Isaiah 6:1-7; Romans 11:33-36; John 3:1-17
Listen here.
Let’s begin with Isaiah in our first reading. About 740 years before Christ, powerful King Uzziah died. Uzziah, also called Azariah, had reigned 52 years in Judah, and “he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (2 Kgs. 15:3). He was not a perfect king, but he was a good king. Just imagine the uncertainty when he died. Who would become the next king? Would he be a good king or not? So the Triune God gave Isaiah a vision of Himself sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, wearing a royal robe. His honor guard of six-winged seraphim were flanking Him and singing His praises: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” Three holies for three Persons of the one Godhead.
What did God want Isaiah to take away into his everyday life of serving as prophet? Two things. First, even though King Uzziah had died, Father, Son and Holy Spirit still sat on the highest throne. Human rulers come and go, but God always reigns. Isaiah’s second takeaway was that he was a sinner among a race sinners. “Woe is me!” he cried, “For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Seeing the true God and being in His presence will do that to you every time. Even as he was being called and ordained to serve as God’s spokesman, Isaiah learned to live on the receiving end of God’s purging and forgiving. Don’t we all—every human being, regardless of age, genealogy or skin color.
Next let’s go to St. Paul as he writes to Christians in Rome. He has taught that the Gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:18). God’s wrath and judgment for all sin of all shapes, sizes and colors is completely justified. “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Rom. 3:10-11), Paul proclaims. Yet, God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is merciful. Even though “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” by His deep wisdom and unsearchable ways all “are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24). This peace with God gets applied to you and me in our Baptism into Christ. We see that happening yet again today with little Caroline Grace. Now we get to be slaves to God, not ourselves. Now we have life in the Holy Spirit. Now nothing can separate us from the Trinity’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now we see that God Himself—the truest community of Persons living together in pure love—overcomes the divides between peoples. In Paul’s day, it was the divide between Jew and Gentile. In our day, well, we desperately need the Triune God, don’t we?
For all this St. Paul leads us in singing a doxology, a hymn of praise, to the Holy Trinity. His riches, wisdom and knowledge in rescuing us from sin and death are so deep. His ways and judgments of recreating us and making us His children are beyond our puny mental powers. Who can teach Him a thing or two or sit in judgment of Him? Who can ever repay Him for His undeserved mercy and goodness? “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.” Three prepositions—from, through, and to—echo three Persons of the Trinity. They also tell us that God—our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier—is the source, the means, and the goal of everything in life.
Now we come to Nicodemus and his late night meeting with Jesus. And we can relate with his confusion. How does all of this work? How can this Man—Jesus—also be God? What does He mean by “born again” or “born from above”? How can life have meaning in this fallen, broken, sick, chaotic world?
Jesus teaches Nicodemus by pointing him to the Holy Trinity. Life with God the Father comes only by being born again. That new birth happens, not by re-entering a womb, but by being washed “of water and the [Holy] Spirit.” Thank you, Caroline Grace, for being our latest reminder and role model in this! And where does God the Son fit into this gift of life with God in His kingdom? “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”
All of this is the mystery we ponder—the mystery of life, the grace we acknowledge, and the true faith we confess. Your whole life and my whole life—indeed the whole life of every Christian—begins and ends with the Holy Trinity. And God wants it to be so with every human being. The Father is not more God than the Son, and the Son is not more God than the Holy Spirit. Neither is any one of them less God than the other two. “Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit” (Athanasian Creed).
All three Persons in one divine Being wants only one thing: you, me, every Christian—indeed every human being—in loving, living relationship with Him and one another, both now and into eternity. That relationship takes place by the purging of sin in repentance and forgiveness in Jesus’ shed blood. Remember that you are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Remember that you are absolved in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And when you are placed into the ground, it will be God the Father, who created your body; God the Son, who by His blood redeemed your body; and God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified your body to be His temple, who will keep you until the Day of Resurrection.
This glorious, gracious mystery helps us make sense of—and even bring hope to—what we now endure. Just as we’ve been confronted with a coronavirus, now we are assaulted by a revolting, senseless killing and by violent, chaotic riots, looting and more killing. Obviously, all of the anger and killing go against God’s Fifth Commandment. We humans should protect life, not snuff it out. Yes, all lives matter. That’s not a political statement; it’s God’s truth. And all of the looting and damaging of property, of course, goes against God’s Seventh Commandment. We humans should protect our neighbor’s possessions, not just destroy, snatch and grab them as ours.
Perhaps the greatest hope and help the Trinity gives at this time is on the matter of “racism”—this highly charged issue that keeps dogging our society and us who live in it. Yes, racism of any shape, size or color is wrong and sinful. Here’s where the Trinity’s truth gives help and hope.
Did you know there are not many different races based on skin color? Yes, there are different people groups—what the Bible calls “peoples and tribes and languages and nations” (Rev. 11:9). Yes, there are differences in appearances—skin colors and eye shapes—to be sure. Do you want to know how different you are from someone who looks different than you in skin color or eye shape? According to one surgeon in Manhattan, the percentage of your genes that determines your appearance—and your neighbor’s appearance—is about 0.01%. [See here.] All of our talk and strife about “race” and “racism” is over 0.01% of our genetic code given by God. He’s the One who determines, in His deep wisdom, what each of us looks like. Do you know that means? It means that in the other 99.99% of our genetic code, you and I are the same as anyone and everyone with different skin colors or eye shapes or other outward traits.
It means there is only one race—the human race. After all, we all descend from one man, Adam, and his wife Eve. “[God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). Just as God is three Persons in one Godhead and one God in three Persons, so also various people groups are one human race and one human race in various people groups.
The greatest news and the greatest hope of all is this: “God [thus] loved the world—every individual human being and every people group of the one human race—that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” This Jesus—the Son of God and descendant of Adam—has come to bring peace, reconciliation, and healing by His death on a cross and His glorious resurrection. It’s the work of the Holy Trinity. It’s the mystery of life for you and for everyone so unsettled and upset at this time. Amen.
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