The Holy Trinity [b] 05/28/21
Isaiah 6:1-8
1In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”
4And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
6Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
8And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
In the Name of Jesus.
Isaiah has unclean lips.
Lips are not just lips. Lips are what expresses the life. By the words of the lips, the heart is known. For what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this makes a person unclean. [Matthew 15:18]
A man’s lips say “I love you and want to marry you,” and by those lips, the woman knows what’s in his heart.
To have unclean lips is to reveal an unclean heart, a sinful body, a doomed life.
Isaiah has unclean lips. So do we.
“Woe is me!”,
says Isaiah,
“For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”
So it’s not just that Isaiah has unclean lips, it’s everyone around him.
For Isaiah to have unclean lips makes him guilty of his own sin. For Isaiah to live among a people of unclean lips covers him in shame.
To live in the midst of a people of unclean lips is to live in the midst of a those speaking from unclean hearts, living from unclean bodies, acting and thinking in unclean lives. And when you live in the midst of unclean people, you are covered in shame.
That’s what it means for us to live in an unclean world, after all. Because, our neighbor is not separate from us. This world, we can’t pretend we are not part of it. We share humanity with our neighbor.
When we see shameful deeds in our society, when we see a boy in tears because he’s been bullied, a young-lady crying at night because she’s been assaulted, when we see the shame belonging to a fellow citizen caught-up in addiction or in thuggery, do we think we are clean of it? Can we separate ourselves from the humans around us without denying we share in the same humanity?
The guilt for our own sin, the shame covering us in this world,
“Woe is me!”,
says Isaiah,
“For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”
And we may say it along with him. Because we look at the declaration of the “Woe”:
“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
The guilt, the shame!, then to know that our lives are lived at the face of the King, the Lord of hosts, that’s “Woe” to the sinner.
But who is this King? This Lord in front of whom we live our lives? Isaiah 6:5:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole Earth is full of his glory!”
He’s the thrice holy One. Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit.
And all the Earth is full of his glory! His glory? It’s not the flashing lightening in the sky; not the majestic mountains he formed; it’s not even the intricate cells he knit together for the human person. His glory? John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Lord’s glory? It is God the Son in the flesh, in weakness, walking to the cross.
It is Jesus with soldiers spitting on him, priests insulting him, the teachers of the Law making fun of him, the king and the governor parading him around in chains, sentencing him to the cross.
The glory of the Thrice holy God? It is the Holy Father sending his Holy Son to die for the unclean on the cross. It is then, as the Son is resurrected and seated at the right hand of the Father, the holy Father and the Holy Son sending forth the Holy Spirit to those who are unholy … to cleanse them with the gifts of the holy blood.
The glory of the Thrice holy God? It is the sinner clothed in the righteousness of Jesus and justified before the Father.
Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit. In the Church, this is the Day of the Holy Trinity. The Church through all generations confesses the Athanasian Creed.
The Athanasian Creed has been used in the Church since about 500 AD.
It was used to clearly state the Trinitarian faith, emphasizing on the Incarnation of the Son. In the early Church, as also now, there were many heretical teachers teaching that the Son was true God, but not true, actual man; or that he was true man, but was not true God.
These heresies end up, of course, destroying the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for the justification of the sinner. For if Jesus is not true man, he does not share in our humanity, does not take on our human guilt, and is not clothed in our human shame, and thus cannot save us by his death. Or, if he is not true God, then his death on the cross is merely the death of a man, and is not taken up into eternity and presented to the Father as the atoning sacrifice for all sinners of every generation.
So the Church, in the Creed, gives clarity to the confession of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to the confession that the Son is true God and true Man, for the justification of the sinner.
In the Creed, we close with saying,
This is the catholic faith; whoever does not believe it faithfully and firmly cannot be saved.
This is, of course, before the invention of the Catholic church of the Pope. The idea of the Pope sitting in primacy over the Church was not decreed until the year 1049, at the council of Reims. But that’s 500 years after the Athanasian Creed.
So in the Creed we confess the catholic faith along with the early Church. After all, that’s what the Creed is about—the doctrine of the Trinity as the Apostles had delivered it to the Church.
And what is this true catholic faith we confess? It is that the Holy Son, true God and true Man, sent forth by the Holy Father, has redeemed us with his own blood.
And the Holy Father and Holy Son have sent forth the Holy Spirit, so that the Holy Spirit gathers the unclean ones into the Church, where he then cleanses them with Word of Gospel, with the washing of Baptism, and with the Body and Blood given the sinner to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins.
This is the catholic faith by which the sinner is saved. By this faith, unclean lips are made clean, for the lips now speak the confession of the heart cleansed by the Gospel.
In the Name of Jesus.