Trinity Sunday
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle B
Theme For The Day
God's holiness awes, cleanses, inspires, and sends forth.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 6:1-8
The Call Of Isaiah
The opening lines of this passage, "In the year that King Uzziah died ..." set the reader up for an event of great significance. Yet, what follows is a vision of cosmic, not merely national, importance. "I saw the Lord," Isaiah bluntly declares, "sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple." The statuary and decorations of the temple interior mingle with Isaiah's vision, as in some strange dream: the seraphs -- huge, winged, angelic creatures that were carved on the sides of the throne in the temple -- come to life, hovering over the smoke-enshrouded area where the Lord has appeared. Their words, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts," have since come to be included in thousands of hymns and anthems. The smoke from the sacrifice that ordinarily fills the temple becomes, in Isaiah's vision, an element of the vision itself (v. 4). Holiness is the predominant theological idea in Isaiah's vision: the image of the Lord the young prophet is blessed to see is at once fearsome and powerful. The Hebrew word translated as "holy" is qadosh, which literally means that which is separated or removed from our ordinary lives. In verses 5-7 we learn that Isaiah's response to this awe-inspiring vision is to confess his sin -- to acknowledge himself as nothing by comparison. That he confesses himself to be "a man of unclean lips" is significant, in light of the prophetic vocation he will soon take up. The Lord's response is to send one of the seraphs flying over to him with a burning coal in a pair of tongs; the heat from the glowing coal purifies the prophet's lips, so his speech, henceforth, will be in service to God. Then, in verse 8, comes the divine calling itself: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Isaiah's humble and faith-filled response is, "Here am I, send me!"
New Testament Lesson
Romans 8:12-17
Adopted, Through The Spirit's Power, As God's Children
Last Sunday's New Testament Lesson was Romans 8:22-27; now we move back a dozen or so verses in this same chapter. As this passage opens, Paul is in the midst of expounding a favorite theme of his, the dichotomy between flesh and spirit. Rather than living as those in debt (or bondage) to the flesh, he advises the Roman Christians: "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (v. 13). What we have received from God, he continues, is not a spirit of slavery but a spirit of adoption (v. 14). Adoption was a well-established institution in the Roman world; a young man who had been officially adopted by a noble patron became, in every respect, that noble person's son. It is an extraordinary claim Paul's making here: that, through the Spirit, Christians are offered a spirit of adoption that gives them, in God's eyes, the same status as God's Son, Jesus. We are privileged to employ the same form of address Jesus used in speaking to God: the familiar term, "Abba" (v. 15). We are "heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." Yet, there is something expected of us in return: that "we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him" (v. 17). As a text for The Holy Trinity, this passage may be useful as an example of the close, familial relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity, and of the role of the third person (the Holy Spirit) in gracefully leading believers into that same familial relationship.
The Gospel
John 3:1-17
Jesus And Nicodemus
We return now to the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus. We have already considered a smaller section of this passage, verses 14-21, on the Fourth Sunday In Lent (see p. 91). This fuller version includes the narrative portion of the Nicodemus story in its entirety, omitting only the closing lines of Jesus' final discourse. (This omission is probably due to the fact that this closing section has recently appeared in the lectionary; logically, the entire block of material belongs together.) Readers could, perhaps, wish for a fuller exposition of the character of Nicodemus. John uses him in this passage primarily as a straw man against whom Jesus' argument is played out -- and the learned Pharisee is about as uncomprehending as if he were literally made of straw.
This is another example of how, in John, narrative details are subservient to the overarching purpose of expounding theology. This is especially evident here, in the fact that, once Jesus' discourse is finished, John never finishes the Nicodemus story. The question of whether or not the Pharisee ultimately buys Jesus' argument is evidently unimportant to him. Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night -- a fact that has led many commentators to suggest that he is fearful to be seen conversing with the Nazarene. At the very least, it means Nicodemus is seeking a private conversation. The Pharisee's opening words (v. 2) express his admiration for Jesus, and particularly for signs of power he has performed -- demonstrating that he is intending this to be a goodwill visit, and not an adversarial confrontation. Rather abruptly, Jesus states, "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above" (v. 3). This is a notoriously difficult expression to translate. The verb gennao, here translated "born," can also mean "begotten" -- referring, in other words, to either the male or female mode of parenting. The adverb agothen can mean both "from above" and "again." It is possible that John is aware of, and exploits, the double meaning: either one -- or both -- makes sense in the larger context. Seemingly oblivious to the possibility of metaphor, Nicodemus asks, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" (v. 4).
