It’s Trinity Sunday, and in today’s sermon, we’re looking at Isaiah’s dramatic call story in Isaiah 6:1-8 and how understanding God as Trinity helps us understand the God who is calling us.
I found helpful this week Will Willimon’s Trinity Sunday entry in his Lectionary Sermon Resource, Year B, Part 2.
Grace to you and peace in the name of the Triune God who is three-in-one and one-in-three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen
I do not have a dramatic story of being called into ministry. I’ve never run into a burning bush like Moses, or been awoken in the middle of the night like Samuel. I’ve never experienced Jesus walking by my boat and saying “Come, follow me” like he did to James and John.
And I’ve certainly never had any experience like Isaiah has in today’s reading, where he sees a glimpse of God’s glory, the Lord sitting on the throne, filling the temple.
And what an amazing vision! The building shaking, the room filled with smoke, heavenly beings attending the Lord, who’s seated on a throne, high and lofty. Isaiah gets to see God’s glory, and he’s overwhelmed.
God is holy, infinite, eternal. In this vision, God is so…other. Isaiah realizes that by comparison, we created people, we flesh and blood human beings are nothing.
The Lord is high and lofty; what are we next to a holy God? What claim could we possibly have on the Divine?
And yet, this is a call story. God has given Isaiah this vision for a purpose. It’s not something Isaiah has somehow stumbled upon, somehow wandered into the God’s throne room. It’s not clear Isaiah has asked for any of this, but the Lord has a call for him.
Seeing the heavenly beings, hearing the eternal song of praise to God, experiencing the drama of God’s throne room, Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me!”
Not a bad reaction, really. This human being has some idea of his place in comparison to God. In encountering God’s holiness, Isaiah recognizes his shortcomings, his sin.
I don’t know exactly what it means to be a man of unclean lips, but I assume it means he feels his words don’t do God justice. He doesn’t have the ability to articulate God, to speak, to proclaim God in the way God ought to be spoken. What comes out of his mouth is not always pure.
I’ve never had a vision like this, and I don’t if I understand exactly what Isaiah’s saying, but I think I can relate. Every time I preach I fear that my language is insufficient.
There is always more that could be said, there are always other people God could call who would do a better job that I could, certainly better than I do.
And I don’t say that looking for affirmation (or sympathy), but to say that Isaiah’s reaction to being called is normal. Not just for pastors, but for all of us who are called by the Holy Spirit to follow in the way of Jesus. (Let me be clear: I mean you. God has called you.)
We should react to God’s call by feeling inadequate. Encountering God’s holiness should show us how holy and perfect we are not.
I wish I had better words for you. I wish my life reflected Jesus better, that I was more bold and at the same time more humble, that I was more confident in my calling, more articulate, more prayerful. To use Isaiah’s language, I wish my lips were cleaner.
As I said, I’m not a pastor because of a dramatic moment in my life. My call story is pretty boring. I grew up in a family who were very active in the church. I never got a perfect attendance award for Sunday School, although I remain convinced that at least one year, I deserved one – I think it was 5th grade.
I went to all the church events and mission trips, and I loved most of them. I was active in high school youth group, then I went to a Lutheran College where along with computer science, I majored in religion. I stayed involved in church because Jesus is where I find purpose and meaning for life.
I worked at church camp for a couple summers, then my last summer in college, I worked at a computer programming internship where I realized I didn’t want to sit in a cubicle working on programs for tracking customer complaints about their insurance policies. So, I went to seminary and on to professional ministry.
Is that a call story? I think so, but sometimes I wonder.
I love being a pastor and I have no intention of changing vocations, but it’d sure be a lot easier if there’d been a burning bush or some flaming angels on the way. I continue to believe this is where God is calling me, but I can understand Isaiah’s objections, asking really, God? Are you sure you want me?
Obviously, your story’s different than mine. Most of you are living out your vocations in different ways than professional public ministry, and that’s good. Maybe you feel like you’re following God’s call, or maybe you’re looking for a more clear call.
Either way, I imagine you have times where Isaiah’s objections make sense, where it’s hard to wrap your head around the idea that God has a calling for you.
So look what God does: God gets involved. God answers Isaiah’s objections.
A seraph touches Isaiah’s lips with a hot coal, and declares his guilt has departed and his sin is blotted out. God takes Isaiah with all his unworthiness and inadequacy and unclean lips, and cleanses him. Isaiah cannot make himself worthy of his calling, so God does it for him. When God calls him, God also equips him.
This is the God we see in all our readings today, a God who gets involved in our world and in our lives. This weekend is the Feast of the Holy Trinity, and we describe God as triune, as three in one, because any other way of describing God is insufficient.
God is the Creator, who set the world in motion, and God has not stopped creating. Your heavenly Father is seated on the throne, yet active here in the world, claiming you as a beloved child.
God is the Son, Jesus, who has entered into the world, living as a human, dying a human death and rising again, given all authority in heaven and on earth, fully human and yet fully God in a way we can experience but not explain, trust but not comprehend, God with us.
And at the same time, for all eternity, God is Spirit, blowing through the world, invisible, yet effective. As Jesus tells Nicodemus, God’s Spirit blows where it will.
The Spirit calls whom the Spirit will call, including people like you and me and Isaiah, as inadequate and unqualified and uncertain as we might be. The Holy Spirit is God filling us, sustaining us for eternity in God’s presence, calling, guiding, stirring us to join in God’s life, to be born again in, to enter into relationship with God who is three-in-one and one-in-three.
So what? The Bible doesn’t say the word “Trinity.” Plenty of people, perhaps the majority in our world today, believe in God without worrying about this illogical mathematical equation. And maybe it doesn’t matter.
But with Christians for two thousand years, we claim that focusing on any one aspect of God is insufficient.
A mystery of faith though it may be, this language of Trinity where 1+1+1=1 is a way for us to begin twisting our brains around the way the Bible describes God and the way we experience God.
We believe in one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God who is Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Three persons, all active in the world, all involved in our lives, all calling and equipping and sending you and me.
It’s one thing to believe there is a God somewhere out there, perhaps setting the world in motion, perhaps even laying out some kind of plan for us.
It’s another thing to believe in a God who is willing to personally enter into the creation, willing to be born a human, willing to die, to submit to the power of death, yet with the power to defeat death and rise again.
A God who chooses to work through human beings, to share our existence. A God who does this all out of love.
And it’s yet another thing to believe that despite it being almost two thousand years since Jesus was walking the earth, God is still active in the world, still intervening, still at work even in ordinary moments; to believe in God the Holy Spirit, God sustaining us, leading us to live into the calling God created us for, the calling Jesus lived out for us.
The message of Holy Trinity Sunday, the purpose of describing God as Trinity at all is not to solve a mathematical equation, or design a litmus test of doctrine, but to try to give words to a God who is indescribable, yet has come to dwell with us.
The exact nature of the Trinity is a mystery, yet it’s the most faithful language we have for comprehending a God who is holy, whose glory is beyond us, yet who loves us and meets us in our inadequacy, who makes us worthy.
Beloved of God, the One who created you, redeemed you, and sustains you continues to call you, to gather you together as the body of Christ and to send you out into the world.
This is the God Isaiah encountered, a God beyond comprehension, yet active in our world. May we answer with Isaiah, “Here am I; send me.”
Amen