Isaiah 6:1-13

12/05/10

Isaiah 6:1-13

Hudson UMC

Our primary passage for this morning from the prophet Isaiah is a paradox of sorts.  It seems tremendously familiar and yet strangely foreign.  We begin by hearing words we have heard, and even sung, before and we end by hearing words that, perhaps, we might rather not hear.  It is such a curious text.  The first half is well known and often preached, while the second half is almost totally ignored in the church, in spite of it being quoted in each of the four gospels.

The well-known and well-liked first part of Isaiah, chapter 6, speaks of the calling that Isaiah had to become a prophet.  We have a man who, in a vision, comes into the presence of God.  Eventually, the voice of the Lord asks who will go and be a messenger for God and Isaiah so confidently says, “Here am I; send me.”  We like this.  We like to think about God commissioning human beings to speak His message.  Sometimes, we even see ourselves as participating in that mission, in one way or another.  There have been many individuals and churches whom have used Isaiah’s response as the pattern after which they follow for Christian leadership.

And yet, in spite of our great desire to identify with Isaiah’s call to divine service, we tend to stop reading right at the point where his mission is spelled out.  I think that this is very telling.  Most of us like to know what we are signing up for before we volunteer to be involved in something.  Very rarely will we volunteer ourselves unconditionally to be sent wherever and to do whatever, and yet this is precisely what Isaiah does, and it is a very good thing that he does because, if he had waited to say he would go until he heard what his mission was, he very well may not have gone.

Listen to what God told Isaiah to do.  “Go and say to this people:  ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’  Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.”  When Isaiah asked how long he would have to have this difficult assignment, the answer is, to use figurative language, until everything you know has changed.

This is, as you might imagine, a difficult task.  Isaiah is being sent out to deliver God’s message to the people and, not only is he told ahead of time that nobody will listen to him, he is told that his message, which is sent by God, will actually be the reason that people will not listen to him.  That is something of a depressing prospect for anyone, but in Isaiah’s case, the situation is even more dire.  He goes off and follows his instructions, speaking the word of the Lord into the lives of the Israelites, but particularly to kings Ahaz and Hezekiah.  Isaiah tells Ahaz not to worry about the armies coming to Jerusalem, that God would not allow His city to fall.  Ahaz does not listen, but God moves anyway.  Years later, when Israel is again being invaded, Isaiah tells Hezekiah not to worry because God is greater than all the armies of the earth.  Hezekiah listens here, but later shows that his trust is not as great as it appeared.  To make matters worse, according to tradition, Isaiah was so disliked that the people killed him by sawing him in half.  It doesn’t sound like a happy ending.

And yet, passages like this one from Isaiah help to show us what happens to human beings when God draws close.  It is so easy for us to think that, at the simple hearing of the word of the Lord, our chains fall off, we are liberated and everything is smiles and rainbows for the rest of our lives.  The commission of Isaiah to proclaim God’s message shows us that, at least sometimes, God’s message seems to drive people away.

However, when we think about what happens when God draws close to human beings, it seems that the first part of this chapter, the part that is so well-known, is more helpful for our understanding than the second.  When Isaiah comes into the presence of God, what happens to him?  Does he shout with praise, does he sing a hymn, does he feel self-affirmed and recharged for the days ahead?  No.  Instead he cries out in despair.  “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!”  Isaiah, who probably wasn’t that bad of a person by society’s eyes felt mortal fear at being brought face to face with God.  This is the same Isaiah who, after a long ministry and a life devoted to God, spoke of God moving among the people.  “You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers your ways.  Behold, you were angry, for we sinned, we continued in them a long time; and shall we be saved?  For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”  Isaiah was so overwhelmed by the righteousness of God that he said, “The best that I have ever done is like a filthy garment.”

What is God’s response to this outcry?  “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.’”  God’s response is to have an angel apply a burning coal to Isaiah’s lips; a coal that even the angel dared not touch was pressed against a very tender part of Isaiah’s face.  We do not read that Isaiah cried out in pain or felt any discomfort, but we hardly need to be told that touching a burning coal to our lips is a painful experience.  When Isaiah meets with God, the first things that happen are not what we would normally call joyful, but it is incredibly important that we do not stop here, or else we will misunderstand all of what God has done.