Jesus repeats his previous assertion about the necessity of rebirth, adding only the detail that this rebirth must be "of water and Spirit" (v. 5). It is unclear what Jesus means here by "water" -- possibly the baptism of John, possibly Christian baptism, possibly Jewish purification rituals (with which Nicodemus would have been familiar), possibly amniotic fluid. There is no definite article before "spirit," so it is possible Jesus means the Holy Spirit, and possibly some more generic sense of the word -- although the fact that he uses "Spirit" with the definite article in verses 6 and 8 suggests the former.
In any event, Jesus is drawing a distinction between flesh and Spirit (v. 6), and is indicating that a decision for the way of the Spirit is the better course. In verse 8, most translators choose to translate pneuma as "wind" the first time it occurs and as "spirit" the second time. Like the Hebrew ruach, the same word suffices for both -- another Johannine double meaning. John is probably not operating under Greek mind-body dualism, in any event. For him and for most of his contemporaries, the moment of human death is when the breath, the wind, leaves the body. Flesh is the lower nature that is animated by breath, which is synonymous with the life-force. With its allusion to the unpredictable wind, this verse testifies to the utterly free and unbounded nature of the Holy Spirit. In verse 9, Nicodemus responds with a total lack of comprehension, and in verse 10, Jesus speaks to him in a rather condescending fashion.
From this point on, John drops his narrative framework and enters full discourse mode. See the Fourth Sunday In Lent (p. 91) for comments on the remainder of this passage.
Preaching Possibilities
There's a certain fascination that sends people out into storms, just to experience the power of the elements. My family and I sometimes venture out onto the beach, when a hurricane or nor'easter passes by our portion of the Atlantic coast. Tasting the grit of sand in our mouths, squinting our eyes between the wind-gusts to look at the storm's fury, we gaze out over what is usually a broad bathing-beach, but on this night is simply no longer there.
Not most of it, anyway. The waves break close to the line of sand dunes that are held in place by the wooden snow fencing and what's left of the dune grass. As for the waves themselves, they look different. No longer are they that sequential series of rollers, typical in calmer weather. No: in the midst of a storm, the sea seems as one, huge wave. Above the roiling mass of olive-green water there hangs a wreath of mist. The sound the sea makes is a continuous crashing.
Why do we do it? What makes otherwise sane, logical people so bold as to go down to the beach -- the beach, of all places -- on a cold night, in the middle of a storm? Fascination sends us down there: the same fascination that sends people careening over Oklahoma backroads in pickup trucks, chasing tornados ... the same attraction that fills theaters with moviegoers eager to witness the watery demise of a steamship named "Titanic." It's an encounter with what theologian Rudolf Otto calls, in his famous book, The Idea of the Holy, mysterium tremendum et fascinans -- "tremendous and fascinating mystery." That's his definition of holiness.
It's much bigger than we are, this mystery. What's intrinsically fascinating about it is how little we, ourselves, can dream of controlling it -- not to mention the whiff of danger that lurks around its edges! In the lee of the storm, you and I glimpse ourselves, outlined in a flash of lightning, as we really are: small and vulnerable, finite and limited.
In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah has his vision: Uzziah, the king who had begun his reign with such promise, but who died in disgrace. Who is it who has power to cast down kings from their thrones? It can only be the Lord! The God who cursed King Uzziah with leprosy, and who appears to Isaiah "sitting on a throne, high and lofty," in the temple, is a figure of dreadful power, who calls forth incredible fear. The very foundations of the temple seem shaken.
"Woe is me!" cries Isaiah. "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!" It's the kind of thing you just might shout into the wind as a nor'easter is raging: but the wind whips your words away, off into space. What are words, anyway? How long do they last? Words are but fragile, transitory things: so much like us, our fleeting human lives. In the presence of the holy, ego-inflated pride shrinks away to nothingness.
This text from Isaiah is troubling to modern ears. Few of us come to church expecting to hear someone cry out, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips...." The truth is, most of us would rather not hear about that sort of thing. Wouldn't we rather practice "the power of positive thinking"? Wouldn't we prefer to surround ourselves with self-affirmation ... to build up our self-esteem ... to reassure ourselves with the mantra of televangelist Robert Schuller: "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better"?
