This is my third sermon for my second year seminary preaching class. See my first sermon on John 6 here and my second sermon on Hebrews 5 here. This sermon was preached on April 27, 2014, for the students in my class small group. The text is Isaiah 6:1-8, the call story of Isaiah. This assignment was intended to be a sermon for Holy Trinity Sunday.
“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of God’s glory.” Wow. Isaiah’s vision is incredible. The Lord sitting on the throne, the building shaking, the room filled with smoke. What an incredible scene of God’s majesty!
And Isaiah is overwhelmed. He knows he doesn’t deserve to be there. As he puts it, he is a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips. A people who keep disobediently making themselves unclean, keep forgetting that God is the source of their life.
This image of God is overwhelming. God is so holy, so other. By comparison, we created people are nothing. The Lord is high and lofty; what are we next to a holy God?
As we proclaim at the beginning of Lent, we are dust, and to dust we shall return. I’m a sinful person. So are you. So is Isaiah. We are all sinful, unclean, separated from God.
This story is set in the year that King Uzziah died. Scholars debate over exactly what year that was, but it’s a major event. Uzziah has been king for 52 years – a long time! Now, foreign superpower Assyria is threatening Israel, and they’ll soon take the 10 northern tribes away into exile. It’s a time of crisis.
In this time of crisis, Isaiah has this vision of God’s awesomeness, of God’s holiness. He recognizes his own unworthiness, his own finiteness, and he reacts appropriately. “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!”
He can do nothing. He can’t help himself, or make himself worthy to see God.
And then God makes a way. God meets him, right where he is.
Now, if I tried to describe my own sinfulness, what keeps me from seeing God, I’m pretty sure unclean lips wouldn’t be the first thing to come to mind. But Isaiah mentions unclean lips, so an angel takes a coal from the altar, touches his lips with it and tells him that in that act, his sins are blotted out. What keeps him from seeing God is blotted out.
He is made clean.
What Isaiah couldn’t do for himself, is done for him. God takes this unclean, overwhelmed guy, and makes him clean. Isaiah is pretty passive in all of this. As far as we know, he didn’t ask to have this vision, and even if he had been praying for some guidance in his life, I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what he was expecting!
Then, in the clearest call story since the burning bush, Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Encountering God changes people. Isaiah goes from unclean, to made clean by God. He doesn’t do anything to deserve this encounter with God. God simply chooses him. God has a tendency to do that, to choose people who don’t think they’re worthy. People who, on their own, are not worthy.
And Isaiah responds, “Here I am; send me!”
Somehow, I’ve had sending on my mind a lot recently. We are here today because we have a call to ordained ministry, professional proclamation. But this call to proclaim God’s message is for all, not just professionals. But part of the mystery of our call is that it is God doing the proclaiming, not us. It is the Holy Spirit who gives us words, the Holy Spirit who opens the ears and minds of those who hear us. Because we’re not worthy. We don’t have it all together. We don’t comprehend God’s glory. We don’t fully understand. We don’t even always really know what it is we’re being called to do.
Today, Holy Trinity Sunday, is a good example of that. Today, we celebrate the mysterious nature of a God we don’t completely understand, a God we can’t fully grasp, a God so far beyond us that our very language for God is even limiting. Even as we proclaim that God is three in one, we can’t comprehend the inner relationships of the Trinity. Let’s be honest, I have no idea if the “us” in verse 8 has to do with the Trinity. We can’t know for sure. But we’re called to proclaim the God we do know, God revealed in Jesus Christ, and we trust the Holy Spirit will work through our proclamation. We’re called by the Triune God, to proclaim the Triune God, as we are enabled by the power of the Triune God.
By stopping the reading here, it sounds like a glorious call story. Isaiah boldly accepts God’s call, and presumably goes out to proclaim God’s message. But if we keep reading, we find out that this story isn’t quite as happy as it sounds. Isaiah’s commission to go to the people isn’t easy. It turns out that the people Isaiah is going to proclaim to are not going to listen to him. He asks God how long he’s to do this, and he’s told, “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate.” Sounds like a great call, right? Personally, I’m thinking maybe I’ll restrict.
I don’t know what it was Isaiah expected to see. I don’t know what he thought he needed to validate his call. But I know I’d love to see God’s glory. How inspiring would it be to have a vision of God’s awesome glory like this?
Well, we have seen God’s glory. But it turns out it’s not what we expect. What we know about God, we know because God has revealed to us. And what is God’s self-revelation? Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We catch glimpses of God’s glory in things like nature, in other people, in great works of art, or in worship, but we see God’s true glory in the cross. We look for the greatness of God, and we find it in the most surprising places.
We find God’s glory in a frail human baby who lives a life that could have been glorious, but ends in death on a cross. We see God’s glory in God’s choice to come dwell among us, as one of us, in Christ’s suffering.
In worship each week, we echo the angels’ song. “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.” But look where we praise God.
We praise God’s glory as we come to the table, as we remember the night in which our Lord was betrayed. That’s where we find God’s glory. That’s where we find our proclamation, in God revealed in suffering, in betrayal, on a cross.
Isaiah was made clean by the live coal taken from the altar. As you receive the bread and wine, the body and blood of our Lord, the one in whom God’s glory is found, receive it as a tangible sign of the promise that you too, like Isaiah, are made holy. You and I are called by God, despite our unworthiness, despite our brokenness. That’s how God works. In Christ, by the Spirit’s power, God makes broken, sinful people holy. When we encounter God, we are changed.
We too are led by the Holy Spirit to encounter God, to encounter the One who came to be with us in Christ Jesus, the one who meets us in our weakness and makes us clean, who calls us. By the Holy Spirit, we too can say, “Here I am, send me.”
And as we make that bold claim that we are sent, we trust in faith that God’s Spirit is empowering and sending us as we say, “Here I am, send me.”