Called to What?

Isaiah 6: 1 – 8 (9 – 13)

 

Today, on our whirlwind pre-Advent tour of prophets of the Hebrew Bible, we are introduced to Isaiah.

 

In the library of scripture, the book of Isaiah is among the “major” prophets along with Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel. It is a collection of writings that fall into three major parts. The first 39 chapters, sometimes referred to as “first Isaiah,” are credited to the tradition of Isaiah ben Amoz and reflect a period about 150 years before the Babylonian exile.  Throughout this first part of the book of Isaiah, the prophet announces why things are going badly for Judah, how they will get worse, and how, once all of this falling apart happens, God might rebuild Judah for the better.

 

Our reading for today comes from this first part of Isaiah, beginning with a time marker about the death of Uzziah.

 

King Uzziah was a good king who reigned for about 50 years in Judah. After a long period of consistent leadership, it is likely that the people of Judah were unsettled by a change of regime. The timing of this regime change was also against the backdrop of the rise of the Assyrian empire – a middle eastern political power that was expanding its reach year by year. So…there is a political and military threat looming.

 

The reading just offered, while sounding a lot like “the beginning” of Isaiah’s call, comes after five chapters in which the prophet is already “doing the thing.” Some text critics believe this might have been a later insertion in the text – perhaps it grounded Isaiah’s identity as a prophet for the consumers and hearers of Isaiah’s prophetic work. It may have been used to legitimize the prophet with the intended audience.

 

In Isaiah’s vision, in the wake of the earthly king’s death, God’s looming presence is on a throne, high and lofty. We assume that the vision is set in the Temple, perhaps as Isaiah glimpses into the holy of holies.  Seraphim – fantastic six-winged creatures – hover and sing praises – holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! Their voices are so big, so powerful, that the very doorframes shake at the sound.

 

Can you imagine? This is such a colorful and magnificent description – smoke, booming voices singing praise back and forth to one another. Maybe you are someone who has been in the awesome presence of God like this – but I venture to guess most of us have had such a dramatic experience of God’s presence. Most of us just heard stories like this one in scripture.

 

Isaiah – whom I imagine is quaking a bit – proclaims, “Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips.”

 

Ah, so there is an awareness on Isaiah’s part that he is somehow unclean, like all of the people around him, and he is therefore unworthy.

 

Those seraphim have an answer to that – touching Isaiah’s mouth with a hot coal from the fire, declaring Isaiah’s sin has been purged by purifying heat. 

 

Now Isaiah is able to hear the voice of the Lord asking, whom shall I send? Who will go for us? 

 

The anthem shared by the choir capitalizes on the language of Isaiah’s exchange with God in this moment. Whom shall I send? Here I am, LORD.  

 

And it sounds so beautiful.  

So hopeful. 

 

This song is dear to almost every seminarian and to many lay people who have found themselves identifying their call to ministry. But the song doesn’t really capture the next bit of the story.

 

To get the full picture of what Isaiah is called to, we need to read on through the rest of the chapter. Here’s what follows Isaiah’s willing response:

 

And the LORD said, “Go and say to this people:

‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.’
¹⁰ 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.”
¹¹ Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said,
“Until cities lie waste
    without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
    and the land is utterly desolate;
¹² until the Lord sends everyone far away,
    and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
¹³ Even if a tenth part remain in it,
    it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak
    whose stump remains standing
    when it is felled.”
(The holy seed is its stump.)

 

In the tradition of the prophets, those called to the work believed that their words were from God and that those words had power to change the course of events. Think about Nathan telling David the Temple is not for him to build. Think about Jonah’s call to tell the people to repent because calamity is near. 

 

Isaiah’s commission keeps the people on the path of destruction on which they find themselves. Utter destruction is at hand. They will not hear nor will they understand. In fact, it would seem Isaiah’s words are to ensure that. 

 

This is what the prophet is called to…a task he doesn’t know about until he’s eagerly answered “here I am, send me.”

 

I think it is fair to ask some questions of this text – do Isaiah’s words actually make the people’s minds dull? OR is the story told in hindsight – in spite of rather than in light of Isaiah’s ministry, the people continued down a path to ruin? I find myself wanting that to be true.

 

And how did Isaiah feel about what God has charged him with? 

 

Eventually Jerusalem would fall apart, the people called the Israelites would be exiled from the Land that God had given them. Political powers would destroy the Temple and the center of religious life. 

 

That is historical fact – and so perhaps the text captures what is simply human nature – folks wouldn’t listen, they wouldn’t act for the common good, they wouldn’t turn back to the God of justice and mercy and compassion. All along through this big story of God, we’ve observed humans being painfully human, longing for political and economic power, compromising their relationship with God for worldly influence. Perhaps you can point to a examples of these human failures in our midst right now.

 

The text ends with a tiny glimpse of hope - a postscript (literally text inserted by a later author), that perhaps a seed of what will come next lives in the remaining charred and battered stump. 

 

Perhaps from that battered stump new life will surge forth…eventually.

 

At the crux of this story is the truth that some destruction cannot be stopped, even by God, and that the path to regeneration/restoration emerges from the ashes of destruction.

 

We are, as people who follow Jesus, people who understand that new life comes from death. Death and destruction do not have the last word. New life might not look like we expect it to, but time and time again in scripture, we see renewal and rebirth.

 

I think it is safe to say we probably have an example of how that is true in our own lives. Relationships end. Ways of being end. And eventually, something new emerges.

 

Like Isaiah, we are also called to hard things – perhaps as individuals we are not called to stopping up people’s ears and hardening their hearts – I’d say that is a unique and rare prophetic call. And not all of us are called to speak prophetically at all. But we are called by our baptism to some especially hard things – to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of sin. We are called to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. 

 

THAT is a different call. AND it is a call. In our baptism and our confirmation and in every reaffirmation we make, we claim and commit once again to that call. 

 

Here I am, send me.

 

Here I am. Send me!

Do you feel that response in you?

 

Here I am. Send me.

 

(step off the chancel and invite Kris to join)

 

Today, we’re going to take time to remember and reaffirm our baptismal vows. I ask you in this time of reflection to remember that God’s call on our lives is complicated and sometimes just plain unimaginable. But in that call, we are accompanied by God, and as the church, we are surrounded by other members of the body of Christ all striving with the same call.

 

We will share the familiar words of our baptismal covenant and we will proclaim our faith anew. We are not baptizing again; we are remembering – for ourselves and for every baptized person sent out from this community – God’s promise to us, our promise to God.

 

Let’s join together in this remembrance…