The problem is, for Isaiah, that his vision doesn't allow him to do that. The light of God's glory has cast the prophet's shadow onto the wall behind him, in sharp relief -- and he doesn't much like the silhouette he sees. Before Isaiah can do a thing more, the angel must hover over him: touching his lips, for the briefest instant, with a burning-hot coal from the fire on the altar. The heat from the sacrificial fire burns all his sin away.
Is Isaiah trying, in this passage, to bad-mouth the human race? Is it his goal to declare that people are just no good, that deep down within us we're all rotten to the core? No, his first intention is to elevate God, not to denigrate humanity. Isaiah is declaring that this God whom he has encountered in the temple is so huge, so awe-inspiring -- so wholly other -- that his life is as nothing by comparison.
What this great text is about, fundamentally, is awe. It's about the feeling the psalmist calls, "fear of the Lord." Isaiah's God is a God who cannot be trivialized -- yet don't we try, so often, to do just that? Don't we endeavor to drag God down to our level? The one of whom the angels sing, "the whole earth is full of his glory" is not our buddy, our friend, our congenial traveling companion. This God can never be the great cosmic vending machine we sometimes wish we had -- into which we plunk our prayers, like coins, expecting a sugary treat to fall out. This God is not the one who is responsible, in any way, for insuring that our lives on this earth are happy.
Once you and I are touched by holiness, our lives are never the same again. That empty place within is unveiled to the light: and the revealing of it can be (and often is) a fearful experience. Yet, thank the Lord, that "empty place" within each of us is a God-shaped place. Into that empty place comes Jesus Christ, the Lord.
Prayer For The Day
Holy, holy, holy are you, Lord God of hosts: the whole earth is filled with your glory! Give to us, we pray, in moments of your own choosing, some glimpse of your glory -- and of our own unworthiness. May such a vision be, for us, like a burning coal placed to our lips. May we be sanctified by your presence, and sent out on the road of life to respond obediently to your call to serve. Amen.
To Illustrate
Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a last judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
-- John Updike
***
What I mean is that if we come to a church right, we come to it more fully and nakedly ourselves, come with more of our humanness showing, than we are apt to come to most places.... Like Moses [at the burning bush], we come here as we are, and like him we come as strangers and exiles in our way because wherever it is that we truly belong, whatever it is that is truly home for us, we know in our hearts that we have somehow lost it and gotten lost. Something is missing from our lives that we cannot even name -- something we know best from the empty place inside us all where it belongs.
-- Frederick Buechner
***
In an interesting homiletical move, John Donne emphasizes the infinite distance between us and holiness by a mathematical argument. It doesn't matter how many times one multiplies it, zero is still zero (among many apt analogies, he includes one about the span of life -- prophetic, considering the fact that he couldn't have known how long modern medicine would be able to expand the duration of life):
If I twist a cable of infinite fadomes in length, if there be no ship to ride by it, nor anchor to hold by it, what use is there of it? If Mannor thrust Mannor, and title flow into title, and bags powre out into chests, if I have no anchor, (faith in Christ) if I have not a ship to carry to a haven, (a soule to save) what's my long cable to me? If I adde number to number, a span, a mile long, if at the end of that long line of numbers, there be nothing that notes, pounds, or crownes, or shillings; what's that long number, but so many millions and millions of nothing? If my span of life become a mile of life, my penny a pound, my pint a gallon, my acre a sheere; yet if there be nothing of the next world at the end, so much pace of conscience, so much joy, so much glory, still all is but nothing multiplied, and that is still nothing at all. 'Tis the end that qualifies all; and what kinde of man I shall be at my end, upon my death-bed, what trembling hands, what lost legs, what deafe ears, what gummy eyes, I shall have then, I know; and the nearer I come to that disposition, in my life, (the more mortified I am) the better I am disposed to see this object, future glory. God made the Sun, and Moon, and Stars, glorious lights for man to see by; but mans infirmity requires spectacles; and affliction does that office.
-- John Donne, Sermon XXXI, in Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (London: Nonesuch, 1946), pp. 699-700
***
Eugene Peterson, in one of his books, says every church worthy of the name should be required by law to post a sign warning, "Beware the God."
***
There is no less holiness at this time -- as you are reading this -- than there was the day the Red Sea parted.... There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said, "Maid, arise" to the centurion's daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant, the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant, the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant, you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.
-- Annie Dillard, For the Time Being (New York: Knopf, 1999)
God's holiness awes, cleanses, inspires, and sends forth.
