The Holy Trinity: 11 June 2006.

Isaiah 6:1-8

Psalm 29

Romans 8:12-17

John 3:1-17

"Don't try this at home!" A warning along these lines ought to be attached to any preaching notes for The Holy Trinity. Preachers do well to avoid attempts to explain the triune being of God, as human language inevitably fails in such attempts and, if history is any guide, leads more often than not to heresy as either the "oneness" or the "threeness" is overemphasized.

Today's lessons reinforce the wisdom of this warning and show a more fruitful path. In point of fact the Bible says very little about God in se. One of the few exceptions is the Old Testament's designation of God as "holy" (that is, at base, "wholly other" than anything else that exists). Otherwise, both testaments consistently describe God in relationship to creation and particularly to humanity. Indeed, even in today's Old Testament lesson, in which God is declared thrice-holy, it is the effect of that holiness upon the prophet that comes to the fore. So there is biblical warrant to focus this day's proclaimed word on the meaning of God's being for the lives and living of God's people.

The lesson from Isaiah (6:1-8) was most obviously selected because it is the source of what the Eastern Church calls the "Trisagion," the "Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of armies" that begins the Sanctus in the Western Church's mass. From early times, Christians have seen in these words an implicit reference to the Trinity, and from the perspective of the entire Christian canon (as opposed to a more historically based analysis) such a reading has merit.

Again, the primary benefit of the text lies not in the nature of God in se but in the implications of that nature for human beings. Specifically, this text stresses God's transcendence and thereby provides an important corrective to our tendency as moderns (and postmoderns) to "fear" God in no sense of that word. Isaiah is overwhelmed by what he sees and particularly by the qualitative gulf between what is on his lips and who is in his eyes. Only God's direct intervention via fire (as a live coal is borne to him by one of the seraphim, or "burning ones") prevents his immediate annihilation (cf. Exod 19:12; 20:18-21). By visible (yea, sacramental) means, Isaiah survives to respond to God's call to use his lips to proclaim God's word to a "people of unclean lips."

Romans 8:12-17 immediately drops the proverbial other shoe, so far as God's being-in-relationship is concerned. Four times in two verses (v. 16f.) Paul employs verbal forms containing the prefix "with" (Greek [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). The emphasis here is on God's immanence: this is a God whose Spirit bears witness with our spirit and makes us joint heirs with Christ, since we suffer with him so as also to be glorified with him. (Note: I take [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] as "since," rather than "if," as more in keeping with Paul's thought--against most translations, but allowed by BDAG, p. 279.) The awesome God of Isaiah delivers us from fear and enables us to call him "Daddy" (Aramaic Abba) in token that we are God's children.

A brief word of commendation is in order here, given my criticism of one feature of the three-year lectionary in last Sunday's notes. The same lectionary did well to change the terminology for the "church's half-year" from Sundays after Trinity to Sundays after Pentecost. As the Romans text makes abundantly clear, it is the Spirit of Pentecost who makes those "with-es" come true, so to speak, as we move from death to life.

The Gospel reading (John 3:1-17) performs its proper office by bringing together the lessons and setting the day in the light of Christ. Jesus tells Nicodemus (and us) that we must be born [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]: both "from above" (like Jesus in his transcendence as God; cf. v. 13) and "again" (like Jesus, first begotten of God and then born of woman, or God in his immanence). (I leave to others the historical implications and complications of a wordplay that works in Greek but not in Aramaic or Hebrew.) Our birth "of water and the Spirit" is modeled on the very being of God! Yet, like Luther's drunken donkey-rider (and Nicodemus), we tend to misapprehend both God and ourselves by perceiving half-truths--and even those wrongly (for "we," see especially v. 11f., with its plural "yous"). It is God's Spirit who must engender in us both life and understanding. Like the wind, the Spirit (and God, for that matter) is not bound by our expectations or rules of engagement: as the Augsburg Confession, Art. V, puts it, the Spirit works ubi et quando visum est Deo--where and when it pleases God.

Jesus then takes another run at explaining things to Nicodemus (and us) as he stresses that bringing a new start at life is not something that a previously wrathful God came up with just recently. Way back in Numbers 21, during Israel's wanderings in the wilderness, God had saved by use of a visible (yea, sacramental) sign that was lifted up. Now God is at it again, and we see that the sacramental is inextricably bound up in the incarnational: once more, God's visible sign will be lifted up, and Jesus will draw all to himself (Jn 12:32). (One must never forget that in John's Gospel the crucifixion is the coronation of the Christ, not his passion, pace a recent movie ostensibly based chiefly on that Gospel.)

As has long been observed, v. 16f. provides a "nutshell" summary of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But these two verses do more: they represent a clear summation and explanation (via the repeated [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "for," at the head of each) of the figurative and mysterious dialogue that precedes them--whether they were spoken by Jesus, as in the NRSV, or added by the evangelist, as in the RSV. These verses lay out in the plainest possible terms how God brought his very nature to bear on the future of the entire cosmos. As is common in Semitic heightened speech (i.e., poetry), these verses contain a chiasm: v. 16 moves from the positive ("God loved") to the negative ("not perish"), while v. 17 moves from the negative ("God did not send") back to the positive ("that the world might be saved"). All bases are covered, and all stands revealed: God will stop at nothing to bring a perishing and condemned world to life and salvation.

Naturally. GCH