A sermon preached at Shiloh Inwood United Church on May 30 2021 based on Isaiah 6: 1-13
A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you a quotation from Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury: “The hardest thing is to be where we are”. [quoted in Stanley Hauerwas, Living Well in Ordinary Time] It is much easier to live in the past, reminiscing about the ‘good old days’. It is easier to live in the future, dreaming dreams about what you will do when conditions change. “The hardest things is to be where we are.”
Rowan Williams goes on to describe where we are as a ‘confusing, damaged time.” Isn’t that a good description for the world these days? — “a confusing damaged time.”
In such a time, hope is hard to come by. In such a time, we find ourselves at the end of our own resources. Our souls are crying out for something more than what we are currently experiencing. Our souls are needing more than the ‘do-it-yourself’ life that our culture offers us.
In the scripture reading this morning, the prophet Isaiah invites us to be where we are by becoming aware that the more we are hungering for is being offered to us. He begins by saying, “In the year that King Uzziah died . . .”, which is short-form for saying that he, too, lived in a confusing and damaged time.
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, sitting on a throne, high and exalted.” He saw the God who made all creation, the whole cosmos. He saw the God who hundreds of years later would send Jesus to heal the broken world. This is the ‘more’ that our souls are thirsting for. Where we are these days is in the presence of God who is glorious, awesome (as the children sang). This God is so large, so brimming over with life and energy and power that just the hem of his robe fills the temple.
Can you picture that? Imagine sitting in the sanctuary in either of our buildings, participating with the rest of us thirsty souls in an ordinary Sunday morning worship service. Suddenly, you catch aa glimpse of God’s presence with us. It is not just a warm feeling or a vague sense that something or someone is hovering around the edges. No, you are aware of God’s presence so massive, so alive that the space seems to be bursting at its seams. The four walls and roof cannot hold all of God’s presence. All you can see with the eyes of your soul is the hem of the robe that tells you that God is here with us.
How would you feel? Awe? Astonishment? Terror?
Isaiah is first of all speechless but he draws our attention to the angel seraphs who have also showed up to our ordinary run-of-the-mill Sunday morning worship service. Mind you, these are not the cute, comforting, reassuring angels that are often pictured in religious and children’s books. These are large, fierce messengers who make their way up to the choir loft and signal to Irv and Joanne and Kay to start playing for all they’re worth. They start to sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is God-of-the-Angel-Armies. his bright glory fills the whole earth.”
[Steve Bell song, “Holy Lord”]
As happens so often with music, their singing helps Isaiah find his own words. “Woe is me!” he cries. “I am lost, as good as dead.”
That is the usual reaction of human beings to God’s glorious holiness. We become acutely aware of our own brokenness. We become aware that we have wandered away from God and are now lost and cannot find our way. We recognize the ways in which we have contributed to the brokenness of our world.
It is true that God loves us just the way we are. It is also true that God loves us too much to let us stay that way. God is present, at work, in our lives. That work is transforming us, pulling us deeper and deeper into God’s own life, into God’s saving love, into God’s abundant joy.
On our own, we shape our lives in ways that hinder that journey into God’s life. We pick up habits and attitudes that weigh us down. We put up defences around our hearts, thinking that they will keep us safe from getting hurt but they only end up blocking our experience of God’s love.
The work of God is often, then, the work of taking down our defences. It is the work of prying our hearts and hands from the tight grip we have on life — a grip that chokes and diminishes the life of God’s Spirit in us. That work can feel like a burning fire. It can feel like our whole world is shaking. Indeed, the scriptures says that the fire is a purifying fire. It is burning away the chains that are holding us captive; it is getting rid of the things that are separating us from God. The shaking is revealing what in our lives has been built upon faulty foundations. The shaking is revealing what is solid, what cannot be shaken because it is grounded in the firm foundation of God’s bedrock presence.
Isaiah experienced that purifying fire and then found that he had been freed enough to hear God invite him into God’s own work in the world. Having had his selfishness burned away, he is open to hearing the voice of God ask, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” And, he is free enough to reply, “I’ll go; send me.”
That story is also our story. We tell it to each other because we, too, are set in the presence of our holy God.
Our lives are not shaped by a pandemic or by the violence and brutality and selfishness and greed that are making this a confusing and damaged time. Our lives are shaped by our holy God who is massively, gloriously at work, healing this broken creation, setting captives free, bringing good news of rescue and redemption to those who have been neglected and abused and left wounded.
We are a sacred community, commanded by Jesus our Lord. We get to participate in God’s holy, healing work in the world. We get to help people bear their grief and their sorrow, to walk with them through the valley of the shadow of death, assuring them that they are not alone. Our risen Saviour walks with them and is leading them home.
We get to create the kind of community that seeks to restore dignity and bring grace into the lives of people who have been de-humanized and brutalized by systems of greed and violence. We get to help each other hear the words of welcome and love and reconciliation that Jesus is speaking into each of our lives.
We get to live holy lives that reflect the grace and holiness of our God. This is where we are. Our souls cry out for this. Our thirsty souls have been met by God’s extravagant grace. Thanks be to that God who invites us into the loving community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Christine Jerrett 