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Sermons For The Sundays after Pentecost (First Third)
Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?
-- Isaiah 6:8b
Sometimes it is interesting to take a biblical passage and just go through it line by line, letting the sparks fly out. This is the way I have opted to deal with today's first reading. Isaiah is one of the prophets who has given us an account of a turning point experience in his life. Some of his imagery will seem strange to us. But if we can get behind it there is something powerful here to which we can relate as well as a piercing word to us in the here and now.
Listen! Isaiah begins: "In the year that King Uzziah died." That is the date of his experience. That year is 735 B.C. That is the date. But saying it the way he does the prophet gives us much more than a date. Uzziah had leprosy and a regent ruled in his stead. The prevailing piety regarded leprosy as a sign of the disfavor of God. The writer of Chronicles said Uzziah was made a leper because he had usurped priestly perogatives. The writer of Kings said it was because Uzziah tolerated the shrines and high places where the practice of magic and sacred prostitution compromised the faith of Israel. So Isaiah's way of dating tells us that this was an ominous time in the nation's history. The leper king was dead and the battalions of the predatory Assyrians were on the march, edging ever closer to Palestine.
Fear and foreboding were in the air. The prophet felt the chill of anxiety in his bones. External changes were triggering an inner crisis in Isaiah's life. We can relate to that. We really cannot separate what goes on around us from what goes on within us.
It was in such an uncertain time of change and threat that Isaiah tells us, "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty." He experienced a moment of perception, of new awareness. That's what biblical writers are trying to express when they use this kind of language. In the biblical sense, seeing is perceiving. Jesus often chided his disciples for having eyes but seeing not, ears but hearing not.
Some may have difficulty with the word throne here. There is a disposition abroad that shies away from words like king, Lord, and master as not appropriate in this day and age. Isaiah's vision of the Lord upon a throne high and lofty remains. What he seeks to share with us here is a sense of the complete otherness of the Sovereign God. What he seeks to communicate is a sense of a transcendent order of reality. And this is precisely what has gone into eclipse in our urban culture in this century.
Someone has said the mission of the church is to keep alive the rumor that there is a God: a God who sees, and knows, and cares, and judges. With the eclipse of a sense of the transcendent in our culture has come the absence of a sense of personal and collective accountability. The cry "mea culpa!" seems to belong to yesterday. Today we make mistakes in judgment. I recall being in a courtroom as the judge sentenced a man who while drunk had shot and wounded a man. Standing in the dock the convicted man looked at the wounded man, who was present, and said, "I'm sorry." Good grief, that's what you say when you inadvertently step on someone's toe or bump into him. Whatever happened to the anguished prayer of the publican, "O God, be merciful to me, a sinner"? Whatever happened to the cry of the returning son, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you"?
What has gone into eclipse is precisely what Isaiah recovered as he came alive to transcendent mystery of the holy God before whom we along with the angels stand vulnerable and from whose gaze we seek to shield our nakedness. The seraphs hid themselves behind their wings. We do it with excuses and blame. Ours has been called a nation of victims, a culture of blame. That's the insight behind the imagery of the seraphs who shield with their wings their nakedness before the high and holy God. Remember Isaiah is trying to give expression to a mystery that cannot be fully grasped by our human vocabulary.
Needless to say, the God Isaiah perceives is not The Man Upstairs. Isaiah's language does not convey the image of a homespun good old boy with whom we can lounge around the cracker barrel for chit-chat. This is not some little domesticated god of our own making. If I could carry a tune, I would burst out singing the words that Walter C. Smith composed and set to the old Welsh Melody, St. Denio.
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
The language of praise, mystery, and wonder is more appropriate to our approach to God. And Isaiah used these words to express the heart of his vision of God. "But the Lord of hosts is exalted by justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness" (Isaiah 5:16).
Isaiah's response to his vision is utter speechlessness. I know that the New Revised Standard Version translates his response as "Woe is me, I am lost." Some argue for another translation, "Woe is me, I am struck dumb." This seems more reasonable in the light of the rest of Isaiah's statement, "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!" In the blinding light of God's holiness what do any of us have to say in our own defense? We make judgmental assessments about one another and measure one another by degrees of difference. But before the blinding light of the Holy God do not the differences between us get dwarfed into insignificance and the similarities stand out? Does not the evil we see outwardly displayed in others exist also in us as a hidden darkness?
The prophet's confession of unclean lips catches our attention. We think of the ritual uncleanness of the leper king, Uzziah. The confession suggests an uncleanness of language, an impurity of speech, pollution and contamination in our very hearts where our thoughts and values shape the words that come forth from our lips. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Jesus said that.
