Everyone on the left → repeat after me: “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of hosts!” (You know, the scripture says that when the winged creatures shouted this, the pivots on the thresholds shook at the sound… the doorframes shook, it was so loud!)
Everyone on the right ← say: “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of hosts!”
Everyone on the right ← say: “The whole earth is full of God’s glory!”
Everyone on the left → say: “The whole earth is full of God’s glory!”
Isaiah heard this from the winged creatures, the sound echoing back and forth inside the temple. The temple was filled with smoke swirling around (I guess I should have brought in some fog machines…)
And, in the center, was the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and lofty, the edges of his robe filling the entire temple.
Everyone together this time: “Holy holy holy is the Lord of hosts! …
“The whole earth is full of God’s glory.”
Can you imagine what it was like for Isaiah to witness this? What an incredible experience! What an awesome encounter with God!
Stories like this used to terrify me. When I was a child, and I’d read Bible stories like this, they didn’t exactly make good bedtime stories for me. I’d wonder what it would be like if God suddenly appeared to me in such a dramatic way.
Thinking about this kept me awake at night, as I lay in bed, in the dark. This is what made me pull the covers over my eyes.
And in my prayers I would say something like, “God, I do want you in my life… but not like that.”
I guess God pretty much answered those prayers, because I’ve mostly heard God and sensed God’s presence in silence.
Since then, I’ve learned that Biblical writers often took artistic license in describing things. Scripture is often more like a painting by an artist than it is like an unaltered photograph. The photograph shows what a scene literally looks like, but a painting often conveys a greater truth, even though it can involve a great deal of artistic license.
Have you ever tried to take a picture of the moon? I have. And never has one of my photographs of the moon been able to come close to what it actually felt like to stand in the moonlight, to see my moonshadow, to see the moonglow bathe the landscape in a soft blue light. A more skilled photographer than I, with better equipment, might come closer, but it still wouldn’t compare to actually being there, standing in the moonlight.
That’s why a painting is a better way to convey what it’s like to stand in the moonlight. That’s why poetry is a better way to explain love. In many ways, art captures more truth than a simple presentation of the facts.
That’s why Jesus told parables. Parables are not literal accounts of actual events, but stories told to illustrate a deeper truth.
The scene Isaiah saw in the temple: did it actually happen like that? If you could travel back in time, would it look just like this?
It might have. But Isaiah was a poet, so who knows...
What I do know is that, for Isaiah, the experience was very real. God appeared to Isaiah in a very real and dramatic way.
And whatever happened in the temple that day, however it happened, Isaiah freaked out. Just as I would have if it was me. However it happened, it was big and dramatic. Life-changing.
This experience wasn’t something Isaiah had asked for. He didn’t know why he was chosen. He wished that God had chosen someone else, someone more worthy.
“Woe is me!” he said. “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!”
Sometimes we all feel the same way. We feel unworthy. We feel insecure. We feel like we’re the only ones who haven’t yet figured things out.
When we were children, we thought that being an adult meant you had everything all figured out. Then when we became adults and we didn’t have everything all figured out, we wondered what was wrong with us. Right?
But being a mature adult doesn’t mean you have everything all figured out. If anything, being a mature adult means that you realize, and accept, that neither you nor anyone else has everything all figured out, that the process of figuring things out never ends, but is a lifelong journey of growth and discovery.
Isaiah didn’t have things all figured out. He felt that he wasn’t yet a fully mature, whole, complete human being. He was incomplete. Imperfect. He was not yet the person he wanted to be. He was not yet the person he felt he could and should be. And so, in his mind, he was not yet a person ready or worthy to be chosen and called by God.
Yet God called Isaiah anyway. God chose Isaiah. God used Isaiah.
Which means that being an incomplete, not-yet-whole person does not disqualify you from being called and chosen by God. Indeed, God only ever calls incomplete, not-yet-whole people, because everyone is, in some way, still in the process of becoming whole.
And being called by God is a part of that process.
This past Monday, our scout troop - Troop 29 - held an election. The scouts voted, as they do twice a year, and chose one of their own to be their next senior patrol leader.
The senior patrol leader is the scout who runs the troop, runs the meeting, keeps the scouts organized and on task.
It’s a big job.
And every time the scouts elect a new senior patrol leader, I think to myself: oh, no. That kid is just not ready. He’s not ready, yet, to have the responsibility of leading the whole troop!
Every time, I think that.
And every time, I am surprised at how each scout grows into the role. They are not fully ready, yet being elected to that position makes them ready. And in the process of leading and learning how to lead, they become the leaders that they were chosen to be.
Isn’t that true for just about every person called by God, who we read about in the Bible?
What about Esther? She went from a quiet life to life in the palace, where she played a pivotal role in saving her people. When she needed convincing that she was, in fact, the right person for the job, she was told that perhaps God had placed her in that position for such a time as this.
What about the disciples? I mentioned last week how they were, at the time of their calling, untrained, uneducated, men… Yet they were the ones called and chosen by Jesus. The only thing that really set them apart was their willingness; their willingness to follow Jesus.
I said that we all feel that way, that we haven’t yet figured everything out, and I feel that way as a pastor. By now I know how to do what I’ve been doing, but I also know that God is calling me and calling us to take the next step, to do something new, to grow, to transform. God is always calling us to grow and transform.
Am I ready for that? Are we ready for that? Am I ready to be the leader that leads us through that?
Not really. But maybe, we can all trust God that, as we go about the work of transformation, and becoming something new, that God will work in us and through us to make us ready, to help us grow, to guide us into becoming the people and the church that we need to become…
As Brian McLaren says: we make the road by walking.
Isaiah wasn’t ready. Isaiah wasn’t prepared. God knew that. God doesn’t call perfect, wholly-formed people. God calls imperfect, not-yet-wholly-formed people. And God makes them whole...
One of the seraphs flew to Isaiah, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched Isaiah’s mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’
And in that instant, Isaiah was changed.
We talk a lot about change. About the need for change, about the need to make change.
Isaiah didn’t make change. Isaiah didn’t initiate change. Isaiah didn’t seek change.
Change came to Isaiah.
The change was not a result of his own effort - God made the change in him. But Isaiah worked with God by being open to change, by allowing God to change him, to make him worthy.
Last Sunday, on Pentecost, we talked about the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit. They didn’t go out and pursue the Spirit; the Spirit came to them.
And they allowed the Spirit to fill them and use them. They allowed the Spirit to change them.
The same thing is happening here with Isaiah. Isaiah was connected to the royal household; some think he might have been a cousin, or a distant cousin, of the king. I don’t know how often he went to the temple. He wasn’t a priest or anything like that.
Maybe he went all the time. Maybe it was routine for him. Maybe it was part of his duty.
But on that particular day, Isaiah had an encounter like he never had before. And for him, everything changed.
The Bible, in case you haven’t noticed, is all about change. Repentance, conversion, transformation, healing - all of those words are about change.
God changed Isaiah. God cleansed him and made him whole. This is symbolized by the seraph touching Isaiah’s mouth with the hot coal.
God changes us. This is symbolized by the waters of baptism. We submit to the water, and allow God’s grace to wash over us, transform us, make us into something new.
And, like Isaiah, once we are changed, we see the world in a new way. We see the world through God’s eyes.
Everything beautiful is suddenly ten times as beautiful as it was before.
And every injustice is suddenly ten times worse than we thought it was before.
Which is why we praise God for what is good, and why we allow the spirit to use us to fix what is broken.
Because whether we were ready or not, by God’s grace we have been changed. Transformed. Made new.
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