Contained in this theological concept of a Trinitarian God is the very practical notion that one cannot have true unity, or experience wholeness, without interrelationship. We are formed, even defined, by the context of our relationships. We are sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, siblings, nephews and nieces, and all of us, always, children of God.

We become who we will become through our interactions with one another.
We do not exist in isolation, even when we feel separate or lonely.
But we thrive when we are consciously invested in relationships
that are built on foundations of mutual love and respect.

As Richard Norris explains in his book "Understanding the Faith of the Church,"
the Trinity is one way to speak of our relation to God:

"It is, first of all, a relation of creature to Creator. At the same time, it is a relation of sinner to Redeemer. Finally, it is the relation of one in process of transformation to the Power which transforms. This is the threefold way," Norris writes,"in which Christian faith knows and receives the God of the Exodus and the Resurrection."

Moses on the mountain; fire off the beaten path.
The bush that called his name was not consumed, but Moses was.
God had sparked the man's attention and Moses turned to look into the light.

Moses left the sheep to graze, stepped off to the side - and out of his shoes -
onto ground made holy by the presence of God.
Fire on the mountain; Moses off the beaten path.

God's action and presence in history
crackled like fire on the side of the mountain
and Moses was caught in the light of the God who illuminated
more of Moses than Moses knew was there.

There is also much more to God than we can immediately perceive, or articulate. Moses who came face to face with God had to ask whom it was that was speaking. Language is imprecise, and the words we use to discuss the Trinity have a history behind them that we must acknowledge if we would know that of which we speak. Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Person all have a variety of meanings that have come into play and influenced our understanding over centuries.

The following explanation of this development of owes a great debt to the writing of Richard Norris. When we speak of God the Father, it can be the "Abba" of Christ's portrayal who loves, nourishes, forgives and guides. This is the Father of a personal relationship. We can speak of the "Father of the universe" as Greek philosophy would style him -the maker of all things, the Creator. This shows God not in light of how he treats us but as the founder of the natural order. And finally, most central in formal discussions of the trinity, God is called Father because he reproduces himself in a second divine reality - the Word made flesh, his "Son".

Nicodemus came in the night to speak with the light of the world, the only begotten Son, the Word made flesh who sat waiting to teach this teacher of Israel. Fully human yet fully divine, Jesus sits in the stillness and listens as Nicodemus speaks: "Rabbi we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God."

Nicodemus is still standing cautiously on the beaten path but he seems to sees the light from the corner of his eye. The Son is indeed not separate from the presence of God. Nor is the Spirit separate from the work of the father and the Son. The Spirit moves as it chooses and people are reborn in the Spirit's passage.

Is this threefold relationship explicitly expressed in the text of this morning's reading from John? No, but as early Christians reflected upon Scripture and their experiences of faith development, especially in baptism, they began to see the outlines of "One God in three Persons" forming. As Norris puts it,"Baptism is that act by which Christians, through the power of the Spirit, are identified with Christ and thus established as God's Children."

"People's relationship to God," Norris suggests, "was a single unified reality, a single relationship to the one God as Father, established and revealed in Christ and brought home to people through the Spirit."

As Paul wrote in today's lessons from Romans,"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, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."

Early Christians knew many ways to refer to God. They also knew there was one God. Hundreds of years of conflict and conversation delivered the doctrine of the Trinity as a means of expressing the presence of distinction and the absence of division in God's action and presence in the world.

But the Greek and Hebrew thought that modulated the discussions carried concepts that created challenges and the need for clarification. Both streams of thought held that God was a transcendent being and that there were intermediaries between God and humankind. Angels or powers were part of Jewish thought. In the Exodus reading this morning it says that an angel of the Lord appeared in the falme, before it tells us Moses heard the vioce of God.

The Greeks conceived of a hierarchy of being that emanated from God. The idea of subordinate divine beings was common currency. The Holy Spirit as intermediary fits easily into this schema but carries a flaw. It makes the Spirit less than the Father. It makes the Spirit a creature, something made.

The Son of God was a more problematic issue. Traditionally, in Hebrew thought, "Son of God" and "Christ" referred to human beings called by God for a particular mission. But in Jesus, "Son of God" came to be seen as the divine power, which had identified itself in, and with Jesus, just as "Spirit of God" was seen as a power in which God expresses himself.

The problem with intermediaries is that they are derivative- this suggests that they are something created by God. The concept of intermediaries separates God and powers into a hierarchy of Supreme Being and subordinates. The concept of intermediaries also isolates God from the world. Neither of these said what we have come to mean. In light of this concern, the Subordinationism view dimmed.

Enter the Monarchianist. They posited that there is indeed only one God, the three aspects of this God could not be hard distinctions therefore there were to be understood as appearances - names for the different ways in which God is seen by us, what God looks like.

This seemed helpful, a way to finesse some of the problems generated by the heavenly hierarchy of those who held to Subordinationism. But if we accept this notion of appearance we have, again, something less that God fully present. We have an image or representation not the full and present reality.

We have God on three channels, three televisions glowing in the night, rather than God himself fully present on the mountain, fully present and sitting next to Nicodemus, fully present and blowing in our lives rustling the leaves of our consciousness to get us to notice who exactly it is that desires to be with us.

Intellectual contortionists struggled to bend their minds around the issues that sprang from trying to understand God's relationships within the Trinity and God's relationships with us as a Trinity.

The Church wrestled with who was the most important, who made whom, and determined that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were co-eternal, the Son was begotten, not made. They stated that the Spirit is not a creature but the power of God present - a God who self-communicated himself so there is no distance between himself and the world.

The Council of Nicea in 325 AD asserted that the Word of God is "of one being with the Father." In this statement, and the Nicene Creed, which we shall shortly say, the Son is not seen as something different from the Father, nor is the Spirit different from the father or the Son.

Why should we care about the theological conflict of the early church councils? Because they have already thought deeply and discussed at lenvth the very same issue we will encounter if we think about who and how God is. We can learn from what they learned.

The key is relation. Relationship is at the heart of God. The doctrine of the Trinity developed to articulate how God is related to Godself, how God is related to the world in general and to human beings in particular. As Norris put it:"the orthodox sought a way of asserting that God-in-himself is not distinct from, but exactly the same as, God-in-relation; and their way of doing this was to say that the distinction of persons is expressive of the fact that relatedness is part of God's own, proper way of being."

The fire on the mountain was God, He told Moses God's name: "He who causes to be"
The teacher talking to Nicodemus was God. Jesus both pointed to and offered new life.
The Spirit of adoption is God. Paul's words still illuminate a lasting and brilliant truth.

Through our baptism and our faith, we are offered incorporation into an interrelatedness where distinction remains but division disappears. God who is loving relationship invites us to see ourselves in His undying light. Fire on the mountain, lamp in the darkness, light of God in the world.