Old Testament Lesson
Isaiah 6:1-8
The Call Of Isaiah
The opening lines of this passage, "In the year that King Uzziah died ..." set the reader up for an event of great significance. Yet, what follows is a vision of cosmic, not merely national, importance. "I saw the Lord," Isaiah bluntly declares, "sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple." The statuary and decorations of the temple interior mingle with Isaiah's vision, as in some strange dream: the seraphs -- huge, winged, angelic creatures that were carved on the sides of the throne in the temple -- come to life, hovering over the smoke-enshrouded area where the Lord has appeared. Their words, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts," have since come to be included in thousands of hymns and anthems. The smoke from the sacrifice that ordinarily fills the temple becomes, in Isaiah's vision, an element of the vision itself (v. 4). Holiness is the predominant theological idea in Isaiah's vision: the image of the Lord the young prophet is blessed to see is at once fearsome and powerful. The Hebrew word translated as "holy" is qadosh, which literally means that which is separated or removed from our ordinary lives. In verses 5-7 we learn that Isaiah's response to this awe-inspiring vision is to confess his sin -- to acknowledge himself as nothing by comparison. That he confesses himself to be "a man of unclean lips" is significant, in light of the prophetic vocation he will soon take up. The Lord's response is to send one of the seraphs flying over to him with a burning coal in a pair of tongs; the heat from the glowing coal purifies the prophet's lips, so his speech, henceforth, will be in service to God. Then, in verse 8, comes the divine calling itself: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Isaiah's humble and faith-filled response is, "Here am I, send me!"
New Testament Lesson
Romans 8:12-17
Adopted, Through The Spirit's Power, As God's Children
Last Sunday's New Testament Lesson was Romans 8:22-27; now we move back a dozen or so verses in this same chapter. As this passage opens, Paul is in the midst of expounding a favorite theme of his, the dichotomy between flesh and spirit. Rather than living as those in debt (or bondage) to the flesh, he advises the Roman Christians: "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live" (v. 13). What we have received from God, he continues, is not a spirit of slavery but a spirit of adoption (v. 14). Adoption was a well-established institution in the Roman world; a young man who had been officially adopted by a noble patron became, in every respect, that noble person's son. It is an extraordinary claim Paul's making here: that, through the Spirit, Christians are offered a spirit of adoption that gives them, in God's eyes, the same status as God's Son, Jesus. We are privileged to employ the same form of address Jesus used in speaking to God: the familiar term, "Abba" (v. 15). We are "heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." Yet, there is something expected of us in return: that "we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him" (v. 17). As a text for The Holy Trinity, this passage may be useful as an example of the close, familial relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity, and of the role of the third person (the Holy Spirit) in gracefully leading believers into that same familial relationship.
The Gospel
John 3:1-17
Jesus And Nicodemus
We return now to the encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus. We have already considered a smaller section of this passage, verses 14-21, on the Fourth Sunday In Lent (see p. 91). This fuller version includes the narrative portion of the Nicodemus story in its entirety, omitting only the closing lines of Jesus' final discourse. (This omission is probably due to the fact that this closing section has recently appeared in the lectionary; logically, the entire block of material belongs together.) Readers could, perhaps, wish for a fuller exposition of the character of Nicodemus. John uses him in this passage primarily as a straw man against whom Jesus' argument is played out -- and the learned Pharisee is about as uncomprehending as if he were literally made of straw.
This is another example of how, in John, narrative details are subservient to the overarching purpose of expounding theology. This is especially evident here, in the fact that, once Jesus' discourse is finished, John never finishes the Nicodemus story. The question of whether or not the Pharisee ultimately buys Jesus' argument is evidently unimportant to him. Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night -- a fact that has led many commentators to suggest that he is fearful to be seen conversing with the Nazarene. At the very least, it means Nicodemus is seeking a private conversation. The Pharisee's opening words (v. 2) express his admiration for Jesus, and particularly for signs of power he has performed -- demonstrating that he is intending this to be a goodwill visit, and not an adversarial confrontation. Rather abruptly, Jesus states, "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above" (v. 3). This is a notoriously difficult expression to translate. The verb gennao, here translated "born," can also mean "begotten" -- referring, in other words, to either the male or female mode of parenting. The adverb agothen can mean both "from above" and "again." It is possible that John is aware of, and exploits, the double meaning: either one -- or both -- makes sense in the larger context. Seemingly oblivious to the possibility of metaphor, Nicodemus asks, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" (v. 4).
