What
kind of questions do you have about God?
Where
do you go to ask them?
Sometimes
I think that my family believes they have an ace in the pocket when it comes to
this because they can just direct their questions at daddy. He’s the pastor. He’s
got the theology degree, right? Therefore, often when I’m least expecting it—like
last week when I was in the middle of pulling up weeds in the garden—two little
girls round the corner out of nowhere with pressing questions like, “Who were
God’s parents?” or “How did God get on earth?”
Granted,
by virtue of some of my training there is a chance I might have pondered these
questions a time or two before, but—and I hate to disappoint them—I certainly
don’t think I have some kind of insider knowledge about God or what God is up
to. My life and experiences aren’t any more or less touched by the divine than anyone
else’s, and I’ve come to deeply appreciate hearing the questions and thoughts
about God that you’ve shared with me. Quite frankly, I have right many
questions of my own, and I’d like to think we’re asking them together.
Thinking
about God can be overwhelming, and I think we can all agree that it’s helpful to
have some kind of established guidelines as we do it. Like with so many other
challenging tasks, it’s beneficial to have some form of received knowledge from
other people who’ve asked the same kinds of questions through the ages so we
don’t feel that we’re just shooting in the dark, which is kind of what
Nicodemus is doing, coming to Jesus under cover of night. He’s shooting in the
dark, trying to learn a little more about God from this rabbi who appears to
have a theology degree a cut above the other rabbis.
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| "Nicodemus talking to Jesus" (Henry Ossawa Tanner) |
Granted,
it’s not clear whether this conversation with Jesus clears anything up for
Nicodemus, but if he’s listening carefully, he might hear that Jesus does give
him some of those guidelines. Jesus talks about God using three different terms
that somehow all relate to each other as if they are one. In the span of one
two-minute-or-so conversation, Jesus mentions God and Son and Spirit as if they
all kind of have something to do with each other.
As
it turns out, it’s one of the handful of Scripture passages where we hear these
terms for God in close combination. These names and relationships are actually
always there, like a mysterious hidden soil that lies beneath the whole story,
nurturing it, giving it its life. However, we never get a clear, thought-out
description of how it all works. In the earliest years of their life together,
Jesus’ followers pored over Jesus’ own words, Paul’s letters, and in even the
deep and complex stories of the Hebrew Bible, and they began to see this threefold
pattern that they had already been using in their worship. What emerged were
creeds and other important writings that became guidelines for understanding
the God that is spoken of in the Bible. Soon this became known as the doctrine
of the Holy Trinity. Words like doctrine and dogma get a bad rap these days, but
they aren’t meant to be scary, intimidating formulas with which we beat people
over the head and make them feel stupid. They’re tools for helping people who
know they believe the same thing to say and teach the same thing about it.
So,
on this day that the church celebrates this Holy Trinity, and on a day when I
know any number of us have showed up wondering about God, I humbly offer up
three points about God that arise out of our texts this morning with the hope
they may help shed light on this most essential of guidelines.
- God is
wholly other, which is just another way of saying that God is holy.
Whatever
we are, God is entirely different from that. That is one foundation of
Christian thought that is reiterated again and again by the people who had
experiences with the divine. It is a sensation that sometimes some of us have when
we’re looking into the night sky, studded as it is with millions of stars and
planets, or when we behold the wonder of a newborn baby. There is something
untouchable and unfathomable about the nature of this Creator-behind-all-of-this
who performs wonders far beyond anything a human can do.
In
our first Scripture passage this morning we see the prophet Isaiah entering
into the courts of the Lord and how he is overtaken by awe at how completely
holy and different the presence of God is. In fact, it is this passage that we
borrow every Sunday just as we begin to approach God’s presence in Holy
Communion:
“Holy, Holy, Holy is the
Lord of hosts!
Heaven and earth are full of
his glory.”
It
underlines for us that in a world that so often makes idols out of things that humankind has made—money, status, power,
family—the true God remains complete other, outside human categories and outside human control.
One
problem with describing God’s total otherness, complete holiness, is that the
only language we have is human language. Try as we may, our words will always
fall somewhat short of describing what God is actually like and tend to make
the high and lofty God in our image.
