Year B Trinity Sunday Isaiah 6:1-8 John 3:1-17

Today is Trinity Sunday, a Sunday for which I’ve heard many a clergy person moan that they simply hate writing a sermon. It isn’t that the Bible lessons are any less beautiful, or that the message of mystery and Divine Love is different, it’s just that, well, God in three Persons? How do you preach about that?

One of the challenges on Trinity Sunday is that there are no Biblical passages that discuss the peculiar Christian understanding of God as three Persons. The word in the Athanation creed is personas, like the mask Greek actors wear to play different characters. Change the mask, and you have a different persona, but it is always the same person behind the three personas! Other monotheists are completely baffled by bold assertions in creeds and in doctrinal theses of just how the One God of the Abrahamic religions can appear to be three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and still be only one God.

And here we are, on the Sunday in the Church calendar that especially celebrates this enduring mystery. Holy Trinity Sunday!

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."

This is a scary story. Did you miss that fact, or did you grasp that the prophet was terrified? The angels themselves are hiding their faces, and it sounds like Isaiah has only glimpsed the hem of God’s robe, perhaps because the prophet wisely averted his eyes, remembering the caution that no one can look upon the Face of God and live.

The Seraphs fly to and fro covering their faces in the awesome presence of the Almighty, and covering their ”feet” – a common euphemism used in the Bible – as a sign of their commitment to purity. The third pair of wings they use to fly about, to fulfill commissions from God, and as these griffin-like creatures fly, they call out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy.”

Today in the Church we use this repetition to describe the Holy Trinity, but the seraphs Isaiah sees are using it for emphasis, to identify God as all-holy, sinless, and apart from earthly things.

And then, the doors of the temple shake, and the place is filled with smoke. It is a sign that God is present – and it is terrifying. If we were in the prophet’s place, this is where we’d turn around and run for our lives, because that is what we would think of first. How to get out of there, out of that situation, and save ourselves, that’s what we would consider to be priority #1. But this isn’t Isaiah’s response.

And I said: "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 have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

We forget we are sinners. We forget God is Love. We forget that God is a just and loving God, who cleanses us, and forgives our sins. We need but confess and ask Him. The seraph touched my mouth … and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out. This is God the Father! This is the One who loves and forgives, and who commissions.

I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Isaiah, cleansed of sin and standing in God’s Presence, says what we are called to say, if we have the faith, the trust to do so., "Here am I; send me!"

Perhaps it is a blessing that in our modern world God doesn’t send us visions of terrifying holiness. But this lack of visions is also a warning, a warning that we have forgotten how powerful and almighty is the God we serve. There are not many today who would grasp what was happening, even in the slightest degree, who would humble themselves, ask God for forgiveness, and wait for His instructions.

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that 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.”

In our Gospel reading today we encounter another frightened person, not filled with the terror Isaiah felt in the presence of Almighty God the Father in full blown majesty and power, but the fear of a man who doesn’t want any trouble from his peers or his society as a whole. A person something like us. He is a man with rank and position which he does not wish to forfeit through the possible foolishness of approaching a Rabbi as controversial as this Jesus fellow. He’s being very cautious, waiting to approach Jesus after nightfall when he, Nicodemus, is less likely to be seen.

He has obviously been studying Jesus, His activities and teachings. What Nicodemus’ studies have led him to conclude is, in consideration of his stature and membership amongst the Pharisees, quite shocking. He faces Jesus and tells Him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God.” It is a statement of faith.

And what follows is a conversation in which Jesus’ words leave Nicodemus confused. Nicodemus knows Scripture and the Law, is intelligent and well educated, but when Jesus tells him that he must be born from above, Nicodemus is puzzled. How can he be born twice? We do this sort of thing all the time. Jesus makes of us a spiritual request, and we try to change it into worldly thinking. St. Ignatius shares with us this spiritual incentive, “Go! Set the world on fire,” and we wonder if that kind of arson isn’t going to get us in a lot of trouble.

In Jesus, God has seen fit to appear in human form. The terrifying Father, has made it easier for us to approach Him and feel comfortable doing so. Mother Teresa often said she had no imagination, so she prayed only to Jesus. She could not imagine God the Father, but another human being she could speak to and feel recognized and loved.

So we learn of God the Father and God the Son – and we know the Holy Spirit is that which binds us all together. But the question still remains. What is our Triune God? Who is the God in three personas? We can never fully explain the mystery that is our God, but we can learn something of God’s nature.

St. Juliana of Norwich gave us this insight.

“And our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts which I could raise, saying most comfortingly: I may make all things well, and I can make all things well, and I shall make all things well, and I will make all things well; and you will see yourself that every kind of thing will be well.

When He says, ‘I may’, I understand this to apply to the Father; and when He says ‘I can’, I understand it for the Son; and when He says, ‘I will’, I understand it for the Holy spirit; and when He says, ‘I shall”, I understand it for the unity of the blessed Trinity, three Persons and one Truth; and when He says, ‘You will see yourself’, I understand it for the union of all men [sic] who will be saved in the blessed Trinity. And in these five words God wishes us to be enclosed in rest and peace.

She refers to “these five words” which are: I may, I can, I will, I shall, you will. With these five words, we learn that God’s wish for us is to be “enclosed” in rest and peace! God wants to surround us with Divine Love, and each persona of the Holy Trinity is forever and constantly involved in this enclosing or surrounding us with Love.

We cannot explain the mystery that is our Triune God. But we can live within it, joined together by the Holy Spirit we received in Baptism, loved by the Father, supported, loved, and saved by the Son.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.

.Let us pray:

Almighty God and Father, You sent your Word to bring us truth and your Spirit to make us holy. Through them we come to know the mystery of your life. Help us to worship you, one God in three persons, You reveal yourself in the depths of our being, by proclaiming and living our faith in you. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen