Holy Trinity

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

John 16:12-15          

On this Holy Trinity Sunday, if you want a concrete explanation of the Holy Trinity, you are going to be disappointed. Because as much as we like neat definitions and dis-ambiguity, the truth is that God is more: more than we can understand, more than we can know and more than we can imagine.

I think what we hear in all of our texts today though is that God desires to be known. And each reveals a different facet of who God is.  

It matters how we think about God’s “is-ness”.

We may begin with who God is not:

God is not a distant clockmaker who sets the world in motion and then watches from a distant perch to see what we will do;

And God is not a puppet master, orchestrating world events for caprice or entertainment;

Nor is God a malevolent judge setting on the mercy bench to mete out punishments.

In Proverbs, we meet God the Creator who acted long ago, as Wisdom testifies to her formation before the beginning of the earth. (v. 22-23)

And in Psalm 8, we hear the Lord called majestic and sovereign, the one whose glory is chanted (v. 2) and how the heavens with their stars and their moons are the very work of God’s fingers (v. 3).

“Creation is…incontrovertible evidence of divine majesty.”[i]

In Psalms for Praying, Nan Merrill paraphrases the psalm’s description of the heavens as “the work of Love’s creation …the infinite variety of your Plan”. 

The next verses in the psalm shift to how God’s plans include humankind as co-workers and stewards of the earth, guardians of the planet, charged with care for all of God’s creatures - the land, the sea and the air we breathe. In his paraphrase, Leslie Brandt writes that the Divine “[assigns to us] the fantastic responsibility of carrying on [God’s] creative activity”.[ii]

Our Creator God isn’t alien or abstract, but the Lord we know intimately, albeit imperfectly and incompletely, through the very world we live in.

In John’s Gospel, God’s majesty as evidenced in the broad swath of creation becomes much more particular, as now we hear Jesus talking with his disciples during the Farewell Discourse before his arrest and execution. In verse 14, Jesus says, “[The Spirit of truth] will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

Karoline Lewis, a Johannine scholar at Luther Seminary, writes, “In John[’s Gospel], to glorify is to make visible the presence of God, which is what the Holy Spirit does and what Jesus does.”[iii]

Episcopal priest Evan Garner goes even farther to say, “God cannot be understood but must be encountered through a relationship that grows from faith.” [iv]

As we consider how we understand the Holy Trinity

or who we know God to be,

our knowing is never mere intellectual assent to doctrine or beliefs, or even through our hearing the Word of God and the stories of Jesus, but through the transformation of our lives as “the Divine [is] living and acting and interacting with us on a daily basis.”[v]

Sometimes, like we sang about last Sunday, we hear God speaking to us in whispers, in “our neighbors’ urgent prayers” “or their “longing for rescue from despair.”[vi]

Other times, as at Pentecost, the movement of God and God’s Spirit is dramatic and noisy, a wind-born incarnation, and, like we heard in the acts of the apostles, it will not be contained or restrained.

Still other times, we experience God in the hand that reaches out for ours when we are hurting, in the encouragement that comes from our brothers and sisters in Christ, and in the very presence of Jesus in their faces and actions.

And of course, here in our sanctuary and worship we experience the presence of Christ at the Lord’s Table, in bread and wine, given for each one of us.

For all these glimpses of God alive and working in through and among us, we give thanks.

May we always pay attention to the places where we witness the power of God in ways, big and small.

I’ll end with a prayer from our Christian brothers and sisters at South Yarra Community Church in Melbourne Australia. [vii]

Let us pray…

O Trinity of Love,
your greatness is known in all the world
and your glory reaches beyond the stars.

In the first of your acts long ago, before the mountains were shaped
or springs brought forth water, you breathed your Spirit into being
to work beside you like a skilled artist, dancing joyously to the music of creation and delighting with you in the works of your hand.

In your child, Jesus Christ, you have revealed the glory and honor for which you created all humanity. When the world would not accept his truth and crucified him, you raised him to new life.

