Sermons
November 17, 2024 (Proper 28)
“Put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades…”
Isaiah 6:-10
November 17, 2024 (Proper 28)
“Put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades…”[1]
Isaiah 6:1-10
A normal thing that happens whenever there’s a major traumatic event: everybody can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about it.
For instance, on September 11, 2001, I was in my office at the church in Sac City. It was a Tuesday morning, and the ladies were just starting to arrive for our weekly prayer group meeting. The first one who came in said, “Did you hear…?”
Maybe it’s less so for us in the United States, but I’m sure everybody in the UK will be able to tell where they were last year when the news came that Queen Elizabeth had died after 75 years on the throne.
It would have been a similar situation for people living in Judah at the time of the prophet Isaiah of Jerusalem.[2] There’s a time marker at the beginning of Isaiah 6: “In the year that King Uzziah died…”
Uzziah, also known in the histories as Azariah, was the last strong, good ruler Judah had, the last one who didn’t have to worry about Assyria knocking on the door trying to come in and take over. He ruled for around 50 years, and it was a time of peace and security for the people of Judah. And the people never gave a single thought to the reality that it would one day come to an end. For anyone who was under 50 years old at the time, Uzziah had just always been king. But he was a human being, and human beings die. And empires and nations rise and fall, the economy goes through good and bad times—we all know this, because we’ve studied history and lived through quite a bit of it ourselves—but it’s hard to look at our own circumstances, our own way of life, as just as temporary as the Roman Empire or the reign of King Uzziah of Judah.
They may not have thought much about it, but there did come a day when everything changed. Years later, Isaiah and his contemporaries would have been able to describe exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news that King Uzziah was dead, just like we who were there never forgot where we were on 9/11; or December 7, 1941; or November 22, 1963. The day it all changed.
The people gathered in the usual places where people gather, and they talked in hushed tones about the king, about the one who would take his place, maybe about where God was in all this. And when the state funeral happened, and the king came through the streets in procession, they all lined the streets to see him carried to rest with his fathers.
Then, maybe a few weeks or even months later, after the new king was seated uneasily on the throne with the crown that didn’t really fit him yet perched on his head, Isaiah was at work one day, a day that started out seeming perfectly ordinary. He doesn’t say what he was doing there. Maybe he was just making sure everything was in order for the next worship service, all the gold pieces polished and in their places, the choir music in order, the sermon ready to go, flowers watered.
But suddenly it became anything but a routine trip to the sanctuary. All at once he found that the division between earth and heaven—between the symbolic throne of God in the Holy of Holies and the real throne of God in the beyond—was ripped away, and he could see that they were really one and the same.
He didn’t really see God, because God is too big for our eyes and our minds to take in; only the hem of his robe filled the whole sanctuary. He saw the creatures who were in attendance on God, the seraphim (the name means “burning ones”) which a lot of folks imagine looking like some kind of weird cross between a person and a cobra, with six wings each to cover their faces—since even the heavenly beings can’t look on God and live—and their private parts, with one pair left over to fly. He heard them singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; heaven and earth are filled with his glory,” so loud that it shook the foundation of the temple like an earthquake.
Isaiah had been in the Temple many times—maybe he’d even felt God’s presence there—but never anything as dramatic and huge as this. Suddenly he realized that he had a big problem.
Even a glimpse of the hem of God’s robe was too much for a mere human being. Not only that, but when those seraphim sang about God’s holiness—God’s “otherness,” as modern theologians sometimes say—he suddenly realized just how unholy, how common, how profane he and his people were. In the words of one commentator, Isaiah was suddenly struck by the sure and certain knowledge that “we human beings and our everyday world are polluted, and, furthermore, we have evolved in such a way that we actually need a polluted environment to maintain our lives. God, on the other hand, is not polluted and hence is fundamentally separate from us and our world.”
So Isaiah cried out in terror and despair. He knew he was done for, a polluted human being who was no different from the entire nation of polluted human beings he lived and worked among, who had seen God. It was all over for Isaiah.
He thought his life had changed when King Uzziah died, but that was nothing compared to how his life was going to change now that he had found himself in the throne room of the real king, the Lord. ’Adonai Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts, commander in chief of the armies of heaven.
