Trinity Sunday! Confusion abounds! Puzzlement ensues! BRAINEXPLODIES!
John 3:1-17; Romans 8:12-17; Psalm 29; Isaiah 6:1-8
Today, Holy Trinity Sunday, is one of my favorite feast days in the church year. When I was growing up it was one of my least favorite Sundays, because I had a pastor or three who felt it necessary to say the Athanasian Creed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasian_Creed) instead of the Nicene Creed (aren’t you glad I don’t feel that way) but since then my attitude has changed. It’s hard to explain why, in large part because it’s so hard to explain the Trinity anyways, but there’s just something about this Sunday that always makes me happy. Maybe it’s because it’s one of the times in the year where we just accept that God is wholly (and holy, cause being punny is fun?) different from us, yet loves and cares for us anyways, almost more importantly, wants us to participate with Him in His work here on earth as well as, in the life to come, participate in His very nature.
It’s that second half — the call to participate in God’s doing and being — that I want to focus on this Trinity Sunday, instead of on God’s rather unknowable nature. To do so, we’re going to spend a good portion of time in Isaiah, but first I want to look at the second half of the second half: that God wants us to participate in His divine nature, not just in his work on earth.
In 2 Peter 1, we read “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” We read similar statements in 1 John 3:2, Hebrews 12:10, Ephesians 4:24, and a few other places. While not talked about much in Western theology, the Eastern Orthodox spend a lot of time thinking, praying, and working on this topic — where God invites us to become a part of Himself.
In the life to come, we have no idea what this will be like, aside from the brief snippets we’re given, but on this Earth, this plays out in following the example the Father gave us in His Son through the assistance of Holy Spirit. Though an Old Testament example, Isaiah 6 is a wonderful way to look at how this works.
In 740 BC, the year King Uzziah dies, Isaiah saw a vision: God was seated on his throne, high and lifted up, with the “train of his robe” filling the temple. Now, the temple itself wasn’t a huge building, but it was still fairly significant — 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 45 feet tall on the inside — and large enough that for the last bit of God’s robe to fill it means God’s robe is kind of huge. Oh, and never mind that God was accompanied by a number of six-winged seraphs all of whom were calling out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” They were calling out loud enough that the building shook.
So Isaiah reacted in the appropriate way when he cried out, “I am a horrible sinner who lives among other horrible sinners, and I’ve seen the Lord.” In particular he said he was a “man of unclean lips”, which becomes significant shortly. But Isaiah fully expected that his sinfulness would bring him death in the presence of the Almighty. This is a perfectly natural reaction; we all should expect our sinfulness to bring us death when we find ourselves in God’s presence; He’s God, after all. It’s how we all often feel when we have encounters with God, that we are sinners in need of forgiveness.
But God doesn’t stop there; we’re not left in a place of awareness of our sins. Just like in Isaiah, God makes us clean. A seraph grabbed a live coal from the altar with tongs, and touched Isaiah’s lips with it saying, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Isaiah said he was a “man of unclean lips”, so God took care of exactly what Isaiah needed to bring forgiveness. He does the same thing for us, when we come to him realizing our sinfulness, he takes away our guilt and atones for our own sins.
But it doesn’t stop there, if it did it would be easy, after all. Instead, Isaiah then hears God’s voice saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” God is looking for someone to participate in His work on earth — someone to be his witness/messenger/image/ambassador, whatever you want to call it. The same applies today; God is still asks his Church to go out in His Name.
And so Isaiah, now having been cleansed of his sinfulness, speaks up: “Here am I. Send me!” Having encountered God’s holiness, realizing his own sin, and being forgiven, Isaiah responds to God’s call in the affirmative. But this isn’t only Isaiah’s call, it is our own as well. We are all here because we have encountered God and His holiness. We’re all been convicted of our own sinfulness, and been forgiven and cleansed through Jesus Christ. And we’ve all heard God’s question, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” The only question, then, is how we will respond.