Through him, you sent your Holy Spirit to pour your love into our hearts; whispering your words into our ears.

Guide us now into all truth and fill us with the hope of sharing your glory. Amen.

---

[i] William Brown. Seeing the Psalms. 155.

[ii] Leslie Brandt. Psalms Now. 21

[iii] Karoline Lewis. “Holy Trinity - June 15, 2025.” Sermon Brainwave.

[iv] Evan D. Garner. “In the Lectionary: June 16, Trinity C (John 16:12-15)”. The Christian Century.

[v] Sundays and Seasons Resources, June 15, 2025.

[vi] Mary Louise Bringle. “God is Calling through the Whisper”. 2003.

[vii] https://laughingbird.net/

Trinity Sunday (Día de la Trinidad)

John 3:1-17

I preached this sermon in the Spanish service; the English translation is below.

Oremos...                
Que las palabras de mi boca y las meditaciones de nuestros corazones sean agradables a tus ojos, oh, Señor, fortaleza y redentor nuestro. Amén.
 
Uno de los podcasts que escucho habla sobre la Biblia y discute cuidadosamente ideas sobre lo que Dios está haciendo en las Escrituras sin usar lo que llaman "lenguaje de vitrales". Para aquellos de nosotros que pasamos mucho tiempo en la iglesia y en conversación con personas que asisten a la iglesia, olvidamos fácilmente cuántas de las palabras que usamos no tienen sentido más allá de las puertas de la iglesia. Ciertamente, hay palabras extrañas y difíciles como "perichoresis" y "escatología", pero incluso palabras más comunes como "bautismo" y "salvación" son malinterpretadas, y, en este domingo, dentro y fuera de la Iglesia, creo que todos estamos confundidos por el significado de la "Trinidad".
 
Hoy es el Domingo de la Trinidad, uno de los pocos días festivos en la Iglesia que no se centra en una persona o evento, sino en la idea teológica de que Dios es tres personas en una. A menudo, los predicadores intentan explicar la Trinidad, pero las metáforas se desmoronan.
 
Un teólogo escribió:

cuando los seres humanos tratamos de describir a Dios, somos como un montón de ostiones tratando de describir a una bailarina. Simplemente no tenemos el equipo para entender algo que está más allá de nosotros, pero eso nunca nos ha impedido intentarlo.[i]

 
No voy a tratar de explicarlo. Creo que está bien que, como gran parte de nuestra vida con Dios, esté más allá de la comprensión humana.
 
Entonces, ¿por qué celebramos el Domingo de la Trinidad?
 
Bueno, la teología importa.
 
Recuerdo que en el seminario aprendí que la definición de teología es cómo pensamos acerca de Dios. Según esa definición, cualquiera que hable de sus ideas sobre Dios es un teólogo. Cada uno de nosotros.
La teología importa porque todo el mundo tiene ideas acerca de Dios. Incluso las personas que no creen en Dios están diciendo algo acerca de Dios al declarar su incredulidad.
 
Y nuestras creencias acerca de Dios dan forma a nuestra identidad. Como Pablo escribe a los Romanos, "todos los que son guiados por el Espíritu de Dios, son hijos de Dios". (Romanos 8:14.)
 
Y nuestras creencias acerca de Dios dan forma a nuestra respuesta al mundo que nos rodea. Como cristianos, estamos llamados a responder al mundo de manera diferente a como si no estuviéramos siguiendo a Jesús.
 
El Evangelio de hoy es una historia familiar. Nicodemo es un fariseo que viene por la noche a hablar con Jesús, buscando entendimiento.
 
No sabemos por qué viene de noche, pero podemos especular. Tal vez Nicodemo estaba siendo reservado porque seguir a Jesús no era una respuesta popular entre sus compañeros. O tal vez reflejaba su propia incertidumbre acerca de quién era Jesús. Aprovechando la oscuridad, no tuvo que reconciliar sus creencias como líder religioso con su deseo de encontrarse con el que se llamaba el Mesías. No tenía que responder a las preguntas de los demás sobre a dónde iba o por qué.
 
