Isaiah 6:1-8 – In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “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 seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
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John 3:1-17 – Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
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For the past few weeks we have had Sundays on which multiple holidays were being observed, and today we continue with that trend! Today is Trinity Sunday – a day to reflect on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This past Friday was also Aldersgate Day (which we observe today) – the day when John Wesley had an experience of the Holy Spirit that basically launched the Methodist movement. And I should also mention that on this day in history, back in 1521, the German monk Martin Luther was declared “an outlaw and a heretic” by the Edict of Worms – which basically launched the Protestant Church.
So we’ve got some rich history today! Without Martin Luther there would never have been a Protestant movement; and without the Wesleys we would not be sitting where we are sitting where we are today. And of course, without the Trinity, none of these things would have happened!
Looking at all three of these events… it’s fairly easy to see how we got to where we are today; but it’s not all that easy to understand how these things happened at the time. What I mean is this: Why was it that the Catholic Church back in 1521 couldn’t see that Luther was speaking the truth? They know now that Luther was right – but why not back then? Why was it that John and Charles Wesley both had been priests for years before they were sure they were saved? And the answers to both of those questions were influenced by how people understood and experienced their relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Answering these questions in detail would take longer than we have this morning. I recommend to your reading any parts of the journals of the Wesleys, or any of the writings of Martin Luther that you can find on Google. For today, though, here’s where we’re headed:
I’ll start off with a brief description of the Trinity. Then we’ll take a look at what today’s scripture readings tell us about the Trinity – first in Isaiah and then in the Gospel of John. And finally we’ll listen to what John and Charles Wesley had to say as they struggled to understand God, and what it means to really have a living faith as a Christian.
So starting off with a brief description of the Trinity: God is a mystery in so many ways! When we really think about God, our minds boggle. When we go out on a starry night and look up at the sky and try to imagine the One who created every star, and every planet that revolves around every star, and every living thing on every one of those planets… God is way beyond anything we can grasp. For most of us it’s enough to know that God is big enough, and powerful enough, and creative enough, and enough of an artist and a scientist, to design, create, and maintain everything we see around us. I like what one website had to say about creation:
“Describing the nature of God is not rocket science – it’s more difficult than that!”[1]
The second thing I want to mention is that the word ‘trinity’ is not found in the Bible. In fact if anything the Old Testament seems to argue against the concept. God says at the very beginning of the Ten Commandments: “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One… and you shall love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Deut 6:4-5) Jesus said this was the greatest commandment ever given, and that the second was like it: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The idea of the Trinity grew out of the early church – during the first few hundred years after Jesus’ resurrection. The concept came about as people talked about the Old Testament scriptures alongside their own experiences of God. Here’s the complexity they were trying to describe:
Jesus said, “the Father and I are One.” (John 10:30) So when the disciples were talking to Jesus, they were also talking to God; and when Jesus spoke, he spoke God’s words with God’s authority.
At the same time, Jesus sometimes spoke about God the Father as being distinct from himself. Jesus said the Father had sent him. Jesus prayed to God while he was on this earth – and this was not Jesus talking to himself, he was talking to God.
Jesus also taught the disciples that the Holy Spirit is a guiding presence in the lives of God’s people, and that the Spirit would arrive on Pentecost. Jesus described the Spirit as “power from on high” – and he said the Spirit couldn’t come to us while Jesus was still on earth, which is why Jesus needed to ascend to God before the Spirit could descend (so to speak).
So we see in scripture that God is God, and Jesus is also God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and God is the Creator, and Jesus is the Redeemer and the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. And these three roles generally speaking don’t overlap.
I like to sum it up this way:
“In a world saturated with divine presence, we have a God ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.’”[2]
God the Father created us; Jesus saves us; the Holy Spirit indwells us… and yet all three persons are one God. (Does this make sense? If yes – great! If not – you’re in good company!)
Turning to our scripture from Isaiah, at first glance this passage seems to have very little to do with the Trinity. The prophet Isaiah is describing a vision of God that he sees while he’s in the temple. This is a mystery to begin with: how could God fit inside the temple? Isaiah himself said, “the hem of his robe filled the temple”. In other words, God can’t begin to fit inside this building – just his hem is enough to fill it, metaphorically speaking. And yet, in some very real way, God is present in the temple.
