Holy Trinity/Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth May 31, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Isaiah 6: 1-8 + Psalm 29 + Romans 8: 12-17 + Luke 1: 39-57
Grace and peace to you from God who created us, Jesus who redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Comforter. Amen.
Today is Holy Trinity Sunday, a Sunday when the Church commemorates an understanding of God that is not offered to us by God or even specifically in Scripture, but was constructed later by the Church in order to make sense out of the ways Scripture does name God. Confused yet? The readings selected for this day show a snapshot of each person of the Trinity: God as creator, God as redeemer in the form of Jesus, and God as Holy Spirit. Lutherans and the other mainline denominations and some not so mainline confess and believe in the Trinity, the Triune God, the Three in One, One in Three. And still it remains one of the most elusive of theological understandings. In other words. Yes, we are confused.
To add to this, today is also the day that the Church commemorates the Visitation of Mary, Jesus’ mother, to Elizabeth, which was our Gospel reading this morning.
As I spent some time thinking about these two observances and reading through our Scripture lessons, I was drawn to the description of God from our reading from Isaiah today. Isaiah writes: “I saw the LORD sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” All I could think about was the depiction of the Ghost of Christmas Future in Dicken’s Christmas Carol! A tall, stately being with a loooonnnng robe. And in this case, so long that it filled the temple. In this case a robe that indicated royalty and sovereignty and majesty.
This is the image of God that many of us grew up with. God sitting on God’s throne somewhere….up there…..and all of us down here scurrying about trying to live out our lives in the best way we know how. All the while, Isaiah writes, God’s robe flows out and fills the entire temple.
This stands in contrast to the way that Mary and Elizabeth would have been wearing their robes. Certainly their garments would have been more simple, and of course quite modest. When I think about Mary traveling to see Elizabeth to share her news and when I think about Elizabeth greeting Mary as her beloved elder – both of them pregnant with unexpected possibility – I see their robes, their garments wrapping around them with love and comfort and belonging. I watch as they greet one another with blessings and with songs that spring deep from Mary’s heart.
One of the finest sermons about the Trinity that I’ve ever heard preached was from our former intern, Pastor Inge Williams. She reminded us that the Trinity is like a dance – that it is about the relationship of God as Creator to the Son Jesus to the Holy Spirit. That the understanding is that they are at once all three separate and yet joined. And there I go, confusing the matter again.
Most scholars agree that it is about the relationship, that can be well described as a dance. And we learn from our readings today something about the nature of the Triune God and how God is reflected in our daily living.
The God depicted in Isaiah’s vision, the one sitting up there on a throne with the robe that fills the temple…that God feels far removed from God’s people. That powerful God is up there, wherever that is, with seraphs, which are basically winged angels, flying around singing praises to God. This picture of God is a reminder of the majesty and grandeur of God. This picture of God with a robe so long it fills the heavens reminds us that God is worthy of our praise. And we come into this place and this space to offer that praise. What we learn from this text is that God receives our worship and our praise and then sends us out, forgiven, and with the word of God burning on our lips. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God asks.
From the Romans reading we learn that the Spirit that we have received is not a spirit of fear but a spirit of adoption. Just imagine, we have been adopted as God’s very children. We can cry out to God as our beloved parent and know that we are as precious to God as the Son, Jesus.
When children know that they are loved and that they are valued and that the love is unconditional, fear leaves them. They are empowered to try and fail and try and succeed and be their wondrous truest selves. This is the gift offered to us through the Spirit, to be our wondrous truest selves!
But I confess, it is this idea of the robes enveloping Mary and Elizabeth that draw me into God’s heart on this day. Because what we learn from Mary and Elizabeth is that how we are in relationship to one another….and to all of the one anothers…..is how we reflect who we are as children of God.
On the cover of your bulletin and displayed here is a lovely work of art entitled Stand. This print was a gift to me from Inge when I preached at her ordination. The woman in these robes holds a small child, protected there and close to her. From the way her robes are billowing out, we know that the winds are howling around her. It is in this photo that I see the presence of the Triune God, as the robed woman, and we are the child she holds close. Life’s winds billow around us, sometimes they threaten to blow down our entire lives. And the hem of the robe that fills the temple becomes the place where we find shelter and refuge and solace. God scoops us up and stands with us as the winds rage around us. And let’s be honest, sometimes those winds blow our lives to smithereens. People we love die. We lose the job. We have no homes. We have no food. We get the worst diagnosis. And God clutches us all the more tightly. Even as God’s robe fills the temple and indeed, the whole earth.
Pastor Michael Coffey wrote a wonderful poem entitled “God’s Bathrobe.” It’s printed on page 12 in your bulletin. As it is read I invite you to follow along if you are a visual person or to just close your eyes and receive the words if you are an auditory person. At the end of the poem we will have some silence for reflection before we sing the hymn.
God’s Bathrobe by Michael Coffey
God sat in her Adirondack deck chair
reading the New York Times and sipping strawberry
lemonade
her pink robe flowing down to the ground
the garment hem was fluff and frill
and it spilled holiness down into the sanctuary
into the cup and the nostrils of the singing people
one thread trickled loveliness into a funeral rite
as the mourners looked in the face of death
and heard the story of a life truer than goodness.
a torn piece of the robe’s edge flopped onto
a war in southern Sudan and caused heartbeats
to skip and soldiers looked into themselves deeply
one threadbare strand of the divine belt
almost knocked over a polar bear floating
on a loose berg in the warming sea
one silky string wove its way through Jesus’ cross
and tied itself to desert-parched immigrants with
swollen tongues
and a woman with ovarian cancer and two young
sons
you won’t believe this, but a single hair-thin fiber
floated onto the yacht of a rich man and he gasped
when he saw everything as it really was
the hem fell to and from across the universe
filling space and time and gaps between the
sub-atomic world
with the effervescent presence of the one who is the is
and even in the slight space between lovers in bed
the holiness flows and wakes up the body
to feel beyond the feeling and know beyond the
knowing
and even as we monotheize and trinitize
and speculate and doubt even our doubting
the threads of holiness trickle into our lives
and the seraphim keep singing “holy, holy, holy”
and flapping their wings like baby birds
and God says: give it a rest a while
and God takes another sip of her summertime drink
and smiles at the way you are reading this filament
now and hums: It’s a good day to be God