Jesus repeats his previous assertion about the necessity of rebirth, adding only the detail that this rebirth must be "of water and Spirit" (v. 5). It is unclear what Jesus means here by "water" -- possibly the baptism of John, possibly Christian baptism, possibly Jewish purification rituals (with which Nicodemus would have been familiar), possibly amniotic fluid. There is no definite article before "spirit," so it is possible Jesus means the Holy Spirit, and possibly some more generic sense of the word -- although the fact that he uses "Spirit" with the definite article in verses 6 and 8 suggests the former.
In any event, Jesus is drawing a distinction between flesh and Spirit (v. 6), and is indicating that a decision for the way of the Spirit is the better course. In verse 8, most translators choose to translate pneuma as "wind" the first time it occurs and as "spirit" the second time. Like the Hebrew ruach, the same word suffices for both -- another Johannine double meaning. John is probably not operating under Greek mind-body dualism, in any event. For him and for most of his contemporaries, the moment of human death is when the breath, the wind, leaves the body. Flesh is the lower nature that is animated by breath, which is synonymous with the life-force. With its allusion to the unpredictable wind, this verse testifies to the utterly free and unbounded nature of the Holy Spirit. In verse 9, Nicodemus responds with a total lack of comprehension, and in verse 10, Jesus speaks to him in a rather condescending fashion.
From this point on, John drops his narrative framework and enters full discourse mode. See the Fourth Sunday In Lent (p. 91) for comments on the remainder of this passage.
Preaching Possibilities
There's a certain fascination that sends people out into storms, just to experience the power of the elements. My family and I sometimes venture out onto the beach, when a hurricane or nor'easter passes by our portion of the Atlantic coast. Tasting the grit of sand in our mouths, squinting our eyes between the wind-gusts to look at the storm's fury, we gaze out over what is usually a broad bathing-beach, but on this night is simply no longer there.
Not most of it, anyway. The waves break close to the line of sand dunes that are held in place by the wooden snow fencing and what's left of the dune grass. As for the waves themselves, they look different. No longer are they that sequential series of rollers, typical in calmer weather. No: in the midst of a storm, the sea seems as one, huge wave. Above the roiling mass of olive-green water there hangs a wreath of mist. The sound the sea makes is a continuous crashing.
Why do we do it? What makes otherwise sane, logical people so bold as to go down to the beach -- the beach, of all places -- on a cold night, in the middle of a storm? Fascination sends us down there: the same fascination that sends people careening over Oklahoma backroads in pickup trucks, chasing tornados ... the same attraction that fills theaters with moviegoers eager to witness the watery demise of a steamship named "Titanic." It's an encounter with what theologian Rudolf Otto calls, in his famous book, The Idea of the Holy, mysterium tremendum et fascinans -- "tremendous and fascinating mystery." That's his definition of holiness.
It's much bigger than we are, this mystery. What's intrinsically fascinating about it is how little we, ourselves, can dream of controlling it -- not to mention the whiff of danger that lurks around its edges! In the lee of the storm, you and I glimpse ourselves, outlined in a flash of lightning, as we really are: small and vulnerable, finite and limited.
In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah has his vision: Uzziah, the king who had begun his reign with such promise, but who died in disgrace. Who is it who has power to cast down kings from their thrones? It can only be the Lord! The God who cursed King Uzziah with leprosy, and who appears to Isaiah "sitting on a throne, high and lofty," in the temple, is a figure of dreadful power, who calls forth incredible fear. The very foundations of the temple seem shaken.
"Woe is me!" cries Isaiah. "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!" It's the kind of thing you just might shout into the wind as a nor'easter is raging: but the wind whips your words away, off into space. What are words, anyway? How long do they last? Words are but fragile, transitory things: so much like us, our fleeting human lives. In the presence of the holy, ego-inflated pride shrinks away to nothingness.
This text from Isaiah is troubling to modern ears. Few of us come to church expecting to hear someone cry out, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips...." The truth is, most of us would rather not hear about that sort of thing. Wouldn't we rather practice "the power of positive thinking"? Wouldn't we prefer to surround ourselves with self-affirmation ... to build up our self-esteem ... to reassure ourselves with the mantra of televangelist Robert Schuller: "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better"?
