Trinity Sunday
Isaiah 6:1-8; Rom. 8: 12-17; John 3:1-17
June 7, 2009

Holy Trinity

What comes to your mind when I say the word "Trinity?" There are several colleges and universities by that name. My mother went to the Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. According to the internet, there’s a nightclub named Trinity in Seattle, Washington. (No cover charge and three rooms of music for dancing. The fat, wrinkled, and uncool need not apply).

If the first thing that springs to your mind when I say "Trinity" is not the Christian doctrine of God in Three Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I don’t blame you. A university called Trinity has a campus and buildings to picture in your mind’s eye. A nightclub called Trinity is easy to conjure. Think blaring music and expensive dental work.

But what image comes to mind when I say "Holy Trinity?" What are we supposed to see when we sing "God in three persons, blessed Trinity?"

Today is Trinity Sunday, the only Sunday in the liturgical calendar named for a doctrine – a doctrine that is central to the Christian faith. We Christians believe that there is only one God whose very essence involves relationship. God who is holy and beyond our reach nevertheless seeks and finds, invites and welcomes. God who is spirit nevertheless takes on flesh to share our life. God who is the eternal "other" is also God with us, groaning alongside us with sighs too deep for words.

That’s very heavy stuff, and if it weren’t for scripture, we wouldn’t know how to begin to picture the Triune God. Today’s lectionary readings can be huge help to us.

We begin with a dream – a vision – seen by the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah finds himself in the throne room of God. He does not see God per se, but he sees the hem of God’s robe and that alone is enough to fill the whole temple. Seraphs – six winged angels – fly back and forth toward the top of the throne, their voices like thunder. And what do they sing? It’s the same song we sing when we are summoned to this Table:

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory."

I’ve never been to Sequoia National Forest. I’ve never stood at the foot of one of those massive three-thousand-year-old trees and looked up. If I did, I think the experience might come close to the feeling Isaiah must have had in the presence of the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah feels very, very small – and so he should. He also feels ashamed. "Woe is me," he cries. "I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips." Isaiah knows he is a sinner, and he knows sinners don’t last long in the presence of the Holy One.

Most people these days don’t like to speak of sinfulness and judgment, but if you’re going to talk Trinity you have to talk judgment. Tom Long, who teaches preaching a Emory University, tells about a conversation with a student. The student had sought him out to complain about an assignment she had been given by her supervising field education pastor. Over a cup of coffee she said,

"He’s making me preach next Sunday."

"Good," said the preaching professor.

"No, it’s not good. He’s making me preach the lectionary."

"Good."

"It’s not good. Have you seen the lectionary passages for next Sunday? They’re about judgment. I don’t believe in judgment. I believe in love. I believe in mercy. I believe in kindness. It took me three years of therapy to get over judgment. I am not going to preach judgment."

The student and professor talked for a while, but then she changed the subject. Tom writes,

. . . She wanted to tell me about her family. She and her husband were having a problem. It was their youngest son, the last to be at home. He was in trouble. He was giving them trouble.

She said, "We don't even know his whereabouts most of the time. For example, last night my husband and I were having supper. We didn't know where my son was. We think he's involved with drugs; we just don't know where he is or what we're up against. All of a sudden, in the middle of supper, the door swings open and there he is. I said, 'Would you like some supper?' He looked like he was going to spit, stalked down the hall to his room, and slammed the door. My husband got up and turned on ESPN. That is what he does always in this situation. It is the way he always responds. But something got into me," she said.

"I got up from the table and walked trembling down the hall. I am afraid of my own son, physically afraid of my own son. When I got to his room, I pushed open the door, and I said to him, 'Now you listen to me. I love you so much I am not going to put up with this anymore.'"

Tom said to her, "I think you just preached a wonderful sermon on judgment." That is what judgment is. It is not God punishing us; it is God setting things right. It’s God saying to us, "I love you so much I’m not going to put up with this anymore."

The great theologian Karl Barth once said, "Do not fear the wrath of God; fear the love of God, for the love of God will strip away everything that stands between you and God."   [1]

And so a seraph brings a live coal and with it touches Isaiah’s mouth. "Your guilt has departed and your sin in blotted out," the angel tells him. Now Isaiah is ready for relationship with God. He has been made holy and is ready to respond to the call of the Holy One. "Here I am, send me."

