Year C Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany February 4th, 2001
Lord of the Lake Lutheran Church
Web page http://lordofthelake.org
By The Rev. Jerry Morrissey, Esq., Pastor
E-mail pastor@southshore.com
Heavenly Father, thank you for the Wonder of your presence in earthly things and circumstances. Amen.
Title: “Wonder.”
Isaiah 6:1-13
Isaiah is at the Liturgy in the Temple when he has a religious experience, which equips him to be God’s prophet.
This text, from the “memoirs” of Isaiah, attempts to describe the indescribable, Isaiah’s vision of God calling him to prophesy in his name. This vision of God’s holiness and glory made such an impact on him and his whole theological position that he was from that point on always conscious of living and working in the presence of God. It is untypical of other “call narratives” in that Isaiah does not object to being called as, for instance, Jeremiah, claiming to be too young, but actually volunteers for the task.
During the reign of King Uzziah (783-742) Judah enjoyed a relatively stable government, and so a degree of peace and material prosperity. After his death, however, things changed rapidly. Ahaz became king and refused to listen to Isaiah’s advice and called on the Assyrians for help. This would eventually spell disaster for the northern kingdom first and then the southern kingdom. His vision would have occurred in 742BC.
In verse one, I saw the Lord: Isaiah is in the Temple participating in a liturgy, watching the priests offering up burnt offerings, the incense filling the place with a cloudy veil of smoke. He has a religious experience where the veil separating the human and divine realms was removed. He experiences the glory and holiness of God in a felt way. He describes it as through he were in God’s throne room and the angels or guardians are all around him. God’s council is present as well. Their deliberations are over and God’s decision is made. Israel will be punished for her sins and rebellion.
The train of his garment filling the Temple: Of course, Isaiah did not “see” God in the literal sense of the word. It was a truism in the Old Testament that no one could see God and live. (See Ex 33: 20-23.) Isaiah gives no exact description of the form or appearance of God, but he describes the throne and train, the skirts of the royal robe, that filled the temple. These are aspects of the nature and presence of God described in a symbolic manner.
In verse two, seraphim: The “-im” is the plural form, like the English “-s,” for “seraph.” Cherubim is the plural of cherub. In subsequent centuries these were thought of as fire-spirits; intimated here when they take hot coals to burn out sin from Isaiah’s lips and the cherubim not mentioned here as air-spirits. In, First, Isaiah’s time a seraph was a reminder, an idol of a foreign god. It was part human, part animal, having six wings. The Assyrian king had demanded these idols be placed in the Temple to remind the people they were subject to their gods. Isaiah saw these on two levels: on the human level, they got into his vision, as did the smoke from the liturgical incense; on the divine level they were subservient to God. Two of their wings were for flying; two covered their eyes out of deference for God; and two covered their “private parts,” euphemistically noted as their “feet” here, out of reverence for God. In other words, Isaiah saw these so-called gods as really servants of Yahweh. Over time both seraphim and cherubim became names for the chief angels. At times, because the word in Hebrew for “serpent” was saraph, so similar to Hebrew seraph, they were wrongly represented as snakes.
In verse three, holy, holy, holy: In the Old Testament the essence of God was expressed by the term “holy.” The Hebrew word for “holi” is kadesh, meaning “other,” “separate,” different,” “unique.” The threefold repetition expresses the superlative in Hebrew. Holiness had two levels of meaning. God as he is in himself was totally “other,” transcendent, unique, incomparable. Secondly, God as he related to creation and humans was morally perfect and good, without sin. This refrain would have been a choral antiphon actually sung at the Liturgy.
Lord of hosts: This is a most ancient name for God going back to Sinai, used in conjunction with reverence for the Ark of the Covenant, residing in the Holy of Holies of the Temple. The phrase originally meant, “he who brings the heavenly hosts into being.” “Yahweh,” translated as “Lord” here, was originally a verb, the older causative form of “to be.”
All the earth is filled with his glory: If merely his train filled the Temple, verse one, the entire earth was filled up with his glory. Holiness and glory are connected. Glory is the external, though visible only to the eyes of faith, manifestation of the divine essence, which is holiness. It was God’s “glory” Isaiah saw, not God himself. He only got a glimpse of his train, so to speak.
In verse four, door shook…house filled with smoke: The earthly context, the liturgy with its loud music and incense, influenced the way Isaiah both experienced God and the way he describes the experience. The two cannot be separated anymore than “glory” and “holiness” are really two different realities. They are two aspects of the same reality. These are also elements in a typical appearance of God, a theophany.
