Light To Serve
Sermon
The Presence In The Promise
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
One of the last works which James Michener published was The Noble Land: My Vision for America. During his long and distinguished writing career Mr. Michener had researched voluminous materials to describe the rise and fall of many civilizations as the settings for his novels. As Michener wrote about America, his homeland, he did so with thanksgiving and appreciation. Gratefully he acknowledged that America had treated him well. However, he observed that there has been considerable slippage in America's cultural values. In spite of the fact that our American method of governing ourselves is the most enduring form of government in human history, Mr. Michener believed that twilight may set in for this nation about the year 2050. The elderly Michener expressed his wish that he could be here to administer changes that would avoid catastrophe for our culture. As he sensed his approaching death, that, of course, was not possible. As he offered his suggestions for correcting what he knew to be wrong, Mr. Michener was not alone in expressing a pessimistic view of America's future.
As we try to offset negative views of our future, serious students of government would remind us that though we have halted the nuclear arms race, we sit in the shadows of nuclear stockpiles capable of destroying civilization in the blink of an eyelash. We face the awesome responsibility of trying to remove those stockpiles without blowing ourselves to kingdom come. In addition, we have entered the era of terrorism of major dimensions. We also have the environmentalists threatening us with horrendous scenarios of how we endanger our land as well as our planet. If you can appreciate the role of those who try to alert us to the dangers of our future, you can sense what the role of an Old Testament prophet was.
The Context
In the First Reading appointed for today we have an account of the calling of the Prophet Isaiah in the Temple at Jerusalem. We know very little about the person of the Prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz. We do know that he ministered to the people of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, for about a generation from 742 to 701 B.C., or perhaps even up until 687 B.C., when the Southern Kingdom fell. The Northern Kingdom had already fallen and was annexed to the Assyrian empire. Judah lived as a vassal state, with the fate of the Northern Kingdom as a political lesson in the harsh realities that can befall any nation that is weakened from within. It was in this political milieu that Isaiah came on the scene to inform his people of the pessimistic future that awaited them. Isaiah was not singular in this calling. His contemporaries were Amos, Hosea, and Micah. Though our collections of the writings of Isaiah's contemporaries are limited, their voices in Isaiah's day were not. Isaiah's preaching and teaching would be in much the same tradition as his colleagues.
The little we do know about Isaiah is offset by the fact that we can surmise that he is also a priest. We can make that conjecture on the basis of the lesson before us today, which locates his service in the Temple where he has a special spiritual experience of being able to see the presence of God in a remarkable vision. We can also surmise that Isaiah was a priest from the manner in which he expresses himself on occasion. It is of small importance that we do not know more about Isaiah. We think of him as the First Isaiah who forewarned and foretold that destruction was eminent if the people did not repent. This is the first prophet by that name. Later in the exile another prophet using the same name would call the people back to the faith. In order to understand the complexity of the task of the First Isaiah, we do well to study carefully how he was called into service.
The Reluctance Of Isaiah
Isaiah's call occurring in the Temple would of itself be no guarantee that he was a priest. However, the description of that momentous experience suggests that this happened in the holy of holies. Isaiah had a vision of God sitting upon a throne, like a king in regal attire, attended by seraphim who have extraordinary winged features. The seraphim chanted antiphonally the trisagion, the thrice-holy acclamation about the presence of the God who fills the whole earth with divine glory. The antiphonal voices shook the very timbers of the holy place, and the entire area filled with smoke, one more sign of the presence of the Holy One. The experience was overwhelming for the priest Isaiah. The design of the liturgical worship and the worship place for the Hebrews was that the priest would enter the holy of holies to act and serve on behalf of the people. The purpose of this arrangement was to assure the people that as the priest made a tryst with God, they could know that God was truly present on their behalf.
On this given day, however, Isaiah experienced more than the usual impressive presence of the ark of the covenant which represented the presence of God. Isaiah sensed the presence of God in this unique vision of the reality of God. The priest was petrified by what was happening before him. He exclaimed, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people, of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Isaiah can only utter his shame as a sinner unworthy of the vision before him. The same would be true for the whole lot of people he represented. No one person he knew would be worthy of the experience he just had in viewing the King. The presence of the Holy One revealed his unworthiness and sinfulness. There was no way God would have anything to do with him, or that Isaiah could be of service to God.