The same God who is "high and holy and lifted up" is the God who loves. That love is made known in judgment as well as forgivingness. In Trinitarian terms, we tend to think of God the Father as the designated judge and God the Son as the designated forgiver, but scripture tells a very different story. Within the Godhead, the "persons" of the Trinity mix it up. Often as not, it’s the Son who judges and the Father who forgives. That’s because God is one.

Isaiah helps us see the Triune God as the Righteous One whose burning love makes us righteous. The Apostle Paul supplies another image.

Picture the playground of First Presbyterian Preschool. It’s late afternoon -- a little after five. Several of the children have already been picked up by their parents. Another car pulls up in the parking lot. Some children near the fence – self-appointed sentinels – immediately identify both make and model. "Hudson, your Mommy’s here."

Now it’s closer to six -- well past closing time. All the teachers have gone home and Ms. Andra, the Director, is waiting with one child still to be claimed. Iosif. Not "Joseph" with a hard "J" but "Iosif" – the Spanish version.

"Don’t worry," Ms. Andra tells Iosif, who is getting anxious. "Your Papi will come. Papi always comes."

She’s about to dial the last number on the emergency phone list when, sure enough, a truck screeches into the parking lot. An embarrassed Dad emerges.

"Lo siento," he says. "I’m late," but Andra doesn’t hear him. How could she hear over the delighted shouts of the little boy. "Papi! Papi! Papi!"

All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, writes Paul. "When we cry "Papi" (or in Aramaic "Abba"), Father, it is the same Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God."

Among other titles, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Adoption. It is by the Spirit that are made children of God, and therefore "heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."

To know the Triune God is to cry with the hosts of heaven "Holy, Holy, Holy." It is to cry with Isaiah, "Woe is me!" But it is also to call out in joy to the God who claims us as his own, "Papi! "Abba." "Father."

Isaiah in the temple. Iosif at the gate. Both are ways of imagining the Holy Trinity. And now we come to today’s third Trinitarian image.

A knock at the door. Someone lights a lamp. Dr. Nicodemus appears in the doorway, furtive, nervous. "Can I come in? Quickly, before someone sees me."

Jesus lets him in. They sit on the floor, near the charcoal brazier. Nicodemus, Pharisee and tenured academic, wants to know more about this Jesus whom his colleagues despise and ordinary people seem to love. He’d ask him in public if it weren’t so dangerous. A person of Nicodemus’ standing can’t been seen in public with the man who only a few hours ago turned over the tables in the Temple and drove the Dean of the Faculty off the premises with a whip of cords.

"You must be from God, or else you couldn’t do the things you do," Nicodemus asserts.

"You must be born again," Jesus replies.

"And exactly how would that work?" Nicodemus asks, pulling out his notebook. "Precisely how does one enter his mother’s womb and be born all over again?"

"Don’t be such a fundamentalist," Jesus replies (or words to that effect). "The problem with you professor types is that you’ve been supplying the answers so long, you’ve forgotten the most important questions. School spirit is the only kind of spirit you have left. Chill out, Nic. Open the window. Let the wind blow where it will. You need to be born from above, born of the Spirit. You can’t expect a graduate seminar from me unless you’re willing to start with Holy Spirit 101."

Isaiah in the temple. Iosif at the gate. And now Nicodemus stumbling home in the dark of night, scratching his head and asking himself, "Could Jesus really be the Messiah? Could God be that crazy? Can I take the chance that God really does love the whole world?"

"I believe in God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." Some people think of that formula as a wall built to keep out heretics. I suppose it has worked that way at times in the life of the church. But I think of the Doctrine of the Trinity as a window into the inner life of God, a glimpse into a mystery that cannot be quantified but can be experienced.

We experience the Trinity when we cry "Woe is me" and seek the mercy of the Holy God, when we cry "Abba" and run into God’s arms, and when we feel the fresh wind of grace that blows where it wills.

We Christians can live with unanswered questions provoked by the doctrine of the Trinity, but we cannot live an instant apart from the Triune God.

To God the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, be praise now and forever. Amen.

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