Trinity Sunday

 Trinity B 2018 RCL

Isaiah6:1-8; Canticle 13; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17

                                                        Rev. Dr. Adam T. Trambley                               

May 27, 2018, St. John’s Sharon

Glory to you, Lord God of our fathers; *
you are worthy of praise; glory to you.

This morning is Trinity Sunday.  We can approach a doctrine like the Trinity from one of two perspectives.  One option is to try to intellectually understand what God as Trinity means, at least as much as we can, which isn’t very much.  This kind of study is worthwhile, but only in support of the more important approach. That approach is to see the Trinity as a magnificent attribute of God that draws us more deeply into the worship and awe of God.

Think about it. The most common way we think about the Trinity on a regular basis is as a doxology.  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and we close most of our collects with some kind of Trinitarian formula.  The basic understanding of our Triune God is one that leads us into worship. 

We only need a basic understanding of the Trinity to carry us into worship.  God as Trinity means that God is a family of love at the very heart of who God is.  God as Trinity means that God has a loving relationship with the other persons who are also part of God, and more importantly, that those persons of God can enter into loving relationships with us.  The loving relationships at the heart of God allow us to enter into the center of God’s life through a relationship with Jesus Christ that the Holy Spirit enables.  Such love in the midst of God calls forth a response of worship and praise in us, both because of who God is and because of what that means for us. 

Glory to you for the radiance of your holy Name; *
we will praise you and highly exalt you for ever.

This particular canticle that we sang between our first two readings, and which Ron is signing now, is sometimes called the Song of the Three Young Men.  This hymn of praise is found in early Greek versions of the Old Testament book of Daniel.  Those churches that have traditionally used the Greek Old Testament, like the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, include this hymn as part of their Bible.  Protestant churches that began after the Reformation to use translations of the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament tend to ignore this hymn or, like the Episcopal Church, place it in the Apocrypha and use it sometimes but not consider it at the same level as scripture.

This hymn occurs in the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story.  These three young Hebrews living in Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar refuse to bow down to an idol that the king has built.  So Nebuchadnezzar throws them into a fiery furnace that is so hot that the soldiers who throw them into it are charred to a crisp.  But God protects Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and no fire harms them.  The Greek book of Daniel recounts an extended song of praise that these three young men sing in the midst of the furnace.  These verses of praise, minus the final doxology sung today, make up the beginning of that song.  The song then continues with verses exhorting all creation to bless the Lord and praise him.  Much of this song makes up Canticle 12 in the Book of Common Prayer and includes verses addressed to natural phenomenon like the sun and stars, winter and summer, and storm clouds and thunderbolts, before moving on to mountains and hills, fish and whales, birds and animals, and finally people.  While walking around this fiery furnace, these three young men spend a few minutes asking everything they can think of to join them in praising the God who is saving them.  They are an example to us.  We, too, could send out an expansive a set of invitations to join us in worship and awe of our Trinitarian God when we consider what God has done in our lives. 

Glory to you in the splendor of your temple; *
on the throne of your majesty, glory to you.

In our first reading this morning, Isaiah gives us another window into the life of praising God.  Isaiah thought he was going into the Temple and has instead entered into the bottom of God’s heavenly throne room.  The Temple of Jerusalem in those days was beautiful and awe-inspiring.  Some of the portions of scripture we often skip as too boring include vivid descriptions of the colorful fabric and precious metals used in the Temple’s adornment.

Isaiah enters this glorious sanctuary and is given the vision of something even more glorious.  God is seated on his throne, and the hem of his garment fills the tabernacle.  God’s is so lofty and uplifted that just the bottom piece of his royal robe is enough to fill the most important worship site built to date.  Imagine how huge the rest of the garment, and the Almighty God who is wearing it, is if just the cuff filled up this entire church this morning. That enormous scale is what Isaiah sees.

What Isaiah hears are the hosts of heaven praising God.  The Seraphim and others are singing the holy, holy, holy we use during our eucharistic prayer, but the sound is so deafening that the temple is rocking  That, brothers and sisters, is some worship.  

Glory to you, seated between the Cherubim; *
we will praise you and highly exalt you for ever.

As Isaiah encounters this incredible heavenly worship, he is overwhelmed with a sense of his own inadequacy.  He knows he has messed up and his people have messed up.  Yet here he is with angelic laser light shows blinding his eyes and seraphic sub-woofers pounding his chest.  He huddles up into a ball, so God sends a Seraph to touch his lips with a hot coal and heal him.  Now Isaiah is able to participate in the heavenly worship and to answer God’s call in mission.

Isaiah shows us what happens when we are powerfully pulled into the praise of our Trinitarian God.  The nearer presence of God makes clear to us our own sins and failings.  We know this is the work of the Holy Spirit.  Yet we are also forgiven, healed, and made whole.  God wants us to be present to him in worship and to go out in mission because that is how we enter into his love.  When we worship God, we are invited into the love that makes up the heart of who God is.  When we do God’s work that he has given us to do, we share in God’s mission, which is the outpouring of his love from the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit into the larger world. 

We are invited into that worship in this place this morning.  We will sing the holy, holy, holy with angels, archangels and all the choirs of heaven, and we offer other hymns and praises, as well.  I’d invite you to picture the hem of the Almighty’s robe filling this place.  Imagine one small corner of God’s garment flowing down from the reredos and altar into our church while it is also filling every other church and chapel, sanctuary and synagogue, earthly temple and house of worship where God is being praised this morning.  Imagine being so close to such an enormous God, a God who invites us deeply into his life of love, and makes us worthy not only to stand before him, but to enter into the divine life of loving God and the divine mission of loving neighbor.  This God is worthy of our highest praises.

Glory to you, beholding the depths; *
in the high vault of heaven, glory to you.

As a further reminder that God is not removed to some unbridgeable throne room in a remote heavenly realm, we have Jesus’ words in our gospel.  He says he has descended from heaven.  He is the incarnation of the God who loves us so much that he was willing to leave this amazing, eternal worship to live and die as one of us.  He came down from the place of honor among the angles to reconcile us back to God, so that we could once again take our place in the center of God’s life.  His teaching that we could be born from above, born again, confirms for us that we are meant to be people at home in the high vault of the heavens where God is praised and where God’s children, whether Isaiah or Jesus or us, move out in loving mission for the love of the world.  Jesus reminds us that God so loved the world that Jesus came so that we might share that eternal heavenly life. 

The basic life of the Trinity that we see in the scripture is that we are created out of the love of God.  Jesus, the Son of God, became a human being out of love for us so that we could reenter the loving relationship with God that we were created for.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus that allows us to know the love of God and to live into that love through loving relationship with Jesus and with one another.  Such a God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is beyond our clear understanding, but we don’t have to fully understand someone to love them.  We love God by accepting the invitation he gives us to enter his courts in worship, and to love our neighbors as he has loved us.  Brothers and sisters, let us love. 

Glory to you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; *
we will praise you and highly exalt you for ever.

Here is a version of the Canticle sung by St. David's Church, Houston, TX.