Puns and Pondering the Trinity

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on Holy Trinity Sunday

Everybody needs a good laugh now and then. It’s good for body and soul.

I’m currently reading a book on humor. The authors contrast the stages of human intellectual growth with research on humor development. The first “humor” stage occurs between eighteen and thirty-six months. A toddler starts doing things that don’t match. Like trying to be cute and putting a bucket on their head as if it were a hat.

Stage two is labeling objects that don’t match. A child is amused calling the bucket on her head “macaroni.” Or cracking up when they hear the word “eyeball.” Because at face value, it is nonsensical. The eye is not a ball! It’s the beginning of word play. Preschoolers can find it funny to call something by a different or silly name.

This leads to the stage three. Finding humor in puns. The knock-knock joke stage. Here’s one for Ethan on his baptism day.

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Water.

Water who.

Water you doing today?

Stage four in humor development happens around the ages of seven to eleven. It’s about paradox or multiple meanings.1 On Trinity Sunday I tried to think of three church puns:

#1 What kind of service welcomes complaints?

Bread and wine (whine).

#2 You come upon a big bowl like the one we use at baptism. Next to it is a sign with huge letters. And you reply, “what a large font.”

3# You walk up to a large picture of Jesus or Mary like we have up front. And you say to your neighbor, “icon if you con (can).”

You wonder what this has to do with Trinity Sunday or Nicodemus, right?

On Holy Trinity Sunday, things come in threes. Trinity. Triune. Triad. Jonah three days in the belly of the great fish. The three Magi and their three gifts. Jesus three days in the tomb. The great three days of Easter. Not to mention the three bears, the three little pigs, the three musketeers. And so many more.

Our gospel today has many word plays and double meanings. It’s the punniest gospel I can think of! And maybe early listeners smiled at certain points.

And now: three word plays in our gospel. 1) Night. Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. Nick at night. But more. Nicodemus is in the dark. But not literal darkness. He’s stuck in his head. He’s stuck in literalism. Maybe like many of us, he’s jaded. Life sucks and then you die. Yet he comes to Jesus. He is the ultimate seeker. What is Nicodemus looking for? Hoping for? What is the “more” that we are seeking?

#2 Born. A feminine image, for sure. Birth. You need Greek for the word play, though! The Greek for “born from above” can be translated “born again” or “born anew.” No surprise! Nicodemus, still in the dark, doesn’t get it. You can’t be born from your mother’s womb a second time. Jesus says you must be born of water and the spirit. Water suggests baptism and we’re thrilled to have a baptism today. But it also refers to the waters of birth.

Jesus then goes further to talk about the Spirit which is like wind. The wind is elusive. You hear it and feel it, like the strong winds this past week. You don’t know where the wind comes from or where it goes. Maybe meteorologists do, but I digress. Spirit is like wind.

3) Spirit. Are you ready for this? In Greek it is a triple word play. A triple pun! Whoa! In Greek the word for “wind” is also the word for “breath” which is also the word for “spirit.” What is the source of our spiritual rebirth? The breath of God. The wind of God. The spirit of God. In our seeking for something more, the Spirit is the source of our transformation.

But why all this on Holy Trinity Sunday you ask? The feast day of our congregation, this year, unfortunately on a holiday weekend with smaller attendance. But aren’t you glad you’re here!

In our gospel, we have God loving the world and sending the Son and the breath-wind-Spirit as the source of rebirth. God revealed three ways. Pretty simple! Or is it?

You’re having a conversation with a non-Christian. Let’s say a Hindu, Muslim, or Jew. And they ask: why do Christians believe in three gods?

Maybe you say, oh, we believe in the same God as you, but differently. And they respond: “Yah, but the three in one stuff—Father, Son and Holy Ghost thing. I don’t get it.”

And you try to remember all the analogies you’ve heard in sermons and Sunday School. God is like water in three forms: liquid, solid, gas. The Trinity is like an egg: the shell, the white, the yolk. Three parts, one egg! Or a tree: the roots, the trunk, and the branches. A three-leaf clover. Or a triangle!2

And then your conversation partner blurts out: what’s the point of it? Why three? Why three gods?

And you sigh. And you take a deep breath. And you wonder what you believe anymore. And if you can say the creed, and if you’re really a true Christian. Maybe we’ve all been there. Stuck in our heads. Stuck in literalism.

When our Eastern Orthodox siblings celebrate the Trinity, they don’t start with intellectual abstraction like we do. Parsing God. They begin with adoring the mystery. They acknowledge the inadequacy of human language and the limits of the mind to consider the infinite God.3

God is always more. Life is always more. And we are always more. More than we can imagine.

It’s another word play, really: one in three, three in one. A God of relationship. Interdependence. Interweaving. A divine dance, as early Christians thought of the trinity.

Yet there’s always more. Today Ethan is baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptized into a community, baptized into relationship. May he always know, may you always know, that your questions are welcome. Maybe there is more in the question than in the answer anyway.

And speaking of multiple meanings, though some Christians are known as “born again” types, and that may make you squirm a bit. In baptism, you are born again, born anew, born from above. God, our mother births us. First at the font, the womb of the church. And then throughout our lives.

May God our mother grant you the curiosity of a child. Welcoming every new day. With new things to explore. New puns to play with. New insights to treasure. New questions to ponder. And new wonders that stir you to praise. Amen.

1 Alyce M. McKenzie and Owen Hanley Lynch. Humor Us! Preaching and the Power of the Comic Spirit.

2 https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1785-start-with-the-three

3 https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3708-other-ways-of-speech