Lectionary Reflections  |  General Convention 2006

Seraphim's Cry, Prophet's Commission
 By Carin Ruff
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
 

Lectionary Reflections for the First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday (B)

Readings for Trinity Sunday, June 11, 2006
  • Isaiah 6:1-8
  • Psalm 29 or Canticle 2 or 13
  • Romans 8:12-17
  • John 13:1-17
Forgive me if it seems a hopeless copout, given today's readings, not to talk about the verse so famous that it's less often quoted than simply referred to by number on billboards and bumper stickers. But I want to talk about Isaiah.

Church can sometimes feel like a six-winged, seraphic juggling act ...
The cry of the seraphim to one another, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory," provides the text of the Sanctus, the acclamation in which we join "our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven" at the celebration of the Eucharist. It is tempting to approach this moment with reluctance, saying with Isaiah, ""Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips." We are imperfect and overpressed; we have only two hands: how can we join a heavenly choir composed of creatures with six wings?! We are here and they are there; we are not ready to see God face to face.

... we sing as one with the saints and all the company of heaven, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" The work of the people works!
And yet I was struck again in church this Pentecost that this is by far my favorite part of the Eucharist. Seraphs are so much a part of the language of heavenly majesty that they only show up in the most solemn of hymns ("At his feet the six-winged seraph..."), but look: they're multi-tasking! Two wings to cover their faces, two to cover their feet, and they still have two left to keep them flapping and aloft. Church can sometimes feel like a six-winged, seraphic juggling act: dozens of people with multiple roles to play move through the church's grand space; old-timers help visitors navigate the ups and downs and books and bulletin; the Epistle is full of unfamiliar place names to trip up the lector; a newly-ordained deacon is aloft on the joy of her new position but still needs guidance through the choreography during the Gradual; a frothily-dressed infant isn't at all certain about all the attention, much less the waters of baptism, and her older siblings long ago lost focus; godparents need to be prompted to give their responses loudly enough to be heard at the back of the nave; and the dove-on-a-stick on his once-a-year outing makes a face-plant into an inconveniently-placed column. At the moment just before the consecration, though, it all miraculously comes together, and we sing as one with the saints and all the company of heaven, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" The work of the people works! And like Isaiah, we all receive absolution -- "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out" -- and commission to go out into the world renewed: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" "Here am I; send me!"

That moment every week when we remind ourselves that we are singing with a whole church that transcends time and place seems to me a particularly salient reminder in the days leading up to the General Convention. Some of us in our Church are covering our eyes, and others our feet, and many are flapping our wings mightily just to stay aloft. In joining together to praise God in majesty, we look forward to a time and a place of unity, where denominational and sectarian divisions will have passed away. But sometimes I think it is important that the earthly Church does have space here and now to pull in contrary directions, since it is characteristic of our existence here and now that our movement forward as a body involves push and pull and sometimes pain. Notice how Isaiah's spectacularly otherworldly vision comes to him and indeed reaches out and touches him in time: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne," he says, grounding the sight of the God who transcends history in a particular historical moment. The seraph who touches the coal to the prophet's lips reaches into time from out of time, giving reassurance from the heavenly kingdom to the here and now. Even so, as we struggle and flap in opposite directions, we do so with the safety net of the knowledge that we are all one in God's temple -- his body -- encompassed by the hem of his robe.

... as we struggle and flap in opposite directions, we do so with the safety net of the knowledge that we are all one in God's temple -- His body -- encompassed by the hem of His robe.
In the light of the prophet's experience, we can understand Jesus's words to Nicodemus as speaking to the same kind of opening of a connection between the Kingdom and this world that Isaiah's vision revealed: the descending from heaven and the lifting up again of the Son of Man, which constitutes a commission to the individual Christian as well as to the whole Church. Let's shout it aloud as a body, not just put it on a bumper sticker.


Carin Ruff is a member of Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio and an English professor at John Carroll University who works on texts of the Anglo-Saxon church.