One of the interesting things about the Old Testament is that, in ancient times, it was totally OK to be faced with a mystery without feeling compelled to solve it. In our culture today we like to have everything analyzed and explained. How did this get here? What caused it? How did it happen? What is it made of? There are good reasons why we ask these questions.
But in the ancient world it was perfectly OK to say, “this represents God in a way that we don’t fully understand” – and just leave it at that. So Isaiah doesn’t feel it necessary to explain what he’s telling us. We do, however, see hints of the Trinity in this passage. First off, God is called holy, holy, holy – three times holy.
Second, God says, “who shall go for us?” – with the word ‘us’ being plural. Is this kind of like the British “royal we” – where the king always talks about himself in the plural? Or was God talking about the other persons of the Trinity, when God said ‘we’? Isaiah’s words are not clear on that; the question remains open.
Then in his vision, Isaiah sees himself as “a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips”. But God provides the cleansing – which parallels what Jesus does for us – and then God asks, “Whom shall I send?” – a question that’s frequently asked by the Holy Spirit. So we catch a glimpse here of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, working together but not specifically named. Isaiah, of course, answers God’s question by saying: “send me”.
Next we turn to the Gospel of John, chapter three, where we see Jesus in conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus. We looked at this passage not too long ago, leading up to Calvary. Today we look at this conversation again, more in terms of the ‘new birth’ that Jesus describes. Jesus says that God’s people are “born of water and the Spirit” – that is, physical birth and spiritual birth. Both of these things need to happen in order for a person to have eternal life. Jesus explains it this way: “what is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” And the fact that human beings can be described as both flesh and spirit – it’s a kind of duality, and an echo of God’s image in us.
But in order for life in the Spirit to be open to all of us, Jesus must go to the Cross. He says to Nicodemus: just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so that all who looked at it would live, so Jesus will be lifted up (on the cross) so that all who believe in him can be cured of sin and live.
The Holy Spirit plays a part in bringing people into God’s Kingdom through being ‘born again’ or ‘born anew’ as Jesus says. So it’s God’s love + Jesus’ sacrifice + the Holy Spirit’s new birth that adds up to salvation for humankind. It’s a mystery that’s not easily understood.
But with all of this as backdrop let’s listen now to the witness of John and Charles Wesley.
The Wesley brothers were raised in a deeply religious household by their father, Samuel, who was a pastor, and their mother, Susanna, who was also a brilliant theologian in her own right. So the Wesley boys were “PKs” – preachers’ kids. If you’ve known any PKs, you know preachers’ kids typically struggle with their faith, because it’s not easy to be raised as children in a church that’s run by your parents. Talk about living in a fishbowl! PKs tend to be a little bit rebellious and they ask a lot of questions and they really wrestle with the faith. I have been blessed to be friends with a number of PK’s in my life, and I love them dearly because they’re very insightful and they ask good questions. And when they wrestle with the faith it’s an honest wrestling.
Both John and Charles grew up and attended seminary at a college called Christ Church in Oxford. Christ Church College is a stunningly gorgeous place! It was built in the 1400s or 1500s and it contains fountains, and flower gardens with walls around them, and a chapel decorated in marble and gold. If you’ve ever seen the Harry Potter movies, some of the exteriors of Hogwarts were filmed at Christ Church Oxford, and the dining hall in those movies was inspired by the dining hall at Christ Church Oxford. Christ Church is one of my favorite places on the planet – I never get tired of wandering around that campus!
The thing is – as John and Charles Wesley quickly realized – Christ Church Oxford is the world’s pinnacle of privilege. It’s the best of the best of the best. Both of the Wesley boys were accepted into the school on academic merit; they were not rich enough to afford it; they were good enough scholars. And now they were surrounded by the kind of wealth that most people can’t even imagine. And they realized that, in many places (not all places) the Church of England back in the 1700s was often attended by people with wealth; church was a place to be ‘seen’.
At the same time, literally only a few blocks from Christ Church, stood the Oxford Castle and Prison. This was a place for criminals, but not just hardened criminals. Pickpockets, petty thieves, and back in those days it was even a crime to be in debt. People who couldn’t pay their debts were thrown in prison. How you’re supposed to earn money to pay off your debts while you’re sitting in prison is a mystery – and of course it was a misery as well, for the debtors’ wives and children.