The Unworthiness Of Isaiah
The reluctance of Isaiah to respond to the presence of the King was not a polite gesture on his part. Isaiah was not indulging in the kind of false modesty most of us resort to when we really want to be coaxed into something. Nor was Isaiah merely self-conscious about this radically new experience as he performed his usual stint in the holy of holies. Rather, Isaiah was deeply aware how keenly we should feel the burden of our guilt and shame in the presence of our Creator. All of us should sense the same emotions as Isaiah as we approach our worship. As a place set apart where we can be confronted by the presence of the holy, our worship space suggests that. Our liturgy reminds us of our need to confess before God our unworthiness either to hear the word or to partake of the sacrament of God's presence.
Sometimes our conversations about God, our jokes about God, and our arguments about God betray the fact that we may take the presence of our Holy God rather casually. Some people are extremely flippant about how they should behave in worship. The Old Testament worship which gave shape to the worship of the New Testament people of God was most serious about the manner in which to approach God. All of that was exaggerated for Isaiah as he experienced this dramatic revelation of God. Though he had served as a priest conscientiously, faithfully, and prayerfully, suddenly he was stung with the pain of how sinful he really was. He had the right to speak neither for himself nor for the people whom he served. We are not told whether or not Isaiah sensed immediately that this unique experience of God's presence was to initiate a new calling for Isaiah. We do get the feeling that Isaiah did know that God had something special in store for him, and Isaiah did not feel up to it. Isaiah felt utterly unusable.
The Redemption Of Isaiah
In a striking gesture one of the seraphim flew to Isaiah with a live coal that had been taken from the altar of sacrifice. The seraph then touched the mouth of Isaiah with the coal. That sounds rather frightening and hurtful. However the action was meant to be one of cleansing and purifying. That is how the seraph explains it. "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." There was no way Isaiah could have cleansed or saved himself, but by this sacramental action God saves and purifies the man Isaiah. We think of how God does the same for us in the sacramental life by which he touches us to blot out our sin and unworthiness. God shares the sacrifice our Lord Jesus Christ made for us by his death and resurrection through sacramental means so that we not only hear but are also touched with the righteousness of Christ.
John Updike relates how people can struggle with their awareness of their inadequacy and unworthiness in his novel In the Beauty of the Lilies. The story begins with Clarence Wilmot, a tender soul and highly sensitive Presbyterian pastor, who loses the faith. The reader wrenches through the pain of Wilmot's struggle and what that all means to his family. The story concludes with Esau, Wilmot's great grandson, who catches a glimmer of redemptive faith in the ill-fated fiery conflagration of a zany community of would-be-believers. The story Updike weaves through three generations of the same family emphasizes how the imperfections and flaws dominate their relationship more than any strengths or beauty they might offer to one another. The story begs for the kind of cleansing experienced by the sacramental action of the holy God revealed to him. Updike's story is a good parable on how generation after generation can miss the offer God makes in God's presence.
The Call
There was no mistaking the presence of God at this moment. Isaiah was fully aware of the fact that God had taken away any excuse he could make to dodge the impact God had made upon his life. This was a dramatic experience for him. It is the kind of experience we would all like to have to assure us that God is in our lives. However, no angel, with its holy smoke and a passel of angels calling to one another, does appear to duplicate this extraordinary event. For Isaiah there is no escape from this arresting scene and the word that follows. When Isaiah's objection and resistance are overcome, when he has been thoroughly cleansed for the job, he hears the voice of the Lord, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" God does not go to those who neither acknowledge God's presence in their lives nor have not been prepared to be received into the kingdom or rule of God by cleansing and faith.