In verse five, woe…doomed…unclean: In the presence of the “uniquely other” Isaiah feels his own “otherness” or separation or distance from God, even though he is so close. He senses his sin and, because he is one with his people, corporate personality, their sin too, also in him. He sees no trace of holiness in either.
In verse six, one of the seraphim…with tongs from the altar: The altar represents the heart of God. What it takes to cleanse from sin is so powerful, so hot from fire, that no creature, human, angelic, or lesser god, can touch it directly. Hence, the tongs. Forgiveness comes from God, albeit through a lesser agency. Fire is a means of purification especially of metal which so easily alloys with other substances, but is not so easily separated and became an apt and often used symbol for forgiveness of sin.
In verse seven, he touched my mouth with it: The lips and mouth are the place where inner thoughts are issued. They represent the whole person, while concentrating on the main means of communication. This is an instance of “the part for the whole,” a literary device which itself illustrates the notion of “corporate personality.” They are now “cauterized” to express purification and forgiveness. Isaiah now is appropriately fit or equipped to both be in God’s presence, holiness, and accomplish his task, the revealing of his presence, glory, to others. Ordinarily, the earthly Temple sacrifices were supposed to accomplish this and they were going on as Isaiah was at prayer. Yet, he is claiming divine commissioning to authenticate his claim as a prophet, backed up by direct forgiveness from God in his heavenly throne room.
In verse eight, here I am…send me: The divine council meeting is over and the decision made. The only question remaining is who will deliver the message. Usually an angel, a member of the council is sent, but Isaiah willingly volunteers to do God’s bidding. This is atypical of the prophetic call in most cases. Jeremiah, for example, brought up his lack of qualifications. Others like Moses or Ezekiel would similarly argue, question or bargain. His wholehearted willingness to dedicate himself to the task foreshadows the “immediate” acceptance of Jesus’ disciples in the gospels. His awareness of sin’s power to prevent him from doing it also foreshadows Peter’s reaction to the “holiness” of Jesus.
In verses nine to thirteen, Isaiah is sent, but not before being warned by God that he will not be entirely or even mostly successful. Except for a small remnant, his message will fall on deaf ears and the judgment will be carried out. A prophet’s “success” is measured by his own fidelity to the word, not by how many people accept it or him.
Isaiah had a religious experience. Everyone has such experiences. They may not be frequent, but the trick is to identify them as such, like Isaiah did. When that happens, life is changed. A religious experience is similar to the experience of wonder. Indeed, it simply is the experience of wonder, an experience that can be had either in a secular or a religious context. When the veil of ordinary experience, the mundane, daily, routine, familiar way of perceiving things and people is removed, however briefly, and it is very brief in most, if not all cases, and one truly “sees” reality as it is, in all its other dimensions or, at least, more than the physical and psychological, and one enters into that experience one has had a “religious experience.” One has “met” God. A secular person would call it “wonder,” that is, minus the “religious” aspect, but it would be the same experience of God.
It is not that we see God as such. We do not see anything different from what is there in any physical sense. Isaiah describes his experience using the “things”- the sights, sounds and smells of the liturgy- which he is involved in, to describe this “flight” or transcendence into a realm otherwise closed to him. When we experience “wonder,” awe, mystery, we experience differently. Dimensions of that ordinary reality are revealed. If, and only if, we remember the experience, as Isaiah did, and do not either dismiss it or place it in the category of “merely unusual” we will want to live our ordinary lives in the light of and according to the pattern, level and depth which the experience revealed. Like Isaiah, we will eagerly and willingly accept life, even failure in life, as not only a gift, but as offering in new experiences the possibility of connecting with that profound experience again, albeit in other and different contexts than the first one.
We know we cannot produce it or conjure it up by ritual, incantations or rigid procedures. We know it is a grace. But we can be on the lookout for it happening again. We can discern “signs” of its presence. Though it may remain hidden and not produce the original effect upon us, we know it is there, always there, just beneath the surface of things. Minus the ecstasy it produces when it become obvious, we still honor its being and live according to its promise, always in hope, always in trust that it is there, always in love as the only appropriate response to it. We know it is the source, the motivation, and the “subject matter” for all art as well as religion. And, in a less obvious way, for all science and its derivative technology.
