Trinity: Receive
We Receive Grace
Isaiah 6:1-8
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. May 30th, 2021
Before I get into today’s Scriptures I want to tell a different Bible story. This one comes from 2 Chronicles chapter 26. King Uzziah was made king of Judah at the tender age of 16, but reigned for fifty two years. He was a great military leader who beat back the Philistines, those pesky people who much earlier had sent out Goliath as their champion. He also forced neighboring nations to pay him tribute. He was also a great builder, constructing towers and gates. He even built towers in the wilderness in order to strengthen Judah’s defenses.
Uzziah was an excellent king by any earthly standard. We are also told he was brought up in the ways of the Lord by Zechariah. It was God who made him prosper. God spread his fame far around the known world.
All that success can get to your head, and it got to Uzziah’s head. Though he started well, walking in the ways of the Lord, he did not end well. One day he was determined to make sacrifice at the altar of incense. The altar of incense was placed near the inner sanctum of the Temple, right in front of the veil that hid the Holy of Holy’s where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The Ark of the Covenant was believed to be God’s footstool, and his sure presence. No one was allowed that far into the Temple but the priests. The High Priest Azariah intercepted and confronted Uzziah with eighty of his priests. He explained to the King that it was not lawful for him to make sacrifice.
But telling the King what to do only made him angry. When Uzziah responded angrily to the High Priest Azariah God struck him with Leprosy on his forehead. The once mighty King was then taken away and isolated. He remained leprous until he died.
It is in the year of King Uzziah’s death that Isaiah has this tremendous vision of God’s throne. The hem of his robe filled the whole Temple, and he was surrounded by angelic beings with six wings called seraphim. The seraphim are always before the throne of God singing their threefold Holy, Holy, Holy. The whole Temple was filled with the smoke of the altar of incense.
This is the vision King Uzziah would have grasped for himself. Likely would have thought he deserved it for all his exploits and wisdom. Isaiah, the prophet of the Lord, does not respond in awe or satisfaction. He responds in fear, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seethe King, the LORD of hosts!”
Then a miraculous thing happens, a miraculous thing that perhaps you did not know what so miraculous. One of the seraphs takes a coal from the altar of incense, the very altar upon which Uzziah vainly sought to offer sacrifice, and with the tongs places the coal on the lips of Isaiah. What made Uzziah unclean, corrupting his skin with Leprosy, makes Isaiah clean. “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”
Uzziah seeks to grasp the right of offering sacrifice, he seeks to barge into the inner sanctum of the Temple and is punished for his impiety and presumption. Isaiah on the other hand is given this vision of the Father as a gift. It is sheer gift. Sheer grace. Though I am sure he did not recognize it as such in the moment. Because he responds to the grace of God in piety, not impiously, the altar of incense is allowed to approach him, in the seraph who brings the coal of the altar to his lips. And he experiences the cleansing grace of God. His sin is blotted out.
It is always tempting for us to be Uzziah, it is always hard for us to be Isaiah. It is tempting for us to be Uzziah because we are naturally prideful and acquisitive. It is hard for us to be Isaiah because it is hard to acknowledge our own sinfulness and the sinfulness of this world that affects us. But when we confess our sins to God, when we approach that throne of grace humbly we find ourselves lifted far higher than we could ever place ourselves. If we approach proudly with our shoulders straight, we find ourselves knocked down farther than we’d ever dare to go.
Such is the grace of God, which is given to the undeserving. It’s not so much withheld from the supposed deserving, as much as they would never ask. Uzziah never asks. He seeks only to proudly approach the altar. Isaiah is afraid of the outrageous gift given to him, and receives the grace necessary to accept the gift of this vision of God.
We cannot grasp God. We cannot define God. We are in no position to negotiate with God. We can only behold God, and receive what God has to offer us. That, I think, is one message of the Trinity, this mystery we celebrate today. We know that God is one and in three persons. That God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and yet remains one God. How this is the case there has been much ink spilled. There are different models, there are alternatives that hav been rejected for various reasons. But it is nothing we could have arrived at if we were guessing. The Trinity is something you could never guess.
Instead, the revelation of the Trinity is something we have received. Like the vision of Isaiah looking upon the throne of God, we have seen God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We may behold Jesus baptized at the River Jordan. The voice coming down, Jesus in the water, the Spirit descending like a dove. We may behold the mysterious working of the Cross where Jesus offers himself to the Father and is raised in the Spirit. We may experience the Triune God in our worship, as we lift up our praises to God, for Christ, in the Spirit. But in all these things, the Trinity is something given to us. A miraculous vision of the wonderful and gracious and powerful God we serve, who desires us to be his children. Who desires us to join with our brother Jesus in the Spirit. Who draws us all into himself.
Not because of anything we have done. But by his gracious favor.