Looking down to see heaven
Commentary
Some mornings, when I ride my bike, the world is still very dark. I have to pick my way
carefully along streets and paths guided only by ambient light from infrequent streetlights
or occasional security lights. When I get to one of my favorite destinations, however, the
heavens open up with radiance from the moon reflected in the waters of Lake Michigan.
In fact, my world becomes illuminated at least as much from the shimmering surfaces
below as it is from the pinpoints above. I need to look down in order to get a shiver from
the brilliance of celestial glory.
So, too, in the lectionary passages for today. Isaiah and Paul and Peter all cast their eyes downward as they encounter the glory of God. Then, and then alone, are they lifted up to bask in the radiances of heaven.
Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13)
In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel (Multnomah, 1990), Brennan Manning admitted his addiction to alcohol. He told of the treatment program he had gone through years earlier to deal with this psychological parasite that threatened to ruin his existence.
Part of the therapy included group sessions in which fellow strugglers sat in a circle and talked of how the demon drink was affecting their lives. One aggressive businessman who had come to the center under legal compulsion, however, did not believe he had a problem. "I drink a little," he said, "but I can handle it. It's never gotten out of hand." Despite the protests of others and cajoling from the therapist he held his ground.
The counselors there had experienced denial many times, and had devised a helpful antidote. At the middle of the circle was a small table with a telephone. First a call was placed to the bartender who most often serviced the businessman's habit. "He drinks like a fish," the man declared to the group over a speakerphone. "He's my best customer."
Embarrassed but not knuckling, the man protested weakly that he never hurt anyone because of his drinking, and that he was always in control. The next phone call shattered his self-deception. In anger, tears, and frustration, the man's wife told the group of the previous Christmas Eve when her husband took their nine-year-old daughter to buy a new pair of shoes. On the way home, they passed his favorite bar and he stopped for a drink. He left the car running to keep out the sub-freezing temperatures, and locked the doors to ensure his daughter's safety. "I'll be right back," he told her.
Eight hours later, he emerged to find the car frozen shut, the engine stilled, and the windows entirely frosted. His daughter was comatose on the front seat, her life threatened by frostbite. Doctors had to amputate a thumb and forefinger, and her hearing was permanently damaged.
Before his wife finished, the man had slid from his chair whimpering. Facing the truth destroyed his projected superman identity and shattered the facade held in place by self- deception. This, according to Brennan, was the moment of turning and the beginning of healing. Repentance is metanoia, according to the Bible -- the change of heart, the turning of the mind.
Isaiah led his people in Jerusalem to this sacred place. They had come through a very tough time in their relationship with God and with one another. Most recently, their king had died a leper. He had presumed to be both political and spiritual ruler, and lost both positions in the process, while disgracing the nation. Although the future appeared now to stretch out in new hope, there were pieces of the past that lingered hurtfully, either from direct offense or in the communal memory. Until they stopped and reflected and spoke words of confession they would be dragging too much of the past with them.
So it is in our compromised world: every community, every family, every nation, and every person needs to revisit this crossroads. Our own superhighways push us on easily toward self-aggrandizement and deception. Only a regular stop at a repentance service station will help us recharge the right engines and find the right roads that point again toward God's kingdom and its well-being.
Isaiah's vision is a reminder that the temple was not a mere religious shrine or a place of personal meditation. Its heritage was rooted in the tabernacle created at Mount Sinai (Exodus 25-40) as a residence for God to live among the Israelites. When the nation became settlers in Canaan and David consolidated its political strength, he set in motion the building of the temple as the magnificent palace of Israel's true king -- Yahweh, the Covenant God. Solomon, David's son, was the actual temple builder. His decision to locate the temple above his own palace on the hillside spur upon which Jerusalem was built clearly marked the temple as the residence of Israel's proper ruler.
Furthermore, when Solomon dedicated the temple (1 Kings 8), it was obvious to all gathered for the occasion that God was moving in -- the Shekinah glory cloud enveloped the place and announced its divine occupant. This is the image upon which Isaiah's vision is based. The temporal king, Uzziah, had violated his political mandate and in so doing had compromised the identity and safety of the nation. Now, in the year of political transition, Yahweh reasserts divine rulership, blazing in holy glory from the real royal palace, the temple.