In
Isaiah’s account he says that he sees the Lord sitting on a throne, high and
lofty, with the hem of his garment filling the temple. That’s a very human
image, but you can tell Isaiah’s grasping for the words to describe something
inherently indescribable. In fact, the translators for one famous ancient Greek
translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Septuagint were so uncomfortable
with Isaiah’s description that they left that part about the garment out. To
them it made God sound too human. God probably doesn’t really wear garments
because God doesn’t really have a body, but what do we know? We know that God
is wholly other.
- God
touches unclean lips.
God
does not let this supreme holiness become a barrier to God’s love. God may be
unapproachable to us, but that doesn’t keep God from approaching us.
I ran across a website this week of an artist who takes scenes from famous works
of art, typically religious in nature, and superimposes them upon ordinary and
often crude scenes of modern-day life. The result is this striking juxtaposition
of the sublime and the mundane. In one
painting there your see Mary, the mother of our Lord, looking positively
angelic and holy, holding the baby Jesus, both of them surrounded by angels in
flowing garments playing instruments—but they are all seated on a very shabby
looking subway car. In a quirky way the painting underscores God’s desire to
touch unclean lips and hold unclean lives, to nestle the divine self within
human ordinariness, which is what Isaiah experiences in his own vision. Through
an act of grace that God initiates, one of the attendants in God’s holy court picks
up a coal and purifies Isaiah’s lips.
This
how the high and lofty God deals with human sinfulness. God doesn’t ignore us
because of it, like some aloof royal person who doesn’t want to associate with
the lowly masses. Nor does God obliterate us because of it, like some mad
dictator who doesn’t understand the value of human life. Rather, God lovingly,
stoops to recognize us even in our state of being unclean, as Isaiah describes
it, and ushers us into God’s presence to have a relationship with us.
It’s
such a small action here in Isaiah’s story, but this action of grace will
become a central, defining factor of God’s identity. God wants to reach out to
humans even in their state of brokenness and redeem them from it. Nicodemus
will hear it this way: “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.” When
we speak of the Holy Trinity, one of the first things we are saying is that the
God of the universe has at one point been so in love with this imperfect
creation that God has entered it himself. On the cross of Jesus, we come to
believe that God doesn’t just want to touch unclean lips but redeem unclean
lives and make them pure again. Even ours. And it rescues us from death.
- To know
God is to be sent.
When
Isaiah enters the courts of the holy God and is transformed by God’s presence, he
doesn’t stay there. He is given a message to proclaim to his people about God’s
judgment and grace. When Nicodemus hears the message about God’s love through
his Son, it is clear that the message is for the entire world. Nicodemus
doesn’t immediately go forth, as Isaiah does, but in the end he emerges from
the shadows and comes to share in Christ’s mission in his own way by helping
remove the body from the cross.
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| "The Yellow Christ" (Gauguin) |
Whether
it is in the style of Isaiah or Nicodemus or somewhere in between, this is to
say, there is something about the nature of God that automatically includes us in
whatever God is doing. This relationship with God is not a one-way street where
we approach the high and lofty altar and stay there, as if in isolation. The
whole purpose of God sharing this love on the cross is to transform us in such
a way that we go forth to share it with others.
You
could say we end up getting caught up in this love that the Father has for his
Son, which is what the apostle Paul is driving at in his letter to the Romans. When
we cry, “ ‘Abba, Father!’ it is that very
Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if
children, then…joint heirs with Christ.”
There
you have it. We’re drawn right in. This is the work of God’s Holy Spirit, a
Spirit which was there even at creation, hovering over the waters and
eventually creating a community of animals and plants and mountains and rivers.
It is the work of the disciples as they behold the Risen Lord anew on Pentecost
and this force of God sends them out to share the message that his holy God
makes people’s lives clean.
And,
come to think of it, it is the Spirit that is at work in your lives, as he’s gathered
you today to open your hearts to questions about God. It’s the Spirit at work
in the lives of all children of God, you and me alike, who round the corner
with wide eyes and groping questions to approach their true Father who is weeding
the bad stuff out of their messy garden. He loves their questions. He takes
them all. And they find in this holy moment they encounter a God who is wholly
other…a God who even touches their unclean lips…a God who gives them a message.
They find Father, Son and Holy Spirit…the blessed Trinity.
Thanks
be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.
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