The Whole Earth is Full of God’s Glory
Rev. Emily Wilmarth
First Presbyterian Church of Highlands, NC, May 31, 2015
Isaiah 6:1-8
Today is Trinity Sunday. I’m guessing no one made special plans for brunch to celebrate. I’m confident no one in this congregation sent “Happy Trinity Sunday” cards to a loved in preparation for today. Yet, the church celebrates Trinity Sunday annually the Sunday after Pentecost. Trinity Sunday is unique in that we don’t commemorate a person or event, like a birth, or death. I don’t even know that “commemorate” or “celebrate” are the right words to describe what Trinity Sunday is for. It’s a day we focus on, pay attention to, lift up the doctrine that the church employs to help us to know, to worship and to serve God.
When I was teaching confirmation, I would ask the students to fill out a survey of the class. I wanted to know what they liked and didn’t like about the class. I sought their words of advice to future confirmands. I needed to hear how they grew and what areas challenged them. Hands down, after the Holy Spirit, the students identified the Trinity as the topic they struggled with the most.
The doctrine of the Trinity is a hard one to grasp. God is one? Then how is God three? Three in one? It’s confusing. In scripture we learn about God the Father and Creator, Jesus Christ the Son and Redeemer, and the Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit, the Sustainer. The Holy Trinity, comprised of these three ways of knowing God, often called the three “persons,” is a concept used to express the Christian church’s belief that the eternal God in whom we believe is “one God in three persons.” This doctrine helps us grapple with the fact that through scripture and experience we come to know God through the “persons” of the Trinity, yet we can never fully know God. I described it to the confirmation class: the doctrine of the Trinity does not try to explain the mystery of the triune God; it is a mystery that cannot be explained. But the doctrine helps us uphold the mystery, to honor the mystery, to spend our lives seeking to grow in knowledge of God. Ultimately, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us about who God is and what God is doing in our lives and in the world around us.
At first glance, I was not sure why the Isaiah story, often described as Isaiah’s call story, was assigned to the lectionary for Trinity Sunday. But as I studied, I realized how the story gives us a glimpse of the triune God. It illustrates a picture of who God is and what God is doing in our lives. The story also teaches us how to worship the triune God.
First, Isaiah paints a picture of the glory of God. He starts with the vision he sees of God sitting on a throne in the temple. In my mind’s eye, I picture the grand cathedrals of Europe – big open sanctuaries with soaring ceilings, huge buttresses, and wide columns. Just the hem of God’s robe fills the space. What a brilliant way to describe the vastness of God. God is huge. Towering. Immense. This description of grandeur illustrates the power of God. A deity so great, so incomprehensible, must be the most powerful in the entire universe.
In fact, God is so powerful, so vast, so mighty, that Isaiah can only see the hem of God’s robe. Isaiah cannot come face-to-face with God, but just standing in the presence of the bottom of God’s robe places Isaiah in the glowing radiance of God’s glory. All it takes for Isaiah to consider his insignificance is this sliver of God’s presence. How many times have we considered our own insignificance as we stared into a vast night sky, brilliant with constellations; or sat on a beach watching waves crash, one after another, over and over; or walked the avenue with what felt like hundreds of people swept up in the current of a big city rush hour. To think that our almighty, all-powerful God rules over everything we know or can imagine, or can’t even imagine, humbles me every time.
The angels describe God’s glory, and they don’t just talk about it. They sing about it. They sing in voices that shake the foundations. God is more than holy; God is holy, holy, holy. In all of this description, Isaiah helps us better understand the powerful, glorious nature of God.
The next thing we learn about God from Isaiah is that in God’s presence, we will never measure up. We will never be as holy, as powerful, as mighty as God. As the temple shakes and holy smoke fills his eyes, Isaiah exclaims, “Woe is me!” One commentator suggested another translation: “Oh, expletive!” We’ve all had that feeling. It’s the feeling of being caught misbehaving by the boss. Only, God is the boss of life, and everything we've ever done to break God’s commandments is on display out in the open for God to see. “Oh, bleep!”
Ancient Jewish purity laws stated that before entering the temple, one had to cleanse oneself. In order to approach God in God’s house, one needed to wash up, to present one’s best, most holy self. Isaiah recognizes that not only is he unclean, impure, but he belongs to a community that falls far short of who God commands them to be. Isaiah does not confess on behalf of the community; rather, he acknowledges the truth that every one of us sins. All of us are broken. Through his humility and humanity, Isaiah teaches us about our relationship to God.
And before Isaiah can say much else, the angels bring coal to his lips to purify him. This is the next thing Isaiah’s story teaches us about the triune God. God forgives. By mere admission of his impurity, God cleanses Isaiah, restores him, makes him new. Maybe this sounds familiar to you. In Isaiah we have a model for our worship. We begin our service with music and praise from our prelude through our call to worship to our opening hymn. We acknowledge the mighty power and glory of God. And then we move straight into the prayer of confession. We acknowledge our individual and communal sin. We realize that we, gathered in the presence and glory of God, fall short. We name it, and we do our very best to own it as we pray together and silently. And then we hear the words of assurance, the promise that God initiates forgiveness. In this holy place, as in the temple in Jerusalem, God reaches out to cleanse us all.