Sometimes, if we put a text under the microscope, so to speak, we can come to conclusions that, if we were to take a step back and look at a larger portion of Scripture, we can see are simply out of line or at least need to be understood within that larger context.  This happens all the time.  People attend protests with bold proclamations on the signs they bring that simply don’t hold up within the entire biblical witness.  We even saw this was the case last week when we focused on Paul’s defense of the law.  The closer we read the text, the more we realized that the law was given to provoke and expose the sin of Israel, the same sin that lurks in every nation, with the effect that the Israelites were more outwardly wicked than they would have been without the law.  It might seem, in light of this realization, that God must be malicious and twisted, just setting people up for failure and then punishing them for it.  And yet, though we realize that, because God gave the law to Israel, not at the end of their covenant relation but at the beginning of it, God did not consider Israel’s failure to keep the law to be grounds upon which to end the relationship, but stuck with them even more ferociously, binding them ever more closely to Himself.

This is important because, if we only look at this chapter, we might get an inadequate understanding of Isaiah’s experience.  Isaiah met with God and his response was terror.  He shook in his boots and was sure that he was going to die.  Indeed, he did not die, but had his lips touched with a burning coal, something that sounds so unpleasant, it actually seems more like torture.  And yet, in spite of this intense and painful encounter with God, it would be a mistake to conclude that meeting with God is a bad thing.  After all, once again, this experience did not come at the end of Isaiah’s prophetic ministry, but at its beginning.  Isaiah spent many years proclaiming the word of the Lord, being willing to surrender himself to the scorn and laughter of the people and finally dying a painful death.  What happened?

You see, in spite of the pain, in spite of the discomfort, in spite of all the things that are hardly considered “good” by our world that he endured, Isaiah had encountered the living God of grace and was dramatically empowered by Him.  The pain was real and it was intense, but it was not the final word.  The discomfort was the pain of a sinful human being coming into contact with the pure holiness of God.  Within the context of this vision, Isaiah had the sin literally burned out of him.  Isaiah’s brokenness as a human being was real and had to be taken seriously.  God could not have said, “Isaiah, go deliver my word to the people” without first preparing him for it, and he could not be prepared without being changed and cleansed.

So long as God stays far away from us, we can believe that we really aren’t that bad.  We look around and realize that we are not flagrant lawbreakers, we don’t do anything really bad and we certainly aren’t any worse than our neighbors, or, even if we are, we could probably point to someone else somewhere who is worse than we are and feel better because we aren’t as bad as them.  Even if we use as our standard the best of all human beings, we can hide behind the old standby phrase, “Nobody’s perfect.”  We imagine that some people are born to be great moral leaders and we conclude that we haven’t been, either because we have already shown that we are not as moral as a Ghandi or a Mother Theresa, or because, when it gets down to it, we don’t really want to be.

But when God draws near, our perception begins to change.  When God makes his law known and says, first and foremost, not a word against adultery, murder or stealing, but against allowing anything at all to come before Him, we start realizing that, maybe, just maybe, we don’t really want God to be first.  We like the laws later in the Ten Commandments because it means that people shouldn’t kill or steal from us.  But when we really consider what it means to live totally free of every form of idolatry, without projecting any of our own likes and dislikes into God and letting God be who He really is, it isn’t so pleasant.  When God met with Isaiah, this righteous man, this one who was to be the great prophet of God, the encounter nearly killed him and nothing short of having a burning coal pressed against his lips could deal with his uncleanness.

And yet, think about how empowering this is.  When the main point of our life is to go, like Isaiah, where we are sent by God and do what we are sent to do, we don’t need to worry so much about ourselves.  We don’t need to worry about how we are perceived by others because the only thing that matters is that we are being faithful to our God.  We do not need to worry if someone doesn’t like us because our lives are so bound up with the mission and message of God that, it really isn’t us that they don’t like, but God’s message.

There is more to say about what happens with God draws close to human beings, but what I want to highlight and not have you leave without being certain of, is that, once we get past the initial shock, we are made free in God.  It hurts because part of us is being removed, but it is the sinful part, which we are better off without.  It was only after Israel received the law that they really began to live as God’s covenant people.  It was only after Isaiah had his lips burned that he stepped into his role as one of the most significant prophets in history.  It is only once we have experienced the grace and love of God that burns like a coal that we begin to understand what we have received.

So, brothers and sisters, be encouraged.  Know in your hearts that we are not the people of God because we have done something special, but because God has chosen to meet with us in His grace and mercy.  Know that we follow God’s ways because we have already received grace and acceptance, not in order to gain that acceptance.  Know that we engage in a faithful life, not because we hope by doing so to make God happy, but because God has already smiled at us and made us his own in such a way that nothing can separate us from His love.  Know that we are nearer to the consummation of God’s plans than we were when we first believed.  Do not be discouraged when you have a painful experience, for God may be there in the midst of it, even in the midst of real tragedy, meeting with you, and walking with you for all your days.  Let us pray.

AMEN