For us the call may appear to be lackluster, mundane, or too ordinary. Yet, however the call comes, it is a call from God. For Isaiah the call came when he was at his work, doing what he should have been doing. Normally, that is where we meet God. God calls out to us from what we have in hand. We may be at the computer, at the dishwasher, at the lathe, in the car, or at any other place of vocation. But that is what it is, a vocation, a calling, a place where God calls out to us to do God's bidding. When we see that, or understand that, whatever mundane task we are doing lights up in a new way. In what we are doing we hear God calling out to us to serve our neighbor by doing God's bidding for that task.
The Answer
The answer Isaiah gave is not a part of the appointed reading for today. However, we all know that Isaiah responded, "Here am I; send me!" Isaiah sensed that in the very act of the call God also gave the power to respond in the affirmative. God was not asking the impossible. God did not require the prophet to do something God would not furnish either the strength or the word for doing what God would require of him. Isaiah was right about that. God did furnish a word. Immediately God instructed Isaiah, "Go and say to this people the following." Isaiah was never at a loss for words to instruct the people in how to read the signs of the times, how to repent, and what to expect of the judgment, the providence, and the redemption of God. We know how effective the prophet was in delivering his message. He remains the foremost of the prophets not only in the place he occupies in the Scriptures, but in the manner in which we today are able to find his work applicable to our day.
Now it could be that God would once again raise a prophet from among us as God did with Isaiah. However, more than likely the majority of us shall not have such a calling, but God calls us nonetheless. What God requires of us, however, is a calling to live and act in the awareness that God is at our side requiring of us faithfulness in the performance of our duties for the sake of our neighbor. Not all of us have the same opportunities to be vocal about the faith, but we can be demonstrative of the faith in the manner in which we perform our duties. Then again many of us have opportunities to speak for the faith which we hold and confess.
Jesus Shows How
The whole matter of our calling is illustrated in the Holy Gospel for today, The Great Draught of Fishes. The story is so well known it does not have to be repeated. However, the story does illustrate that the call of our Lord came to men who were engaged in their vocation, which was fishing. Jesus uses the draught of fishes to teach them that the obedience to his word enables them to have great success at their work. Jesus tells them that he can do the very same thing for them in catching people. For them the lesson was a dramatic illustration how the word of God works. They could see the result in their nets, but they would not always be able to see the results of their work among people in the same way.
We can take heart the same way. What the Season of Epiphany is designed to do is to make us alert to the light God has shined into our lives through the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Christ who lived, died, and rose again for us made it possible for us to see life in the light of all that he revealed. Because of that, we are the called people of God to be sent into the world to serve God by whatever means and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. In the light of all that God has done for us in Christ Jesus, we can all respond to the presence of God by saying, "Here am I; send me!"
As we try to offset negative views of our future, serious students of government would remind us that though we have halted the nuclear arms race, we sit in the shadows of nuclear stockpiles capable of destroying civilization in the blink of an eyelash. We face the awesome responsibility of trying to remove those stockpiles without blowing ourselves to kingdom come. In addition, we have entered the era of terrorism of major dimensions. We also have the environmentalists threatening us with horrendous scenarios of how we endanger our land as well as our planet. If you can appreciate the role of those who try to alert us to the dangers of our future, you can sense what the role of an Old Testament prophet was.
The Context
In the First Reading appointed for today we have an account of the calling of the Prophet Isaiah in the Temple at Jerusalem. We know very little about the person of the Prophet Isaiah, the son of Amoz. We do know that he ministered to the people of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, for about a generation from 742 to 701 B.C., or perhaps even up until 687 B.C., when the Southern Kingdom fell. The Northern Kingdom had already fallen and was annexed to the Assyrian empire. Judah lived as a vassal state, with the fate of the Northern Kingdom as a political lesson in the harsh realities that can befall any nation that is weakened from within. It was in this political milieu that Isaiah came on the scene to inform his people of the pessimistic future that awaited them. Isaiah was not singular in this calling. His contemporaries were Amos, Hosea, and Micah. Though our collections of the writings of Isaiah's contemporaries are limited, their voices in Isaiah's day were not. Isaiah's preaching and teaching would be in much the same tradition as his colleagues.