Pero está claro que para Nicodemo, la comprensión es difícil de alcanzar. A cada paso de la conversación, cuando Jesús habla de Dios y de lo que Dios está haciendo, Nicodemo trata de decirlo en términos terrenales. Están hablando el uno al otro o por encima del otro, sin conexión ni entendimiento.
 
Estoy agradecida por Nicodemo, en primer lugar, porque nos muestra que incluso los expertos religiosos de la época luchaban por entender la actividad de Dios en el mundo, ¡y tenían a Jesús allí en la tierra con ellos! Creo que Nicodemo nos ayuda a ver cómo existe una tensión entre lo que entendemos que es el mundo y lo que Dios quiere que sea el mundo.
 
Y segundo, porque la historia no termina perfectamente con Nicodemo de repente teniendo un entendimiento milagroso. Los siguientes versículos dicen que después de que Jesús termina de hablar con Nicodemo, se va y continúa viajando con sus discípulos.
A Nicodemo le queda reflexionar sobre lo que Jesús dijo, luchar con ello y ahora reconciliar lo que creía y lo que había oído de Jesús.
 
Y creo que esa es una definición fiel del discipulado:
leer y observar, escuchar y luchar con lo que la actividad de Dios en el mundo significa para nosotros y cómo vivimos.
 
Jesús concluye su conversación con Nicodemo, diciendo las palabras que ahora conocemos tan bien:

Porque de tal manera amó Dios al mundo, que ha dado a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo el que cree en él no se pierda, sino que tenga vida eterna. En efecto, Dios no envió al Hijo al mundo para condenar al mundo, sino para que el mundo sea salvo por él.

 
Y con esas palabras, Jesús describe el poder redentor y lleno de gracia de Dios para unir a las personas en una sola comunidad. Es una comunidad amada y vivificante que nos invita a cada uno de nosotros a la plenitud del amor de Dios por nosotros y por nuestro prójimo.
 
Si bien no sabemos lo que Nicodemo decidió acerca de Jesús, nuevamente podemos especular porque regresa a la historia después de la crucifixión. Esa noche, Nicodemo trae especias y aceites para ungir el cuerpo de Jesús para su entierro. Claramente, él no dejó su encuentro nocturno con Jesús sin cambios, y nosotros tampoco podemos hacerlo.
 
Oremos,
Dios de vida abundante y misericordia,
Gracias por tu Espíritu que nos guía,
Para que Tu Hijo nos enseñe,
Y por tu amor transformándonos
por el bien del mundo.
Amén.

---

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, citando a Robert Farrar Capon, "Three Hands Clapping", en Home By Another Way, Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999, 152-153.

John 3:1-17

Let us pray…         

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

One of the podcasts I listen to talks about the Bible and carefully discusses ideas about what God is doing in Scripture without using what they call “stained glass language”. For those of us who spend a lot of time in church and in conversation with people who attend church, we easily forget how many of the words we use don’t make sense beyond the doors of the church. Certainly, there are strange, difficult words like “perichoresis” and “eschatology” but even more common words like “baptism” and “salvation” are misunderstood, and, on this Sunday, inside and outside the Church, I think we are all confounded by the meaning of the “Trinity.”

Today is Trinity Sunday, one of the few festival days in the Church that is centered not on a person or event, but on the theological idea that that God is three persons in one. Often preachers attempt to explain the Trinity but the metaphors fall apart.

One theologian wrote,

when human beings try to describe God we are like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina. We simply do not have the equipment to understand something so utterly beyond us, but that has never stopped us from trying.[i]

I am not going to try to explain it. I think it’s okay that it, like so much of our life with God, is beyond human understanding.

So why do we observe Trinity Sunday?

Well, theology matters.

I remember in seminary learning that the definition of theology is how we think about God. By that definition, anyone who talks about their ideas about God is a theologian. Every one of us.

Theology matters because everyone has ideas about God.
Even people who don’t believe in God are saying something about God by stating their unbelief.

