If only I could have been a fly on the wall that day. By all accounts, the Jerusalem Temple was massive. It dominated the landscape of ancient Jerusalem. The height of the walls made any average human seem as small as. . . well, a fly. And it was full of mystery, of rooms that should be approached with profound reverence. Nothing about this Temple was ordinary. It was where heaven and earth were joined.
So, a fly on the wall in the Temple on the day that Isaiah received his vision must have felt spectacularly small. With its peculiar and limited eyesight, a fly would have had to move around, I suppose, to take in the scene. First, there was a transcendent vision of the Lord on a raised throne, with gargantuan, flowing skirts filling the interior of the holy space. Seraphim with their strange qualities of six wings were flying about.
And the voices of the seraphim must have sounded alien, and I honestly have no idea what they would have sounded like to a fly’s ears. But the seraphim were calling to one another, “holy, holy, holy!” Then, the doorposts began to shake, and surely the fly would have felt or sensed the vibrations of that terrifying sound. Suddenly, there was the voice of a man lamenting his own sinfulness and frailty. Perhaps he even dropped to his knees as he confessed his unworthiness to Almighty God.
That’s when one of the seraphim appeared, with a whoosh of air as it swooped down to the humbled man. The seraphim was using its six wings to hold a pair of tongs—unwieldy, to say the least. And within those tongs was a crackling, smoking, excessively hot coal that had come from the altar in the Temple. And with a swift motion, the coal touched the lips of the man, cleansing away his sin. Then, the Lord spoke with a voice that would surely have commanded the attention of any mortal. “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And in response, a feebler, even tentative, voice says, “here am I; send me.”
Now, imagine, being a fly on the wall in this room. Surely, any fly would feel rather small in this sizeable space. A fly on the wall here on a Sunday before Mass would notice people gathering. There would be in the air a palpable, if not visual, sense that something exciting and profound was about to happen. As a friend of mine would say, “We’re about to have church!” Apart from a rustle of people finding their pews and quiet greetings to fellow parishioners, there would also be a reverent silence, a sense of awe, and a joyful expectation of something magnificent to come. By buzzing around, a fly would notice that many people drop to their knees for a time, with heads bowed.
Then, the organ strikes up, and beautiful, captivating sounds fill the air. What would that sound like to a fly? And soon a procession is forming and moving up the aisle and heading to the front. And while there’s no clear vision of God, something is special about the front of the church, a fly might notice (if it had a brain like ours). The people are bowing to something up there, and soon clouds of incense smoke are filling the air. Voices are raised in song, and I would bet that a fly could sense the power of sonic frequencies uniting in praise.
But after some time and much carrying on, a fly buzzing around in the room might notice that everyone is again going down on their knees. If a fly could understand what was going on, it would hear words of confession. “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a person of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” And a sign made in the air by someone at the front is rather like a coal from the altar touching the lips of the people. And after more pageantry and ceremony, the people move to the front and kneel once again and stretch out their hands and eat and drink something with a delicacy unlike usual human feasting. And before too long, someone at the front again says something, and it could very well be, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And a crowd of people respond in unison, with vibrations in the fly’s ears, “Here am I; send me.” And the people depart.
But to what are they going? And to what did Isaiah go? If we want to be completely honest about the whole story of Isaiah’s call by God, we need to face where he went after he so eagerly said, “send me.” Sign me up! is what Isaiah said, if we quote the old Gospel hymn. Sign me up for your mission, Lord.
But little did Isaiah know for what he was signing up. Indeed, after the fact, he may very well have regretted what he signed up for, because the Lord was sending him on a terrifying mission. Isaiah was to go and speak the brutal truth to a people who had lost their way. Isaiah was to announce to God’s people that they would experience ruin and destruction, the natural consequence of their errant ways. They would suffer. It would be very bad. But. . . but, one day a remnant of that people would turn back to the Lord in repentance, and a seed of future hope would remain. All was not lost. There was still hope.
On this Trinity Sunday, there’s no better way to praise the mystery of the triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, than coming to worship. It’s in worship that we acknowledge that we will never speak logically or rationally about the mystery of the Holy Trinity. And because our words and theological concepts will inevitably fail, we are reduced to worship. In worship, we can’t help but feel ourselves drawn out of ourselves and into something greater than ourselves. We can’t help but experience within our very bodies the dynamism of the God we worship, who is One God in Three Persons—one shared substance, three distinct but united persons, a God of perfect community. The robes of God’s skirts sweep from heaven to earth and fill this space, and his awesome presence elicits our praise and song and prayer.
And at some point, we drop to our knees, recognizing how small we are, like a fly on the wall in this space. We recognize how small our narrow worlds are, where we envy another’s gifts, or judge someone harshly, or refuse to share what we have, and in general, fail to be grateful. We name how messed up our world is, where someone walks into a business and shoots the place up or where certain people are still told by parts of the Church that they don’t belong, or where even the most powerful nation in the world can’t seem to muster a functional government because of spite and pride. We confess it all on our knees to God because before his staggering presence, we are humbled and awed.
But no matter how small we feel, it does no good to wallow in our sinfulness, and it’s not what God wants because he has something else in store for us. Our confession lasts only a brief time before a coal touches our lips, and we are healed. Speak the word only, Lord, and my soul shall be healed. We’re healed, and God no longer lets us have an excuse to stay away from him. God doesn’t insist that we stay away from his presence, as if God were a wrathful bigot. God doesn’t require that we become mired in our sinfulness. God invites us forward, and we consume the Body and Blood of his Son. God invites us into the divine life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity comes to us, and we are invited to share in the divine life of the Trinity, where one day, we hope to live eternally. God as Trinity is a God who will not stay removed from us, but comes to us and invites us to come to him. As Isaiah saw in his vision, God’s robes spill out from heaven to earth and sweep us up into relationship with him.
And just as the Father once lovingly sent his Son into the world to save and heal it, and as the Son lovingly sent his Spirit upon the Church so that the Church could be sent into the world to tell the good news, so after we feed on Christ, we, too, are sent. God says, “Whom shall I send?” Send me, we say. Sign me up!
And that’s where the trouble begins, or maybe even the hesitation. This is where we balk, because we’re asked not to bask in the majesty of worship forever, but to go to the streets, knowing our frailty but also knowing the incredible mission that God has given us. God, whom we worship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a God of mission. God’s very nature is mission, of an outward-looking love that spills out from the very being of God into our world.
So, sign me up, Lord, that my own love may spill out into the world. Sign me up, Lord, to go to the neighbor who’s been scorned and ostracized and tell him that God has forgiven all and that although the world may hate him, God always cherishes him. Sign me up, Lord, to wade into the fray of cruel, political speech to announce that I will have no part of it. Sign me up, Lord, to go to the outcast and forsaken to say that while many may deny them dignity, they still bear the irrevocable image of God. Sign me up, Lord, to tell others in the Church that although the laborers seem to be few, the harvest is indeed plentiful, and God will give the growth. The Church will thrive. Sign me up, Almighty God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because I have beheld your glory and felt it in my bones, and I can’t help but proclaim it to the world.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
May 26, 2024