Smoke and mirrors

 

Isaiah 6: 1-8
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
May 30, 2021 – Trinity Sunday

Here we are again: another vision, like something out of a dream—or nightmare, depending on your point of view. This is Isaiah’s call story: how and when and why he was called to be one of God’s prophets.



Like most stories, it begins before we meet the hero. Uzziah was king of the southern kingdom of Judah with its capital in Jerusalem, and Jeroboam II was king of the northern kingdom of Israel with its capital city of Samaria. Like those before him King Uzziah was complicated. There was much he accomplished as a statesman, a military commander, and as a captain of industry and innovation. Judah thrived under his leadership. Yet even though Uzziah was a pious man and observed all the religious laws and requirements, he also made a grab for power by insisting that he also be high priest like his idolatrous counterpart to the north. Though priests and scholars tried to put him off, Uzziah persisted in his desire for more power. He entered the Holy of Holies and began to offer incense on the golden altar. Before he could finish, he was struck with leprosy, which was a catchall way of saying he was covered in sin which made him unclean, unfit to be in the Temple, to be king, to be in community with any of his people. He lived the rest of his life in seclusion in a house near the cemetery.

King Uzziah

And so it is at the end of Uzziah’s life that Isaiah has his vision and disrupts his life to be one of God’s prophets, God’s truthtellers. Isaiah’s vision of God is that God is the Master on his throne, the highest of high priests, the most majestic of kings, the hem of his robe filling the Temple. God has celestial attendants called seraphim, six-winged burning snakes of fire, smoke billowing throughout the house as the seraphim call to each other praises of God’s glory being the fullness of the earth.



Isaiah can hardly speak in the presence of such vast power and holiness. Instantly he is reminded of his unworthiness to be in such a presence for having witnessed such grandness and majesty. And it is only through pain and torture that Isaiah is declared forgiven and now worthy. This scene reminds me of a young farm girl, her stalwart dog, and three timid friends who approach a wizard in his smoke-filled throne room in a similar state of mind, who must also endure pain in order to prove their worthiness of the help they need.







What is it about greatness and power, or even the illusion of greatness and power, that makes us think we’re less than, that reminds us of every wrong and bad thing we’ve done, mistakes we’ve made, our failures and flaws, rather than our belovedness? Too often submission and obedience are given to the powerful out of fear and panic. The imagery in Isaiah’s vision comes out of patriarchy, hierarchy, and a warped sense of purity, divorced of any relationship or connection to wholeness, the creation, and ordinary human lives.



Indeed, it is a strange text to prescribe for Trinity Sunday, when we remember that God is relational. Father, Son, and Spirit. Mother, Child, and Advocate. Guardian, Vulnerable One, and Friend. And yet God is also mystery, hard to define like smoke, heard in the cracking of lightning as well as in the silence. It was mystery that the Wizard of Oz abused to carry off the illusion of power and greatness. In the end he was just a man behind the curtain. Dorothy had her own trinity of brains, heart, and courage, and held the power to take herself home all along, but she had to learn it for herself. That was the imagery and the relationships that compelled her to say yes to her journey, to say yes to disrupting her life for her friends, to participate in her own transformation.

Eternal Mystery of Trinity, John Stuart

What image of God, what vision of holiness, what relationship would compel you to say yes to your journey, to say yes to disrupting your life for the sake of others, to participate in your own transformation? Almost 30 years ago I said “here I am, send me” because church saved my life. I thought if I could give that gift to another young person, someone else who didn’t think they were worthy of love and acceptance, I would give my life to that, in return for the life I received. I had no idea that five years later I would give it all up for another claim upon my heart, that of motherhood.



All of us have disrupted our lives in so many ways, willingly and unwillingly, because someone else needed us to, for the sake of their wholeness, healing, for their courage to be who they are. Isn’t that what it means to be a parent, sibling, offspring, partner, lover, friend, human? What if “trinity” is another way of saying God is unlimited and unbound by human convention and constructs? What if God is both smoke and mirrors, mystery and image, silence and sound, all of creation steeped in holiness, including us and our belovedness?

When we are called to disrupt our lives, we are being asked to see God, to know holiness, to find ourselves in the other, to find them in us. It’s not just acceptance or affirmation that is required of us. Can we see ourselves in the queer teenager, the transgender youth and adult, in the Black man, in the Indigenous woman, in the anxious and depressed, in the hungry child, in the addict, in the incarcerated, in our street friends, in the most marginalized and vulnerable? Can we see ourselves in those who conflict us? Can we see them within ourselves?



What is Church, marriage, family, friendship, the human covenant if not the willing disruption of our lives for the perseverance of love and justice? Amen.





Benediction – enfleshed.com


Love does not enforce sameness.
Love does not demand conformity.
Love does not shame differences nor demean deviations.
Love celebrates the multitudes
of ways to be,
of ways to love,
of ways to practice liberation
on this shared journey toward the Kindom of God.
May we go and do likewise.