Trinity Sunday, Year B
A Sermon for Spirit of Hope United Methodist Church, May 26, 2024
It will come as no surprise to those of you who know me that I enjoy science fiction and fantasy…but not just any science fiction and fantasy. I like Star Wars and Star Trek, but I don’t like 1984 or Brave New World. I like Lord of the Rings, but not Game of Thrones. I don’t know about you, but I prefer stories that lead me to hope, not stories that leave me wallowing in a pit of despair.
“A New Hope” is an apt title for the first Star Wars movie. Life in that galaxy far, far away was bad and getting worse for most of its citizens, who lived under the thumb of a cruel empire. But just when it seemed there was no hope…suddenly there was! And it came about in a surprising way.
“Star Wars” isn’t the only story to have the theme of good triumphing over evil, of course. It’s a familiar one. There’s a book by Joseph Campbell called “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” about how the same story keeps popping up over and over, in everything from ancient mythology to modern literature. C S Lewis postulated that if the same stories keep recurring in all these different forms, it’s because they are reflections of the greatest story ever told. And that story is a true one.
The whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is a telling of that true story. Just like in the Star Wars movies, there are many times it may seem hopeless, but in the end, good will triumph over evil. Love will win out over hate, justice over injustice, and joy over sorrow. We may not know the timeline for this, but we can be sure it will come about. Today’s lectionary readings give us a few glimpses into this great mystery.
Isaiah was a man who lived in difficult and challenging times. Israel in the 8th century BC, like the planets in the imaginary Star Wars universe, was in a terrible mess. The once unified kingdom had split in two after the death of Solomon. Two hundred years later, both the northern and southern kingdoms faced grave troubles both from within and from without. They were riddled by crime, violence, and political instability, as well as threatened with invasion by Assyria. This is all chronicled with an unflinching eye in the book of Kings. Isaiah and the other 8th century prophets Isaiah, Amos, Micah, and Hosea all had quite a few strong words to say about how unhappy God was with their unjust, violent, and amoral society, and as a result how it was bound to be conquered by nations that were even worse.
I imagine Isaiah hit a really low point the year King Uzziah died, because Uzziah had been a pretty good king, and who knows what kind of king was coming next? According to the history given in Kings, the monarchy’s apples tended to fall pretty far from their paternal trees, and the way the good ones and bad ones seesawed back and forth is enough to give the reader whiplash. I imagine that Isaiah was feeling pretty hopeless when he had his great vision of the Lord, high and lifted up. What was Isaiah’s response? “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” I don’t deserve to see God! But instead he is given a powerful symbol of God’s forgiveness, and eagerly accepts God’s commission to speak on God’s behalf. God doesn’t want to destroy Isaiah…or Israel. He wants to put right everything that has gone wrong, and he wants Isaiah to be a part of that!
Isaiah does warn the people to change their ways or face conquest and exile, but he also paints beautiful word pictures of a world reborn, a world that has finally become the way God planned for it to be from the very beginning, a world where everyone is able to live long and prosper. No war, no crime, no poverty, no sickness. In Isaiah’s visions, nature is no longer red in tooth and claw; people live to be at least 100; and many nations stream to Jerusalem to learn about God and how to walk in his ways.
That sounds pretty good to me; how about you?
Nicodemus was a man who lived in difficult and challenging times. Like Luke Skywalker and the biblical prophets, Nicodemus was living in a very messed up world. The people lived under the crushing boot of the Roman Empire and Caesar demanded worship as a god. Any dissent was immediately stomped out, usually with astonishing cruelty. Most people were extremely poor and struggled to make ends meet, while those who collaborated with their Roman overlords might live in luxury. As a serious student of the Bible, Nicodemus knew Isaiah well. But it had been 800 years! Where was God? And then surprise! God showed up in the form of Jesus, who began his ministry by quoting Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
When Nicodemus went to see Jesus, he struggled to understand what Jesus was telling him. Like many people of his time, he might have been expecting a political Messiah, someone who would assert his divine power to put the world to rights. Maybe he wanted to know where he could sign up for Jesus’s army. But instead Jesus talked in metaphors about the wind and being born again (or born above, depending on your translation- the Greek word can mean both). God’s reign on earth as in heaven will come about, just not in the way Nicodemus was thinking.
Like Isaiah and Nicodemus, we live in difficult and challenging times. What lessons can we take from their stories that will give us hope for the future?
First of all, sometimes God shows up when we least expect him. When Isaiah went into the temple that day, he wasn’t expecting God to show up in person and in power. Nicodemus wasn’t expecting to have to rethink his whole theology. He wasn’t expecting Israel’s salvation to show up in the form of a crucified Messiah. I can think of several times when I felt the presence of God in a really powerful way, and I wasn’t expecting it at all. One time was when as a college student, I walked away from an automobile accident that should have killed me. At the time I was in a difficult place, and I clearly heard God say to me, “Now will you believe I love you?” Has this kind of thing ever happened to you?
Secondly, when we come into the bright light of the presence of God, we become acutely aware of our own failings. We all have a shadow side, a darkness within us that we often try to hide and pretend doesn’t exist. It is only when we bring this shadow side to the light that God is able to begin the process of our transformation. As a corollary to this, we need to be cautious about calling out the faults of others. As Jesus taught, we shouldn’t go after the speck in our brother’s eye when we have a log impairing our own vision. Or put another way, when you point your finger at someone else, there are four fingers pointing back at you. It turns out that the optical instrument we need to use to sleuth out sin is not binoculars or a microscope or a periscope or a telescope, but the mirror.
Third, when we powerfully experience the grace of God, we can’t help but respond. God, what do you need me to do? Okay, I’m on it! Isaiah responded, “Here am I. Send me!” Nicodemus responded, because the next time he shows up again in the biblical narrative, he is advocating for Jesus against those of his fellow Pharisees who wanted to kill Jesus. How have you responded to the grace of God? It might not be so dramatic, but God knows what you have done, even if it has gone unnoticed by others. And every little bit we do adds up.
Fourth, we need to remember that God’s timeline is not our own. Isaiah did not live to see his beautiful visions become reality. The earliest Christians did not live to see God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Yet Isaiah kept declaring the word of the Lord, and the earliest Christians were equally faithful in their attempts to follow the teachings of Jesus. We need to be both patient and persistent, to keep on doing the next right thing. Just because at first we don’t succeed doesn’t mean it’s time to quit. As Mother Teresa said, we are not called to be successful but to be faithful.
Finally, we need to remember that nothing is hopeless when we hope in God. As Paul put it, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
John 3:16-17 is probably the most well known and often quoted passage in the New Testament. Say it with me: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world would be saved.
Did you get that? God loves each and every one of us individually, and God loves the whole world. We don’t have to fear death, because we will find that it is a doorway into the presence of God. We don’t have to fear that the world will end with a bang or a whimper because God is in the business of redeeming it. And the God that Isaiah saw high and lifted up, the God we see in the person of Jesus, and the God who is with us in the form of the Spirit is able to do all that he says he will do.
God is working to put right everything that is wrong in this world, and perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that he is working through us flawed human creatures to do it. One day the swords will be beaten into plowshares, the lion will lie down with the lamb, there will be no one who does not live a full and long life, and everyone will sit under their own vine and fig tree with no one to make them afraid. One day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
And that’s good news to me. Let’s do our part in making it so.
joantheexpatriatebaptist 