The little we do know about Isaiah is offset by the fact that we can surmise that he is also a priest. We can make that conjecture on the basis of the lesson before us today, which locates his service in the Temple where he has a special spiritual experience of being able to see the presence of God in a remarkable vision. We can also surmise that Isaiah was a priest from the manner in which he expresses himself on occasion. It is of small importance that we do not know more about Isaiah. We think of him as the First Isaiah who forewarned and foretold that destruction was eminent if the people did not repent. This is the first prophet by that name. Later in the exile another prophet using the same name would call the people back to the faith. In order to understand the complexity of the task of the First Isaiah, we do well to study carefully how he was called into service.
The Reluctance Of Isaiah
Isaiah's call occurring in the Temple would of itself be no guarantee that he was a priest. However, the description of that momentous experience suggests that this happened in the holy of holies. Isaiah had a vision of God sitting upon a throne, like a king in regal attire, attended by seraphim who have extraordinary winged features. The seraphim chanted antiphonally the trisagion, the thrice-holy acclamation about the presence of the God who fills the whole earth with divine glory. The antiphonal voices shook the very timbers of the holy place, and the entire area filled with smoke, one more sign of the presence of the Holy One. The experience was overwhelming for the priest Isaiah. The design of the liturgical worship and the worship place for the Hebrews was that the priest would enter the holy of holies to act and serve on behalf of the people. The purpose of this arrangement was to assure the people that as the priest made a tryst with God, they could know that God was truly present on their behalf.
On this given day, however, Isaiah experienced more than the usual impressive presence of the ark of the covenant which represented the presence of God. Isaiah sensed the presence of God in this unique vision of the reality of God. The priest was petrified by what was happening before him. He exclaimed, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people, of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." Isaiah can only utter his shame as a sinner unworthy of the vision before him. The same would be true for the whole lot of people he represented. No one person he knew would be worthy of the experience he just had in viewing the King. The presence of the Holy One revealed his unworthiness and sinfulness. There was no way God would have anything to do with him, or that Isaiah could be of service to God.
The Unworthiness Of Isaiah
The reluctance of Isaiah to respond to the presence of the King was not a polite gesture on his part. Isaiah was not indulging in the kind of false modesty most of us resort to when we really want to be coaxed into something. Nor was Isaiah merely self-conscious about this radically new experience as he performed his usual stint in the holy of holies. Rather, Isaiah was deeply aware how keenly we should feel the burden of our guilt and shame in the presence of our Creator. All of us should sense the same emotions as Isaiah as we approach our worship. As a place set apart where we can be confronted by the presence of the holy, our worship space suggests that. Our liturgy reminds us of our need to confess before God our unworthiness either to hear the word or to partake of the sacrament of God's presence.
Sometimes our conversations about God, our jokes about God, and our arguments about God betray the fact that we may take the presence of our Holy God rather casually. Some people are extremely flippant about how they should behave in worship. The Old Testament worship which gave shape to the worship of the New Testament people of God was most serious about the manner in which to approach God. All of that was exaggerated for Isaiah as he experienced this dramatic revelation of God. Though he had served as a priest conscientiously, faithfully, and prayerfully, suddenly he was stung with the pain of how sinful he really was. He had the right to speak neither for himself nor for the people whom he served. We are not told whether or not Isaiah sensed immediately that this unique experience of God's presence was to initiate a new calling for Isaiah. We do get the feeling that Isaiah did know that God had something special in store for him, and Isaiah did not feel up to it. Isaiah felt utterly unusable.
The Redemption Of Isaiah
In a striking gesture one of the seraphim flew to Isaiah with a live coal that had been taken from the altar of sacrifice. The seraph then touched the mouth of Isaiah with the coal. That sounds rather frightening and hurtful. However the action was meant to be one of cleansing and purifying. That is how the seraph explains it. "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." There was no way Isaiah could have cleansed or saved himself, but by this sacramental action God saves and purifies the man Isaiah. We think of how God does the same for us in the sacramental life by which he touches us to blot out our sin and unworthiness. God shares the sacrifice our Lord Jesus Christ made for us by his death and resurrection through sacramental means so that we not only hear but are also touched with the righteousness of Christ.
