In our Old Testament reading today we see the “call of Isaiah”. This call comes at a time where he and the people of Israel are experiencing severe trauma. Juliana Claasens writes that we can understand this call as a response from God to “the multiple layers of trauma shaping the book of Isaiah”.
As I reflected on this, I began to wonder how God is “calling” us as a community of believers and as individuals in response to the multiple layers of trauma we are experiencing at this time. Clearly the prophet himself was not exempt from the trauma, deeply engaged and embedded in his historical moment. So too each of us live and love and struggle and move within this traumatic context. Yet God’s response is to call us into becoming part of Gods own response to the trauma of the world. We read again today in the Gospel those powerful words “for God so loved the world” Reminding us yet again that God does not come in judgement, but rather in love and mercy seeking to heal a broken and wounded world. Seeking to heal our brokenness, our woundedness. And that in order to do this God chooses to work with us as partners, drawing us into the life of the Trinity.
Today we celebrate that life of the Trinity. Drawn into a God who seeks to be with us in the very places we find ourselves. This is a deep mystery of our faith. A mystery that needs to be experienced rather than intellectually understood. The mystery of God’s response to our trauma, and Paul’s call in his letter to the Romans to “be who you already are in Christ”. All of this leaves me hopeful that although the trauma of our time is real, although it is pervasive, so too is God’s response. It also leaves me humble, that God seeks to be with the world through me and you and our community at All Saints. We are called and empowered by the Holy Spirit to live into this loving life of God, in ways
that open others to the healing and grace that can be found there.

Pray for me, I am praying for you.

Reverend Anastasia Huntley

30 May 2021