Making sense of Holiness.

There they are, the Trinity, in this week’s readings: God the Father in Isaiah, God the Son in John, and God the Holy Spirit in Romans. They are there as plain as the noses on our faces and as elusive as the wind. God the Father, elusive for Isaiah until one day in the temple he realized that God was there in majesty that defied description. God was there invoking awe and issuing a call to ministry and service. How many times has God eluded us? God the Son, elusive again, as Nicodemus tries to make sense of the Son of God in the room with him. Elusive as he is, Nicodemus, is side-tracked by semantics, as we often are in our conversations about faith. 

God the Holy Spirit obscured from our view in Paul’s conversation about being led, as sons and daughters, by the Spirit of God. Obscured from our view as we try to follow Paul’s theological arguments about adoption and the witness of the Spirit. We are surrounded by the dance of the Trinity. The heavens scream the majesty of God while we, like Isaiah, sit years without end in places of worship wishing that God would visit us. 

The redemptive Son of God stands knocking at every door around us seeking to reconcile each individual with God, longing for devoted disciples who would transform the world, while our heads remained buried in The Art of War. And, the Spirit of God, who has promised that we would never be apart from God’s presence, whispers thousands of “I love yous” as we insult her by calling God’s guidance chance or good fortune. There they are in the readings; here they are in our lives— Father, Son, and Spirit— as plain as the noses on our faces, and as elusive as the wind.

Holiness— it is a matter of opinion what qualifies. To some people it is going to church; to some it might mean avoiding certain bad habits or adopting certain outward religious practices. Some think clergy are, by default, some kind of holy person. Trust me when I say that idea is patently false! Growing up, I knew people who adhered to so called “holiness traditions.” They willingly and consistently lived the mundane, everyday aspects of their lives according to a strict interpretation of Scripture. It was a willing setting aside of any aspects of humanity in order to be more like what the scripture called for in a follower of Jesus. 

In this text, the prophet finds himself utterly, inescapably human in the presence of his vision of God. The death of the king is no mere historical marker, but a sign that things are about to change in Judah. Although Uzziah, in his fifty-two years of reign brought Judah to new heights in terms of prosperity, influence, and power, he forgot that he was an earthly king and not a divine one. Isaiah’s experience of soaking in the presence of absolute holiness brought about a visceral reminder of his own humanity. 

It’s as if he looked around at the angels and the smoke and the trembling temple and the songs and the tongs and concluded, “One of these things is not like the others.” And even though he was made guiltless, and that flaming, searing coal of mercy and forgiveness blotted out his sin, the whole episode is an object lesson in this one unavoidable, undeniable truth: God is holy. We are not. We are human. Or as we like to say, “We’re only human.”