This is what proves disconcerting to Isaiah. If Uzziah, who had a rightful regency mandate based upon royal blood lines affirmed by God (see 2 Samuel 7) had lost his footing through presumptive power-grabbing, was anyone safe when encountering Yahweh? Isaiah may have had as pure a heart and thoughts as any of us can attempt, but he knew that our best efforts at holiness are like dirty rags when scrutinized by the blaze of God's glory.
Repentance is the only stance possible for those who encounter God. No personal pride can enter.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
We know more about the life and interactions of the Christian congregation in first- century Corinth than we do about any other New Testament church. Paul spent a year and a half there on his second mission journey (50-51 A.D.), and then carried on an extensive correspondence with the church from Ephesus, his base of operations on his third mission journey (52-55 A.D.). At least four letters and several personal visits took place, from the hints and itineraries sprinkled through the pages of our New Testament books 1 and 2 Corinthians. This letter is actually Paul's second to the congregation from Ephesus. The first was a very stern letter sent in response to news he had heard about significant immorality happening there.
Since that first letter, there had been a lot of prayer and passion spilled on both sides of the Aegean Sea. Recently Paul had received three visitors from Corinth, stalwarts among the church's leadership: Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (1 Corinthians 16:17). These three brought gifts and news and a letter approved by the full church leadership in Corinth. The letter responded to some of Paul's earlier instructions and charges, and also included a list of questions to which Paul responds from 1 Corinthians 7:1 on.
One of the last questions raised by the Corinthian believers had to do with the attestation about and implications of the resurrection of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul brings his answer. His brief summary of witnesses to Jesus' resurrection include a collection of individuals and groups that make the event hard to write off as fabrication. Furthermore, in Paul's own testimony of meeting the resurrected Jesus, there is a poignancy that brings the transforming power of the event home. Paul met Jesus. Paul was changed.
Fred Craddock tells a story that shares much of the impact of Paul's testimony in a contemporary setting. Fred and his wife were on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee when they stumbled onto an out-of-the-way restaurant called the Black Bear Inn. It proved to be a good place to eat, besides offering the possibility of actually seeing one of those black bears. An entire wall was glass, opening out onto a wild and rugged valley.
As they sat at supper, quietly communing with nature and each other, their solitude was broken by a tall man with a shock of white hair who ambled over. They could see he was well along in years, probably past the fourscore allotted by the psalmist.
He was hard of hearing as well, since he rudely interrupted their quiet reverie with noisy and nosy questions at least twenty decibels too loud. When he found that Fred taught at a seminary, he suddenly had a story to tell about preachers. Without an invitation, he pulled up a chair and invaded their space. Nodding out the great glass window, he said, "I was born back here in these mountains."
But the story was not to be a pretty one. "My mother was not married," he went on, "and the reproach that fell upon her, fell upon me. The children at school had a name for me, and it hurt. It hurt very much."
In fact, he said, "During recess I would go hide in the weeds until the bell rang. At noon hour I took my lunch and went behind a tree to avoid them. And when I went to town with my mamma, all the grownups would stop and stare at us. They'd look at my mamma, and then they'd look at me, and I could see they were trying to guess who my daddy might have been. Painful years, those."
But something big was about to happen. "I guess it was about the seventh or eight grade," he continued, "when a preacher came to town. He frightened me when he preached, and he attracted me, all at the same time. He was a big man. Thundered when he preached. But he caught me. Every time he preached, he caught me with his words.
"I didn't want the people to catch me, though. So I never went to church on time. Waited around outside till they sang the hymn before the sermon. Then I'd sneak in just as he was getting warmed up. When he was finished I'd rush right out. Didn't want to hear the people say, 'What's a boy like you doin' in church?'
"But one morning, I got caught. A bunch of women lined up in the aisle, and I couldn't get out. And I got all nervous and cold and sweaty. And I knew somebody was going to see me and say, 'Whatcha doin' here, boy? What's a boy like you doin' in church?'
"And sure enough, suddenly a hand clamped down on my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the preacher's face.
" 'Whoa, boy!' he says to me. And he turns me around, and he looks me in the face. And he studies me for a while. And I can just see he's trying to find the family resemblance. And finally he says, 'Well, boy...! I can see it now...! I can see you're a child of ... You're a child of ... Wait now....'
