and the Christ body (verse 17), so that we may be glorified with Christ too. Given Rohr and other scholars’ interpretations, we can understand this to mean this Spirit as referring to the whole earth body – the whole ecology. In The Dream of the Earth, cultural historian and theologian Thomas Berry wrote, “If there is to be any true progress, then the entire life community must progress.”
Paul also explains that we are debtors to the Spirit (verse 12). The notion of being indebted to the earth – to the larger body – is common to many indigenous worldviews. Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about a turtle who reminded her of this debt: “The turtle reminds me that I owe my small human life to the generosity of the more-than-human beings with whom we share this precious homeland.”
It is the cycle of reciprocity, of mutuality, that we as human beings are meant to be heirs to (verse 17). But in order to receive the inheritance, we must be willing to let go of our small selves and join the larger body – in both its sufferings and its joys.
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This passage opens up in darkness. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, has come to visit Jesus at night (verse 3). Throughout the gospels, this is the only time that we hear of a nighttime visitation. Scholars have speculated that Nicodemus came under the cover of darkness for fear of being seen by the Jewish authorities. Whatever the reason, nighttime is a powerful time for opening up questions and mysteries that we cannot access in the light of day.
In Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, Malidoma Somé writes: “Among the Dagara, darkness is sacred. It is forbidden to illuminate it, for light scares the Spirit away. Our night is the day of the Spirit and of the ancestors, who come to tell us what lies on our life paths.”
Jesus informs Nicodemus that “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above” (verse 3). As in the Isaiah passage, a directional orientation is associated with God – translated here as “above.” I can struggle with this language – it seems to underlie a dominant Christianity that focuses on this “heavenly above” at the expense of acknowledging the divine earth that is below us, around us, and in us.
But there are a couple interpretations of this phrase that have helped open it up to more meaning for me. The Greek word used here, ἄνωθεν, is also found 13 other times in the Bible, and it is not only translated to mean “above.” In Luke 1:3 and Acts 26:5, it is translated to mean “from the beginning.” In Galatians 4:9, it is translated as “anew.” And later in this same John passage, the same word is translated simply to mean “again” or “anew.”
This dual meaning likely explains why Nicodemus then asks how one could be born again after growing old (verse 4). It seems here that Nicodemus is evoking what he understands to be “laws of nature” – that we can only age as time goes on, and that we can only come through our mother’s womb once.
Jesus then responds that one must be born through both water and the Spirit in order to enter the Kingdom of God (verse 5). This reference to water is ambiguous. Jesus might be referring to the water of a mother’s womb, as Nicodemus just named. And he may also be referring to the waters of baptism or mikveh, the Jewish ritual cleansing (that Nicodemus would have certainly been familiar with) that took place in “living water” – water that had not been manipulated by humans. Either way, Jesus evokes his own wilderness beginnings, when he is simultaneously baptized into the wild Jordan River and visited by the Spirit as a dove.
It is here that he introduces the distinction between the flesh and the Spirit (verse 6), earthly and heavenly things (verse 12). This distinction has been taken up and used in many harmful ways in these last 2,000 years, often causing people to turn away from the sacredness of our own bodies – our own living, breathing, bounded bodies – as well as from the sacredness of the “natural world” around and within us.
Many scholars have addressed this distinction and how it might be understood in a way that does not disparage the sacredness of the human body. Richard Rohr points us to the Greek word that Paul uses to refer to flesh, sarx. This word appears 147 times in the Bible and contains multiple complex meanings within it.
Rohr writes: “I think what Paul means by sarx is the trapped self, the small self, the partial self, or what Merton called the false self. Basically, spirit is the whole self, the Christ self that we fall into by grace. We are saved by a larger mystery in which we can only participate as one abiding member. The problem is not between body and spirit; it’s between part and whole.”
Jesus asserts that one must be born of both the flesh and the spirit – both into one’s small body, and into the larger body – or ecology – that one is situated in.
The wind also makes an appearance here. It may seem to be employed as a metaphor, but perhaps it is also a direct reference. Does the Spirit move through the wind, the air element that moves across our skin and through our lungs? Is the wind “earthly” or “heavenly,” or somehow mysteriously both?
