"Both/And" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday May 26, 2024 – Trinity Sunday
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8


When was the last time you experienced awe?  Where were you?  What were you doing in that moment when awe or reverence made you take a step back, either literally or metaphorically, and need to catch your breath?  How did it feel?  How did you respond? Does awe give you goosebumps or run a chill up your spine?  Does awe cause you to pause and stay in that moment, or does it overwhelm you so you have to turn away.  Does it strike you silent, or does it make you sing out?

 

For me, I call these my “Oh. Wow.” moments.  They are usually unexpected – I can’t predict when they are going to happen.  They tend to take my breath away.  They fill me with a sense of my insignificance in the big picture; they make me feel as though I am in the presence of something so much bigger than myself; and yet they also fill me with gratitude that I have the opportunity to be where I am in that moment.

 

There is a spot on the road from Kenora to Wabasemoong in northwestern Ontario, where the road curves around a lake on the left-hand side of the road and a cliff towers over the right-hand side of the road that usually brings me one of these “Oh. Wow.” moments.  I experienced it many times when I was living in Tanzania, but one moment in particular stands out, when I was worshipping in a house church on Christmas morning looking out over the rolling hills.  Oh. Wow. I can’t believe I am in this place at this time.

 

Awe is a heavy word, even though it’s meaning has been trivialized by how we use it.  If something is good, we call it “awesome” or containing some awe.  If something is really bad, we call it “awful” or full of awe.  But we don’t often think about awe itself.  To me, it’s a word that carries both reverence and fear that comes with being in the presence of someone or something that is so much more or so much greater.  Awe on its own is so much more than either awesome or awful.

 

And to me, the reading from Isaiah that _____ shared with us is a reading that is full of awe.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have been in that moment.  The author uses imperfect human words to try and describe what is happening. The room is filled with choking, blinding smoke. Six-winged seraphs are flying around the room – I heard one commentator describe seraphs as being like giant snakes with wings, and we’re told that two wings covered their faces, two wings covered their feet, and two wings were used to fly around the room.  The seraphs are singing, and who knows what language they were using, but they are singing praise to God.  And then the room begins to shake, like an earthquake is trying to shake it loose from its foundations.  And then God is there, sitting on a throne, surrounded by all of these unworldly creatures and occurrences.

 

I don’t know about Isaiah, but I think that I would have been absolutely terrified in this moment.  Nothing that is happening in this moment can be made sense of using logic or reason or even past experiences.

 

This passage is a description of the prophet Isaiah’s call story – the moment when God called Isaiah to go to the people of Ancient Israel and point them back towards God and back towards living the way that God wanted them to live, loving and honouring God, and loving and living well with their neighbours.

 

And if this was the only description of God that we were ever given, it would be a pretty terrifying God that we follow.  But fortunately this image or depiction of God isn’t the only one we are given.

 

We have to hold this picture of God up beside a picture of a vulnerable baby lying in a manger.  Because the same God who sits on a throne in that smoke-filled room where Isaiah was called – this same God chose to become human in the person of Jesus, and as a red and wrinkled newborn was wrapped tightly in a blanket and placed in a stone trough where animals feed.  As the person of Jesus, God felt what it is to be hungry, knew what it is to be tired, experienced both love and betrayal.  This same God who inspires awe and praises in that moment of Isaiah’s vision emptied themself of all of their power and allowed themself to be nailed to a cross and left there to die.

 

We have to hold the picture of God that Jesus shows us – a God who chooses to become vulnerable – beside the picture of God that Isaiah paints for us.

 

And we are given more depictions of God.  As well as the awe-inspiring God of Isaiah, and the vulnerable God in Jesus, we also have images of the ever-present God.  Here I think of God as depicted in the story of Noah, when God and Noah used to walk together, and God gave Noah detailed building instructions for an ark.

 

Last Sunday, with Pentecost, we celebrated the very present nature of God in the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is God working in the world.  God is working in you, working in me, working in all people, working in the river and the trees and the rocks and the wind, transforming us all into who and what God created us to be.  In the Holy Spirit, God is always closer to you than your very breath; God is holding you in love; God is lighting a fire under your behind when you need to act; God is empowering you to do the hard work of loving all of your neighbours, the hard work of forgiveness, the hard work of doing justice.

 

We have been given all of these different pictures of who God is, and to me, that is what the Trinity is all about.  Today is Trinity Sunday when we get to talk about who God is; and because we can see God as Trinity, we can see God as all of these things.  It’s not an either/or situation, God is a both/and.  God is all of these, and more.  We don’t have to choose which of these pictures of God is the “right one.”  On the flip side, we don’t get to choose which of these pictures of God is the one we want.  God simply is.

 

God is the awe-inspiring presence in Isaiah, surrounded by smoke and flying seraphim.  God is the vulnerable baby born at Christmas who would later be nailed to the cross.  God is the Holy Presence that surrounds you and works in your life.  All of these are the same God who reveals God-self to us in these different ways.  This is who God is; the one-in-three and the three-in-one.

 

My favourite image for the Trinity is a trio of dancers holding hands, or maybe with their arms around each others’ shoulders. Sometimes one of them is leading, sometimes another one. Each of the dancers is distinct from the other, but they can never be separated from each other and they are always dancing to the same music.

 

And my favourite part of this image is that we are invited to join the dance, to become part of the swirling energy and beauty of God.  The Holy Spirit who is God working in each one of us is drawing us into the divine dance.  And just thinking about this fills my heart with awe and brings goosebumps out on my arms.

 

And so the question that I want to leave with you today is, how are you going to dance with God this week?  Where is the divine music going to lead you?

 

And may it be so.  Amen.

 

 

Trinity Sunday