"And he stared me right in the face. 'Yep!' he says. 'I can see it now! You're a child of... God! There's a striking resemblance!'
"Then that preacher man swatted me on the bottom, and he said, 'Go on, boy! Go claim your family inheritance!' "
The Craddocks were quite taken by the story the old man had to tell. Fred thought there was something familiar about it, so he asked the elderly gent, "Sir, what's your name?"
The man replied, proudly, "Ben Hooper!"
It was then that Fred Craddock remembered his daddy telling him the story of the time the people of Tennessee twice elected an illegitimate bastard boy as governor, and how Ben Hooper had done the state proud.
Ben Hooper had faith. He gained faith when a preacher told him he was child of God. He proved his faith when he carved a future of grace out of a mixed inheritance. Or, as Paul put it (1 Corinthians 15:10), "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect."
Luke 5:1-11
A boy in first grade came home from school and told his mother that his class had had a substitute teacher. "What was her name?" asked the mother, but the young lad couldn't remember.
Since she knew most of the regular substitutes from her time of serving on the school board, the mother asked, "Was she a young woman or an older woman?"
The boy thought for a moment and then replied, "I don't know. She looked brand new to me."
We all have had experiences with teachers old or brand new. One of my best teachers was my father. Early in life he drilled into me his favorite proverb: "Hindsight is better than foresight, but never as good as insight." When I heard it as a child, I was more intrigued by the fascinating twist of words than I was captured by the wisdom it communicated. Time, however, has taught me its truth: We see further into the past than the future, of course, but those who have an awareness of how things fit into God's grand scheme are truly wise. Perhaps my father was only making more clever what his own father, in a thick German accent, always declared: "We get too soon old and too late smart."
Insight is a matter of perspective. It involves getting the scenic overview, the satellite snapshot, the observation deck lay of the land. In today's gospel lesson, insight is at center stage. Jesus is recognized by the crowds as a great teacher whose insight illumines their world. The disciples, as a group, believe Jesus has insights that can even improve their fishing techniques on the Sea of Galilee, and Peter gains a new perspective in his relationship with Jesus that helps him reorient his worship practices. Insight is the heart of the Luke's gospel, and he self-consciously seeks to promote a transcendent outlook that will influence our daily behaviors.
Of course, as Peter shows us, the only true response to insight which reveals God to us is humility and hesitancy. It is the hubris of our age that believes we can find God and understand religion and manipulate spirituality. Søren Kierkegaard put it straight when he wrote that if we are really honest we experience fear when we read the words of Jesus. Kierkegaard said that we should really collect up all our New Testaments and bring them out to an open place high on some mountaintop. There we should pile them high and kneel to pray, "God, take this book back again! We can't handle it! It frightens us! And Jesus, go to some other people! Leave us alone!"
To our amazement and unworthy benefit, however, the wonderful message of Jesus is grace. "Don't be afraid," he tells Peter and the others. And then he couples it with a very logical outcome: "From now on you will catch men." It is only the spiritually insensitive and self-sufficient who have no need to follow and evangelize. Those who realize the incredible gift of divine love cannot help but feel and tell.
Application
Some years ago, Bill Hybels wrote Descending into Greatness (Zondervan, 1994). In it he traced the social or cultural or financial paths traveled by some whose reversed temporal fortunes brought about a deeper spiritual walk. Sometimes we can only see God when we lose the upward trajectory of our own rising stars, according to Hybels.
Chuck Colson's Born Again (Chosen, 2004), written shortly after his prison term and change of political fortunes, and his recent The Good Life (Tyndale, 2005), reflecting on the turnaround years later, both carry that same message: We cannot see God until we learn humility. It is not our ability to knock on heaven's door that opens the way to God, but God's gracious initiatives toward us when we finally realize who we are and whose we are. Then, out of our need and finiteness we receive amazing grace.
How does our spirituality become hubris? Where do we encounter the glory of God in blazing brilliance? In what way does our piety emerge from humility rather than manipulative personal sales techniques? These are questions that we need to wrestle with as we encounter God today.