The experience of wonder is the experience of God. It comes to us through human and created forms, glory, though itself is formless, holy. It can never be possessed, only experienced and expressed in religion and art. Aspects of it can be explained by science and mastered by technology, but after all the mastery is accomplished, the mystery remains. There is something left over which will not and cannot be analyzed or utilized. The experience is transcendent in itself and causes us to transcend into its realm as it has descended into ours. It can happen in church or at sea, at work, home or anywhere else, because it is everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
Isaiah had this experience. Peter has it in today’s gospel story. Whether we recognized it as such or not we have all had this experience. In its presence we are reduced to knowing ourselves “as we are known,” as Paul puts it in 1Corinthians 13:12. Our sin is painfully obvious to us. Yet, even after being cleansed of all sinfulness, we know we would still not be equal to the experience, not worthy of it. It is grace through and through. It is love come home to us and alive. And we become alive and capable of a love we thought impossible, because unimaginable. It is not that we do not have these experiences. We either do not notice them or dismiss them as “pleasant surprises.” The scriptures are written and the stories are told to help us identify in our own lives similar experiences, showing the same general patterns and to respond accordingly. Without such experiences our responses to God would be obligatory, mechanical, rigid, pre-determined by rules as well as devoid of spirit, love and fruit. Isaiah never forgot this. Perhaps it was his only one. At least, he only recorded one. One is enough, more than enough. Yet, experience teaches us that the experience is always possible. It is one and the same experience, though repeated throughout life in various contexts. It is God coming to us.
The curtain that veils the realm of God and God himself from human perception can only be pulled back by God himself.
Humans can put themselves in a frame of mind or a frame of reference, a context, that increases the chances of the separating veil being drawn back, but humans cannot produce the experience.
In the religious experience, the experience of wonder, humans become intensely aware of moral inadequacy, that is, the difference between the quality of the wonderful, extraordinary experience and the quality of their ordinary lives.
Religious experiences, experiences of wonder, do not just produce awe. They produce a desire, even a commitment, to live ordinary life differently. They produce of sense of mission.
Beauty and Holiness: A thoroughly secular person can and does experience wonder from time to time. However, such a person will use different language to describe the awe produced in him or her by the wonder, the mystery, apprehending him or her. It is for that person a “beautiful” experience. What is beauty if it is not what the Hebrews mean by “holiness?” Beauty is a sense of otherness, the recognition that an object or person is “set apart” from the ordinary, is different from the usual, is “above” the norm or normal. And the experience does not stop at the awe of the moment. The secular person, after experiencing beauty, goes on a lifelong quest for more beauty, to experience as much of this profoundly moving reality and in as many forms as possible. We humans are naturally religious when it comes to being enveloped by the experience of wonder and enchanted by it for life. The secular person and the religious person may have different terms for the experience and may “do their thing” in different realms, one in art, the other in religion, but the underlying reality, call it revelation, it is the same. It is God! The difference is not in the experience, but in the response to the experience. The religious person places the experience dead center in the midst of his or her life. The pursuit of holiness is a holy pursuit, not an avocation, but a vocation. Unlike the pursuit of beauty it is not limited to beautiful people or things or “lovely” events. The experience is not really something to be pursued at all. It cannot really be found, in the sense of “at the end of a search.” Rather, the experience finds us. We are apprehended, overtaken, by it, not the other way around. While it is true that we need to put ourselves in the right frame of mind before it will happen, we can never be sure that, even then, it actually will happen. God, the experience of wonder, is not subject to human machinations, incantations, procedures, rituals or canons of art. No, the experience is not limited to the “beautiful,” though it includes it. Wonder can find us anywhere, even amidst the ugly places and people of daily life. Isaiah found the experience in the Temple, but God’s Temple is really this universe and every other one that may exist.
Near-Death Experiences: These are really experiences of wonder, proving that wonder, God, finds us; we do not find him. When a person is declared clinically dead, that is, incapable of experiencing anything, wonder defies human categories of definition and allows the human person to continue to experience life, but on another plane, level, dimension, realm. The person does not shut down, but is lifted to a higher realm. When that person is brought back to the level playing field of earthly life, he or she reports the experience in human language and categories of thought, much as we all report our dreams, much as Isaiah reports his experience. Such folks report light at the end of a tunnel, warm and welcoming embraces, peace and love. And most folks, who return to earthly life, after being declared clinically dead, report the desire to change the way they live, that is, to learn more and to love better. They, like Isaiah, now have a mission in life, that is, to live it as well as possible. That is a commitment to holiness, whether the person is secular or religious. The experience of wonder, uncommon as it is in itself, but common to all humans, is the “common ground” from which we can all grow in both experiential and intellectual knowledge of God and the basis for secular and religious folks to mutually benefit from their essentially similar experiences. Amen.