And our beliefs about God shape our identity. As Paul writes to the Romans, “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” (Romans 8:14)

And our beliefs about God shape our response to the world around us. As Christians, we are called to respond to the world differently than if we are not following Jesus.

Today’s Gospel is a familiar story. Nicodemus is a Pharisee who comes at night to speak to Jesus, seeking understanding.

We don’t know why he comes at night, but we can speculate. Perhaps Nicodemus was being secretive because following Jesus wasn’t a popular response among his peers. Or perhaps it reflected his own uncertainty about who Jesus was. Under the cover of darkness, he didn’t have to reconcile his beliefs as a religious leader with his desire to encounter the one being called the Messiah. He didn’t have to answer questions from others about where he was going or why.

But it’s clear that for Nicodemus, understanding is elusive. At each turn in the conversation, when Jesus talks about God and what God is doing, Nicodemus tries to frame it in earthy terms. They are talking at or over each other, without connection or understanding.

I am grateful for Nicodemus, first, because he shows us that even the religious experts of the day struggled to understand God’s activity in the world, and they had Jesus there on earth with them! I think Nicodemus helps us see how tension exists between what we understand the world to be and what God intends the world to be.

And second, because the story doesn’t wrap up neatly with Nicodemus suddenly having a miraculous understanding. The next verses say that after Jesus finishes speaking with Nicodemus, he leaves and continues traveling with his disciples.

Nicodemus is left to ponder what Jesus said, to wrestle with it and now to reconcile what he believed and what he has heard from Jesus.

And I think that is a faithful definition of discipleship:

to read and observe, to listen, and to wrestle with what God’s activity in the world means for us and how we live.

Jesus concludes his conversation with Nicodemus, saying the words that are so well-known to us now:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

And with those words, Jesus describes the grace-filled and redemptive power of God to unite people together in one community. It is a life-giving, beloved community that invites each one of us into the fullness of God’s love for us and for our neighbors.

While we don’t know what Nicodemus decided about Jesus, again we can speculate because he returns to the narrative after the crucifixion. That night, Nicodemus brings spices and oils to anoint Jesus’ body for burial. Clearly, he did not leave his nighttime encounter with Jesus unchanged, and neither can we.

Let us pray,

God of abundant life and mercy,

Thank you for your Spirit leading us,

For Your Son teaching us,

And for your love transforming us

All for the sake of the world.

Amen.

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, quoting Robert Farrar Capon, “Three Hands Clapping,” in Home By Another Way, Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999), 152-153.

Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

So, I have a question for you this morning: What do a three-leaf clover, an ice cube and the sun all have in common?

They all fall short as ways of explaining the Holy Trinity – the doctrine that says that God is three distinct persons in One. All three of these analogies stumble into a heresy –a belief that’s contrary to Christian tradition – known as modalism that says God exists in different forms or modes but isn’t actually three distinct persons. If you insist on having an explanation, the best one I have come across says that “the Bible says that when it comes to God, 1 + 1+ 1 = 1.”[i] Of course, in the math we learn in school, that doesn’t work either.

And maybe that’s the best way to answer questions about the Trinity - to name that it is beyond our comprehension, rationale or logic. God doesn’t follow any of our careful plans or fit into neat boxes or formulas that add up. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (16:12) There simply are truths about God and God’s actions that we cannot understand.

What Scripture provides isn’t answers or explanations, but inspiration, that helps us know who God is and who we are as God’s people.

Before I ever went to seminary, I went on a women’s retreat with my home congregation, and I remember the Bible studies throughout the retreat looked at passages that offered language for God that was different than Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some of the participants were uncomfortable with Matthew’s image of God as a mothering hen (Matthew 23) or Isaiah’s illustration of God as a laboring mother (Isaiah 42). Imagining God - when God is beyond our understanding - is challenging.

