Isaiah 6.1-8; John 3.1-17
Today the church celebrates the Holy Trinity, the name of God just invoked over us. Each year the church calendar retraces and recounts the great works of God—watching for Christ in Advent; celebrating the Son of God conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary at Christmas; following the way of the cross through Lent; celebrating the Son of God raised by the power of the Holy Spirit at Easter; and that same Spirit poured out on Jesus’ followers at Pentecost.
We are at the halfway point of the church year. The first half emphasizes redemption and what God has done for us: the gift of grace. The second half turns toward sanctification and what God is doing in us: our growth in grace. English priest and poet George Herbert described these two halves, the gift of grace and growth in grace as God’s “two rare cabinets full of treasure.” The first contains the great events in Christ by which God has accomplished our salvation; the second opens us up to how we live as people of God. Trinity Sunday stands at the border of both halves and looks at both the life of God and our life in God. The word ‘Trinity’ isn’t in the Bible, but the basic grammar is there, including today’s gospel telling how the Father sent the Son into the world in love and that we are born to new life in the Spirit. The God revealed as Father, Son, and Spirit is the God in whom we live and move and have our being. And in God, we are encountered by both divine majesty and divine intimacy.
In today’s first reading, Isaiah has a vision of both. In the presence of God’s majesty, “high and lofty,” the foundations of the Temple shake and the entire place is filled with smoke, like the cloud of glory associated with the presence of God in the Old Testament. Isaiah sees seraphim, six-winged angels, and hears them sing their praise: “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Yet even as the angels praise God, they are humble, reserved, conceal their faces and feet. In the presence of God there is no hand-shaking chumminess with God—not for angels, for Isaiah, or for us. We are encountered by the Sovereign Lord of the universe, the source of all being—God above, beyond, and beneath—the One in whom all things exist and whose glory fills the heavens and earth. Elsewhere, the prophet Habakkuk reflects Isaiah’s vision and says, “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!”
In God’s holy temple, in the presence of God’s holiness and majesty, Isaiah becomes aware of the vast gulf between his life and God. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Why lips? Maybe it’s because Isaiah, when he heard the angelic choir sing their praise with sinless voices, became aware that his own life was often discordant, out of tune with God’s desire. We all are. For some of us, it’s hard enough to sing in tune with hymns to say nothing of living in harmony with God. Jesus describes this vividly in his teaching. What the mouth says reveals what the heart is full of. If what comes out of our lips is unclean, it reveals the deeper issue of our heart; “deceitful above any other thing,” says the prophet Jeremiah as he diagnoses the heart. The New Testament letter of James rebukes Christians for this very thing. With our mouths, James says, we both bless God and yet curse people made in the image and likeness of God. This contradiction, James reminds us, “ought not to be so.” When Isaiah experiences God’s majesty, he recognizes a truth about himself. In the presence of God’s perfect and harmonious holiness, Isaiah recognizes his imperfection, the discord in his life, his sin, and sin in the lives of the people around him. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”
Isaiah is encountered by God’s divine majesty. And yet during this same encounter, Isaiah is met by God’s divine intimacy. God’s glory is accompanied by God’s grace. One of the seraphs flies to Isaiah holding a burning coal taken from the altar. This seraph, Isaiah notices, is carrying that burning coal with tongs. Safety first. If you’re cooking outside this Memorial Day weekend, you’re not likely to grab burgers directly off a hot grill with your bare hands. The angel uses tongs, too. Yet if one of God’s holy angels can’t touch a burning coal directly, what will happen when that coal directly touches a sinful Isaiah’s lips? This must be one of the most unique stories of God’s encounter with anyone anywhere in the Bible. Except Isaiah says nothing about being harmed when this hot coal touches his lips. God’s glory is accompanied by God’s grace. God’s power is turned toward Isaiah’s cleansing.
“Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” And more than a cleansing of personal sins and failings, God’s divine and intimate work in Isaiah’s life is transforming. Faith in the God in whom we live and move and have our being, is not just information about God, things for us to know—Trinity Sunday, for example, asking us to love God with our minds and think through what is means to say that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but that there are not three gods but one. Faith is not just information about God but transformation in God, life-changing discoveries to be entered into and explored. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Our desires, longings, joys, frustrations, griefs, hopes, and fears are real, and all are met by the glorious and gracious God who comes to us with cleansing and transformation.
Writing about Isaiah’s awareness and fear over his sin and guilt, and about being touched by God’s fire in the burning coal, Fr George Smiga describes the angelic encounter as surprisingly gentle and kind. God’s grace goes hand in hand with God’s glory. This speaks to our own fear of transformation and change, especially in the presence of God, especially when we are aware of our fear, faults, and failings. Sometimes we imagine that change will be too difficult to endure, that altering the direction of our lives will be too much to bear, that repentance will lay bare our faults. But when God initiates the transformation, and God is with us through it, we will survive. We may feel the fire of God’s holiness, but it will not destroy us. As finite and limited as we are, even sinful as we are, God’s infinite grace and holiness transform us and make us people of God in, and for, the world.
Isaiah’s response to God at the encounter with God? “Here am I; send me!” These words are later echoed by Mary in response to the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she has been chosen to be mother of the Son of God, “Here I am…may it be as you have said.” This ‘Yes’ to the transforming call of God in our life is echoed by us every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done;” this is our openness to God’s transforming glory and grace in and through our life. “Here am I; send me.” Life in God is not just information but transformation, life-changing discoveries to be explored in the God in whom we live and move and have our being.
The thing that made Isaiah the person and prophet he was, that shaped his life and message, was the awareness of the holiness and majesty and glory of God. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” And within that glory, God’s grace—a cleansing touch and life transformed. This same glory and grace are for you. Isaiah’s vision invites you into an exploration of the wonder of God and your life made new in God. The Sovereign Lord of the universe and source of all being—God above, beyond, and beneath—the One in whom all things exist and whose glory fills the heavens and earth is, in today’s gospel, revealed for your life and the life of the world. The Father sends the Son in love; Jesus on the cross bears the burden of our sin and cleanses us with the fire of forgiveness; and in the love of Father and Son, life is born of the Spirit. The Father’s love, the Son’s death, new life in the Spirit—divine majesty and divine intimacy held together the Holy Trinity, the one God of glory and grace.
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