Jesus then compares himself to the serpent in the wilderness who was lifted up by Moses. Jim Perkinson offers an excellent commentary on the role of serpents in the Bible and other spiritual traditions, and what it might mean for Jesus to be comparing himself to one. He concludes that the primary serpentine question offered to us is: “Do [we] see? What wild Spirit-Creatures of skin and metal are we failing to honor, as we flee, and struggle, and fall?”
The final verses in this text center around a promise of eternal life and salvation (verses 15, 17, 17). If we can widen our scope and know ourselves to be part of the larger ecological body, then our relationship with life will continue on even when our small body has died.
Preaching and Teaching Ideas
Sacred Humility
This week’s Isaiah passage begins by naming that this story takes place “in the year King Uzziah died.” Although this may seem like a simple historical timestamp, it may also be the key to unlock a deeper meaning of Isaiah’s story.
The story of Uzziah’s kinghood is detailed in 2 Chronicles chapter 26. Verses 6-15 tell of Uzziah’s many conquests and strong army, with the author asserting multiple times that “Uzziah became powerful.” But verse 16 marks a shift: “But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar” (16). The temple priests gathered around to stop him, saying, “It isn’t right for you to do this – it isn’t your place” (17). But when Uzziah became angry and refused to leave, he broke out in leprosy and was exiled, never able to enter the temple again (20).
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When read through the lens of King Uzziah’s pride and downfall, Isaiah’s story stands in direct contrast. Where Uzziah had lost sight of God, Isaiah clearly sees God “sitting high and lofty on the throne” (1). Where Uzziah had barged into the temple and demanded to light the incense himself, Isaiah sits quietly inside until he experiences the threshold shaking and “the house filling with smoke” – presumably from the temple incense (4). Whereas Uzziah had felt pride in his power, Isaiah responds to this experience by declaring his humility, his smallness: “Woe is me! I am lost…” (5). Unlike Uzziah, expelled from the temple with a new disease (dis-ease), Isaiah is actually visited by one of the winged Spirit-creatures, who brings him a “live coal” from the altar and offers ease from his guilt and sin (7).
Together, these two stories offer us contrasting models for interacting with the sacred or the divine. It’s likely that we all have experiences of acting more like Uzziah and more like Isaiah.
When have you or your people violated a sacred order, taken something that wasn’t ours, or gotten out of right-size with ourselves? What were the results? And conversely, when have you or your people respected a sacred order, received gifts with gratitude, and stayed right-sized? What were the results?
Many of us in dominant Western culture have been trained to be more like Uzziah, accruing power and becoming filled with righteousness and pride. We have placed ourselves above other humans and placed humans above all else. And as we are seeing, the results have been catastrophic. Not only have we violated the sacredness of our human and more-than-human kin, we have also cut ourselves off from “the temple” – our direct connection with the divine.
Isaiah’s humility before God offers us another way. It is precisely in Isaiah’s moment of humility (and perhaps even despair) that he is visited by the Spirit and given direct access to “a live coal” – the living fire of life (6). Then, when he hears God’s call (“Who will go? Who shall I send?”, 8) he is able to respond without hesitation. His “Woe is me!” is transformed into “Here I am; send me!” His humility is transformed into sacred response-ability. His humility is his sacred response-ability.
This same kind of movement is mirrored in this week’s gospel. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven.” In order to go up – to be met and lifted by the Spirit of life – one must go down – into one’s humility, humanity, powerlessness.
What do the words humility, humanity, and powerlessness evoke for you? What practices or experiences help you access them? What more-than-human beings help remind you of your place and role?
Finally, this week’s psalm also offers us another model for human right-sizedness within the world around us. Through the first ten verses, there is no mention of humans. The focus is entirely on praising God’s power as it moves through more-than human beings, including waters and thunderstorms, trees, mountains, fire, wilderness, and forests. It is not until the final verse that human beings are named or evoked. Human power is not centered, but named only in relation to the power that God has given to many other wild beings. In contrast to the messages that many of us receive in this Anthropocentric Era, it is clear that humans are not running this show. This psalm right-sizes us as the latecomers to a weird, wild party that started long before we came – and hopefully will carry on long after we’re gone.