It’s an amazing story that we are a part of. This incomprehensibly vast, most powerful ruling God sees us. And God sees us not as though we were some piece of lint stuck to the bottom of God’s robe. God sees us, hears our humility, and reaches out to pick us up, to wash us clean, to count even us as viable participants in God’s holy reign.
Finally, by his reaction to God’s call, Isaiah teaches us what it means to respond to God’s glory and God’s grace, how to live in relationship with our triune God. Having forgiven Isaiah of sin, God asks, “Whom shall I send?” I imagine Isaiah like an eager school kid, shooting his hand in the air.
“ME!! Send me!” Isaiah doesn’t even know what the mission will entail. He just trusts, believes, desires to be the one whom God sends to work in the world.
Using Isaiah as a model for worship, we conclude our Sunday mornings with opportunities to serve. We pray for the world, opening ourselves to the many needs still present in God’s creation. We give of ourselves through our offering. We stand for the charge and benediction as a sign of our own willingness to be sent out into the world to bring Christ’s peace to everyone we encounter.
In worship, we embody the story of Isaiah’s call. The elements of praise, confession, forgiveness and grace, and sending out in mission become an integral part of our identity as those who worship the Triune God.
As deeply as I appreciate Isaiah’s call story for what it teaches us about who God is and what God is doing in the world, and as helpful as the story is in outlining what we do as we gather as the church to worship, I realize the challenge of the story. I realize that most of us will never experience a call like Isaiah’s. Most of us won’t see a profound vision. And many won’t hear God’s voice as loud and as clear as Isaiah.
In my experience, most Christians wrestle with their sense of call to serve God, not that we aren’t willing to serve. But we often aren’t always sure what exactly God calls us to do, and when, and how. Sometimes, God calls us again and again, because, unlike Isaiah, we don’t always hear the first time. Or we hear the call, but fear we might fail. Or we doubt if we have the skill or the time or the energy to follow the call. Sometimes, we need an extra nudge to say to God, “Here I am.”
I recall the story of a husband and wife I met on a mission trip one year. Their community had been ravaged by tornadoes in northern Alabama. One of the most devastating realities for the community was the truth that happens anywhere a tornado hits. Anything in the tornado’s path gets utterly destroyed. But, often anything just outside that path stays intact. Neighbors in the same subdivision can experience drastically different outcomes. Some lose everything, and some lose nothing. What I found was that those who sustained little damage experienced deep grief and guilt for something completely beyond their control.
The couple that I met said that the day after the tornadoes hit, they all met at their church. The wife and her husband came with as many tools as they could fit in the trunk of their car. They hoped to find ways to be useful, since the only thing they suffered was the loss of electricity. They longed to help their devastated neighbors. The trouble was, neither husband nor wife was very handy. Neither had the tools, nor the talent, nor the stamina for the grueling work necessary to clean up and restore the community. After that first day, they returned home, not exhausted by a day’s labor, but angry, confused, and feeling helpless. They faithfully trusted that God would use them. But, they felt they had failed God and their neighbors by their lack of skill. They questioned their call.
That night, the husband thought long and hard about what to do. His desire to serve was not squashed. The wife went to bed, leaving her husband to stew on his own. When she awoke the next morning, she found the car packed with every pot and pan and cooking utensil he could find in their kitchen. She told me her husband said to her, “You’re the best cook in town. We will feed people. Let’s get to the church.”
A year later, they were still feeding their neighbors, day in and day out. She told me that the first day they didn’t know how they would prepare enough food, or even how they would cook without electricity. She said that they didn’t know how long into the future they’d be serving their neighbors. She didn’t seem to be bothered by the questions. She was simply serving food, trusting that the answers would come when needed, as they had to her husband.
I read this quote this week: “The Trinity is the story of God’s passionate determination to be present with the world. It’s the reminder that God’s primary disposition towards the world is of love, not judgment. It is about the fact that the saving God is the God of resurrection and recreation, giving new birth and life to human beings.”[1]
God calls each of us. It is up to us to look for the glorious presence of the divine in our midst. It is up to us to trust, to believe that God, in Jesus Christ, loves us and forgives us, not in spite of who we are, but because of who God created us to be. It is up to us to listen for the voice of God who, by the power of the Holy Spirit, asks us to serve. It is up to us to use the gifts our triune God equips us with to share God’s love with the world.
In the name of God our Creator, Christ our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit our Sustainer, may it be so.
[1] Lawrence Moore, http://disclosingnewworlds.net/trinity-year-b/