Alternative Application
There is much to bring out from the Isaiah passage, and it would serve as sufficient material for a message in its own right. First, one might contrast the life of Uzziah with that of Isaiah (who was probably also part of the extended royal family). Second, it might be helpful to compare and contrast Isaiah 6 and Genesis 3: the temple and the Garden of Eden as the places where God dwells, the holiness of the deity over against the contamination of the humans, the role of the cherubim as guardians of God's sanctuary, and the shifting attitude of God in keeping Adam and Eve at bay while now cleansing Isaiah for intimacy and friendship with the divine. Third, Isaiah's humility in the presence of glory is instructive for all who treat spirituality with manipulative frivolity, as a power or experience one can manipulate or own.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 138
Few people write thank-you notes anymore. A word of thanks may be offered briefly when a gift is received or a favor done, but the custom of a formal written thank you has, for the most part, faded from our common life. It is a loss felt more deeply than conscience might admit. Not only has a civilized habit disappeared from our social horizon, but with it has gone an intentional sense of thankfulness. Social critics might label this as the result of a burgeoning sense of entitlement in an over privileged generation. Perhaps this is so. But the purpose here is not social commentary so much as it is a call to thankfulness as an intentional ongoing way of living.
Psalm 138 evokes this sense of intentional and ongoing thankfulness. Here thanks are offered with the completeness of a "whole heart." Thanks come even though the writer walks through the "midst of trouble." Thanks go up every day and in every way to this God who accompanies, this God who is present, this God who delivers on his promises.
The thankfulness alluded to here is not merely a serial list of thanks for favors done or prayers answered. It bespeaks an attitude of thanksgiving. No matter what's happening or what state of life the writer experiences, the thanks keep coming. And it is here that a sense of invitation comes.
The reader is invited to this life of thankfulness along with the psalmist. The band strikes up a chord and the conductor is pointing directly at us. It's time for each person to take stock of the mighty doings of our God and to enter into an ongoing and constant state of thankfulness wherein our whole hearts are engaged in thanking God.
Each morning as the alarm clock sounds, give thanks for the gift of life and breath. Each hour as one more person is encountered, give thanks for the gift of human touch and contact. As each bite of food is consumed be thankful for nourishment and the privilege of taste. Again, it is not so much remembering to say thank you each time as it is adopting thanksgiving as part of the process of thinking and feeling.
The invitation comes with gold engraving -- join in a life of thanks and praise to this incredible God. It is a life well worth the living.
So, too, in the lectionary passages for today. Isaiah and Paul and Peter all cast their eyes downward as they encounter the glory of God. Then, and then alone, are they lifted up to bask in the radiances of heaven.
Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13)
In his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel (Multnomah, 1990), Brennan Manning admitted his addiction to alcohol. He told of the treatment program he had gone through years earlier to deal with this psychological parasite that threatened to ruin his existence.
Part of the therapy included group sessions in which fellow strugglers sat in a circle and talked of how the demon drink was affecting their lives. One aggressive businessman who had come to the center under legal compulsion, however, did not believe he had a problem. "I drink a little," he said, "but I can handle it. It's never gotten out of hand." Despite the protests of others and cajoling from the therapist he held his ground.
The counselors there had experienced denial many times, and had devised a helpful antidote. At the middle of the circle was a small table with a telephone. First a call was placed to the bartender who most often serviced the businessman's habit. "He drinks like a fish," the man declared to the group over a speakerphone. "He's my best customer."
Embarrassed but not knuckling, the man protested weakly that he never hurt anyone because of his drinking, and that he was always in control. The next phone call shattered his self-deception. In anger, tears, and frustration, the man's wife told the group of the previous Christmas Eve when her husband took their nine-year-old daughter to buy a new pair of shoes. On the way home, they passed his favorite bar and he stopped for a drink. He left the car running to keep out the sub-freezing temperatures, and locked the doors to ensure his daughter's safety. "I'll be right back," he told her.
Eight hours later, he emerged to find the car frozen shut, the engine stilled, and the windows entirely frosted. His daughter was comatose on the front seat, her life threatened by frostbite. Doctors had to amputate a thumb and forefinger, and her hearing was permanently damaged.
Before his wife finished, the man had slid from his chair whimpering. Facing the truth destroyed his projected superman identity and shattered the facade held in place by self- deception. This, according to Brennan, was the moment of turning and the beginning of healing. Repentance is metanoia, according to the Bible -- the change of heart, the turning of the mind.
