Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
June 11, 2006
Isaiah 6: 1-8
In a recent Christian Century magazine, Rob Merola, an Episcopal priest, shared some reflections on, well, fishing – it caught my attention right away! He wrote, “On the first day of my vacation, I went fishing on the Yellowstone River in Montana. I caught nothing but a couple of branches. That might have been because I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing. I didn’t know what flies to use, I didn’t know how I should work them in the water, and I didn’t know which areas of the river would be most productive in terms of holding feeding fish. Did I mention that it had been 20 years since the last time I went fly-fishing?
“The next day, all that changed when a good friend took me fishing. He had a boat, so we could cover a lot more water. He showed me what flies to use and how to present them. He showed me exactly where to cast. And guess what? I caught several very nice trout, some weighing several pounds.” (Now he’s just showing off!)
He concludes, “I could not have caught those fish without the help of my friend. I needed a boat, the proper flies and the necessary knowledge of how and where to fish this particular river. My friend had all these things, and in sharing them freely, he made it possible for me to do something I could not do on my own.”
Can you think of a time in your life when that has been true for you – a time when someone intervened, helped out, or in some way made it possible for you to do something you could not have done on your own? I remember that first backpacking trip with our younger daughter Becky – I’ve shared the story with you before – when she just ran out of steam on our first day and sat down. I wondered how I was possibly going to carry her, her pack and my pack, and get to our camp. Suddenly the other members of our group miraculously appeared. They picked her up, they picked up her pack, they picked up my pack, and took us to camp. Of course, by the end of the week, she was out-hiking me, but that first night, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Without the help of others, I couldn’t have done it on my own. Or on Mother’s Day I mentioned my mother and her support for me when I was far away at school, basically feeling lost, overwhelmed and afraid. I know that without her support, I would have never made it. She enabled me to do something I could not have done on my own. Think about it… when has someone or something done just that for you?
The prophet, Isaiah, knew exactly when it happened for him. Isaiah, a powerful and eloquent prophet of God, who 750 years before Jesus was born, boldly spoke to the leaders of Israel and challenged them to turn back to God and to God’s ways of justice and compassion and peace, or they would face nothing less than national disaster. Amazing how his words still ring true these many centuries later. But how could he do that? How was he quite literally able to lay his life on the line, to risk everything, in order to speak God’s word? What gave him the strength, the courage to do that?
“In the year that King Uzziah died…” In this text, Isaiah relates his mystical, wondrous and frightening vision of God. Note that this is no cute, cozy or comfortable God who meets the prophet. Isaiah is blown away by God, overwhelmed by God’s holiness and power. In fact, he finds himself looking for the nearest exit. “Woe is me! I am lost! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.” Literally face to face with God, it is as if all of Isaiah’s inadequacies, weakness and failures are right there on display for all to see. He feels unworthy. He knows this is something he cannot do on his own.
So I’m sitting in Atlanta at this preaching conference, listening to the rather young-looking pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the United States. He is talking about his sermon preparation – the amount of reading he does, the kind of research he engages in – he keeps turning his sermon series into best-selling books. And as I sit there, I’m starting to feel like Isaiah: “Woe is me! I can never measure up to this standard of preaching.” I had a partially-completed sermon in my briefcase, and after this guy spoke, I could hear all the words in my sermon asking if they could be dismissed from the page.
Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever sit in the silence of your own soul and find yourself doubting your own ability, your own worth? On your own faith journey, do you, like Isaiah, find yourself plagued with your unworthiness, your shortcomings, your failures, when you find yourself confronted with the awesome holiness of God? “Woe is me, I am a person of unclean lips. I can never measure up to the divine standard.” I think of how I am called to preach to you the word of God, almost every Sunday, and yet so many Sundays, when confronted with this God, it feels like I can barely muster a whisper. “Woe is me!”
But back to our text. For just as his world seems to be collapsing around him, a strange and unexpected thing happens to Isaiah: “Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar…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.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?’ And I said, ‘Here am I, send me.’”