Being attentive to the language we use for God isn’t about replacing or dismissing traditional language. Instead, the many scriptural images for God help us expand our understanding of who God is. Liturgical scholar and author Gail Ramshaw describes the images in Scripture as treasures, writing that

some of the treasure is old and some new. Treasure that is old is often of more value than that which is new, just as old images might be layered with more meaning for the self and the community than new images. [If we] think that only old treasures are valuable [we] forget that God's Spirit continues each week to offer our world signs of divine mercy.[ii]

The different words to describe God can feel strange in our mouths, but for the person who has suffered abuse by an earthly parent or bullying in school, finding God as a fortress and avenger in the Psalms or as a refuge in Jeremiah may bring comfort. For anyone who is awed by the beauty of our natural world, seeing God as a dove and an eagle in Mark and Deuteronomy or as rain and thunder in Hosea and Exodus helps us connect with our Creator God.

Today’s reading from Proverbs 8 invites us to expand our understanding of God to include Woman Wisdom. In Scripture, the feminine Sophia or wisdom can refer to the Holy Spirit and, in these verses, we hear her testify that she was there “at the beginning of God’s creating work.” (v. 22) As God’s companion, she was there “at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” (v. 23)

Some hear this text echoed in the prologue of John’s gospel where the Evangelist John says, “¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²

He was in the beginning with God.”

The Trinity is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and
the Trinity is God, Jesus and Wisdom.

In these verses, Woman Wisdom calls out “to all that live” as she retells the creation story and how she rejoiced with God and delighted in the inhabited world and in the human race. (8:30-31) The Hebrew verb there is not “rejoice” but “play” so Old Testament scholar Robert Altar translates verses 30 and 31 as

I was His delight day after day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world, His earth, and my delight with humankind.[iii]

Author David Weiss has written a version of the creation story where he pictures the Creator giggling as She imagines all the things she will make, and humming as She scoops up the “softest, nicest-smelling Earth,” and makes “Humus Beings.” The delight and joy is contagious.

And the object of this divine delight is us. We delight God.

Let me say that again. You and I delight God.

In a world that measures success by productivity, it’s easy to forget that play, delight and joy are all part of a well-ordered world, but they are.

And in our modern world filled with division, cynicism and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of one another as beings in whom God delights, but we are.

Psalm 8 continues this theme of divine joy and delight.

The psalmist asks, in verse 4, “What are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, human beings that you should care for them?”

The psalm assures us that God knows and remembers each one of us, “[making us] little less than divine” [crowned with glory and honor].” (verse 5)

And then it acknowledges how God has entrusted us with care for each other and all the works of God’s hands.

The same God who delights in us invites us
to care for the awesome creation we enjoy,
to see God’s majesty in it, and
to find joy and delight in that trust and care.

May our lives honor God’s invitation into life together, and may we find joy and delight in it.

Let us pray.

Holy God,

In the beginning, You were there, and the Word was there, and Wisdom was there.

And from the beginning you delighted in humankind and have shown us your majesty and your mercy.

Open our ears and our hearts to hear You call to us and to respond to your Word and Spirit, Your Son and Wisdom.

Amen.

[i] Tim Beilharz. “Why analogies of the Trinity fail.” Youthworks. https://youthworks.net/articles/analogies-of-the-trinity, accessed June 10, 2022.

[ii] Gail Ramshaw. Treasures Old and New. Kindle Edition. 36.

[iii] Robert Altar. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. 379-380.

Trinity Sunday

Romans 8:12-17

The current issue of the ELCA’s magazine Living Lutheran showed up in my mailbox this week, and as I skimmed its pages, I saw a familiar face. Pastor Emily Norris who once was my daughter Emma’s youth leader at Augsburg in Winston-Salem was ordained a little over a year ago, during the pandemic, on Zoom and the magazine was telling the story of the community she leads now.

The community, called The Dwelling, is a collaborative effort between the Lutheran and Moravian churches in Winston-Salem to create a community designed for people experiencing homelessness. When Emily was serving at Augsburg she was part of their ministry of providing overflow shelter in the winter, accommodating people when the other shelters filled up. And now the Dwelling provides free mobile showers as its anchor ministry but they also provide clothing and toiletries and now they are also helping renovate affordable housing units in the city for those in need. And in 2020 they rented a space where they now have regular Sunday worship. (Read more at Living Lutheran.)

