Fr. Bill Carroll – Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024
We did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but we have received a spirit of adoption.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When Isaiah sees God seated on the throne, the six-wingèd seraphim speak to him. As they cry out, the angels cover their faces: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts (they say). The whole earth is full of his glory.” Isaiah shrinks back: “Woe is me (he says). I am lost. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. Yet mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”
On this Memorial Day weekend, as we remember the cost of our freedom, I am reminded that today’s reading from Isaiah inspired the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It was written by Julia Ward Howe, the same abolitionist preacher who created Mother’s Day. Presiding Bishop Curry often quotes it in his sermons, especially the last verse:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.
As he died to make folk holy, let us die to make all free
While God is marching on.
(Let us die to make all free. While God is marching on.) Beloved, we “did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.” In another place, the Bible says that “perfect love casts out all fear.” But love can’t remove the shock and awe we feel, when we encounter the righteousness of God.
The presence of the Holy One reveals our sins. We are mortal, compromised, and afraid. And so, it is only when the angel purifies our lips with fire that we dare to speak the Word of God.
If we read a little further in Isaiah, we learn how devastating the Word of God can be. God calls Isaiah to tell the People that their hearts will be hardened. They will be like Pharaoh before the Exodus. The prophet then imagines the utter destruction of Jerusalem. The People of God will be decimated, until all that’s left is a stump and the holy seed. That seed is the righteous remnant of Israel. It is also Jesus crucified.
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD GOD of hosts.” We also hear these words in the Eucharist. They mark the beginning of God’s new world. As we sing them, we come before the heavenly throne. In the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus himself comes among us to reign. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. He is pure goodness and boundless love. He is beyond our comprehension and above every name. And yet, he has come to us. He has come to us to set us free.
“The whole earth is full of God’s glory.” Every last creature reflects God’s goodness and love. And human beings, in particular, are made in God’s own image and likeness. But, when we meet God, we feel lost. At the same time, though, God finds and embraces us. Through Jesus and the Spirit, God gives us the gift of his friendship.
God is neither selfish nor stingy with his gifts. He is utterly generous and free. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God lives in perfect community. And he calls us to share his own love and freedom.
In the Spirit, we turn to Jesus. And he leads us back to the One that he calls “Abba, Father.” “For we did not receive a spirit of slavery, to fall back into fear.” But instead, God has adopted us as his beloved children.
In Jesus, we forsake the works of the flesh. We renounce the world’s ways of division, violence, and oppression. Rather, we produce the fruits of the Spirit, namely “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” This is our calling as Christians. As God’s Spirit burns more brightly within us, we follow Jesus more and more. Until, at last, God’s ways are perfected in us, and God’s love is all in all.
I’d like to close with a quote from Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s from a short book of meditations on traditional Orthodox icons. Williams is speaking about a family of sacred images that portray Jesus as the “Ruler of All.” Here, Jesus is typically shown with one hand extended in a gesture of blessing, while the other holds a book–a sign that he will come to judge the living and the dead.
Williams asks us to pay special attention to the eyes of Jesus. What does he see when he looks at us? When he does that, he does so with holy love and sovereign grace. And we are changed by how he sees us.
Where do his eyes lead us then? (Williams asks). To our own deepest reality, to the loving self-communication of God, which is at the heart of our existence—and which by sin and laziness and forgetfulness we deny. To the wellspring of divine life in the centre of what we are, the Word that calls us into being…His gaze upon us takes us to the abiding love of the Creator that is expressed in the sheer fact of our being here at all…And we begin with him to see the Father as we look at all things and persons. We see the distortions, the refusals and the tragedies, and see them all the more honestly and painfully in the light. But we don’t stop being able to see the gift of the Maker who still loves in and through it all. The dwelling of the light is in us as well…We are being drawn toward this secret fire in the heart of earthly reality.
This fire is the Spirit of Jesus. It is the Spirit of love and adoption and freedom.
Glory, glory, Hallelujah! God’s truth is marching on!