Isaiah
6:1-8
Trinity
Sunday
May
27, 2018
William G. Carter
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting
on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the
temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two
they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two
they flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord of
hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The pivots on the thresholds
shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.
And I said: “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!” Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had
been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my
mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has
departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord
saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I;
send me!”
Here I am, Lord. Is
it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. We sang those
words last week, as new elders and deacons began their terms of service. It’s a
favorite hymn, to be sure. Whenever we sing it, it is certain to get a positive
response. The tune is singable, the words are heart-felt. If you look around,
somebody is probably wiping away a tear or two. Here I am, Lord.
When
you heard the scripture text, you probably noticed some of the words of that
song are lifted right out of our Bible. Isaiah of Jerusalem remembers the voice
of God calling him to his life’s work. God is looking for the right person to
speak up, the right person to speak out, the right person to address the people
of Judah in troubling times. Who is going to be? Who will speak up for God? And
Isaiah declares, “Here I am, Lord.”
That’s
about all most of us know about the prophet Isaiah: he responds affirmatively
to God’s Voice. That, of course, is the punchline of the story. It’s right up
there with God speaking to Moses out of a burning bush, “Go to Pharoah, tell him
to let my people go.” Or Jesus, walking along the shore of the sea of Galilee
and calling out to some fishermen, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fish
for people.”
The
plot of each story goes the same way. God says, “I need to get something done.”
The heroic Bible character says, “OK, I will do it.” The rest of us cheer,
breathe a sigh of relief, and figure “mission accomplished.” Somebody out there
is doing what God needs to get done. In other words, it’s not really a story
for the rest of us; it’s about some specialist who said “yes” to the Lord a
long, long time ago.
Now
if you were listening to this story, you heard a lot more going on in this
story. In the end, the ancient prophet says, “OK, God, sign me up.” But that’s
merely the conclusion, and a provisional conclusion at that. The story becomes
a lot more interesting the deeper we dig in.
So
here are three things to notice: the seraphs, the unclean lips, the burning
coal.
First,
the seraph. On Thursday morning, one of our office volunteers was proofreading
the worship bulletin before it was printed. I walked through to grab a donut,
she looked up, and said, “What’s a seraph?” What? “A seraph – the Bible passage
says there were seraphs. What are they?” I said, “I don’t know; I don’t think I’ve
ever met one, but they are kind of a super angel.” She looked at me with a most
curious gaze.
And
I said, “The bigger question is, what are they doing in the Temple?” And then
she looked really confused.
The
seraphs, or as they are sometimes called “seraphim,” are only mentioned here as
angelic beings. They have three pairs of wings: to fly, to cover themselves in
modesty, and to cover their faces in reverence. There are texts outside the
Bible that speak about different orders of angels, although the Bible itself
doesn’t spend a lot of energy getting distracted by angels. Suffice it to say,
the seraphim are the ones closest to God.
This
satisfied our Thursday volunteer, but I pressed the other question: what are
they doing in the Temple? And that’s a trick question. It has to do with King
Uzziah, who is mentioned rather quickly and dismissed.
King
Uzziah began as a wonderful king. Given the sorry list of Israel’s terrible
kings, he showed a lot of promise. Uzziah
ruled for 52 years. He chased out the Philistines, defended the borders, and
built up the economy. In the words of the Bible’s greatest compliment, “he
learned the fear of the Lord.” (2 Chronicles 26:5).
That
is, until he got a little big for his britches. Uzziah believed that, since he
was the king, and things were going well, that he would also act as if he was a
priest. He grabbed the incense pot, started smoking up a little frankincense,
and made his way to the high altar. It was a desecration, an abomination, a
really bad move. Uzziah was stopped in his tracks by the high priest and eighty
other priests, all described as “men of valor.”
An
argument broke out. Uzziah figured he was the king, and kings can do whatever
they want. The priests said, “Oh no, no, no.” And just when Uzziah started
getting huffy, leprosy broke out all over his face. They hustled him out of the
temple, now doubly desecrated. He had to live by himself in seclusion. He could
still call himself the king, but nobody was going to go near him or pay any
further attention to him. He had leprosy til the day he died, and all the
moralists said, “That’s what you get when you get too big for your britches…in
the temple.”
Meanwhile,
the Temple was still desecrated – and in the year Uzziah died, God showed up.
It was big. Really big. Even the seraphim were there. Nobody had ever seen one,
I figure, but Isaiah knew what a seraph was when he saw one. Their voices were
thunderous: HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. The foundations are shaking, the house is filled
with smoke.
And
what are the seraphim doing there, in a desecrated Temple? They are announcing
the holiness of God, even there, especially there. There is no distinction
between sacred and secular, because God is there – so it’s sacred.