Flesh and Spirit
Ah, the flesh and the Spirit. This infamous distinction shows up in both this week’s gospel and epistle. This theme may at first feel antithetical to a Wild Lectionary which seeks to explore the ways that Spirit speaks through the earth and our bodies. For the last many centuries, this distinction between flesh and Spirit has been taken up and used to turn people away from the sacredness of our own bodies – our own living, breathing, bounded bodies – as well as from the sacredness of the “natural world” around and within us.
What were we taught about the relationship between flesh and Spirit? Were we taught that one is good and the other is bad? Were we taught that they are inherently interconnected or inherently opposed? How has this affected the way that we relate to our own bodies, others’ bodies, and the more-than-human world?
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In recent decades, though, many scholars have addressed this distinction and how it might be understood in a way that does not disparage the sacredness of the human body. Richard Rohr points us to the Greek word that has been translated as flesh, sarx. This word appears 147 times in the Bible and contains multiple complex meanings within it.
Rohr writes: “I think what Paul means by sarx is the trapped self, the small self, the partial self, or what Merton called the false self. Basically, spirit is the whole self, the Christ self that we fall into by grace. We are saved by a larger mystery in which we can only participate as one abiding member. The problem is not between body and spirit; it’s between part and whole.”
Jesus asserts that one must be born of both the flesh and the spirit. Given Rohr’s interpretation, we can take this to mean that one must be born into one’s small body as well as into the larger body – or ecology – that one is situated in.
Can we allow ourselves, like Jesus, to be baptized into something bigger, wider, and wilder than our own small bodies?
This week’s psalm illustrates a theology that is not separate from the earth, but deeply embedded in it. Verses 3-9 depict the many ways that God (or the voice of God) is moving through the wild bodies of the world. Beginning with waters and thunderstorms, then on to cedar trees, mountains (Lebanon and Hermon), fire, wilderness, and forests.
Would those natural beings be considered physical or spiritual, “flesh” or “Spirit”?
The psalm blows open the binaries and reminds us of an older way of being, an indigenous way of being, that knows no distinction between that of the earth and that of the Spirit. In Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, Malidoma Somé writes: “In Western reality, there is a clear split between the spiritual and the material, between religious and secular life. This concept is alien to the Dagara. For us, as for many indigenous cultures, the supernatural is part of our everyday lives. To a Dagara person, the material is just the spiritual taking on form.”
What if we read the gospel and epistle passages through this indigenous lens? Where do we notice ourselves creating a binary between the spiritual and the material? What experiences or beings help us feel into the space beyond this binary? When do we experience our bodies, others’ bodies, and the more-than-human world to be holy and sacred?
Nighttime
This week’s gospel passage opens up in darkness. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, has come to visit Jesus at night (verse 3). Throughout the gospels, this is the only time that we hear of a nighttime visitation. Scholars have speculated that Nicodemus came under the cover of darkness for fear of being seen by the Jewish authorities. But whatever the reason, this encounter was shaped by the fact that it took place at night.
So many of us in the dominant Western world have lost our connection to the sacred darkness. Whether we live in cities where we are lucky to see a handful of stars, or we turn on our lights (or smartphones) when the sun goes down, most of us sighted people do not experience the kind of dark that our biological and spiritual ancestors were nightly enveloped by. As poet-activist Jim Perkinson has named, many of us have cut ourselves off from experiencing an entire half of this planetary experience.
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In Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, Malidoma Somé writes: “Among the Dagara, darkness is sacred. It is forbidden to illuminate it, for light scares the Spirit away. Our night is the day of the Spirit and of the ancestors, who come to tell us what lies on our life paths.”
For sighted people, darkness affects our physical body as well as our Spirit. Dark sky advocate Paul Bogard explores this extensively in his book The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. He writes, “In dimly lit situations, our pupil expands, our iris relaxes, and thirty times more light can enter our eye.” For sighted people, being in darkness can literally (and ironically!) allow us to see more than if we had the aid of light.