Isaiah led his people in Jerusalem to this sacred place. They had come through a very tough time in their relationship with God and with one another. Most recently, their king had died a leper. He had presumed to be both political and spiritual ruler, and lost both positions in the process, while disgracing the nation. Although the future appeared now to stretch out in new hope, there were pieces of the past that lingered hurtfully, either from direct offense or in the communal memory. Until they stopped and reflected and spoke words of confession they would be dragging too much of the past with them.
So it is in our compromised world: every community, every family, every nation, and every person needs to revisit this crossroads. Our own superhighways push us on easily toward self-aggrandizement and deception. Only a regular stop at a repentance service station will help us recharge the right engines and find the right roads that point again toward God's kingdom and its well-being.
Isaiah's vision is a reminder that the temple was not a mere religious shrine or a place of personal meditation. Its heritage was rooted in the tabernacle created at Mount Sinai (Exodus 25-40) as a residence for God to live among the Israelites. When the nation became settlers in Canaan and David consolidated its political strength, he set in motion the building of the temple as the magnificent palace of Israel's true king -- Yahweh, the Covenant God. Solomon, David's son, was the actual temple builder. His decision to locate the temple above his own palace on the hillside spur upon which Jerusalem was built clearly marked the temple as the residence of Israel's proper ruler.
Furthermore, when Solomon dedicated the temple (1 Kings 8), it was obvious to all gathered for the occasion that God was moving in -- the Shekinah glory cloud enveloped the place and announced its divine occupant. This is the image upon which Isaiah's vision is based. The temporal king, Uzziah, had violated his political mandate and in so doing had compromised the identity and safety of the nation. Now, in the year of political transition, Yahweh reasserts divine rulership, blazing in holy glory from the real royal palace, the temple.
This is what proves disconcerting to Isaiah. If Uzziah, who had a rightful regency mandate based upon royal blood lines affirmed by God (see 2 Samuel 7) had lost his footing through presumptive power-grabbing, was anyone safe when encountering Yahweh? Isaiah may have had as pure a heart and thoughts as any of us can attempt, but he knew that our best efforts at holiness are like dirty rags when scrutinized by the blaze of God's glory.
Repentance is the only stance possible for those who encounter God. No personal pride can enter.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
We know more about the life and interactions of the Christian congregation in first- century Corinth than we do about any other New Testament church. Paul spent a year and a half there on his second mission journey (50-51 A.D.), and then carried on an extensive correspondence with the church from Ephesus, his base of operations on his third mission journey (52-55 A.D.). At least four letters and several personal visits took place, from the hints and itineraries sprinkled through the pages of our New Testament books 1 and 2 Corinthians. This letter is actually Paul's second to the congregation from Ephesus. The first was a very stern letter sent in response to news he had heard about significant immorality happening there.
Since that first letter, there had been a lot of prayer and passion spilled on both sides of the Aegean Sea. Recently Paul had received three visitors from Corinth, stalwarts among the church's leadership: Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (1 Corinthians 16:17). These three brought gifts and news and a letter approved by the full church leadership in Corinth. The letter responded to some of Paul's earlier instructions and charges, and also included a list of questions to which Paul responds from 1 Corinthians 7:1 on.
One of the last questions raised by the Corinthian believers had to do with the attestation about and implications of the resurrection of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul brings his answer. His brief summary of witnesses to Jesus' resurrection include a collection of individuals and groups that make the event hard to write off as fabrication. Furthermore, in Paul's own testimony of meeting the resurrected Jesus, there is a poignancy that brings the transforming power of the event home. Paul met Jesus. Paul was changed.
Fred Craddock tells a story that shares much of the impact of Paul's testimony in a contemporary setting. Fred and his wife were on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee when they stumbled onto an out-of-the-way restaurant called the Black Bear Inn. It proved to be a good place to eat, besides offering the possibility of actually seeing one of those black bears. An entire wall was glass, opening out onto a wild and rugged valley.
As they sat at supper, quietly communing with nature and each other, their solitude was broken by a tall man with a shock of white hair who ambled over. They could see he was well along in years, probably past the fourscore allotted by the psalmist.