The problem is, for Isaiah, that his vision doesn't allow him to do that. The light of God's glory has cast the prophet's shadow onto the wall behind him, in sharp relief -- and he doesn't much like the silhouette he sees. Before Isaiah can do a thing more, the angel must hover over him: touching his lips, for the briefest instant, with a burning-hot coal from the fire on the altar. The heat from the sacrificial fire burns all his sin away.
Is Isaiah trying, in this passage, to bad-mouth the human race? Is it his goal to declare that people are just no good, that deep down within us we're all rotten to the core? No, his first intention is to elevate God, not to denigrate humanity. Isaiah is declaring that this God whom he has encountered in the temple is so huge, so awe-inspiring -- so wholly other -- that his life is as nothing by comparison.
What this great text is about, fundamentally, is awe. It's about the feeling the psalmist calls, "fear of the Lord." Isaiah's God is a God who cannot be trivialized -- yet don't we try, so often, to do just that? Don't we endeavor to drag God down to our level? The one of whom the angels sing, "the whole earth is full of his glory" is not our buddy, our friend, our congenial traveling companion. This God can never be the great cosmic vending machine we sometimes wish we had -- into which we plunk our prayers, like coins, expecting a sugary treat to fall out. This God is not the one who is responsible, in any way, for insuring that our lives on this earth are happy.
Once you and I are touched by holiness, our lives are never the same again. That empty place within is unveiled to the light: and the revealing of it can be (and often is) a fearful experience. Yet, thank the Lord, that "empty place" within each of us is a God-shaped place. Into that empty place comes Jesus Christ, the Lord.
Prayer For The Day
Holy, holy, holy are you, Lord God of hosts: the whole earth is filled with your glory! Give to us, we pray, in moments of your own choosing, some glimpse of your glory -- and of our own unworthiness. May such a vision be, for us, like a burning coal placed to our lips. May we be sanctified by your presence, and sent out on the road of life to respond obediently to your call to serve. Amen.
To Illustrate
Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a last judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.
-- John Updike
***
What I mean is that if we come to a church right, we come to it more fully and nakedly ourselves, come with more of our humanness showing, than we are apt to come to most places.... Like Moses [at the burning bush], we come here as we are, and like him we come as strangers and exiles in our way because wherever it is that we truly belong, whatever it is that is truly home for us, we know in our hearts that we have somehow lost it and gotten lost. Something is missing from our lives that we cannot even name -- something we know best from the empty place inside us all where it belongs.
-- Frederick Buechner
***
In an interesting homiletical move, John Donne emphasizes the infinite distance between us and holiness by a mathematical argument. It doesn't matter how many times one multiplies it, zero is still zero (among many apt analogies, he includes one about the span of life -- prophetic, considering the fact that he couldn't have known how long modern medicine would be able to expand the duration of life):
If I twist a cable of infinite fadomes in length, if there be no ship to ride by it, nor anchor to hold by it, what use is there of it? If Mannor thrust Mannor, and title flow into title, and bags powre out into chests, if I have no anchor, (faith in Christ) if I have not a ship to carry to a haven, (a soule to save) what's my long cable to me? If I adde number to number, a span, a mile long, if at the end of that long line of numbers, there be nothing that notes, pounds, or crownes, or shillings; what's that long number, but so many millions and millions of nothing? If my span of life become a mile of life, my penny a pound, my pint a gallon, my acre a sheere; yet if there be nothing of the next world at the end, so much pace of conscience, so much joy, so much glory, still all is but nothing multiplied, and that is still nothing at all. 'Tis the end that qualifies all; and what kinde of man I shall be at my end, upon my death-bed, what trembling hands, what lost legs, what deafe ears, what gummy eyes, I shall have then, I know; and the nearer I come to that disposition, in my life, (the more mortified I am) the better I am disposed to see this object, future glory. God made the Sun, and Moon, and Stars, glorious lights for man to see by; but mans infirmity requires spectacles; and affliction does that office.
-- John Donne, Sermon XXXI, in Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (London: Nonesuch, 1946), pp. 699-700
***
Eugene Peterson, in one of his books, says every church worthy of the name should be required by law to post a sign warning, "Beware the God."
***
There is no less holiness at this time -- as you are reading this -- than there was the day the Red Sea parted.... There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said, "Maid, arise" to the centurion's daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant, the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant, the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant, you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture.
-- Annie Dillard, For the Time Being (New York: Knopf, 1999)