Here is a thought to roll around in your head. When we lose a sense of the transcendent God, we also lose a vision of our own humanity. The human dimension goes into eclipse and this is reflected in many ways. The marketing-inspired image of the person as consumer diminishes us. Pornography dehumanizes our personhood. The adulation of the lifestyles of the rich and famous proclaims an inadequate message about what it means to be a successful human being. Indifference to the claims of Divine justice and righteousness triggers social dislocations and chaos.
"Yet!" "Yet!" What a crucial little word Isaiah inserts in his account. It reminds us of the crucial little "But now" that Paul shouts out in the third chapter of his letter to the church in Rome at the end of his diagnosis of our human condition. Hear again that confession of Isaiah with its remarkable conclusion. "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!" Here is the wondrous thing! God wills to disclose himself to us!
God wills to reach out and touch the life of Isaiah. God wills to disclose himself to us! That is the meaning behind the powerful imagery of the seraph who touches the prophet's lips with a burning coal. H. G. Wells is reported to have said, "I cannot believe that whoever is up there would reach down and shake hands with me." The story is told of a little boy who didn't quite understand the words of the Lord's prayer. His parents overheard him one night saying his prayers before bedtime. "Our Father, who art in New Haven, how do you know my name?" That is a good question. Think of the Lord of all creation and the mystery boggles the mind. Yet it is the central and wondrous affirmation of the faith. It was to this God, high and lofty, to whom Jesus prayed with the simple and intimate word of the Aramaic household, Abba, the equivalent of our English word Daddy. Set aside any discomfort with masculine language here for the sake of hearing the mind-boggling proclamation of the high and lofty God who is so far and yet so near!
So Isaiah has seen the Lord, high and lofty. He has seen himself and his community in a new way and a flash of humbling insight. Now he hears what his ears had not heard before. He hears the pathos of God. "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' " This passage has traditionally been identified as Isaiah's call to ministry. But there is no direct call. No voice thunders out, "Isaiah, I have chosen you for a special task." Isaiah just hears. He has become a listener and what he hears moves him to a response, "Here am I; send me!"
Our gospel reading today introduces us to John's unique way of speaking about the lifting up of Jesus. His whole gospel is an invitation to see the Lord, high and lifted up, and to hear the voice from on high. And doesn't each gospel in its own way bid us to hear the pathos of God in the cries of the oppressed, the sighs of the sorrowing, the weeping of the little ones, the appeals of the excluded? In and through our crucified and Risen Lord, do we not hear the question posed for us, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?"
-- Isaiah 6:8b
Sometimes it is interesting to take a biblical passage and just go through it line by line, letting the sparks fly out. This is the way I have opted to deal with today's first reading. Isaiah is one of the prophets who has given us an account of a turning point experience in his life. Some of his imagery will seem strange to us. But if we can get behind it there is something powerful here to which we can relate as well as a piercing word to us in the here and now.
Listen! Isaiah begins: "In the year that King Uzziah died." That is the date of his experience. That year is 735 B.C. That is the date. But saying it the way he does the prophet gives us much more than a date. Uzziah had leprosy and a regent ruled in his stead. The prevailing piety regarded leprosy as a sign of the disfavor of God. The writer of Chronicles said Uzziah was made a leper because he had usurped priestly perogatives. The writer of Kings said it was because Uzziah tolerated the shrines and high places where the practice of magic and sacred prostitution compromised the faith of Israel. So Isaiah's way of dating tells us that this was an ominous time in the nation's history. The leper king was dead and the battalions of the predatory Assyrians were on the march, edging ever closer to Palestine.
Fear and foreboding were in the air. The prophet felt the chill of anxiety in his bones. External changes were triggering an inner crisis in Isaiah's life. We can relate to that. We really cannot separate what goes on around us from what goes on within us.
It was in such an uncertain time of change and threat that Isaiah tells us, "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty." He experienced a moment of perception, of new awareness. That's what biblical writers are trying to express when they use this kind of language. In the biblical sense, seeing is perceiving. Jesus often chided his disciples for having eyes but seeing not, ears but hearing not.
Some may have difficulty with the word throne here. There is a disposition abroad that shies away from words like king, Lord, and master as not appropriate in this day and age. Isaiah's vision of the Lord upon a throne high and lofty remains. What he seeks to share with us here is a sense of the complete otherness of the Sovereign God. What he seeks to communicate is a sense of a transcendent order of reality. And this is precisely what has gone into eclipse in our urban culture in this century.
Someone has said the mission of the church is to keep alive the rumor that there is a God: a God who sees, and knows, and cares, and judges. With the eclipse of a sense of the transcendent in our culture has come the absence of a sense of personal and collective accountability. The cry "mea culpa!" seems to belong to yesterday. Today we make mistakes in judgment. I recall being in a courtroom as the judge sentenced a man who while drunk had shot and wounded a man. Standing in the dock the convicted man looked at the wounded man, who was present, and said, "I'm sorry." Good grief, that's what you say when you inadvertently step on someone's toe or bump into him. Whatever happened to the anguished prayer of the publican, "O God, be merciful to me, a sinner"? Whatever happened to the cry of the returning son, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you"?
