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NOT SAFE BUT GOOD
Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-16
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
June 7, 2009
According to some accounts, a child will have absorbed 30,000 television ads before entering first grade, and teenagers will have spent more time with advertisements than the entire time that they will spend in high school. And at least one study estimates the average adult watches 8 hours of television each day. Mind-boggling isn’t it?
Regardless of the precise number of hours, the point is: what is the message we are receiving with all of those ads? I was paying attention this week, and I now know that some men “know how to end the night properly” – that is with a particular brand of vodka. If I switch telephone carriers, I will have a whole lot of people led by a nice-looking man in retro eyeglasses who will care about me and watch out for me. Multiple times I was told how I could save money by buying more – which never really seems to make much sense. And despite the market, an investment company I am encouraged to call by its first name promises me peace and security.
Taken together, what is the philosophy of life communicated by these messages? That the good life comes to those who buy the right stuff and that my purpose in life should be to make enough money to do what I want, go where I want, and be entertained the way I want. And where is God? Either absent or ineffective. As Ronald Byars notes, “the suggestion that we belong to anything or anyone larger than ourselves [other than a cell phone network] is hard to find on any channel.”[1]
In contrast to the familiarities of television, what a different and odd scene we encounter in Isaiah – with heavenly creatures called seraphs and burning coals used to make the unclean clean. The setting is the Temple in Jerusalem. More than asynagogue or church congregation, the Temple was a one-of-a-kind place, the center of Judaism at the time of Isaiah. It represented the junction of heaven and earth and a throne-like seat in its inner sanctum symbolized God’s presence and reign as Ruler of the universe.
Whether what happens in Isaiah 6 is something that a television crew could have filmed if it was there, or whether what is described is a vision or dream in Isaiah’s head,we don’t know for sure. And it does not really matter. What matters is the message that Isaiah gives us about God and the worship of God. What a very different message it is from the ones we get from television.
For Isaiah, God is not pushed off into the margins. God is front and center. God is awesome – too big to be contained by the Temple, too big for Isaiah to see anything but the bottom hem of God’s robe. And God is holy. Even the heavenly creatures use two of their wings to keep from seeing God. Confronted with such a holy and awesome God, all that Isaiah can do is fall on his knees and proclaim that “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”
What a contrast Isaiah’s description of God offers to what we see around us. Too often in our world and in our culture, if God is seen as present at all, God is shrunk down to an absentee landlord who started things off and then disappears. And while we Christians certainly think God is present and active in our lives, we can sometimes shrink God down by treating God as some magic genie or cosmic butler – someone we summon in our prayers to respond to our requests and meet our needs.
But Isaiah reminds us: God is not shrinkable. God is not made in our image; we are made in God’s image. God does not exist to serve us and meet our needs; we exist to serve God. Before humans, or life, or even the universe existed, God existed. And long after we are gone, even if human life should cease on earth, God will still be. God is creator of all that is, so that in God there is always more mystery than our puny minds can grasp. And in God, we encounter a holiness so much purer and greater than anything in our lives, that all we can do is avert our eyes and fall on our knees and proclaim, “Woe is me, for I am a man [or woman] with unclean lips among a people of unclean lips.”
What can we do before such an awesome and holy God?Only this – worship God.
Wherever God is, there is worship, and God alone is worthy of our worship and praise. In worship here, we are not just gathered to hear an inspiring talk or hear some good music, or have our spirits lifted, although we hope that all may occur. But we are gathered in the presence of a great and holy God who, in the words of our opening hymn, “there is none beside Thee. Perfect in power in love and purity.”
Because God is present when we worship here, nothing we do should be casual. Woe to the preacher who speaks glibly about God. Pity the worshipper who prattles and has no place for silence or expectant listening in the presence of God. We come here, not to hear ourselves, but to meet God – awesome and holy. And we come togive the God we meet the worship and praise that God deserves. That is how our worship must begin. As one of the men in the Bible study said Tuesday night, “I come to worship each week because I have been given so many blessings.” Or as the author, John Cheever, once put it, “If I didn’t [go to worship], I wouldn’t know what to do with my gratitude.”[2]
When we praise God and focus on God’s majesty and glory, we cannot help but recognize that we are not worthy to even be in God’s presence. That is why our confession of sins always follows our opening prayers and hymns of praise. Because like Isaiah, if we are aware of who God is, then we will always be aware of the great gap between God’s goodness and our sinfulness. We are always falling short of what God wants us to do and to be.
But our worship service does not end with praise of God and confession of our sins, because God is not content to let that gap continue. Isaiah 6 reminds us that although the gap between God and us is infinitely wide, we worship a God who is always reaching across that gap – reaching down and lifting us up. A seraph holds a live coal to Isaiah’s lips, symbolizing both God’s forgiveness of Isaiah and God’s empowerment of Isaiah to speak on behalf of God.
In the same way, after we confess our sins, we hear words of forgiveness and assurance. Because our God is not only awesome and holy. Our God is also merciful and loving. In Isaiah 6, he sends a seraph to cleanse Isaiah’s unclean lips. Later, as the gospel of John tells us, he will “give his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16). In Jesus Christ, God reaches down to us, and takes us up in His arms to show us that we are his precious children whom he willnever abandon or leave orphaned, despite our sins and failures.
In Isaiah 6, we see the whole journey we take each Sunday in worship. Look at the bulletin. First, there is praise and thanksgiving, then confession of sins, and the words of forgiveness and assurance. Then comes the word from the Lord. In Isaiah’s case, it is the voice of the Lord who speaks directly to Isaiah. In our case, God’s word can be heard by the power of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures and even through these human words.
Following the word, Isaiah responds. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? asks the Triune God. “Here I am; send me,” Isaiah replies.
We talk about worship inspiring us and “charging our spiritual batteries.” And it is good when worship does that. But that is secondary, a by-product of praise. As we see in Isaiah, our worship should do something more. As Tom Long writes, “worship does more than inspire us; it [is meant to] transform us. It changes the way we live, changes the way we view life’s challenges, changes what truly matters to us changes the way we see ourselves….[worship gives us] new eyes and new ears, a new set of lenses to look at the world.”[3] In other words, worship gives us a vision of a world that is very different from the world we often see around us, whether on television or in our workplace, school or neighborhood. In worship we get a glimpse of the realm where God’s presence is recognized and God’s rule is acknowledged. That is why it is so important that we do it regularly.
In God’s realm, in the kingdom of God, each one of us is called for service. Each one of us is asked, “Whom shall I send?” Empowered by God, each one of us is given what we need to be able to say to God: “Here I am. Send me.”
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis describes the first time the children hear about Aslan:
“’Is – he a man?’ asked Lucy.
‘Aslan a man!’ said Mr. Beaver sternly. ‘Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond the Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion.’
‘Ooh!’ said Susan. ‘I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’
‘That you will, dearie, and no mistake,’ said Mrs. Beaver. ‘If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’
‘Then he isn’t safe?’ asked Lucy.
“Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver….’Who said anything about safe? [Of] course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’”[4]
As Isaiah learned, as Nicodemus learned, as we learn when we discover the God revealed in our Scriptures, God is not safe. But as we see most clearly in Jesus Christ, God is good, very good. This is the God we worship each Sunday. And this is the God who waits to hear us say: “Here I am. Send me.”
[1] Ronald P. Byars, Christian Worship: Glorifying and Enjoying God (Louisville: Geneva Press, 2000), 3.
[2] Thomas W. Currie, The Joy of Ministry (Louisville: Westminster Press, 2008), 9.
[3] Thomas G. Long, Testimony (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 41.
[4] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (London: Puffin, 1950), 75.