Trinity Sunday

Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8

Within Christianity there are conflicting images of God. I’m not talking about pictures or icons, but the ways we imagine God to be: our understanding of God’s nature.

In the United Church we tend to emphasize God’s love, God’s justice, God’s desire to transform the world into a better place and us into better people.

But there is a large part of Christianity that emphasizes God as a judge, often a harsh judge; with numerous rules and a tendency to send people to Hell. As much as we tend to blame the Evangelical movement for so many things, this judgmental God can be found in most denominations and has deep roots in the histories and traditions of both Eastern and Western branches of Christianity.

What’s that all about? Where does that come from?

I believe that today’s lesson helps us understand. Look at Isaiah’s situation: he has a vision in which he finds himself in the very presence of God. There are Seraphim with multiple wings and voices that shake the foundations. And they’re just God’s servants!

Isaiah is freaked out! God’s holiness is loudly declared three times over by this scary 6-winged angel, and all Isaiah can think about is the way he and his people fall short of God’s perfection. It’s like he’s saying “I don’t belong here: I can’t survive here!” He’s so desperate that he’s willing to kiss a live coal to avoid being consumed by God’s holiness.

It has been a long time since we have tended to talk about The Fear of God, but here we see it in a very raw, literal form.

It shouldn’t be hard to understand: if you are faced with overwhelming power, fear is a natural reaction. It’s even healthy: if you are facing a tornado, you should be scared, and look for cover!

We see it over and over in scripture: anytime an angel shows up the first thing they have to say is “fear not”. Jesus uses these words himself, and these are mere representatives of God! Poor Isaiah: his vision took him into the very presence of the Creator.

The whole idea of Heaven in the Hebrew Scriptures is of a place for God to dwell: humans don’t belong, and wouldn’t survive. The Hebrew Scriptures only record two humans going there: Enoch and Elijah. It’s like we’re just not designed to experience God without serious filters. Direct experience of the Divine is overwhelming.

This understanding is what leads to the idea that we need to worship and praise God. God is seen as so powerful as to be unapproachable; the idea of a family relationship with God is revolutionary every time it appears in the Bible.

Jesus emphasized this loving, family kind of relationship, which is why Jesus and his message are so important to our faith. We have needed the loving image of God we find in Jesus to get past our sense of fear.

That has been vital for us. God doesn’t want us to be afraid. As Paul puts it, perfect love casts out fear.

But you know, a sense of awe is still appropriate. Loving God, and believing that God loves us, shouldn’t take away from the sense of wonder that we experience as we contemplate the Infinite.

One of my favourite modern takes on this is found in Bruce Cockburn’s song: “Lord of the Starfields” which, he says, is the closest he has come to writing a hymn:

Lord of the starfields / Ancient of Days
Universe Maker / Here’s a song in your praise

Wings of the storm cloud / Beginning and end
You make my heart leap / Like a banner in the wind

O love that fires the sun / Keep me burning.

Lord of the starfields / Sower of life,
Heaven and earth are / Full of your light

Voice of the nova / Smile of the dew
All of our yearning / Only comes home to you

O love that fires the sun / Keep me burning

Cockburn has done a clever job of balancing ancient phrases with modern understandings of the universe. He has worked hard to insert that sense of wonder at God’s obvious power:

“voice of the nova, lord of the starfields, wings of the stormcloud”

with the message that God is loving, even gentle:

“sower of life, smile of the dew”

The contrast is remarkable but it captures well the situation we find ourselves in: we are called to believe in a creator God who is responsible for, and therefore greater than every wonder of the universe, great and small, and we are called to believe that this amazing creator loves us; wants what is best for us; calls us to move forward in life; to participate in making the world a loving place.

If the only thing we see is the power then it’s not surprising that we would be filled with fear and expect judgment and want to be on the right side of such a stern God. It’s not surprising that we might become quick to condemn anyone we think God might not like. It’s not surprising, but it is sad.

We are called to a more complex understanding, and we are called by Jesus himself, who set the tone for the relationship with God that we celebrate.

And as we see in our reading the story is not supposed to end with the awe, or the fear, or the wonder. The story ends with the person who encountered God being inspired to take up God’s ways, and carry God’s message.

That’s the message: when we encounter God and are overwhelmed by the vision of God’s power and wonder, we have have a choice:

we can fall to our knees and stay there, fearing God and wondering how to pacify such a powerful being;

or we can believe in God’s love, get up from our knees, and start to live our lives in a way that demonstrates how God’s love matters.

We can do what Isaiah did: we can get past our fear, and guilt, and that feeling of being overwhelmed by holiness. We can be inspired, and respond to God’s call by wanting to share what we’ve found with others.

What we’ve found is clearest in the teachings of Jesus: he shows us a God of love, who wants to reconcile everyone, overcoming all boundaries and transforming every unjust relationship: creating a world where the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

Jesus showed us that this all-powerful God, creator of the universe, was prepared to use weakness, even the weakness of dying on the cross, to shake the greatest empire of the world to its very roots.

It’s a marvellous irony, that this Being who can create all the wonders of the universe and inspire such awe and devotion, can transform the world through weakness and ordinary people. And it’s a wonderful gift, to be able to follow Isaiah and move beyond our own weakness to the place where we can share God.