What has gone into eclipse is precisely what Isaiah recovered as he came alive to transcendent mystery of the holy God before whom we along with the angels stand vulnerable and from whose gaze we seek to shield our nakedness. The seraphs hid themselves behind their wings. We do it with excuses and blame. Ours has been called a nation of victims, a culture of blame. That's the insight behind the imagery of the seraphs who shield with their wings their nakedness before the high and holy God. Remember Isaiah is trying to give expression to a mystery that cannot be fully grasped by our human vocabulary.
Needless to say, the God Isaiah perceives is not The Man Upstairs. Isaiah's language does not convey the image of a homespun good old boy with whom we can lounge around the cracker barrel for chit-chat. This is not some little domesticated god of our own making. If I could carry a tune, I would burst out singing the words that Walter C. Smith composed and set to the old Welsh Melody, St. Denio.
Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise.
The language of praise, mystery, and wonder is more appropriate to our approach to God. And Isaiah used these words to express the heart of his vision of God. "But the Lord of hosts is exalted by justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy by righteousness" (Isaiah 5:16).
Isaiah's response to his vision is utter speechlessness. I know that the New Revised Standard Version translates his response as "Woe is me, I am lost." Some argue for another translation, "Woe is me, I am struck dumb." This seems more reasonable in the light of the rest of Isaiah's statement, "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!" In the blinding light of God's holiness what do any of us have to say in our own defense? We make judgmental assessments about one another and measure one another by degrees of difference. But before the blinding light of the Holy God do not the differences between us get dwarfed into insignificance and the similarities stand out? Does not the evil we see outwardly displayed in others exist also in us as a hidden darkness?
The prophet's confession of unclean lips catches our attention. We think of the ritual uncleanness of the leper king, Uzziah. The confession suggests an uncleanness of language, an impurity of speech, pollution and contamination in our very hearts where our thoughts and values shape the words that come forth from our lips. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Jesus said that.
Here is a thought to roll around in your head. When we lose a sense of the transcendent God, we also lose a vision of our own humanity. The human dimension goes into eclipse and this is reflected in many ways. The marketing-inspired image of the person as consumer diminishes us. Pornography dehumanizes our personhood. The adulation of the lifestyles of the rich and famous proclaims an inadequate message about what it means to be a successful human being. Indifference to the claims of Divine justice and righteousness triggers social dislocations and chaos.
"Yet!" "Yet!" What a crucial little word Isaiah inserts in his account. It reminds us of the crucial little "But now" that Paul shouts out in the third chapter of his letter to the church in Rome at the end of his diagnosis of our human condition. Hear again that confession of Isaiah with its remarkable conclusion. "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!" Here is the wondrous thing! God wills to disclose himself to us!
God wills to reach out and touch the life of Isaiah. God wills to disclose himself to us! That is the meaning behind the powerful imagery of the seraph who touches the prophet's lips with a burning coal. H. G. Wells is reported to have said, "I cannot believe that whoever is up there would reach down and shake hands with me." The story is told of a little boy who didn't quite understand the words of the Lord's prayer. His parents overheard him one night saying his prayers before bedtime. "Our Father, who art in New Haven, how do you know my name?" That is a good question. Think of the Lord of all creation and the mystery boggles the mind. Yet it is the central and wondrous affirmation of the faith. It was to this God, high and lofty, to whom Jesus prayed with the simple and intimate word of the Aramaic household, Abba, the equivalent of our English word Daddy. Set aside any discomfort with masculine language here for the sake of hearing the mind-boggling proclamation of the high and lofty God who is so far and yet so near!
So Isaiah has seen the Lord, high and lofty. He has seen himself and his community in a new way and a flash of humbling insight. Now he hears what his ears had not heard before. He hears the pathos of God. "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?' " This passage has traditionally been identified as Isaiah's call to ministry. But there is no direct call. No voice thunders out, "Isaiah, I have chosen you for a special task." Isaiah just hears. He has become a listener and what he hears moves him to a response, "Here am I; send me!"
Our gospel reading today introduces us to John's unique way of speaking about the lifting up of Jesus. His whole gospel is an invitation to see the Lord, high and lifted up, and to hear the voice from on high. And doesn't each gospel in its own way bid us to hear the pathos of God in the cries of the oppressed, the sighs of the sorrowing, the weeping of the little ones, the appeals of the excluded? In and through our crucified and Risen Lord, do we not hear the question posed for us, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?"
