Yes, Protest. But Worship First.

This weekend features the only Sunday of the liturgical calendar that focuses on an idea rather than an event. Most of the church year follows the life of Christ. We celebrate his birth on Christmas, his death and resurrection during holy week, and his ascension into heaven 40 days later. Pentecost recalls the descent of the Holy Spirit, while Epiphany remembers the coming of the magi to visit the child Christ.

Trinity Sunday is different. It was not formally added to the church calendar until the 14th century. It was meant to promote the traditional belief about God over against the heresies that denied the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Turning our attention to reflect on the inner workings of God this weekend may seem a far cry from the issues troubling our republic, including the protests of increasingly draconian immigration policies, the destruction of property in response to these policies, and the seemingly relentless news cycle that has exhausted us all. But the Christian doctrine of God has never been about pondering abstractions. God has always revealed himself in the midst of the world we inhabit.

The Old Testament reading that commonly accompanies Trinity Sunday comes from Isaiah 6:1-7. It opens not with God, but politics. It says, “in the year King Uzziah died.” Uzziah reigned for over 50 years in Judah. His death occurred at a time when Assyria’s power was on the rise and the long season of Judah’s financial prosperity had come to an end. Uzziah died in 740 BC. Neighboring Israel would fall to Assyria 18 years later and be carried into exile.

It is against this backdrop that Isaiah sees the vision of God that we encounter on Trinity Sunday. This is important because the vision serves as a stabilizing force in the prophet's imagination and, by extension, in the people's. Uzziah might be dead, but God still reigns. Uzziah’s death speaks to the limits of any earthly ruler. Isaiah’s vision highlights the enduring reign of God.

Placing our hope in a particular human leader to fix the world is folly. That does not make politics irrelevant. Policies have consequences. We are seeing this in real-time. Nonetheless, all politicians, the righteous and the wicked, are bound by time.  Every president that has ever lived will one day meet their maker, including the present one. This ought to give us the courage to resist moral compromises that will have us look foolish as the seasons turn.

Isaiah’s commentary on Uzziah gives way to something much more important: A vision of God.  He sees the Lord seated upon the throne with his robe filling the temple and angelic beings flying to and fro. These angels cried, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). 

What we encounter here is worship. During the civil rights movement, mass protests were often preceded by worship services.  The church would be wrong to convince itself that it is only relevant when it engages in direct political action. The worship of God, with an awareness of what is happening in the world, is also a form of protest. What I have in mind is not singing hymns while ignoring the fact that the house is on fire, but instead rushing towards the flames, shouting “Alleluia!”

Worship declares that there is something more worthy of our attention and devotion than politics. It is no surprise that two of the most explicitly political books in the bible (Isaiah and Revelation) have the most vivid scenes of worship. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council could go out into the streets of a roiling South with confidence because they believed that those who opposed them had to bow to a higher authority. 

It would be wrong to think that the goal of worship is to fuel protest. Instead, worship reorients our reality around ultimate things. It invites us upward and inward, before we head outward. Worship forces us to ask the real questions that our busyness helps us avoid: Where did I come from? What is my purpose? Is there a God that orders the affairs of humanity or is all of existence merely the will to power? If there is a being that created us from love and for love, what do we owe him, our fellow humans, and ourselves?

Therefore, for the Christian, God is not the counter to the empire or some kind of opposing force. Instead, Christ is the undressing of the empire, rendering it nothing more than the context within which we bear witness to something greater.   

More than anything else, we need to orient our lives around the shout “Holy, Holy, Holy!” That shout, if it is only inside the church, bounces off the walls and comes to nothing. The cry must be uttered outside as well. The holiness of God and his compassion towards all humanity require us to care about the immigrant and the foreigner. He has bestowed a dignity on persons that is irrevocable.

Isaiah’s encounter with God provokes a personal crisis. He recognizes both his own brokenness (“I am a man of unclean lips”) and the brokenness of his people (“I dwell among a people of unclean lips”). But that judgment is not the last word. God sends an angel with a burning coal from the altar and places it upon Isaiah’s lips, thereby removing the prophet’s guilt. Isaiah, then, is a model for what we hope happens to us as we encounter God in worship. We see ourselves and the world for what they truly are. But that is not the end. 

Worship is also a chance to be transformed. Only people who have been made aware of their need for God can answer his call, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” Yes, we can go out and do the work that God has given us to do, but first we need to go to church.

Esau Mccaulley is Pastor of All Saints Church in Naperville, IL, host of the Esau Mccaulley Podcast, and author of the forthcoming book God’s Colorful Kingdom Storybook Bible: The Story of God’s Big Diverse Family. He serves as an Associate professor at Wheaton College.