It would seem that the decision about our unworthiness, our weakness, our inadequacy is finally not ours to make. The same God who threatens to overwhelm Isaiah, now empowers him. And the same Isaiah who just moments before had known weakness and fear, finds himself, no doubt much to his own surprise, saying, “Send me. I’ll go!” Because of his encounter with God’s, and not only God’s power, but probably more importantly, God’s forgiving, empowering, mercy and grace, it is now possible for Isaiah to do something that he could never have done on his own.
I know I’ve shared this story with you before, a story told by Fred Craddock, but I have to return to it one more time because I think it speaks to this text. When Craddock was a student, only twenty years old, he read Albert Schweitzer’s massive work, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. A famous book, but Craddock didn’t like it. He thought it rather theologically thin, its view of Jesus woefully weak. Then he learned that Schweitzer was going to be in Cleveland to play a concert on a new organ in a large church, and would remain after for some conversation.
Says Craddock, “I bought a Greyhound bus ticket and went to Cleveland. All the way up there I laid out my questions about his book. I figured that if there was conversation in the fellowship hall, then there would be room for a question or two.
“I went there, I heard the concert, I rushed into the fellowship hall, got a seat in the front row, and waited with my questions in my lap. After a while he came in, shaggy hair, big white mustache, stooped, and seventy-five years old. He had played a marvelous concert. You know, he was a master organist, along with everything else that he did. He came in with a cup of tea and stood in front of the group. And there I was, close, ready with my questions. Dr. Schweitzer thanked everybody: ‘You’ve been very warm and hospitable to me. I thank you for it. I wish I could stay longer with you, but I must get back to Africa because my people are poor and diseased and hungry and dying, and I have to go.’ Then he added, ‘If there is anyone here in this room who has the love of Jesus, would you be prompted by that love to go with me and help me?’”
Says Craddock, “I looked down at my questions; my brilliant questions and they were so stupid. And I learned, again, what it means to be a Christian and had hopes that maybe I could be that someday.”
“If there is anyone here in the room who has the love of Jesus…” Is there anyone here today who just might need the spirit of Christ, the presence of Christ, to enable you to do something, go somewhere, or make a commitment that you could not do or go or make on your own? Maybe we don’t ask that enough around here. Sure we always want and need volunteers, nowhere more than in our children’s Sunday morning Christian Education program, which is going to be a pretty exciting program next fall! We ask for volunteers, we ask for help, we ask for money, but maybe what we don’t ask often enough is…where does God really need for you to show up? Where might God be pushing you, nudging you, moving you beyond your comfort zone? Think about your own life for a moment. How might God be shaping you, what might God be up to in your heart, right now?
Isaiah went out and preached a wondrously bold word he thought he could never preach. Some of us are no doubt a bit shocked that we are actually preparing to leave for ten days in Nicaragua. I’ve been resisting this trip for 20 years! We get so fearful, so cautious, so convinced of all we cannot do. Trouble is, we worship a God who isn’t the least bit cautious and seemingly couldn’t care less about our cautiousness.
What does God have in mind for you? Where is God nudging you? Habitat for Humanity will be building some houses in town – is that where God wants you to go? We might need some youth leaders – the Sunday School, the choir? Give more money? Maybe it is time to go work in the Catholic Worker or at the local Food Pantry. Or maybe you have been thinking, “I just need to spend more time in prayer…” or “I have just got to carve out more time for my family.” Where is God moving you? Where is God nudging you in your own heart? Where does God need for you to go?
I have the feeling that I am going to live out this sermon in my own life for the next ten days. I’m going to take my Bible and I just might read that call of Isaiah each and every day, especially in those times when I’m tempted to say, “Okay, God, I think we made a little mistake here.” But I’d really like all of us to reflect on that call…and on our call. What can God help us to do that we could not have done on our own? And take these words of seminary professor, Dan Moseley, with you: “Those touched by the divine spirit and made sensitive by the holy presence will wonder, ‘Why me? Who am I? I am inadequate and overwhelmed. I don’t know what to say or do?’ But, because your lips have been touched by the cleansing coal of the spirit’s fire, because you know you are only adequate by the mercy of God, you can, with fear and trembling say, ‘Here am I. Send me.’”