10:30 am, Trinity Sun, May 26, 2024 ~ JGWhite, FBCA

(Isaiah 6:1-10; John 3:1-17)

In the past few months of few of us staff have been watching episodes of the ‘TV series,’ The Chosen, that dramatizes the stories of Jesus and the disciples. From the first episode, one of the main characters is… Nicodemus. Nicodemus, a Pharisee of the Jewish religion of the first century. In our visual lifetimes, with all the TV and film and computer videos that have filled our minds, we grasp onto the telling of such a story, and now we visualize Nicodemus as we saw him onscreen, when we read of him in these Bible pages.

In the series, he does have this secret meeting with Jesus of Nazareth, in which we hear Christ say, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”

If you could sit down at a table, with Jesus, what things do you think you might not quite understand? What would you ask Jesus? What might He ask you?

There are a number of things that might not be understood today, from the scriptures we are reading. John 3:16, this most famous verse of the Bible, what does it mean? The Jewish scholar, Nicodemus, who talks with Jesus here, has a few questions; a few things do not make sense to him in what Jesus says.

What Jesus was offering Nicodemus was not a tune-up, or a few minor tweaks to an already near-perfect life; it was a brand new life. A new birth. A fresh, down to the foundations beginning. What newborn enters the world without birth pangs, shock, disorientation, or pain? Downright bewilderment isn’t the exception in a birth story; it’s the rule. If we don’t find Christianity at least a little bit confusing, then perhaps it’s not Christianity we’re practicing.

— Debie Thomas, “Where the Wind Blows”

Today, in much of the Christian Church, is celebrated as Trinity Sunday. How do we understand this Trinity idea of God? God is One, only One; but God is known as Three Persons, the Father, the Christ, the Holy Spirit. Don’t understand completely? I say that’s OK; you can know the Sacred One without having to explain.

And when we look back, hundreds of years before Jesus’ lifetime, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah has a vision of God, and immediately does not understand how he can survive it. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips.” Yet Isaiah does survive; and is called upon for a mission, which he chooses to accept. “Here am I; send me.”

I used to think I understood Isaiah chapter six. Back when was a university student, this chapter became very important to me. Worship together, which I already liked, became a whole new realm, for me. I never shall forget the first time I came into the pews for Sunday night service in the Manning Memorial Chapel, Acadia. The hymns were different. The prayers were different. There were candles burning. There were robes to be worn. The order of things was new to me. There seemed to be a lot of bowing and scraping going on. It was all quite unfamiliar… and yet I felt I was at home. Sensed I had found a pattern I had not even known I was looking for. I did not understand in my mind; but I knew my experience of Holiness that night, among strangers with whom I shared those pews.

In a way, the service was patterned upon the experience of Isaiah the prophet, in chapter six. In time, I found some new spiritual mentors for my life, while I was still a teen, and I even felt the influence of those who had been their mentors before.

So, Isaiah 6 was a model for divine worship. An influence upon Prentice and Boyd and Cherry was I. Judson Levy, who wrote a book about Christian worship, patterned upon Isaiah 6.

But, the esoteric theories about how worship works need to come down to earth and get real. What do we people actually want and need to understand? Simply how to hope in God, and contact God, and live our meaningful lives with God.

Isaiah claimed: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD sitting on a throne, high and lifted up… (I 6:1) That king had reigned for 52 years in Israel. It was a moment of change.

Forty-five years ago, Acadia Chaplain, Jud Levy, wrote,

It is always “the year of King Uzziah’s death”, not literally, of course, but in what is symbolized by this. It is the year, and the day, in which men and women, boys and girls, face the realities of their living – the time when personal problems face them, and when they are baffled or confused by the turmoil in society around them. It may very well be the year of some one’s death, some one nearer and dearer than any “King Uzziah”. There is likely to be a broken heart, and a wounded life, in every congregation. (I. Judson Levy, Come, Let Us Worship, 1979, p. 23)

One of the many students who was mentored by Jud Levy was a person I consider one of my mentors. One of your former Senior Ministers here at First Baptist. He died suddenly, this past week: John Boyd.

In the week that Rev. John Boyd died, did I see God, with any power and care?

Our understanding of deaths is rather like what we know of births, when we experience them. Be they physical births, or spiritual rebirth. Decades ago, in Port Lorne, NS, someone asked their pastor, Mr. Olmstead, about death and life after death. ‘Death is like birth,’ the wise minister said. He continued, saying something like this: ‘Before you were born, you were safe, and warm, and fed, and as close as you could ever be to someone who loved you. Then, one day, you got forced out of that safety, that security, that closeness, into a strange, bright, cold, painful world. Did you know what you were headed for? No. But it turned out to be so amazing, so beautiful, so filled with opportunities.’

‘So it is with death. We may have little desire to leave this life, die, and get forced into whatever the next is like. But it is as much larger and greater than this life as this life is bigger than being in the womb.’

In her most recent book, Diana Butler Bass talks at one point about the new birth in Jesus, relating it to her experience of birthing her first child, and in those first hours receiving her daughter to hold and to nurse.

Women understand this transformation, this new birth, in all its tenderness, the freshness of God’s presence come into the world. This was true for me, and mysteriously, painfully true for one of my best friends, Teresa, whose son was stillborn. Even with the sadness of simultaneous birth and death, she felt it too: “God’s presence was in the midst of the worst of our lives; they will call him Immanuel, God with us.” Years later, we shared our memories of those days. “Birth,” she said knowingly, “is so transformative.” (Diana Butler Bass, Freeing Jesus, “Presence,” 2021, p. 225)

Never having fathered a child, never having a partner who became a mother and cared for a one-day-old, a one-week-old, a one-month-old, I can only guess at the real joy, and tiredness, and confusion of first parenthood. I have seen it in others, many who carry the new role so graciously. Many things are not understood. But understanding grows with the experience, and in family, and in community. Our understanding is never complete. It is always growing.

Right now, I am missing the final events in Kentville of the NS Celebration of Nature conference. Yesterday, a couple times, Nature NS president, Bob Bancroft, mentioned that he is quite uneasy with people who say they know everything about something or other. That’s never true, is it?

It is important to know that you don’t know. And realize when you don’t understand something.

Then, you rest, and seek enlightenment.

Then, you converse with God about things.

Then, you wait long enough truly to ‘get it,’ instead of rushing to your own conclusions.

Then, you follow the guidance available to you.

It is Good News that there are inspired people around us, who meet God, have the Divine encounter, receive some holy wisdom. Like Isaiah of old. Like John Boyd of our lives. They help us, they serve us, they minister to us. Even from the grave those who went bravely before us lead us and lift our spirits by what we remember of them, by what they wrote, what they left behind, and the stories that are told.

[ We do not understand everything. So, it is still going to be OK to rely upon others, to be led on our way. I am serious when I say I am a good follower. I don’t actually mean I am good at following where others lead me. What I mean is, my following is better than my leadership!

That’s not really it either. I should say, any leading I do is actually never something new. It is simply following someone else. I am always catching up. Not sticking my neck out; just going along after others blazed a trail or were new and creative. But I have chosen the path I think is greatest, among the options already there.

Maybe you are like this; a natural-born follower. That can be fine. To follow a good path, that others have pointed out, IS to be decisive, it is to act, it is to take your own steps forward. Steps that someone else might even follow later. ]

It is within ‘the will of God’ that we do not understand all things.

It is also within the plan and way of this life that we are brought into those moments of closeness with Holiness, that show us the next big step for us. ‘In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD, high and lifted up…’

In the year that… things end and change around us… someone will have a vision. We answer the call. Thanks be to God!