Messages, Meditations, and Musings on the Life of Faith by Rev. Dr. Scott E. Olson, Interim Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church, Preston, MN

Sunday, June 3, 2012

"Our Lips Are Seared" - Holy Trinity B Sermon

“Our Lips Are Seared”
Holy Trinity B
June 3, 2012
Isaiah 6.1-8

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, a day that throws both preachers and pew-dwellers into a panic. Pew-dwellers, understandably, fear a mind-numbing dose of systematic theology, like a dollop of castor oil, delivered regularly whether needed or not. Preachers, for their part, are always looking for a way to make theological concepts palatable, but they fear simplistic and often heretical metaphors used to describe the Trinity. Add on top of this trinitarian angst is oft-repeated—and therefore it must be true—observation that Holy Trinity Sunday is the only church festival that doesn’t honor a person or a churchly event and you have a perfect storm brewing. However, what preachers and pew-dwellers often lose sight of is that the Trinity, as both doctrine and “person,” is an attempt to make sense out of our encounters with God, both in Scripture and in our daily lives.

All three of our lessons, in one way or another, are reflections on encountering God. I want to focus on Isaiah’s close encounter of stupendous kind, with a barely perceptible nod to Romans and John. Isaiah is in the temple and all of a sudden, it seems as if the temple walls expand and fade away. Imagine the walls of this sanctuary growing and God’s presence filling the space. God is at the same time fantastically huge and distant, but close enough to touch and talk to. God is so Holy Other that the earth shakes and smoke appears, but God so present that Isaiah lives to tell about his encounter.

I’ve just finished a book by James Rubart called Rooms, described by one reviewer as part CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters and part Wm. Paul Young’s The Shack; it could also be part Frank Peretti. The main character, Micah, has mystical encounters with God and other spiritual beings designed to help him choose the world that would give him life. Now, I find descriptions of these encounters fascinating: the overwhelming sense of the otherness of God, being bathed in intense light and God’s overpowering peace and love. Even so, I also find them puzzling because I cannot recall ever having that kind of encounter with God. Even when I had my own conversion experience as young adult returning to God, there wasn’t any kind of earth shaking experience. By the way, these kinds of experiences have been around at least as long as Moses, and they are well documented in mystics such as Julian of Norwich and Hildegard of Bingen.

The point is that sometimes we mistake our experience with God for who God actually is. What Isaiah reminds us is that we don’t encounter God as much as God encounters us. In that encounter that God always initiates, God is both totally unknowable and intimately known; thoroughly invisible and yet as accessible as the waters of baptism and the bread and wine of Holy Communion; and enormously distant and yet intensely present to every moment of our lives. When asked about youth ministry during my call interview I responded that it is all about relationships, which means being present with young people, building trust, and respecting them. The reason this is true, not only for youth ministry but for all ministry, is that God is a God of relationships. God, within God’s very being, is relational.

The real bottom line is not how God encounters us, but rather what happens because of the encounter. Like Isaiah, when God meets us there is a question of how we respond, because God gets us moving. All of Scripture invites us into a relationship with God and invites us to see where God meets us. In that meeting, God transforms us, moves us, and invites us into a living faith. That’s what John’s Jesus means by being born anew and it’s what Paul in Romans means about being adopted as sons and daughters of God. When that happens, like Isaiah, our lips are seared, and we set aside to join God in life giving work. Look for those places where God is expanding your lives and be ready to say, “Here am I, send me.” Amen.

No comments:

Post a Comment