TRINITY SUNDAY (Year B) – Isaiah 6:1-8: Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17 – 7 June 2009 – A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado
Sensing God’s Holiness, and Being Sent
INRODUCTION – Wanting to hear, wanting to be sent
Do you ever wish that you could hear a clear message from God, some “marching orders”, if you will? Do you find yourself thinking, “God, I want to do what you want me to do, but I’m not hearing your voice.”? Maybe, at least some of the time, we are pushing God away. I heard David Cartwright say recently that in England, the name Christ is used almost exclusively as a swear word, so much so that he doesn’t even associate “Christ” with Jesus anymore. David said, “I have to think of Jesus as ‘the Anointed One’.” That, of course, is what Christ or Messiah means.
THE HOLINESS OF GOD
And that brings me to a related point, on this Trinity Sunday. Have we lost – or are we in danger of losing – a sense of the holiness of God? The majesty, the glory, the hugeness, the incomprehensible nature of God that is meant to inspire in us another word that maybe we don’t hear as much as we used to… awe. When the Bible says, “And so-and-so feared God”, that is a holy fear we are talking about. It is being in awe of God, trembling at how holy and huge and powerful and yes – even how scary – God can be.
“Our God is an awesome God; He reigns from heaven above…” We sing those words. But how awesome is our God to us, really?
And that brings me to the vision that Isaiah had of the holiness of God. It was at a certain time – in the year that King Uzziah died, probably around 738 B.C. – and at a certain place… in the temple in Jerusalem. In this vision, God was too gigantic to fit inside the temple. “… the hem of his robe filled the temple.” (Isaiah 6:1) As one of our folks said a few weeks ago, it’s as if the roof had been blown right off the temple, and only the bottom of God’s robe fits inside of it. In Isaiah’s vision, even the seraphs – the highest order of angels who attend to God – must cover their faces, to protect themselves from God’s glory, God’s power… God’s holiness. And when one of the seraphs called out to another one, it was like an earthquake in the temple. And what did Isaiah hear the one seraph say? “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)
It was a high-church day. There was smoke that filled the temple. And you get the sense that Isaiah turned away from it all, maybe even lay prostrate, as he said (or maybe just thought), “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and [not only that] I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
And the vision got even more up-close and personal when one of the seraphs flew to him, with a live coal that it had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs, and touched it to Isaiah’s mouth.
Visions are often not just what we see with our eyes. Notice that what Isaiah experienced was not an eyes-only experience. It was a full body one. He saw the Lord sitting on a throne and the hem of his robe, and he saw the seraphs – yes. But he also heard the voice of the one seraph that shook the temple, and he felt the temple shaking. He heard the voice of the seraph once it spoke directly to him. He smelled and even tasted the smoke and the coal, and he certainly felt it when the seraph touched the live coal to his mouth.
Isaiah was all caught up in the holiness of God. Is it any wonder that he quickly said, “Woe is me! My people and I have unclean lips. My people and I are unholy, and never have I felt that more than at this moment, when I am right in the midst of God’s holiness.”
GOD’S TRANSCENDENCE AND GOD’S IMMANENCE
In that moment Isaiah knew God to be both transcendent – beyond everything, beyond all that is – and immanent… present in and throughout the universe, even and especially present to him in that moment.
In our great desire to know and be with God, and in God’s power and great desire to be with us, I think we sometimes focus so much on God’s immanence – God with me, God in me, Jesus my friend, God as personal… all of which is very true – that we forget about the transcendent, unknowable, inscrutable God. The God who is beyond words and beyond predictability. Julie Overland says that our Muslim neighbors can relate much more to this big, transcendent God who “does stuff” and you just respond to it, however you can. It’s now like you and I can control or manipulate this God.
What I am interested in on this Trinity Sunday – on this day that is probably beyond all other days in the church year when it comes to acknowledging the mystery of God, on this day when we are reminded of Nicodemus, one of the teachers of Israel, saying to Jesus, “How can these things be?”, on the day when we hear Jesus talk to Nicodemus about the mystery of the Spirit, which is as mysterious as the wind, which “blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” – on this day, I ask you and I ask myself: Have we lost our sense of the holiness of God? And can we remember that, as in the case with Isaiah, the holiness of God isn’t something that you see with your eyes only, so that if you don’t see something, you are tempted to say, “It isn’t real. It’s isn’t happening.” No, taking in the holiness of God tends to be a full-body experience, or a least a several-senses experience.
HOW DO YOU SENSE GOD’S HOLINESS?
I don’t think we get to let ourselves off the hook and say, “Well, I’ve never seen anything like what Isaiah saw!” I’m guessing that Isaiah was paying attention, and on the lookout for God, and – as terrifying as it might have been – wanting an experience of the holiness of God. Just like Moses at the burning bush, and the Israelites who allowed God to lead them out of Egypt by something that looked like a huge pillar of cloud by day, and a huge pillar of fire by night. Just like Mary, who responded to that crazy, unbelievable visit from Gabriel, when he told her she would conceive and bear a son, who would be called Son of the Most High. Just like the twelve who responded when Jesus said to them, “Follow me.” Just like the Samaritan woman at the well, just like Nicodemus, just like Paul on the road to Damascus. They were all paying attention, in one way or another, or at least you can say that they paid attention once God got their attention! They were normal people, just like you and me, and they experienced the holiness of God.
So, how do you experience God’s holiness?
Do you hear it and feel it and see it when you are caught in a summer thunderstorm?
Do you taste and smell and feel the holiness of God when you eat of the communion bread, and drink of the wine?
Do you see it and feel it in the grandeur of a sunset, or when you come around the bend in a trail and see some bighorn sheep, or a hawk circling overhead?
Does the holiness of God take over your body when you have an unexpected conversation with someone, and you feel connected – to your friend, to yourself, and to God?
Do you experience the holiness of God throughout your body when you pray or when you sing or when you read a really good book?
The God we worship today is not only the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He’s also the God of Moses and Isaiah and Mary and Mary Magdalene and Teresa and Martin and Nelson and Desmond. He’s still holy, holy, and more holy, and the whole earth – the whole universe – is still full of his glory.
GOD’S HOLINESS AND OUR BEING SENT
One final point. You want guidance for your life? You want marching orders? You want to feel like you are being sent out by God to do something? I believe there’s a connection between our sensing the holiness of God, and our being sent.
It’s those who sense and take in and even get overwhelmed or struck down by the holiness of God who are sent.
Abraham. Joseph. Moses. David. Isaiah. Jeremiah. Amos. Jonah. Daniel. Mary. Jesus. The twelve apostles. Mary Magdalene. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Paul. Ambrose. Augustine. Teresa of Avila. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mother Teresa. Desmond Tutu.
And you.
When you get overwhelmed with how awesome, how powerful, how loving, how beyond words, how transcendent, how immanent, how mysterious, how brilliant, how beyond us in every way God is, then – often precisely then – God says, “Ah, I have her right where I want her now, and I know what I want to ask her to do, and she is in a place where she can hear it.” And in that moment, when you are suddenly most aware of God’s holiness, and you, like Abraham and Isaiah and Mary and all the others, are ready to say, “Here am I; send me!”, then – exactly then – God says something, and somehow it’s all very clear what God is saying to you, and you set off, not knowing exactly how it will turn out, but knowing that you have heard from God, and knowing that the Holy One – the Most Holy One of All – is with you.
The person of faith gets sent out by God, not so much when he or she feels holy or thinks of himself or herself as holy, but when we sense – with all that we are – the holiness of God.