Josh Bascom, “Two Questions”

I had a professor in seminary who said that if you live in a town close to a seminary, the best Sunday of the entire year to skip church is Trinity Sunday—the Sunday after Pentecost, which just so happens to be today. The reason is that it’s a pretty daunting task to preach about the Holy Trinity. What is it? 3 in 1? How does that work? And so many ministers tend to pass off this task to a local seminarian who is actively studying this and eager to show off their recent comprehension St Augustine’s De Trinitate. Of course this never goes well. Much like a college freshmen coming home for their first Fall Break, eager to explain the ways of the world to their parents, nobody wants to hear this. And I can say this because I gave a couple of terrible Trinity Sunday sermons to an unfortunate congregation down in Chapel Hill five or six years ago. 

So today, this Trinity Sunday, I’m going to do my best to speak as little as possible about the Trinity, I’m not going unpack and explain it to you. Because today, I have no doubt, that you haven’t tuned in to hear some argument or lecture on philosophic theology. Instead, I have no doubt that you’re hearing/reading this hoping to hear something comforting, to hear a message of good news, to lower your blood pressure, to be inspired or imagine or experience something that draws the peace that passes all understanding a little closer to you and your life. 

In our reading from Isaiah 6, we’re given a vision of the Lord sitting powerfully on a throne, high and lofty. It’s a striking image, one that leaves you feeling small and underneath some mighty authority. We may shy away from words like authority and power these days in our society, where we regularly hear about or experience abuses and misuses of power, but perhaps this is a picture that in fact brings you a bit of comfort. Maybe your life feels out of order, out of control, and you’re hoping and praying that there is someone else behind and above it all who is truly in control. But regardless of whether you’re looking for or fleeing from authority in your life, authority like we see here, the high and lofty sort, can leave us feeling distant or alone if all we have is the image of a king sitting on some throne of clouds.  

And this is where the one-two punch of this passage lands for me. Because it doesn’t end with some royal portrait, simply promising us a distant presence of authority and control, instead it concludes with these verses: 

“Then one of the seraphs flew to me [flew to me and to you, right here where we sit, in the midst of our real and gritty lives], holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”

God’s control and presence, His authority and power and grace in our lives doesn’t stay up there on the throne, waiting for us to ascend, rather it appears to descend down to us. It touches us in the flesh, and it heals us of our guilt, our sins and our fears. 

A friend of ours in their 70’s recently had a couple of very serious and potentially life-threatening surgeries and procedures. Afterwards they reflected on their experience and the surprising level of peace and calm that overcame them, to a degree and in a way that could have only come from God Himself. This peace, they said, took the form of a deep focus on, as he saw it, the only two things that mattered. He was surprisingly not concerned with his past, with the ups and downs of his own story. Instead he was captivated by these two questions: “Where am I going after this? And do I have someone to sit here with me and hold my hand?” When I first heard this is it really moved me, because these are the questions at the root of so much of our anxiety and fear, regardless of what stage of life you find yourself in. “Where am I going after this? And do I have someone to sit here with me and hold my hand?”

Where are we going? Is there someone or something that is in control, so in control in fact that they have prepared a place for us on this side of the grave AND beyond it? The answer we hear throughout Scripture and if we’re given the gift of seeing and feeling this throughout our own lives, is a profound yes! There is a God who sits upon the throne of our lives, who has made us, provides for us and delivers us out of the darkness of our days and into the peace of his mercy. 

Do we have someone to sit here with us, in the midst of adversity, who can simply hold our hand? Of course we all respond to this question in our own particular ways. Some of us may be saddened by the reminder that we are painfully alone, searching for a partner or a community. Some of us may be taken to a place of gratitude for the spouse or friend we can rely on. While others struggle with thoughts of a broken relationship, or the loss of a loved one. But the Gospel gives us a universal truth, one that is absolute and unchanging regardless of our circumstances. A truth that directs us to an already present reality, that there is one among us, beside each and every one of us, someone more reliable, more trustworthy and more merciful than any spouse or friend ever could be. Someone who in fact is in even more control of our lives, thank God, than we are. 

At the heart of the Christian story is the word Emmanuel, “God with us”. Jesus listens to the stories of the people he meets who are suffering. He listens to us. He’s present with them and present with us. He holds their hands and through the Holy Spirit we have all been brought into that story, that ancient story has become a modern story, a story that has in fact become our reality. 

I’m sorry to say, but it looks like I’ve actually talked about the Trinity a fair amount today, maybe in a sneaky sort of way. And that’s because while we may not know exactly how the Trinity works, we do know that this is how God works. God is in control, sitting high on a throne of authority over all His creation, most notably you and me, in a way that can sound and seem very other or out or up there. But at the same time Jesus and the Holy Spirit are very near. The word became flesh and dwelled among us, dwelled and died for us. The spirit is with us and in us. We have a perfect and loving companion this side of the grave, and it just so happens that that companion is the same God who has prepared a place for us on the other side of the grave as well. 

I’ll close with a blessing that I’ve had the privilege of giving to a few men and women on their death beds. For me, it’s as good as we can get for a description of the way the Trinity works. It comes from our prayer book, and it’s just as powerful and hopeful and telling of God’s ways with and for us on our first day of life as it is on our last. So please close your eyes for a moment, and hear these words today:

Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world;
In the Name of God the Father Almighty who created you;
In the Name of Jesus Christ who redeemed you;
In the Name of the Holy Spirit who sustains you.
May your rest be this day in peace,
    and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.

Amen