A Homily for Trinity Sunday

[Isaiah 6:1-7 / Romans 11:33-36 / John 3:1-15]

How often had Isaiah served in the temple? How often had he participated in its liturgy? How well he knew it! But then there came that day, that life-changing day, when the earthly scene in front of him melted away and he was left trembling, staring open-mouthed into the very heart of heaven. He saw God. And the sight terrified him.

He saw Yahweh sitting on his throne high above the earth, the train of his robe swirling down and filling the earthly temple. He saw seraphim, angels of fire, above Yahweh, six-winged, flying and calling. He heard their song: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

And he thought he was through. He cried out: “Woe is me! I am undone. I am cut off. I am dead meat.” He thought he was about to die. And so he made confession: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” He confessed that he was a sinner and that the sin showed up by what he said; and he was part and parcel of a people who sinned with their lips too. Suddenly brought into the presence of Truth Himself, every lie he’d ever told seemed to be filling his mouth with a polluted and foul taste and smell. He knew he was done for.

But then something he had never expected happened. One of the seraphim took tongs to the altar before God and took a live, burning coal and with it he seared the mouth of the Seer, he purged the mouth of the prophet. He told him: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt it taken away, and your sin is atoned for.” The angel did not tell him that his guilt and sin weren’t real. The angel told him that they had been taken away from him and atoned for by another, and the touch of the living fire of God delivered that gift to him. Isaiah that day became a new man, a man with a mission. A man with cleansed lips, dedicated now to speaking what they heard from God.

It is somewhat of a contrast when we move to the Gospel reading. Make no mistake about it: there sits the One before whom Isaiah trembled in fear. There he sits not on a high and lofty throne, but probably on a dining coach in a humble home, wearing not the great train that Isaiah saw, but clothed in our own flesh and blood. No seraphim in sight. And in comes Nicodemus. Blind to who is before him. As blind as Isaiah was all those times he worshipped at the temple without realizing the terror and awe of the unseen presence of God.

Nicodemus is ready for a theological chat. But Jesus tells him: “You must be born again.” And what does Nicodemus do with that? He argues whether or not it is possible. “Can an old man creep back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus doesn’t back down. He pushes it further: “Unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter God’s kingdom. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.”

Flesh born of flesh. The most a rebel human being can conceive is another rebel human being. Oh, the rebel may put on a good show. May try his hardest to live according to the law of God. But the problem is that God doesn’t look at the outward show. God’s eyes pry right down into the heart, they behold the inner most being, and what he inevitably sees there is the old Adam, singing his old song: “I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it; and I’ll do it too whenever I think I can get away with it. I want to be the one who calls the shots. I want to be the boss.” That’s what lives inside of everyone of us who is flesh born of flesh.

And so we need the new birth that the Spirit gives. The Spirit who gives birth to spirit within us. Who plants inside of us a new heart, a new will, a desire that marks us as true children of God, who pray: “thy will be done, Holy Father, thy will be done!”

This new birth comes in the waters of Baptism. That’s what Jesus was inviting Nicodemus to. That’s what he was inviting everyone to when he said: “You must be born again.” But it is not as though, God takes out the old heart and gives you the new one. No, he transplants that new heart in Baptism and it beats right alongside the other heart, not in peaceful coexistence, but in constant conflict and battle. Will we live from the old heart and it’s will to have it’s own way; or will we live from the new heart that the Spirit gave us in Baptism, the heart that wills and longs for God’s will to be done?

The premiere mark of living from the old heart is in how the old Adam thinks of God. He’s the joy-squelcher. He’s the rule-maker. He’s the one who demands this and that, and who is determined to make us miserable by not letting us do all the things we want to do. He’s the God who out to get us and make us pay for not keeping all his heavy demands.

That’s the God Isaiah was afraid he was meeting in the temple, and so he cried out: “Woe is me!” That’s the God Nicodemus had bargained with all his life, trying to butter him up by a fine display of outward obedience. Only problem is: that God doesn’t exist. Isaiah found that out with the touch of a burning coal and the gift of forgiveness. Nicodemus found it out too, when that God in our flesh said to him: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

For our God is not a God that deals with us by pay backs. “Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” as our epistle had it. He’s not a God who is out to take from you, but a God whose heart is set on giving to you. This is the only true God, the blessed Trinity, the Father who gives the Son into our flesh, the Son who pours out the Spirit, the Spirit who plants that new heart in us and brings us to faith in the Son, that the Son might present us before the Father, that God might be all in all for us.

Today you who have been baptized come to the Table. Today your lips are touched with the living flesh and blood of the Son of God. And suddenly you are there with Isaiah: “Behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has been taken away and your sin atoned.” That’s the gift of life from the God who delights in giving, the Most Blessed Trinity before whom we join with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, evermore praising and singing: Holy, holy, holy. Amen.