John Updike relates how people can struggle with their awareness of their inadequacy and unworthiness in his novel In the Beauty of the Lilies. The story begins with Clarence Wilmot, a tender soul and highly sensitive Presbyterian pastor, who loses the faith. The reader wrenches through the pain of Wilmot's struggle and what that all means to his family. The story concludes with Esau, Wilmot's great grandson, who catches a glimmer of redemptive faith in the ill-fated fiery conflagration of a zany community of would-be-believers. The story Updike weaves through three generations of the same family emphasizes how the imperfections and flaws dominate their relationship more than any strengths or beauty they might offer to one another. The story begs for the kind of cleansing experienced by the sacramental action of the holy God revealed to him. Updike's story is a good parable on how generation after generation can miss the offer God makes in God's presence.
The Call
There was no mistaking the presence of God at this moment. Isaiah was fully aware of the fact that God had taken away any excuse he could make to dodge the impact God had made upon his life. This was a dramatic experience for him. It is the kind of experience we would all like to have to assure us that God is in our lives. However, no angel, with its holy smoke and a passel of angels calling to one another, does appear to duplicate this extraordinary event. For Isaiah there is no escape from this arresting scene and the word that follows. When Isaiah's objection and resistance are overcome, when he has been thoroughly cleansed for the job, he hears the voice of the Lord, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" God does not go to those who neither acknowledge God's presence in their lives nor have not been prepared to be received into the kingdom or rule of God by cleansing and faith.
For us the call may appear to be lackluster, mundane, or too ordinary. Yet, however the call comes, it is a call from God. For Isaiah the call came when he was at his work, doing what he should have been doing. Normally, that is where we meet God. God calls out to us from what we have in hand. We may be at the computer, at the dishwasher, at the lathe, in the car, or at any other place of vocation. But that is what it is, a vocation, a calling, a place where God calls out to us to do God's bidding. When we see that, or understand that, whatever mundane task we are doing lights up in a new way. In what we are doing we hear God calling out to us to serve our neighbor by doing God's bidding for that task.
The Answer
The answer Isaiah gave is not a part of the appointed reading for today. However, we all know that Isaiah responded, "Here am I; send me!" Isaiah sensed that in the very act of the call God also gave the power to respond in the affirmative. God was not asking the impossible. God did not require the prophet to do something God would not furnish either the strength or the word for doing what God would require of him. Isaiah was right about that. God did furnish a word. Immediately God instructed Isaiah, "Go and say to this people the following." Isaiah was never at a loss for words to instruct the people in how to read the signs of the times, how to repent, and what to expect of the judgment, the providence, and the redemption of God. We know how effective the prophet was in delivering his message. He remains the foremost of the prophets not only in the place he occupies in the Scriptures, but in the manner in which we today are able to find his work applicable to our day.
Now it could be that God would once again raise a prophet from among us as God did with Isaiah. However, more than likely the majority of us shall not have such a calling, but God calls us nonetheless. What God requires of us, however, is a calling to live and act in the awareness that God is at our side requiring of us faithfulness in the performance of our duties for the sake of our neighbor. Not all of us have the same opportunities to be vocal about the faith, but we can be demonstrative of the faith in the manner in which we perform our duties. Then again many of us have opportunities to speak for the faith which we hold and confess.
Jesus Shows How
The whole matter of our calling is illustrated in the Holy Gospel for today, The Great Draught of Fishes. The story is so well known it does not have to be repeated. However, the story does illustrate that the call of our Lord came to men who were engaged in their vocation, which was fishing. Jesus uses the draught of fishes to teach them that the obedience to his word enables them to have great success at their work. Jesus tells them that he can do the very same thing for them in catching people. For them the lesson was a dramatic illustration how the word of God works. They could see the result in their nets, but they would not always be able to see the results of their work among people in the same way.
We can take heart the same way. What the Season of Epiphany is designed to do is to make us alert to the light God has shined into our lives through the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Christ who lived, died, and rose again for us made it possible for us to see life in the light of all that he revealed. Because of that, we are the called people of God to be sent into the world to serve God by whatever means and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. In the light of all that God has done for us in Christ Jesus, we can all respond to the presence of God by saying, "Here am I; send me!"