It’s a great story, but it was a story I already knew. I had participated in Emily’s ordination online and have watched the ministry there grow.

What was new to me was John Whitely’s story. Johnny had been one of the men who stayed at the overflow shelter and he had met Emily there. And when he was found in the shelter’s restroom after an overdose and revived, he thought he’d burned yet another bridge and he wouldn’t be welcomed back.

As an aside, I hear this a lot from people in our community right here. Sometimes they have behaved badly and for the sake of good order and boundaries, they are banned from returning to the feeding ministries or shelters, but not always. Sometimes soured relationships with others create barriers that keep them isolated. Sometimes shame cuts them off from the very places that might provide a meal, safety and maybe even a community.

Anyway, when John saw Emily the next winter she asked if he’d be back at the overflow shelter, and he was surprised he was welcome, or even wanted there. But he was and since the Dwelling opened, he’s been involved there, even serving on their council, and John was baptized last year. As Pastor Emily says in the article, [The Dwelling] is creating a community that accepts the messiness of being human.”

The welcome that John found at the shelter and at the Dwelling was a welcome that he wasn’t entitled to have by birthright or by his own efforts. He hadn’t earned it. In fact some places would have written him off. Instead, what he received was unmerited grace born out of the ‘spirit of adoption’ that Paul writes about in our reading from his letter to the Romans.

There he says,

you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (Romans 8:15-16)

The desire for belonging is universal. God created us for relationship and forms us for community, and by faith, baptism and the power of the Holy Spirit, we are joined into God’s family, becoming God’s own children, co-heirs with Jesus Christ, God’s Son. We no longer see God as a distant deity, or an aloof clockmaker who has set the world in motion and watches from afar. Instead, I imagine that God watches us like we watch a beloved child riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time, playing a sport they love or reading a poem they’ve risked sharing with us. God delights in each of us.

In addition to belonging in God’s family, Luther said in his explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, that “calling on God, our Father” means we “come to believe God is truly our Father and we are truly God’s children, in order that we may ask God boldly and with complete confidence just as loving children ask their loving father.”

Love doesn’t always mean saying yes, but it does mean listening. God promises to hear our prayers - our rejoicing and our sorrow. We are not crying into an empty void. When we pray, out loud or silently, with words or with sighs, we are in the presence of a loving parent who knows us and wants good for us.

And not only us, but also for our siblings in Christ, in our congregation and also in the world around us.

I met a woman last week who shared a story of the one time she heard God speak to her audibly. She worked in Gaffney, and, like many of us, she drove a regular route to and from her workplace. She remembers seeing one man at one of the crossroads or intersections whenever she passed through. You know him. Well, maybe not him exactly, but he’s the person you see with the cardboard sign at the corner of Earl Road, the one who stands across from Chik-Fil-A at the corner of 74 where the traffic from Walmart comes out or the one who stands at the offramp from the interstate. Anyway, this man was always there when she passed by, and as she drove, she’d say a prayer for his safety. And then one day he wasn’t there. And she was worried for him, and feeling the burden on her heart for him, she spoke to God, asking, “God, why do I feel so anxious for this person I have never met?” and she said she heard God say, “Because he’s your brother.”

A person she’d never met, and never did meet, but a person loved by God all the same. In the same way we are called to love and extend God’s welcome to one another, seeing each other as siblings in Christ.

Let us pray…
God, our Father,
Thank you for making us your children, co-heirs in your Kingdom with your Son. Help us embrace this spirit of adoption and the belonging that comes from being in your family. Empower us by your Holy Spirit and open our eyes to see every person first as your child and our sibling. Place the burden of their welfare on our hearts and help us live our lives in ways that reflect your grace and mercy to the world. Amen.

Holy Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6:1-8

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.

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

[ii] ibid