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Our scripture passage this morning comes from the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, verses 1-8.
6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 The pivots[a] on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph[b] touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
God is a girl… that’s what my daughter told me. She wasn’t right… but she wasn’t wrong either. Who god is, what god is, those are questions that fill whole lives of study and contemplation, they help people to determine their own identities, and for some they establish hierarchies and systems of worth and authority, systems and hierarchies with which they navigate the world. For still others they clearly establish a line between themselves and God. Who is God is no small question, what is God is no small question… What would you say if I asked you, who is God, what words or ideas would you use to describe the God that you here this morning to worship. For someone watching online, or sitting in these pews today, or maybe not, be honest with yourselves even if you don’t share with other people, maybe the word worship is awkward, or even uncomfortable… and maybe that has to do with how you would answer those questions, who and what is God?
Today is Trinity Sunday, and I love that word in our Christian tradition, trinity. Outside of our faith a trinity is very simply thing, a trio, or set of three people or things. That’s one thing plus one thing plus one thing equals 3 things. Pretty clear right? So why in the world does math, the straightforward 1,2,3 of it all, suddenly go out the window when God gets involved. For trinitarian Christians like you and me, the math goes more like, one plus one plus one equals one, and to further complicate matters each individual element of the trinity, is equivalent to the entirety of the trinity. If you are having trouble with that math, your not alone. Many a meal on my seminary campus was spent constructing and disproving metaphors and other ways of wrestling with the Trinity, and though some of those discussions got… exciting, they may have offered more to my understanding of those big questions, who and what is God, than whole semesters of class and study did.
But, lets look at things a bit differently today, today let’s talk about who God is, what God is, when we need God. I would like to share something I witnessed in my time as a chaplain intern in a Boston hospital, but before that let’s talk about Isaiah. In this morning’s scripture passage from Isaiah, we hear about a moment when Isaiah encountered God. Maybe it was a dream, maybe a vision, maybe it was an actual encounter, to be honest I don’t think it matters. Ok it would be cool if the moment that Isaiah described literally happened, but in my opinion, from Isaiah’s perspective that day, the literalness of things was not important… only the result of the encounter.
You see, Isaiah was a prophet, or you might also say advisor to the King of Judah, so his role was to commune with God and with kings and generals and to offer God’s wisdom, and his own, to those men, and unfortunately they were probably all men… who held so many lives in their hands… so in extension one could say that Isaiah also held those lives in his hands. That’s a lot of pressure, and in Isaiah’s day there was the constant threat of Assyrian attack, and Isaiah felt unsure he was up to the task set before him, he admits as much in the passage from this morning, referencing his unclean lips.
And it is to that man, that man with so much on his shoulders, that man so unsure of his worthiness, that God came in the scripture, and God came exactly as Isaiah needed God to come. Isaiah was in the temple and it was filled with the hem of God’s robe, let’s just pause there, the temple was not a closet, it was huge… even the smaller chamber at the center, the Holy of Holies, where God was supposed to literally live, and only High priests were permitted to enter, even that room, was like 30 by 30, it was big, so to fill it with the hem of a robe is a significant thing. But to someone accustomed to kings, and attuned to the sights and sounds of a kings court this robe would have represented so much more than a momentous dry cleaning bill, it would have signified power and glory, announcing the kingly status of the God that Isaiah saw before him, seated far above, and waited on by six winged angels that sang Gods praises as they flew about the room. With that in mind, and with Isaiah’s burdened mind and body in mind, it makes sense that he would fear his inadequacy in this moment, but God does not dismiss him as unworthy, but through an angel, lifts Isaiah’s perceived weakness, burning it away with a coal. And when God calls out, in search of whom to send, Isaiah stands tall and says, here I am! To a man burdened by the weight of his work, God came as a source of power, glory and authority, to imbue that man with a sense of his own worth, God came as the God Isaiah needed!
When I was working as a chaplaincy intern at that Boston hospital, I was assigned three units. One was a trauma ICU, one was an oncology ICU, and one was an ortho floor. On the trauma unit I met with people facing burns, gunshots, and infections that took too many lives during my short time there, and the oncology unit sat me down with folks facing their own mortality as they fought often unfair battles with an unseen invader. In those two units I knew from day one that I was in over my head, out of my depth… but the ortho floor was something different. Most of the patients on that floor, were in and out, bones repaired, medications given, and then off they went to rehab or home, to recover and return to their lives, but while the overall weight of things on that ortho floor was lighter, it was not without challenges. One particular encounter for me, stands out as a moment when God comes as we need God to come. I was paged STAT to a room on the ortho floor, which was unusual to say the least. I was met by a nurse at the desk who took me to a room where a woman was howling and moaning in pain. She needed an IV but could not stop writhing and twisting and clenching as the pain she felt overwhelmed her and took control of her body. The nurse said to me, I don’t know if you can do anything to make her calm down enough for us to get this IV in, but maybe you can just distract her a bit, I don’t know… so there I was, a distraction… I walked into the dark room, and took a place at this poor woman’s side, I introduced myself, and honestly didn’t know if she could even hear me, but soon, through spasming gasps she asked to hear a passage from Ecclesiastes, you probably know it, to everything there is a season, etc. etc. I almost chuckled, why would she want to hear this passage, but as we read it, and I mean we, because as I read that passage aloud, she mouthed the words along with me… and to my surprise, and it was a surprise, she began to lay still, or still enough, because before I knew it, the nurses had the IV in and a visible relief came over the woman’s body as modern medicine did its magic. We spoke and prayed for a bit as she rested in her bed, and I embarrassedly said to her, can I ask, why that passage? I could think of so many other words to offer comfort, but that passage hadn’t even occurred to me. And to paraphrase, she said it had always been a comfort to her, and that in that passage she found God in all things, good and bad, and to know that she wasn’t alone in her pain, to know that when she was facing too much that even then God walked with her, that was the comfort she needed to face the un-faceable. God came to her in that moment, just as she needed God to come.
I can’t speak for my daughter, but I think I know why she said God is a girl. My daughter finds joy and excitement in stories of strong girls and women, as a musician herself, she especially adores the voices and personalities of female musicians, and I love this about her. So when I hear her describe God as a girl, I can’t help thinking that in a God that can call up mountains from the depths, create universes and call them Good, and give of themselves as a sign of love, and a God that also happens be a Girl just like her, my daughter can begin to see her own worth, value, and potential. God, the little girl, is the God my Emily needs to explore the world for what it is, a gift of possibility.
The Trinity is a complicated, moderately confusing idea, and sometimes I think it fails to describe God at all. It fails to show how God is a little girl, how God, is a majestic king, and how God is a promise of presence, it fails to describe all the ways that God comes to us as we need God to come. But sometimes if we can distance ourselves from outdated masculine father language, it’s a helpful reminder of God’s roles in our lives, and maybe it’s not a total failure, that fails to convey the ways that God is and was and always will be the Source, the Way, and the Life. For God is the source, of all things, God through Jesus Christ is the way, the way of justice, peace, and love, and through the constancy of the holy spirit God is the life, that burns in all of creation, pushing and driving all things forward…
Remember, God isn’t just an old white man with a long beard sitting on a cloud somewhere, God is whatever we need God to be! God is the voice in our hearts reminding us of our worth, offering us comfort, and calling us to action. Amen