Blessed Trinity

(Scriptures: Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:1-17 John 3:1-17)

The Celts use the term “thin places” to refer to places where God’s presence seems especially near. The idea behind the phrase is that there’s a sort of invisible veil or curtain that separates the world we experience every day, the world we experience with our five senses, from eternity – and things are taking place in both worlds at the same time. That is to say, in this way of understanding, eternity is not just someplace we go when we die, but rather eternity is going on around us all the time, for the most part unseen and undetected. Except every now and then, in places experienced as “thin places”, it’s as if the veil or curtain between time and eternity is thinner than normal, and eternity almost seems to break through into time. The Bible records a number of such places – for example, in Genesis, after Jacob left his father to escape the wrath of Esau, at a certain place he later named Beth-El, he had the vision of a ladder from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending the ladder. Jacob said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!”




In today’s Old Testament reading, Isaiah experiences the Temple as such a “thin place”. From the imagery, it seems that while Isaiah was in worship at the Temple and the Temple liturgy was going on, he was caught up into a vision of a heavenly liturgy going on at the same time, in which the Lord was sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, being attended and worshipped by angels. We’re told that in this vision, the hem of his robe filled the Temple – perhaps for Isaiah in his vision, the veil in the Temple separating the people from the holy of holies comes to represent the hem of God’s robe.



Having experienced this almost indescribable scene, Isaiah becomes immediately aware of his own sinfulness and unworthiness. “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 of seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Last week at the Bible study we read this in the Good News translation, and the wording stuck with me: “I am doomed because every word that passes my lips is sinful, and I live among a people whose every word is sinful.” No attempt to excuse himself or minimize his sin – just acknowledgement and confession. And then an angel touches a live coal to his lips and pronounces him cleansed from sin. He hears the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go?” And Isaiah responds, “Here I am, send me.” If we think about it, this scene forms the pattern for our worship here at church – we assemble, sing a hymn of praise to God, and (except on communion Sundays) we pray a prayer of confession of sin, and hear the words of the assurance of pardon. Having been freed from our sin, we are freed to respond, as Isaiah did, “Here I am, send me” – by singing hymns of thanksgiving, by the giving of our tithes and offerings which can go places we can’t personally, and at the end of worship by being sent out into the world to serve the Lord.



Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans is, ultimately, the outcome of another such unexpected encounter with the divine. We know that while on the road to Damascus to hunt down and arrest Christians, he was given a vision of the risen Christ – and that vision caused Paul to turn from persecuting the church on the basis of the law as he understood it, to living in the Spirit and thus becoming the church’s greatest missionary. The cleansing from sin Isaiah experienced in his vision by way of the burning coal touched to his lips by the angel, in Paul’s telling, was given to him and is available to all through Christ. Thus, having written eloquently in Romans 7 about the inner struggle of one who delights in the law of the Lord, but finds himself captive to the sin of the flesh, Paul is then able to write, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus….For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit…..for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. When we cry “Abba! Father! – even “Daddy!” – it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our Spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.



Our Gospel reading provides yet another account of an encounter with the divine, as Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. It is a less dramatic encounter than the others, but transformative just the same. Nicodemus initiates the encounter – he comes to Jesus, not the other way around – and at the outset seems to be firmly in control of the conversation: “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” But then, as Jesus responds with a seeming non-sequitur – “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above” – in the ensuing conversation about being born of the Spirit – “the wind blows where it will, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with those who are born of the Spirit” - Nicodemus is thoroughly spun around, baffled, disoriented. And yet, out of his disorientation and confusion, faith slowly emerges, so that by the end of John’s Gospel Nicodemus is able to come forward publicly with Joseph of Arimithea to claim the body of Christ.



Today is Trinity Sunday, when we lift up the doctrine of the Trinity, one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The word “Trinity” is nowhere found in Scripture – the naming of the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, appears in just one place in Scripture, in Jesus’ Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” The doctrine of the Trinity was not dropped down from heaven on a tablet of stone, but hammered out in the early church over centuries and finally adopted as orthodoxy at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This doctrine is a human attempt to make sense of encounters with the divine such as those experienced by Isaiah, Paul, and Nicodemus, human attempts to describe the indescribable. Some speak of the Trinity in terms of function – God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are described respectively as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer – the Father creates; the Son redeems, and the Spirit sustains. Others emphasize that the Trinity does not simply mean one God with three functions, but one God in three persons – that within the one God, within the Godhead, are three persons in an eternal dance of intimate love and mutual self-giving. We see some of this dance of self-giving in Jesus’ words from John’s Gospel - “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me….I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.” So in effect it is Jesus who invites each of us to “come join the dance”.



I began by describing thin places, encounters with the divine, and ended with a description of the three persons of the Trinity in a mutual dance of self-giving - dynamic images, images of motion and mystery. Often when humans, especially church folk, try to describe the indescribable, they turn that which is living and in motion into something static, a fixed orthodoxy from which no one is to deviate – and then use that fixed orthodoxy as a club or brickbat with which to beat over the head those who disagree. And those creedal clubs and brickbats have drawn much blood over many centuries. (As St. Paul writes, the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.) And so, on this Trinity Sunday, I would invite us to focus, not so much on static creedal statements, however venerable, but on those moving, mysterious, unpredictable encounters as described in Scripture between humans and the divine. As is sometimes expressed in the United Church of Christ, we see the ancient creeds as testimonies of faith, not tests of faith – as descriptions of how our ancestors in the faith experienced the divine, not as prescriptions limiting how we today are to experience the divine. For we worship a God always in motion, a God who is still speaking, still acting, still creating and recreating. Remember that God’s name, which is usually translated “I am what I am” can also be translated “I will be what I will be.”



We had quite a discussion last week at the Bible study around the question, “Why do most of us not have visions today such as Isaiah had?” One thought was that it’s not given to everyone to experience visions. Some told of visions they’ve had. We also discussed that visions come in many forms – sometimes dreams, sometimes an inner voice or an intuition that we should follow this path rather than that path. One factor may be whether we are receptive to visions, to encounters with the Divine. We here in America live in a society where we believe that what we can see and hear and touch and taste and smell – what we can experience with our five senses, what we can explain by means of science and logic - is all there is. Other cultures are more open to the possibility that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.” If we think we have everything all figured out – and if in our religious dogmatism we even think we have God all figured out - we may be blind and deaf to the leading of the Spirit. So I would encourage us, on this Trinity Sunday, to step off our society’s perpetual motion machine and spend time in prayer and meditation, to at least give God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a chance to get a word in edgewise. Who knows what may happen! We may be granted to see visions and dream dreams; or it may be given to us to experience God’s leading as a still small voice which we must strain to hear.



As we prepare for communion, there’s a vision I’d invite us to consider – that our communion table is part of the Lord’s table, a table of fellowship that is not just here in this sanctuary, but a table that extends around the world, a table that extends, not just through space, but through time. At this table we in our small gathering are brought together with believers of many languages in many lands, that we gather here as your mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers did for many generations since 1861, remembering the words of Jesus, “This do in remembrance of me.” Having confessed our sins and received assurance of pardon, having joined with believers around the world at the table, may we hear God’s call, “Who will go for us”, and may we at Emanuel Church respond, “Here we are! Send us!” Amen.