But then something even more incredible happened to Isaiah. He didn’t die.
One of the seraphs flew over, and it took a piece of charcoal from the incense burner and touched it to Isaiah’s lips—symbolically purifying those lips, removing the pollution that was a given for a human being living in his times—in just about any times, really. And the seraph pronounces Isaiah cleansed, forgiven, freed from guilt and sin, from uncleanness and pollution.
Then Isaiah overhears God’s voice—God doesn’t seem to have been speaking to Isaiah himself, and we don’t really know to whom he was speaking. God says, “There’s a job that needs to be done, a Word that needs to be spoken; whom shall I send to do it?”
Suddenly Isaiah hears his own voice calling out in response: “I’ll do it!”
Do what, Isaiah? Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?
When we read what comes after Isaiah’s response, we discover that Isaiah’s job would be to go and speak to the people in such a way that they quit listening, that they stopped caring, that they refused to turn, to repent, so that they could be healed and avoid the calamities that were surely coming now that Uzziah was gone and Assyria was coming and the good old days were over.
We preachers like to stop before we get to that part, so we can say, see, wasn’t that nice, Isaiah responded enthusiastically to God’s call, and so should we all—and some of you should consider the ministry, just like Isaiah. And yes, there may well be someone sitting here this morning who is being called to professional ministry, being called to be a pastor, and I certainly want to encourage a person hearing that call to answer like Isaiah did, “Here am I! Send me!” But we need to make sure we’re clear about one important thing: there are a lot of things we don’t know when we answer that call about the path we’re about to step onto.
My ordination vows contained language something like, “Ministry is a lot like herding cats. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Well, I do know a thing or two about herding cats.[3]
But Isaiah wasn’t being called to be a pastor; he was being called to be a prophet. There’s a big difference.
The old word for a pastor in many places was parson. That’s just an old pronunciation of person. The pastor was seen as the person of God living and working among a community of people. It sets a pastor apart, puts them in a special position, but they’re still part of the community. We are preachers, theologians, teachers; but we are all those things in residence, embedded in the community’s life.
But Isaiah was called to be a prophet—he was totally set apart. Remember his cry of woe and despair: I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. I’m one of them, one of the common people, I’m embedded in a corrupt community.
But when the seraph touches his lips with the burning coal, and pronounces him cleansed, he is no longer one of them, not in the same way as he was before. Now he’s set apart, made holy like God is holy. And when he goes back among the people, he’s not going to fit in like he did. He’s going to say things that don’t make the people feel so good. He’s going to say things that are so hard to hear, they simply refuse to hear them.
So I really don’t want to say to everybody here that we should all be like Isaiah. Let God cleans us with purifying fire, set us apart from everybody else, for special tasks that will make everybody else think we’re misfits, to say special words that make everybody stick their fingers in their ears.
No, I don’t want to tell you to be like Isaiah—but someone else already did. Someone told us, “Be holy as I the Lord am holy.”[4] Be cleansed. Be an oddball. Be different.
Someone else showed us what this looks like: Touch the untouchable. Love the unlovable. Stand up against systems that lay heavy burdens on innocent people. Walk the path of obedience, not the path of respectability—even if it leads to a cross on a dark and desolate hillside.
Even today, even after all we’ve been through on 9/11, and before, and after, the Lord still sits on the throne. The center still holds strong—God is still the King of Kings. The cleansing of God’s purifying fire still sets us apart for new ministries in new times.
Here we are, Lord! We will go for you, and speak your words to our fearful, angry, divided world that has its fingers in its ears. We will go for you, and shine your light into our dark and despairing world that has its eyes shut. We will do your will, no matter how long it takes and even if nobody else pays any attention at all.
Yes, we will be like Isaiah.
[1] h/t to The Who.
[2] We have to specify which Isaiah we’re talking about, because scholars now believe there were multiple authors in the Isaiah book as we have it: Isaiah of Jerusalem in chapters 1-39, Isaiah of the Exile in chapters 40-55, and then a Third Isaiah in chapters 56-66.
[3] The most important thing to remember about herding cats is that you can’t herd them anywhere they haven’t already made up their minds to go.
[4] Leviticus 19:2, among other places.