John and Charles Wesley looked at this system, and they saw injustice, and they heard the call of scripture to show mercy to the poor and the hurting. They and their friends pledged themselves to be members of a “Holy Club”: to study scripture together and pray together, and lead disciplined Christian lives, and finding ways to do good for people in the prison: collecting money; educating their children (schools were not free back then); teaching housewives the basics of first aid and medicine.
This kind of practical, down-to-earth spirituality was considered a bit methodical by the Wesley’s classmates, who poked fun at them and called them ‘Method-ists’ – and the name stuck. What was meant as an insult, the Holy Spirit took as an honor.
The Wesleys did all these things motivated by their intellectual understanding of the scriptures. The Bible says ‘do this’ so we do it. The Bible is God’s word and we believe in God.
But the Wesleys had a nagging feeling that this wasn’t enough. So they signed on to travel to the New World – to be missionaries to the Colonies (back before the Colonies were America) – and they ended up in Georgia.
Things didn’t go very well for them there. Charles really didn’t like Georgia – I gather it was too hot and humid for him – and he went back home to England pretty quickly. John stayed for awhile in hopes of reaching the Native Americans with the gospel. Meanwhile one of the young women at his church in Savannah developed an interest in Mr. Wesley – and he was not really in the mood to be interested in. Let’s just say things did not go well. John Wesley slipped out of the colonies and hightailed it back to England.
John and Charles both – separately but at the same time – went through a period of deep discouragement. They had worked hard; they had taught and preached about the faith well; but their experience in the colonies left them questioning their own salvation. They knew all the right stuff; they were doing all the right things; but their hearts were discouraged. At the same time they both noticed a kind of spirituality in a movement from Germany called Moravian. John said the Moravians were passionate in prayer, fearless in adversity, cheerful with each other, free of evil speech.
John writes that he was starting to say to himself, “I should give up preaching. How can I preach to others, [when I don’t] have faith myself?” You can hear how down he was. And he shared this thought with [a Moravian preacher friend], and asked whether he should [quit preaching]. [His Moravian friend] answered “By no means.” And John asked, “But what can I preach?” His friend said, “Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”
I suspect his Moravian friend saw more in John Wesley than Wesley saw in himself in that moment. Around that same time John wrote:
“I went to America to convert the Indians; but, oh, who shall convert me?”
God rarely leaves questions like that un-answered for very long. I think most of us are familiar with the story of how John found himself one night attending a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate, London, on May 24, where he “felt his heart strangely warmed” – and his life was never the same after that.
But today I’d like to share with you more about Charles Wesley’s story. Charles’ story is not as well-known, or as dramatic… but for myself, I’ve always found his story inspiring because he’s a musician, and I can relate to that.
Charles’ experience with the Holy Spirit happened three days before John’s. It was Pentecost Sunday – May 21, 1738. On that day, Charles opened his Bible for a word from God, and put his finger on a text that described in detail the mighty work of God in his life. The passage was Psalm 40:3 and it said:
“He hath put a new song in my mouth…. Many will see and fear and will trust in the Lord.”
This became a prophetic word in Charles’ life: he went on to write thousands of new songs – most of them hymns – some of them even set to music by the composer George Frederick Handel of Messiah fame.
Charles describes his experience of fully coming to faith in a hymn called And Can It Be. I love this hymn; it’s one of my favorites. Three days after this hymn was written, John had his “heartwarming” experience.
After these things happened, the brothers found that many churches and pulpits were closed to them; the society people in London didn’t consider it ‘proper’ to be ‘enthusiastic’ about your faith. So the brothers took to the fields and the factories and the town squares… anywhere where people would listen to the Good News of Jesus.
The emphasis John and Charles placed on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer went on to influence the Holiness movement, the Pentecostal movement, and the Charismatic movement, as well as the Methodist Church and the United Methodist Church. And the Church of England was influenced, too, whether they like to admit it or not.
I’d like to finish the story of John and Charles Wesley today by reading Charles’ own description of his conversion… And Can It Be. If you like you can follow with me in the hymnal – It’s #363 Charles wrote:
And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! how can it be
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?‘Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies!
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love Divine!
’Tis mercy all! let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more.He left His Father’s throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace;
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free;
For, O my God, it found out me.Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness Divine,
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
AMEN.
Trinity Sunday – Aldersgate Sunday – May 26, 2024
[1] https://cmj-israel.org/learn/mystery-trinity
[2] SALT, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/6/1/relationships-are-who-we-are-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-trinity-sunday
Getting Started 