While our first reading is
the story of Isaiah’s call to prophesy, it is first and foremost, the story of
how Isaiah is a witness to the
extraordinary, of something that is “normally concealed from the human
eye.” Where, on Pentecost, in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke recalls Joel’s own
description of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon the people, saying, “your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
(Acts 2:17), in this reading, we hear Isaiah describe his own
vision of the Lord.
First he
describes seeing the Lord seated on a throne and the hem of the Lord’s robe filled the room. This is the majestic and sovereign ‘Adonai’ —
“God of the universe”, “Holy God, Mighty Lord, Gracious Father”, “Holy and
mighty, holy and immortal” — whose glory we name in the Great Thanksgiving when
we sing the sanctus using the words
from verse 3: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full
of his glory.” (6:3)
Next, Isaiah describes the
presence of the seraphs, celestial winged serpents near to God, and when the
seraphs speak, the text tells us, “The pivots on the thresholds shook and the
house filled with smoke.”
This encounter with the Lord
was neither cerebral nor academic; it was tactile and it was physical.
Shaking and trembling disturb you, and alert you to what is
happening around you; smoke gets into your nostrils and lingers on your
clothes, and even your skin. The
encounter stays with you.
Isaiah’s extraordinary encounter
with the divine echoes in the lives of Moses, Ezekiel and even Paul.
When Moses was leading the people
of Israel to meet God, Exodus 19 says they stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and “[it] was wrapped in
smoke, because the LORD had descended
upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole
mountain shook violently. (Exodus 19:18)
When
Ezekiel was confronting Israel, Ezekiel 38 says the Lord declared, “… On that
day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; …and all
human beings that are on the face of the earth, shall quake at my presence, and
the mountains shall be thrown down, and the cliffs shall fall, and every wall
shall tumble to the ground…. (Ezekiel
38:20)
When
Paul was imprisoned with Silas in Philippi, Acts 16 says, “Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of
the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and
everyone's chains were unfastened.” (Acts 16:26)
Encountering God should
affect us – leave us changed in some way; we should not be the same as
we were before.
Often in Scripture we see God
enter into relationship with a person who was then set apart to bear witness to
God. (Romans 1:1)
After the Lord appeared to
Moses in the burning bush and told him that he would lead God’s people out of
Egypt, Moses protested, but God gave him a staff and healed him from leprosy so
that the people would recognize his authority, as one whom God had sent.
(Exodus 4:1-12)
And again, when the word of
the Lord came to Jeremiah, he protested that he was only a boy, but,
“Then the LORD put out his hand and touched [his] mouth; and the LORD said to
[him], "Now I have put my words in your mouth. (Jeremiah 1:9)
And again, when Ezekiel was
commissioned to speak the Lord’s words to the people, a scroll was spread out
before him and the Lord instructed him to eat it. When he had eaten it, he
testified that “it was as sweet as honey.” (Ezekiel 3:4)
And again, when Paul who was first
known as Saul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he fell down in the road and
was blinded for three days, before Ananias laid hands on him and he regained
his sight and began to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God. (Acts 9)
When it was Isaiah’s turn, the
prophet responded in confession and the seraph placed a burning coal upon his
lips to purify and sanctify him.
His confession is both for
himself and for the people of Israel:
"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!" (6:5)
In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther teaches that the purpose of
confession isn’t to
“come
and say how upright or how wicked you are….[but] to lament your need and allow
yourself to be helped so that you may attain a joyful heart and conscience…”…It
is “to hear what God wants to say to you.” (LC, 478)
And the gift that Isaiah
receives, and that we all receive when we encounter the Holy who is God, is the
Word that brings absolution or forgiveness, for the comfort and restoration of
our souls.
God responds to our lament with forgiveness, providing balm, and as the African-American
spiritual promises,
curing the sin sick soul and
making the wounded whole. (Washington Glass, “Balm of Gilead”)
Isaiah is a witness to the
extraordinary.
Shaken and disturbed,
humbled by the awesome power
of God,
compelled to confession,
and fashioned in forgiveness,
he is sent out into the world.
This morning, I want to ask,
What will shake you into response?
Where have you heard God
speaking and you cannot overlook or dismiss it any longer?
Are you moved to confession
for yourself or for the world in which we live?
Not pointing fingers, mocking
others for their beliefs or calling other human beings names but naming instead
what Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls “the real deathliness that
hovers over us and gnaws at us….”[i]
What will it take for you and
I to voice true lament at the ways in which the brokenness – the
sinfulness – of our human nature – our conceit and vanity – are on display? And
how might we shine light into the darkness and tear away the veil that covers “the
fear and the pain that individual persons want so desperately to share and to
own but are not permitted to do so.”[ii]
Brueggemann describes the
prophetic imagination to which we are called in the tradition of the Old
Testament prophets:
as one that cuts through the
numbness
and penetrates the
self-deception so that,
to the ends of the earth, God
is confessed as Lord.
Inhabited by the power and Spirit of God, our hearts
are burning because our Holy God is here, setting us apart and calling
us into the world as witnesses.
Let us pray.
Your way, O God, is holy. (Ps.
77:13)
Thank you for restoring your
people with abundant grace and forgiveness;
Created for relationship and
set apart as Your people, draw us to you in confession when we turn away from
you;
Fashion us now into a
people who bear witness to your love for all.
We pray in the name of the
Father, Son + and the Holy Spirit.
[i] Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination (p. 45). Augsburg Fortress - A. Kindle
Edition.
[ii] ibid
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