He was hard of hearing as well, since he rudely interrupted their quiet reverie with noisy and nosy questions at least twenty decibels too loud. When he found that Fred taught at a seminary, he suddenly had a story to tell about preachers. Without an invitation, he pulled up a chair and invaded their space. Nodding out the great glass window, he said, "I was born back here in these mountains."
But the story was not to be a pretty one. "My mother was not married," he went on, "and the reproach that fell upon her, fell upon me. The children at school had a name for me, and it hurt. It hurt very much."
In fact, he said, "During recess I would go hide in the weeds until the bell rang. At noon hour I took my lunch and went behind a tree to avoid them. And when I went to town with my mamma, all the grownups would stop and stare at us. They'd look at my mamma, and then they'd look at me, and I could see they were trying to guess who my daddy might have been. Painful years, those."
But something big was about to happen. "I guess it was about the seventh or eight grade," he continued, "when a preacher came to town. He frightened me when he preached, and he attracted me, all at the same time. He was a big man. Thundered when he preached. But he caught me. Every time he preached, he caught me with his words.
"I didn't want the people to catch me, though. So I never went to church on time. Waited around outside till they sang the hymn before the sermon. Then I'd sneak in just as he was getting warmed up. When he was finished I'd rush right out. Didn't want to hear the people say, 'What's a boy like you doin' in church?'
"But one morning, I got caught. A bunch of women lined up in the aisle, and I couldn't get out. And I got all nervous and cold and sweaty. And I knew somebody was going to see me and say, 'Whatcha doin' here, boy? What's a boy like you doin' in church?'
"And sure enough, suddenly a hand clamped down on my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the preacher's face.
" 'Whoa, boy!' he says to me. And he turns me around, and he looks me in the face. And he studies me for a while. And I can just see he's trying to find the family resemblance. And finally he says, 'Well, boy...! I can see it now...! I can see you're a child of ... You're a child of ... Wait now....'
"And he stared me right in the face. 'Yep!' he says. 'I can see it now! You're a child of... God! There's a striking resemblance!'
"Then that preacher man swatted me on the bottom, and he said, 'Go on, boy! Go claim your family inheritance!' "
The Craddocks were quite taken by the story the old man had to tell. Fred thought there was something familiar about it, so he asked the elderly gent, "Sir, what's your name?"
The man replied, proudly, "Ben Hooper!"
It was then that Fred Craddock remembered his daddy telling him the story of the time the people of Tennessee twice elected an illegitimate bastard boy as governor, and how Ben Hooper had done the state proud.
Ben Hooper had faith. He gained faith when a preacher told him he was child of God. He proved his faith when he carved a future of grace out of a mixed inheritance. Or, as Paul put it (1 Corinthians 15:10), "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect."
Luke 5:1-11
A boy in first grade came home from school and told his mother that his class had had a substitute teacher. "What was her name?" asked the mother, but the young lad couldn't remember.
Since she knew most of the regular substitutes from her time of serving on the school board, the mother asked, "Was she a young woman or an older woman?"
The boy thought for a moment and then replied, "I don't know. She looked brand new to me."
We all have had experiences with teachers old or brand new. One of my best teachers was my father. Early in life he drilled into me his favorite proverb: "Hindsight is better than foresight, but never as good as insight." When I heard it as a child, I was more intrigued by the fascinating twist of words than I was captured by the wisdom it communicated. Time, however, has taught me its truth: We see further into the past than the future, of course, but those who have an awareness of how things fit into God's grand scheme are truly wise. Perhaps my father was only making more clever what his own father, in a thick German accent, always declared: "We get too soon old and too late smart."
Insight is a matter of perspective. It involves getting the scenic overview, the satellite snapshot, the observation deck lay of the land. In today's gospel lesson, insight is at center stage. Jesus is recognized by the crowds as a great teacher whose insight illumines their world. The disciples, as a group, believe Jesus has insights that can even improve their fishing techniques on the Sea of Galilee, and Peter gains a new perspective in his relationship with Jesus that helps him reorient his worship practices. Insight is the heart of the Luke's gospel, and he self-consciously seeks to promote a transcendent outlook that will influence our daily behaviors.
