TRINITY SUNDAY (Written on May 26, 2009)

For the Lectionary (what's a lectionary?) of June 7, 2009: Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-17

 

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."

 

VERSE NINE by Larry Patten

I demand an additional verse to the Bible. Let Isaiah’s sixth chapter have fourteen verses rather than thirteen. This action won’t add or subtract any words, chapters, books, or testaments. It’s barely a hiccup. It won’t even register on the Biblical Richter scale of changes. You’ll adjust to this tweak lickety-split.

Here’s what I want: ⁸Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” ⁹And I said, “Here I am Lord, send me.”

Now it’s Isaiah 6:1-9 for the Trinity Sunday lectionary reading and Isaiah 6:1-14 for the entire chapter. And, ta-da, when you continue into the seventh chapter, reading the prophet’s demands and challenges, you’re back on familiar ground. By the time you reach Isaiah 8:1’s tongue-torturing “Belonging to Ma’her-shal’al-hash-baz . . .” you’ll have forgotten that earlier alteration two chapters before.

Why do this?

To encourage a pause. An intake of breath. I don’t want anyone, aloud or silently, to arrive at Isaiah 6:8 and read the next twenty-eight words (at least it’s twenty-eight English words in the NRSV) as one unit. You know how people suck in a lung-full of air before blowing out birthday candles? It wouldn’t require an effort like that to have sufficient oxygen to read the current verse eight.

So I declare a pause. I plead for an intake of breath. “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah heard in his vision. This was a call. A summons. This was a vision of God, of a holy throne, of winged cherubim, otherworldly and completely here and now. What will you do with your life? Will you feed my lambs? Will you preach truth to power? Will you serve your neighbor even if you despise her? Will you turn the other cheek and forget that you only have two? Maybe even seventy cheeks, or seven times seventy.

Will? You? Do? That?

“Whom shall I send?” was and is an ordination question. It’s also a question that comes before any ordination questions. It’s even more a question that doesn’t care whether you are ordained or not or ever will be. “Who will go for us?” sounds like an insignificant voice weeping in the loneliest and most fearsomely dark night. “Who will go for us?” will also be asked on the same bright and beautiful day when your best friend has invited you for a game of golf or tennis or cricket or whatever it is that is your most favorite thing to do with your most favorite friend.

And yet, on that dark night or bright day, who will go? Will you go? I want a pause. An intake of breath. Be careful with your answer.

And don’t you dare think, believe, or imagine that it’s a question that will only come once. One question; answer given. Hand raised. Box checked. Let’s move on. Nope, faith ain’t that simple. My newly renumbered verse eight keeps coming and coming and coming. Verse eight is the lion and you are the lamb. (Or is it the other way around?). It slaps you in the face or whispers in your ear. Verse eight delights in tossing out a banana peel just as you’re about to turn a corner . . . a corner on your walk or in your life.

* * *

In John’s Gospel, Nicodemus hurries through the streets and alleyways of nighttime Jerusalem to pose a question to Jesus. He wants to ask the enigmatic and frighteningly transparent carpenter from a backward Galilean burg a few questions. The Pharisee can’t not ask these questions.

I imagine Nicodemus arriving at the door. First decision: does he possess the courage to knock and have the door open so that an interior light reveals his troubled face? He knocks, and is invited in. Second decision: should he really ask aloud the questions that won’t leave his wondering heart and that, day after day, make his head hurt? Can he release these words from his troubled soul? Third decision: will he be able to stand still, to not retreat, and listen to the answers?

And the answers come. His heart pounds. His head no longer aches, but soars with possibility.

Next decision? Well, that decision takes a while! Nicodemus “disappears” until John 7:50. But the real kicker, the real next decision, comes in John 19:39. Read it for yourself. The man with questions once walked across a dark city with a troubled heart. His next decision about how he will respond to Jesus’ answers unfolds in the bright, awful, truthful light of a Good Friday.

Now, that was a pause. The writer of John really, really, really knew how to give us a huge, gaping, chasm of a pause!

The Holy calls. The Holy hints. The Holy lures. There are times when our reactions will be immediate. This is good. I’ve sat in my office or a hospital room or a strange kitchen and answered an immediate “Yes!” to another. They didn’t need to complete their question. I would try to be there for them. I would help, listen, or pray with them. Now. Here. And yet, I wish for that extra verse in Isaiah. Don’t race through it. Don’t squeeze the question against the answer. In the ways that the Holy does call, hint, and lure, we sometimes should hesitate. Not because we want to evaluate the divine invite, or form a committee to talk the idea into submission, but because our answer—and the gifts and graces unique to each of us—have consequences.

Who will I send? That was a question for Isaiah. But now it’s yours. You’ve heard it. And you know, as much as I don’t know because I’m not you, that the Holy has placed this question before you and the answer will change your life. Verse eight ends.

Take a breath. Verse nine must be all yours when it’s spoken.

in Peace,

Larry