Trinity Sunday
Year B
Exodus 3:1-6
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-16
Psalm 93
Randy Welsand
I’ve always enjoyed working with wood. My dad was a carpenter and I spent many an hour out in the shop watching him fashion chairs and tables and kitchen cabinets and other things out of wood. He would take a pile of boards and turn them into something new, something wonderful. And I was his helper!
I would help him hold the board as he ran it through the table saw or help hold the boards steady as he glued them together. "Never pull the board" he used to say, "just guide it. If you pull it, the cut could go off track and be crooked". But mostly my job was to keep the shop cleaned up.
As a side benefit, I got to keep the scraps of wood and nails left on the floor. I would straighten those bent nails I scavenged and nail those scraps of wood into my own creations. A small table, a car, I even built a little birdhouse once, put it out on the garage, but nobody ever moved in. I made the hole too small. "That’s how you learn" my dad would say. "Next time you’ll know better." He believed that sometimes making mistakes was the best way to learn.
Dad also had a wood lathe. I was fascinated with this lathe. He would take a square piece of wood, put it in the lathe, turn it on and the wood chips would fly everywhere! When he was done, what was once an unattractive chunk of wood was now transformed into a most beautiful candle holder or flower pot. When I was old enough, he taught me how to use the lathe. He showed me the proper way to hold the chisel and how to take shavings of wood off the rough piece of wood a little at a time. He taught me how to make something useful out of a scrap of wood that would otherwise be used as firewood. My turnings never seemed to look quite as good as his, but I learned how to do it safely and I learned how to do it right.
As an adult, I still love to work with wood. The skills my dad taught me have really come in handy. About a year ago, I started to build drums. I use pieces of wood, sometimes coming from old scrap pallets and sections of rawhide. I cut these pieces of wood into shapes called staves and then glue them together into what is called a stem, which is nothing more than a drum without a head. The stem is then sanded smooth or turned into a round form on a lathe. A piece of rawhide is then soaked and stretched over the stem and held in place with more strips of rawhide. The process of building a drum is one that forces the original materials, wood and rawhide, to be changed into something new. Out of these stresses comes a new creation, a drum. Like everything, risk is involved. Too much force could crack the drum or tear the rawhide. Too little leaves a 'dead' sounding drum or one that falls apart under pressure. To avoid the process means that no transformation will take place, no music will be created. It remains in effect nothing more than just boards and skins. Each drum I make requires a certain amount of risk to get the job done right. When completed, each has it’s own voice, it’s own uniqueness. All these unrelated raw materials have joined together and been transformed, reborn as a new creation.
Nicodemus was a religious man. He knew the Decalogue and the Torah by heart. He was known not only as a teacher of the law but as THE teacher of the law. His was at the top of his profession. . If anyone knew the truth about God, it was Nicodemus. Yet for all of his knowledge, he was strangely unfulfilled. There was a certain emptiness within him that he could not explain. So he took a big risk. He went to Jesus at night, out of fear and asked him what it would take to enter the kingdom of heaven. What did he have to do? Jesus told him that to enter God’s kingdom required something that was quite impossible by human standards. He needed to be born again. To open up his heart to the work of the Holy Spirit blowing freely among him filling his emptiness with God’s love.
When we are born again, we become a new person, forgiven of our sins and granted an intimate relationship with God. We only have to be willing to change our course. For years, ABC’s Wide World of Sports television program opened with the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. I'm sure most of us remember the skier coming down the large ski jump only to fall before the jump and tumble head over heels off the jump and bounce off of the supporting structure. What we didn’t know was that the skier had made a conscious decision to fall rather than to finish the jump. Why? He realized that the ramp had become too fast and that if he finished the jump, he would have landed outside of the sloped landing area on the flat ground which would have been fatal. As it turned out, the skier suffered no more than a headache from that spectacular tumble.
In order to make a drum , it is necessary to pick the raw materials wisely and carefully mold them into the new form risking setbacks during the transformation. Nicodemus took a huge risk in his daring night time visit to Jesus but he gained the directions to the Kingdom. Like that skier, to change one’s course in life can be a dramatic and painful undertaking. But is better than having a fatal landing at the end.
Let us pray: Lord God, Heavenly Father thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit, blowing through us like a healing wind. Bringing us forgiveness of our sins and comfort in our times of need. May we all be reborn and join you in your heavenly kingdom. Through your Son, our savior, Jesus Christ.