Trinity Sunday

When Carol Crane was a child in first grade, she mystified her teacher and her classmates when she wondered aloud why the number five, displayed in a row of other numbers above the chalkboard was yellow, when she thought it should be green.

Her question didn’t make sense and was vaguely disturbing. And Carol learned to keep her mouth shut about such things. She didn’t know then that there were others like her for whom the ringing of a doorbell resembled a series of triangles, or a dog bark seemed like a circle with dots around it.

Today, she knows that she is blessed or afflicted with synesthesia (sin-es-thee-sia), a condition that affects about 1 in 25,000 persons. Synesthetes tend to see sounds, smell colors and taste shapes. When a synesthete hears the sound of a truck backing up, making a beep-beep-beep sound, he or she might see the beeps as a series of red dots. In a string of numbers, the 5’s may be experienced as a different color from the 2’s. Circles smell different from squares, and sour foods sound different from sweet foods.

People like Carol are hot-wired to join several senses together as altered building blocks of perception. The condition is seven times more common among artists, novelists and poets. People with this ability seem to experience the world with more intensity, and they make unexpected connections between things they see, touch, smell, taste and hear, all of which is a real asset to people involved in creative work.

Was the prophet Isaiah a synesthete? Who knows? But when God commissioned him to “Go and say to this people” (6:9 NIV) in today’s Old Testament Lesson, he experienced a riot of sensations that triggered emotions of both fear and awe.

He saw the Lord “sitting on a throne” (Isaiah 6:1). He heard one seraph call to another, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts” (v. 3). He smelled the smoke that filled the house of the Lord, and felt the pivots on the thresholds shake (v. 4). He even tasted the live coal that the seraph put on his mouth to blot out his sin (vv. 6-7).

Granted, not a true experience of synesthesia. The voices of the seraphs didn’t appear to him as the shape of triangles, nor did the coal on his lips evoke a sense of sound. But Isaiah’s experience of God lifted him into a heightened state of sensory awareness to such an extent that he contracted what one might call a case of synesthesia spirituality.

This is clearly a more sensational encounter with God than most of us experience on a given Sunday in church. Our perceptions of the Lord are usually on the level of quiet stirrings, not thundering spectacles. And yet, we cannot dismiss the experience of the prophet Isaiah, a man who grasped new dimensions of God’s power and purity and grace and love through his expanded sensory perceptions.

Our contemporary problem, you see, is not that we grasp too much of God, but that we experience too little of him. In America today, God is seen as marching in step with our political parties, and with our national interests. God is understood to desire our prosperity, and to support  – in the words of the Prayer of Jabez – the enlargement of our territories. God is perceived as a calming presence, a supportive friend, and a healing helper, all of which work together to maintain the status quo.

There may be some truth to these characterizations, but they are not the whole truth. They certainly don’t match the experience of Isaiah in his moment of synesthesia.

With his sensory perceptions racing on overdrive, Isaiah sees a Lord who is holy, high and lofty – on a throne, lifted up. He is far above all political parties, and much more pure and perfect than any human institutions.

The one true God cannot be shoehorned into a particular earthly program, or forced to get in line with our personal or national interests.

In fact, the opposite is true: Our goal should always be to get ourselves in line with God. For that to happen, we need to have a synesthetic experience of God, one that may be baffling but blessed, perplexing but powerful.

For example, on Trinity Sunday, Isaiah’s experience points us to the triune God. The trisagion of verse three has traditionally been regarded as a theological marker of the triune nature of God. A new, synesthetic approach to understand God might be to see God as a divine community of persons. This understanding, argued by theologian Shirley Guthrie, preserves our perception of a single God, but in this case God is one single community of persons.

Within this community, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit work together to do the work of creation, redemption and sanctification. Within this community, God can show both almighty power and suffering love, he can reveal his grace and truth in Jesus Christ, and he can offer inspiration and new life in the person of the Holy Spirit.

This view of God also expands our understanding of what it means to be the church today. If God himself is a community, united in mutual love and shared purpose, then we can be a close-knit and cohesive community as well. If God’s community is creative, then ours should be, too. If His community is full of grace and truth, then these are qualities that we should show. If His community offers inspiration and transformation, then we should do no less.

It’s a multi-sensory journey to spiritual wholeness. When we see God, we cannot help but see ourselves. In our cry for deliverance, a God of grace touches our hearts with coals of love and forgiveness and we’re never the same.

Notice, also, that the experience doesn’t end there: Forgiveness sets us up for service.

The voice of the Lord called to Isaiah, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And Isaiah said, “Here am I; send me!” (v. 8). Isaiah knew that forgiveness freed him to go in a new direction, not to return to his former ways. He believed that new life was being given to him so that he could serve the Lord, and so he offered to go in whatever direction God would send him. He became one of the greatest of the prophets, speaking God’s word to a troubled, corrupt and sinful society.

What do you think God has forgiven you to do?

The world still needs prophets, courageous souls willing to deliver the message “Thus says the Lord” to a society that is quick to block out divine words. But the world also needs teachers and counselors, preachers and evangelists, healers and helpers, as well as people of vision and energy and integrity in every line of work that is being performed today.

So be a computer technician with compassion. A sales clerk with Christian vision. A school administrator with a sense of discipleship.

These qualities may not seem to be an obvious or predictable fit. But that’s synesthesia. That’s the expansion of perception that opens us up to God and to his will for us.

The challenge for each of us is to practice synesthesia spirituality. When you have a vision of God, you cannot not do something. Painters with a vision paint. Composers compose. Poets poet. Christians “go and tell” – and show and tell.

That’s what we’ve been forgiven to do.