For those who want a change from the Gospel
Trinity Sunday – Isaiah 40:12-17, 27-31

This has got to be about the hardest Sunday of the year for which to write an OT Lectionary blog! If the Trinity is only alluded to in the NT, how on earth are we meant to find it in the Old? In fact it wasn’t until the 4th century that the doctrine of the Trinity as we understand it was finalised, the end of a journey in which Christians had tried to express theologically what they knew and had experienced of God, and to outlaw false doctrine. So to expect to find a fully developed trinitarian theology in our Bibles is a vain hope. Yet there are hints, the very hints which caused early Christians to try to formulate the idea. Maybe there are some in today’s OT reading.
The passage comes from the second part of the book of Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah) which dates from the end of the Babylonian exile, and announces to a weary and homesick nation that God is about to rescue them and build a highway to take them back to their homeland. There is the feel that people had almost given up on their God after decades away from home, with their Temple having been destroyed, and being surrounded by the gods of Babylon, where they now felt they were doomed live for ever. So to a people who had forgotten, the prophet poses a series of questions, with the refrain ‘Do you not know?’
‘Who has …?
v.12-17 pose a series of questions about God as creator, and the relative tininess of humans. The reference to God’s Spirit or spirit in v.13 is probably what inspired the lectionary compliers to choose this as a trinitarian passage, although most likely it simply means the ‘mind’ of God: who can grasp what God means to do, or tell him how to do it? But what we do have here is a dramatic picture of the majestic creator of all, before whom humans appear as nothing.
The filleted out verses, 18-26, similarly pose questions to the disillusioned Jews: With whom will you compare God? (v.18), Do you not know? (v.21) and again To whom will you compare God (v.25). If we are seeking to read these verses through the lens of a trinitarian theology, we have a description of God the Almighty king and Father, before whom we are left with no option other than humble and awe-filled worship.
But then the next question introduces a different note:
‘Why do you complain …?’
This leads into an assurance that God has in no way forgotten them, nor are they beyond his reach in Babylon, nor has he grown old and past it, needing to be replaced by a more up-to-date Babylonian deity. In fact he is among them even so far away from home: the very ends of the earth are his. If we want to, we can perhaps find a hint of the incarnation here. God, rather than leaving the exiles to get on with it, is still present in their world, with compassion and care. Jesus is God with us.
‘Do you not know …?’
This question, to which we shall return in a moment, ushers in the famous verses about renewed strength and eagle’s wings, which we might want to read as a reference not to the majesty of the creator, nor the closeness of the redeemer, but rather God’s Holy Spirit within us, renewing, empowering, comforting and equipping for the journey.
So at a stretch, and without believing that Deutero-Isaiah had a fully developed 4th century doctrine of the Trinity, we might see some hints here about the nature of God as creator, redeemer and empowerer. But to return to that question which forms a refrain in between the others, what is significant is that the people ought to have known, and that in knowing would be their comfort and salvation. The Hebrew word yadha’ is a rich one, and is not just used about having information. Its primary meaning is to ‘ascertain by seeing’, and that right there is perhaps the most helpful thing we can say about the Trinity from this passage. Preachers have spent so long trying to get people to understand how God can be three and one at the same time, but that is to miss the point, not least because no-one can understand. But Isaiah’s question isn’t about what they comprehend; it’s about what they have experienced. ‘Have you not heard?’ in v.28 could mean ‘Have you not experienced?’ And there’s the point: how have we experienced the awesome majesty of God the Creator and sustainer of the whole universe, and how do we respond to him in worship? How do we know the closeness of Christ with us day by day, such that we love him and call out to him for help in all the circumstances of life? And how have we felt the empowering of the Spirit, bringing his gifts and growing his fruit in us, refreshing us, renewing us and causing us to flourish? This is a very different kind of knowing, and is of far more value then mere theological formulae.