What comes up for you when you think of being outside at night? What do you see? What do you hear? How does your body feel? What does the sky look like?
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Nicodemus, this powerful religious authority, came to Jesus with his curiosity, awe, and vulnerability during the night. The nighttime can open up parts of ourselves that are not always accessible during the movement and light of the day. It can upend assumptions and structures that seem obvious or taken-for-granted during the day. It can offer fertile ground for listening, remembering, dreaming, and imagining (or experiencing) worlds beyond our own.
In The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram writes about indigenous shamans who need to “alter the common organization of their senses in order to enter into a rapport with the multiple sensibilities that animate the local landscape [...] – the songs, cries, gestures of the larger, more-than-human field.” For sighted people, the nighttime may change our sense of sight, but this altering of our senses may help us open up to perceiving the more-than-human field. A field that Jesus was deeply attuned to.
Have you ever experienced a visitation from the Spirit at night? What did it have to say? What voices do you hear speaking to you in the nighttime? What questions might you bring to Jesus, to the stars, to the nocturnal creatures who move by the light of the moon?
Awe and Mystery
On this Trinity Sunday, we celebrate and honor the truly wild mystery at the heart of the Christian tradition: that our “one God” is really also three. It is one of those math equations that doesn’t quite make sense. The more you think about it, the harder it is to understand. So perhaps our call is not to think about it, but simply to marvel at its mystery.
In Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, Malidoma Somé writes: “In the culture of my people, the Dagara, we have no word for the supernatural. The closest we come to this concept is Yielbongura, ‘the thing that knowledge can’t eat.’ This word suggests that the life and power of certain things depend upon their resistance to the kind of categorizing knowledge that human beings apply to everything.”
Yielbonguara: The thing that knowledge can’t eat.
Despite modern Western culture’s insistence on logic and categories and rational thinking, there are so many wild things that continue to evade knowledge’s sharp teeth. This week’s psalm evokes some of them. Verses 3-9 depict the many ways that God (or the voice of God) is moving in the world. The mighty waters and thunders, the trees in their breaking, the mountains in their shaking, the fires, the wilderness, the forests. The psalmist does not try to explain why these things are happening, or how God is able to do these things, or who God is or isn’t. They simply sing in wonder and awe at the beauty, glory, power, and strength of whoever or whatever it is that is able to move these wild beings.
When we experience or witness the beauty and power of any created being, how do we respond? Do we feel the urge to explain, rationalize, or categorize our experience? What does it feel like to simply stand in awe and wonder at the mystery?
Somé concludes: “Dwelling in the realm of the sacred is both exciting and terrifying.” May this Trinity Sunday offer us an opportunity to stand in awe and gratitude for all that our human minds will never fully understand.
Sources and Resources
Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman by Malidoma Somé
The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light by Paul Bogard
Review of The End of Night by Inez Tan
Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram
The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World by David Abram
The Four Vision Quests of Jesus by Steven Charleston
“Flesh and Spirit” by Richard Rohr
“Wild Lectionary: Trinitarian Mindset and Reconciliation” by Victoria Marie
“Seraphim Serpents, Bronze Gifts, and Saving Sights” by Jim Perkinson
“The Turtle Mothers Have Come Ashore to Ask About an Unpaid Debt” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Contributor Bio
Kateri Boucher (she/they) is the Ministries Coordinator at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Detroit. She is in the process of receiving her Masters of Divinity through the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities (studying online). Kateri is part of the Queer St. Peter's affinity group, a weekly volunteer at Manna Meal soup kitchen, and a facilitator with the Living Buddha, Living Christ series in collaboration with the Building Beloved Community sangha. They are former associate editor at Geez Magazine and former Catholic Worker at Day House Detroit.
Art Credit
“Monstera” by Sarah Fuller is used by compensated agreement. Sarah Fuller is a visual artist and illustrator working in the medium of linocut printmaking. Sarah explores themes of spirituality, mysticism, relationships, nature, beauty and social justice, making visual reference points that support people and communities engaged with these experiences.