Of course, as Peter shows us, the only true response to insight which reveals God to us is humility and hesitancy. It is the hubris of our age that believes we can find God and understand religion and manipulate spirituality. Søren Kierkegaard put it straight when he wrote that if we are really honest we experience fear when we read the words of Jesus. Kierkegaard said that we should really collect up all our New Testaments and bring them out to an open place high on some mountaintop. There we should pile them high and kneel to pray, "God, take this book back again! We can't handle it! It frightens us! And Jesus, go to some other people! Leave us alone!"
To our amazement and unworthy benefit, however, the wonderful message of Jesus is grace. "Don't be afraid," he tells Peter and the others. And then he couples it with a very logical outcome: "From now on you will catch men." It is only the spiritually insensitive and self-sufficient who have no need to follow and evangelize. Those who realize the incredible gift of divine love cannot help but feel and tell.
Application
Some years ago, Bill Hybels wrote Descending into Greatness (Zondervan, 1994). In it he traced the social or cultural or financial paths traveled by some whose reversed temporal fortunes brought about a deeper spiritual walk. Sometimes we can only see God when we lose the upward trajectory of our own rising stars, according to Hybels.
Chuck Colson's Born Again (Chosen, 2004), written shortly after his prison term and change of political fortunes, and his recent The Good Life (Tyndale, 2005), reflecting on the turnaround years later, both carry that same message: We cannot see God until we learn humility. It is not our ability to knock on heaven's door that opens the way to God, but God's gracious initiatives toward us when we finally realize who we are and whose we are. Then, out of our need and finiteness we receive amazing grace.
How does our spirituality become hubris? Where do we encounter the glory of God in blazing brilliance? In what way does our piety emerge from humility rather than manipulative personal sales techniques? These are questions that we need to wrestle with as we encounter God today.
Alternative Application
There is much to bring out from the Isaiah passage, and it would serve as sufficient material for a message in its own right. First, one might contrast the life of Uzziah with that of Isaiah (who was probably also part of the extended royal family). Second, it might be helpful to compare and contrast Isaiah 6 and Genesis 3: the temple and the Garden of Eden as the places where God dwells, the holiness of the deity over against the contamination of the humans, the role of the cherubim as guardians of God's sanctuary, and the shifting attitude of God in keeping Adam and Eve at bay while now cleansing Isaiah for intimacy and friendship with the divine. Third, Isaiah's humility in the presence of glory is instructive for all who treat spirituality with manipulative frivolity, as a power or experience one can manipulate or own.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 138
Few people write thank-you notes anymore. A word of thanks may be offered briefly when a gift is received or a favor done, but the custom of a formal written thank you has, for the most part, faded from our common life. It is a loss felt more deeply than conscience might admit. Not only has a civilized habit disappeared from our social horizon, but with it has gone an intentional sense of thankfulness. Social critics might label this as the result of a burgeoning sense of entitlement in an over privileged generation. Perhaps this is so. But the purpose here is not social commentary so much as it is a call to thankfulness as an intentional ongoing way of living.
Psalm 138 evokes this sense of intentional and ongoing thankfulness. Here thanks are offered with the completeness of a "whole heart." Thanks come even though the writer walks through the "midst of trouble." Thanks go up every day and in every way to this God who accompanies, this God who is present, this God who delivers on his promises.
The thankfulness alluded to here is not merely a serial list of thanks for favors done or prayers answered. It bespeaks an attitude of thanksgiving. No matter what's happening or what state of life the writer experiences, the thanks keep coming. And it is here that a sense of invitation comes.
The reader is invited to this life of thankfulness along with the psalmist. The band strikes up a chord and the conductor is pointing directly at us. It's time for each person to take stock of the mighty doings of our God and to enter into an ongoing and constant state of thankfulness wherein our whole hearts are engaged in thanking God.
Each morning as the alarm clock sounds, give thanks for the gift of life and breath. Each hour as one more person is encountered, give thanks for the gift of human touch and contact. As each bite of food is consumed be thankful for nourishment and the privilege of taste. Again, it is not so much remembering to say thank you each time as it is adopting thanksgiving as part of the process of thinking and feeling.
The invitation comes with gold engraving -- join in a life of thanks and praise to this incredible God. It is a life well worth the living.
