Sunday, May 27, 2018

Holy Trinity Sunday



While our first reading is the story of Isaiah’s call to prophesy, it is first and foremost, the story of how Isaiah is a witness to the extraordinary, of something that is “normally concealed from the human eye.” Where, on Pentecost, in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke recalls Joel’s own description of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon the people, saying, “your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” (Acts 2:17), in this reading, we hear Isaiah describe his own vision of the Lord.

First he describes seeing the Lord seated on a throne and the hem of the Lord’s robe filled the room. This is the majestic and sovereign ‘Adonai’ — “God of the universe”, “Holy God, Mighty Lord, Gracious Father”, “Holy and mighty, holy and immortal” — whose glory we name in the Great Thanksgiving when we sing the sanctus using the words from verse 3: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (6:3)

Next, Isaiah describes the presence of the seraphs, celestial winged serpents near to God, and when the seraphs speak, the text tells us, “The pivots on the thresholds shook and the house filled with smoke.”

This encounter with the Lord was neither cerebral nor academic; it was tactile and it was physical. Shaking and trembling disturb you, and alert you to what is happening around you; smoke gets into your nostrils and lingers on your clothes, and even your skin. The encounter stays with you.

Isaiah’s extraordinary encounter with the divine echoes in the lives of Moses, Ezekiel and even Paul.

When Moses was leading the people of Israel to meet God, Exodus 19 says they stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and “[it] was wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. (Exodus 19:18)

When Ezekiel was confronting Israel, Ezekiel 38 says the Lord declared, “… On that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel;  …and all human beings that are on the face of the earth, shall quake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the cliffs shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground….  (Ezekiel 38:20) 

When Paul was imprisoned with Silas in Philippi, Acts 16 says, “Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened.” (Acts 16:26) 

Encountering God should affect us – leave us changed in some way; we should not be the same as we were before.

Often in Scripture we see God enter into relationship with a person who was then set apart to bear witness to God. (Romans 1:1)

After the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush and told him that he would lead God’s people out of Egypt, Moses protested, but God gave him a staff and healed him from leprosy so that the people would recognize his authority, as one whom God had sent. (Exodus 4:1-12) 

And again, when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, he protested that he was only a boy, but, “Then the LORD put out his hand and touched [his] mouth; and the LORD said to [him], "Now I have put my words in your mouth. (Jeremiah 1:9)

And again, when Ezekiel was commissioned to speak the Lord’s words to the people, a scroll was spread out before him and the Lord instructed him to eat it. When he had eaten it, he testified that “it was as sweet as honey.” (Ezekiel 3:4)

And again, when Paul who was first known as Saul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he fell down in the road and was blinded for three days, before Ananias laid hands on him and he regained his sight and began to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God. (Acts 9)

When it was Isaiah’s turn, the prophet responded in confession and the seraph placed a burning coal upon his lips to purify and sanctify him.

His confession is both for himself and for the people of Israel:
"Woe is me!
I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" (6:5)

In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther teaches that the purpose of confession isn’t to
“come and say how upright or how wicked you are….[but] to lament your need and allow yourself to be helped so that you may attain a joyful heart and conscience…”…It is “to hear what God wants to say to you.” (LC, 478)

And the gift that Isaiah receives, and that we all receive when we encounter the Holy who is God, is the Word that brings absolution or forgiveness, for the comfort and restoration of our souls.

God responds to our lament with forgiveness, providing balm, and as the African-American spiritual promises,
curing the sin sick soul and making the wounded whole. (Washington Glass, “Balm of Gilead”)

Isaiah is a witness to the extraordinary.
Shaken and disturbed,
humbled by the awesome power of God,
compelled to confession,
and fashioned in forgiveness, he is sent out into the world.

This morning, I want to ask,
What will shake you into response?

Where have you heard God speaking and you cannot overlook or dismiss it any longer?

Are you moved to confession for yourself or for the world in which we live?
Not pointing fingers, mocking others for their beliefs or calling other human beings names but naming instead what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls “the real deathliness that hovers over us and gnaws at us….”[i]

What will it take for you and I to voice true lament at the ways in which the brokenness – the sinfulness – of our human nature – our conceit and vanity – are on display? And how might we shine light into the darkness and tear away the veil that covers “the fear and the pain that individual persons want so desperately to share and to own but are not permitted to do so.”[ii]

Brueggemann describes the prophetic imagination to which we are called in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets:
as one that cuts through the numbness
and penetrates the self-deception so that,
to the ends of the earth, God is confessed as Lord.

Inhabited by the power and Spirit of God, our hearts are burning because our Holy God is here, setting us apart and calling us into the world as witnesses.

Let us pray.
Your way, O God, is holy. (Ps. 77:13)
Thank you for restoring your people with abundant grace and forgiveness;
Created for relationship and set apart as Your people, draw us to you in confession when we turn away from you;
Fashion us now into a people who bear witness to your love for all.
We pray in the name of the Father, Son + and the Holy Spirit.


[i] Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination (p. 45). Augsburg Fortress - A. Kindle Edition.
[ii] ibid
 

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