June 3, 2007 - Trinity Sunday, Year C
Saint James Episcopal Church, Saint James, NY

Sometimes
it's easy to get distracted
but just a few words in a reading from Scripture
and miss the rest of it.
Something catches our attention
and the rest
might as well
never have been written.
Sometimes
it's wonderful,
a window on a world
that we could never have imagined
but have suddenly glimpsed.
Other times
it's simply a distraction, a way of avoiding
whatever else
is there in the text
that we'd really rather ignore.
And still other times
it's the one thing that we can make sense of
in the middle of something
fundamentally
confusing.

And all three of these seem to be in operation
most times when we read our Old Testament reading today
from Isaiah, chapter 6.
Most of us just straight to the end of the reading, to verse 8,
when Isaiah falls on his knees and pleads
"Here I am Lord, send me!"
For some of us, those words come as confirmation
that God has chosen us
to do something.
For some, it avoids the language of guilt and sin
that comes right before it.
And for others of us
it's the one tangible thing to grasp hold of
in a story
that seems entirely improbable.

Those few words
that ended our reading today
are all we remember;
we too easily miss
what comes before
a vision
of God.

Today is Trinity Sunday.
It's a Sunday that most clergy
try to avoid preaching;
the complexity of the doctrine, the belief
that the God we know, the God in whose name we baptize,
is a God we know as Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier,
Eternal Majesty, incarnate Word, abiding Spirit.
Three persons, one God.
Different, and yet the same,
distinct, and yet whole.
It's difficult to grasp hold of;
it's perhaps the most confusing thing
about the Christian faith.
There's a creed that you can find in the back of the prayer book,
called the Creed of Saint Athanasius,
the Athanasian Creed,
and it goes on for three long pages
trying to work out
which things the three persons of the Trinity share,
and how they are different.
It's long
and complicated,
and although I was tempted to have us read it today in place of the usual creed, you were saved by Arielle's baptism,
because the service requires us to use the Apostle's Creed.
It's actually well worth reading and reflecting on,
but probably not the way you want to spend
this Sunday morning.

But there's a second reason. Because in spite of the beautiful language and careful unpacking of the mysteries of the Trinity
that the Athanasian Creed offers,
in some way it misses the point.
Because what it does
is draw our attention
to the three separate persons of the Trinity;
what it distracts us from
is the incredible central truth of our faith:
the unity
and immensity
of God.

You see, most of us kind of get the God as Creator thing.
Christmas and Easter come along, and we have God incarnate,
and although it's maybe improbable,
the difficulty we have is not in understanding it, but buying it.
And then there's Pentecost, the celebration of the Holy Spirit,
again, a bit uncomfortable,
but essentially straightforward.

But then, straight after Pentecost
we have Trinity Sunday.
A day to remind us
that we believe
in one God.
In case we're confused
and tempted to think
that we have three little gods
all in a row
and we can pick and choose among them
according to our mood.
Essentially, fundamentally,
we believe in one God.

And maybe because the idea of God is so intangible,
especially when we compare it to Jesus
and even the Holy Spirit,
our reading today stresses
that this God
is as tangible
as real
as we can imagine.

And it all begins with a date.
Just in case you were ready to dismiss it as the ravings of a lunatic,
it begins with a specific time
and place.
In the year that the king died,
as far as we know, around 740 BC,
in the year that Uzziah died,
most likely when he was in the temple,
Isaiah
saw God.
And we have the description
of what he saw.

We say that Isaiah saw God,
but in reality, what he saw
was just a tiny bit of God,
a tiny piece of the one
who was too immense, too glorious
for human eyes to catch hold of.

What Isaiah saw
was God
on a throne,
or at least that's what he seemed to see,
because all he got round to describing
is the hem of God's robe.

It reminds me of Moses,
who asked to see God
and got a glimpse of the back of the glory of God
passing by.

Isaiah got to see God
that all he saw
was the hem of God's robe.
Maybe because God is so big, so glorious.
Maybe because Isaiah
already had his face to the ground,
bent over in prayer, overwhelmed,
and dared look no higher.
Maybe.

But Isaiah did see those
who were attending God.
And even they
were almost two glorious to imagine.
The sound of wings beating, seraphs,
and voices echoing Holy.
Smoke curling up
and the very hinges of the doors
shaking.
Words can barely begin to express it.
Isaiah had been ushered
into the very presence of God.

And this is the God in whose presence
we worship
We may not have seraphs
or shaking doorposts,
but God is here all the same,
the very same God
that Isaiah saw,
a God who is glorious beyond our imagining.

We come, each Sunday morning, into the presence of God
and we join with the seraphs
in the Eucharistic prayer, in the words of the sanctus,
"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory."

We might not be able to see them, but angels and archangels are here too ,
they with us
and we with them
as in our Eucharist, our thanksgiving,
we are caught up into the heavenly celebration
with God right in the center
of it all.

And no wonder that we, like Isaiah,
sometimes get overwhelmed.
It was back in the sixteenth century
when Thomas Cranmer put together a prayer
to try to say how we feel
faced with all that glory of God.

We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you are the same Lord
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him,
and he in us.

We call it the prayer of humble access,
and some people don't like it because they think it's too groveling.
But let's face it,
in the presence of God,
maybe groveling is appropriate.
But while we may not be worthy
Christ is.
Christ is worthy
and through his death and resurrection,
through his body and bloody
we are made worthy
to live in the presence of God.

And it's not just Sundays.
Because the God of Isaiah
is not confined to church buildings.
This God
who we meet here
in the Eucharist
is the very same God
in whom we live
and move
and have our being.
This immense God,
this glorious God,
this holy God
is the one who comes to us
and dwells in and with us.

And you know what?
Like Isaiah, I've run out of words.
Because words can only convey a minuscule part
of who God is.
They are inadequate.
So we do the best we can,
but in the end
we fall silent,
silent before the awesome majesty
and wonder
and glory of God.

Amen.We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you are the same Lord
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him,
and he in us. Amen.

We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you are the same Lord
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him,
and he in us. Amen.

We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you are the same Lord
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him,
and he in us. Amen.

©Raewynne J.Whiteley, 2007