Just
let that sink in. Wherever God is present, it is HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. Wherever…
the implications are staggering. Someone puts it this way
One of the bad habits we pick up early in
our lives is separating things and people into secular and sacred. We assume
the secular is what we are more or less in charge of: our jobs, our
entertainment, our government, our social relations. The sacred is what God is
charge o: worship and the Bible, heaven and hell, church and prayers. We then
contrive to set aside a sacred place of God, designed, we say, to honor God but
really intended to keep God in his place, leaving us free to have the final say
about everything else that goes on.
Prophets will have none of this. They
contend that everything, absolutely everything, takes place on sacred ground.
God has something to say about every aspect of our lives: the way we feel and
act in the so-called privacy of our hoes, the way we make our money and the way
we spend it, the politics we embrace, the ways we fight, the catastrophes we
endure, the people we hurt, and the people we help. Nothing is hidden from the
scrutiny of God. Nothing is exempt from the rule of God. Nothing escapes the purposes
of God. Holy, holy, holy.[1]
So
Isaiah says, “Woe is me! I have unclean lips. I live among people of unclean
lips.” In the presence of a Holy God, the only God there is, we are toast.
(That’s my translation.)
What
he is missing, of course, is the same thing he sees - the seraphs are in the
same room with him, the same filthy room. God is there, too, a pure Holy God in
the midst of a desecrated Temple. His first, only, response is, “There isn’t
room here for the likes of me, and the likes of us.” We are people of “unclean
lips.”
Again
it’s an interesting Bible phrase, appearing only here in this text. Even though
it’s an ancient phrase, you can probably surmise what it means. It has
something to do with lips, but it reveals something else.
There
is a retired high school English teacher who wrote a letter to the President
about gun violence in the schools. She received a form letter back from the
White House. The grammar was atrocious. There were redundancies, incorrect capitalization,
lack of clarity in the reasoning. So she corrected the letter in purple ink and send it
back.
USA
Today reported the story on a slow news day.[2] You
might not think that a retired teacher correcting a letter written at a fourth
grade level would be a big deal, but you should see the online comments and the
criticisms of her act: they are a mile long. Her critics take issue with her and
call her “stupid,” and then they start calling one another “stupid” as well.
Alas, we live among a people of “unclean lips.”
You
see, “unclean lips” reveal a filthy heart. That’s the sense of the Biblical
phrase. In one of the Psalms, there is a complaint lodged against a person with
dirty heart and lips: “Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of
treachery. You love evil more than good and lying more than speaking the truth.
You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue!” (Psalm 52:2-4)
In
the presence of a Holy God, what does Isaiah know? He is surrounded by people
of impure speech, destructive insults, lying impulses, and forked tongues. Unclean
lips, indeed.
That
brings us to the great “nevertheless.” The Bible repeatedly offers God’s great “nevertheless.”
God is announced in the Temple by the seraphim, Isaiah knows he and the people
are broken and unworthy, so God decides to bridge the gap. In a highly symbolic
act, one of the seraphs flies to the altar of the Temple, picks up a burning
coal with a pair of tongs, and touches the prophet’s unclean lips.
Then
the pronouncement is given: Your guilt is chased away. Your sin is over and
done. The God who is already present in the desecrated temple is able to reach all
the desecrated people. There is mercy and forgiveness for all who can accept
it. And for all who can accept it, there is work to do.
It’s
a terrific text, a huge story. And it brings to mind the conversation that I
have from time to time. Maybe I run into someone at the ice cream store and
they apologize that they haven’t been in worship. They see me in line ordering
Rocky Road and not in this room. These days, I smile, tell them it’s good to
see them, ask them how they are doing.
Maybe
if the conversation opens up, I might even ask, “So where is Holy Ground for
you?” Then I will listen for a while. How would you answer that question? Where
is Holy Ground?
The
Bible says it this way: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm
24:1). And it says, “Where can I flee your presence, O Lord?” (Psalm 139:7-12).
Wherever I go, you are already there. The conclusion: all ground is Holy
Ground.
- God come in clarity and
judgment when an out-of-touch king thinks he is something more than he is.
- God comes as pure and perfect
light, revealing our cracks and imperfections in the light of great mercy.
- God steps through the distance
that separates us from the Holiness, declaring we are forgiven and free.
- And God gives us something to do, always gives us something to do, because holiness is not something to be bottled like perfume so we can spritz a little bit of it here and there; holiness is something to be lived – out in the world as well as in the Temple. Holiness is the clear and abiding sense that God is here, with us and among us, and that we are part of God’s purposes for the world.
So
enjoy this Sabbath as a gift. Do something that restores life to your soul and
gives life to the people around you. And
for God’s sake, for God’s holy sake, bring some glory to the God who has given
you everything, always remembering that the ground beneath your feet is holy
ground.
[1] Eugene Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire (Colorado Springs:
Waterbrook, 2017) p. 117
[2] USA Today, “Teacher corrects White
House letter with ‘many silly mistakes,’ 26 May 2018 (online at https://usat.ly/2sakbA3)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment