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Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 6
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
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!”


You worry that through all the cultural references made from this pulpit—the films, the books, the internet memes—that somehow the pinnacle of human expression would be overlooked. Well worry not more: today I want to begin with Looney Tunes.

So here are (in my opinion) the five best cartoons in the ‘short comedy’ genre ever produced:

“Operation: Rabbit” (1952) where Wile E. Coyote introduces himself as a genius and Bugs proves otherwise.

“Mad as a Mars Hare” (1963) starring Marvin the Martian who shows us he is “very very angry.”

“Rabbit of Seville” (1950) proving that kids can love Rossini as much as adults.

“What’s Opera, Doc?” (1957) which had kids everywhere singing “Kill the Wabbit.”

“One Froggy Evening” (1955), selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress for being the “Citizen Kane” of cartoons.

And, of course, it’s “One Froggy Evening” that’s generated much scholarly debate. Is it a comedy or a tragedy? And if it’s a tragedy, is it actually a double-tragedy, pushing the literary envelope even further? And what about Michigan J. Frog himself? Is he just a singing frog, or is a symbol of something else?

“One Froggy Evening” begins, of course, with a demolished building and a singing frog that emerges from the cornerstone. He sings ragtime standards, and the man who finds him immediately dreams of vast riches. But the frog won’t sing, neither to a talent agent nor to a crowded theatre. Eventually the frog ends up in another cornerstone, and the story repeats.

I share all this because I’m spent 25 years waiting to sing “Hello Ma Baby” from the pulpit, and because I want to use the story to explore an idea I’m working on, on that brings together Michigan J. Frog and the call of Isaiah, as read by Bunny, who is no slouch when it comes to singing ragtime standards.

The thesis/idea is this: Faith should be something that if you try to tell people about it, they will struggle to understand. Like the singing frog, faith should be something that we experience but may not be able to share with others, at least not without considerable effort—and effort that may ultimately fail.

So we begin with a book most likely written in exile, that period of literal and figurative dislocation when the elite of Judean society are carried off the Babylon. In searching for reasons, they turn to the prophet Isaiah, an eight-century prophet who predicted with some accuracy what would some day befall Judah. Isaiah believed that the disobedience of the people led to their exile, and he spends thirty-nine chapters being specific.

But the passage that Bunny read takes us back to the beginning, to the call of Isaiah. It’s a rich visual moment when call and response evoke the wonder of this God who needs prophets to express God’s worldview and will. The moment begins with a vision of complex creatures with wings and various covered parts singing some of the most familiar words in scripture, words that we say every time we share communion:

Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might;
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.

This passage (called the Sanctus) continues with a quote from Psalm 118 and is familiar as the words shared on Palm Sunday, “Hosanna in the highest: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

That’s the polite part of the story, in contrast to a young Isaiah who cries out “Woe to me!” when multi-winged seraphim are flying toward him. Convinced he is going to die (he saw the Lord) he confesses that he has unclean lips and comes from a people with unclean lips, only to face one final confrontation: Seraphim touch his lips with a coal from the fire and his sin is forgiven. If only that was the end of the story, but it is not:

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!”

The obvious contrast here is to the call of Samuel, that extended dialogue between old Eli and young Samuel. It’s a humorous call, meant to delight:

Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, “Here I am.” And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” But Eli said, “I did’t call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down. Again the Lord called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”
“My son,” Eli said, “I did’t call; go back and lie down.”

You get the picture. Eventually Eli understands that this is a call story, and sends the lad back to truly answer the call. It’s light, it involves a loving relationship between young and old, and it’s about as far from the frightening call of Isaiah as you can get.

Some of you are still wondering about the frog, so I won’t torment you any longer. The double-tragedy of “One Froggy Evening” is that the man cannot realize his dream of sharing the remarkable thing he has discovered, and the frog ends up back in the box. Yes, his motive is crass, but he sincerely believes that the world will gain from the experience of a singing frog, something he is unable to share.

Isaiah, like a new Moses, has met God face-to-face and lived, a tale worthy of telling of ever there was one, but he is unable to share the complex majesty of the moment. Instead, God says ‘share this’:

‘You will be ever hearing,
but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing,
but never perceiving.’
This people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.

And that’s the gentle beginning, before God get’s really mad. Eventually forgiveness will follow, much in the way the coal touched the lips of Isaiah, but until then God will speak through the prophet and share a message that would fit just as well today as them: Here’s Isaiah 10:

Woe to those who make unjust laws,
to those who issue oppressive decrees,
to deprive the poor of their rights
and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.

In fact, when J.S. Woodsworth, the minister who would go on the found the CCF shared these words during the Winnipeg General Strike (1919) he was arrested for seditious libel. And I’m sure similar words are being shared that the end of the First Nations’ Truth and Reconciliation event, being held in Ottawa as we speak.

So this is one example of faith being something that if we try to tell people about it, they will struggle to understand. Seems in 1919 at least, this kind of faith might even get you arrested. Nonetheless, it is the expression of our faith in the public realm that may puzzle (and offend) precisely because God may call us to deliver an unpopular message to a people ill-disposed to accept it.

Another example would the complexity and majesty of an encounter with God. Much ink has been spilled trying to understand the number of wings possessed by the seraphim, what the wings cover, and how this relates to the architecture of the Temple itself. And that’s just three verses of the hundreds that describe an encounter with God.

Fast-forward to the New Testament, and we meet God in Jesus Christ, and the encounter becomes more complex still. For every “I am” statement that tries to make plain our relationship to God in Jesus, there is another that leaves us shaking our heads. Treasure in a field, a dishonest steward, the fish with a drachma in its mouth—surely the Kingdom of God doesn’t need to be this complex?

By Matthew 13 the disciples have had enough. They ask, “Jesus, why do you speak to them in parables,’ meaning ‘we don’t have a hot clue what you’re saying.’ Jesus says, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them” and they likely did that wide-eyed thing people do when they are truly speechless. Then Jesus quoted the passage from Isaiah 6:

‘You will be ever hearing,
but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing,
but never perceiving.’

Thanks Jesus, thanks a lot. Faith should be something that if you try to tell people about it, they will struggle to understand. It wasn’t terribly clear to the disciples, and they were there the whole time—right there. How much more will we struggle to describe a relationship and a set of beliefs and ultimately fail.

Finally, faith as something that if you try to tell people about it, they will struggle to understand often comes down to worldview. The seraphim speak and begin to commission Isaiah by cleansing him with a hot coal from the purifying fire: “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

We begin each service words of regret and concession—we concede who we are and what we tend to do. This reminds us first, that we have sins and second, that our sins are forgiven. The parables of Jesus might be a confusing mess, but the message “you’re sins are forgiven” couldn’t be clearer. And Jesus’ need to remind people has an obsessive quality to it, because it’s God’s key theme too.

But the world struggles to understand this obsession. And by the time the self-esteem movement took hold, we struggled to understand it too. ‘That’s a real downer’ people said, or my favourite—’I didn’t do anything wrong this week.’ Really? A full week without negative thoughts toward anyone? Were you in a coma?

Faith should be something that if you try to tell people about it, they will struggle to understand. And that includes faith in a God who stands with the poor and the oppressed, a God who is complex and mysterious down to today, and a God who forgives us even when we forget we need forgiveness.

May this God continue to call, and may we always say “Here I am, Lord. Send me!” Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 3:53 AM