Isaiah 6.1-8; 1st Corinthians 15.1-11; Luke 5.1-11
CS Lewis once noted that many people talk about meeting God as if it would be a warm, cozy experience. Now we could certainly all use more experiences like that in our lives—the near presence of God and the assurance and strength that come with it. But about the thought that a divine encounter will always be warm and cozy Lewis says, “We need to think again.” In another place, about coming to faith from atheism, Lewis says, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” What could he possibly mean?
There will be moments, as John Wesley experienced, when our hearts of faith are ‘strangely warmed;’ when faith becomes sight, and God does renew our courage, strength, and hope—moments of joy to be thankful for. Yet there will also be times when the goodness of God uncovers and exposes hard truths about our lives, about the way we live, about who we are meant to be as God’s people and how we fall short. There are times that we see our lives reflected in the mirror of God’s holiness and notice the blemishes.
Those who knew the sainted Mother Teresa and have written about her say that when people met her for the first time, she made them nervous and uncomfortable. She didn’t set out to intimidate; she was small in stature, 4’11” or 5 feet tall and frail. When she founded her Missionaries of Charity to care for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, her desire was to serve in obscurity. Yet people said that meeting her was an unsettling experience. Because in the presence of true greatness and goodness we become aware that we are neither as good or as great as we would like to be or even as God means us to be.
Holiness is unsettling. In its presence, we become aware of our shortcomings.
That’s Isaiah’s experience in today’s first reading. The presence of the Lord fills the Temple in an encounter that is anything but warm and cozy. Isaiah sees the awe-inspiring reality of God, high and exalted. The doorposts and thresholds of the Temple shake. The house of God is filled with smoke. This is not a usual Sunday morning for prayer book Episcopalians, even when we use incense! Angels are present, too—seraphim. Their name means ‘burning ones.’ These aren’t the angels of Christmas cards or home decorating stores. Nearly every time angels appear in the Bible, the first thing they say is “Do not be afraid,” as if, without that reassurance, you would be afraid. In the Bible, the job description of angels includes bringing fire out of rock, smiting the Egyptian firstborn, waking the dead with trumpets, and standing over the earth at the last judgment (other duties as required). Isaiah hears fiery angels sing about the holiness of the Lord filling the whole earth. For him, it is a moment of conviction that reveals the gap between his own life and the greatness and goodness of God. “Woe is me! I am lost.”
Isaiah’s experience mirrors various accounts throughout the scriptures of people standing in God’s presence and feeling overwhelmed: Moses sees a burning bush and takes off his shoes as he stands on holy ground; Ezekiel in the Old Testament and John in the New fall on their faces in the near presence of God; Peter in today’s gospel confesses his sinfulness. Isaiah’s response to his encounter with the holiness and presence of God isn’t, ‘How cool is this?!’ but “I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips.”
That’s an odd image, isn’t it? Unclean lips. Why lips? Maybe it’s because Isaiah just heard the angelic host praising God and knows his own voice is croaky and out-of-tune in comparison. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe Isaiah has become aware of a truth that Jesus later points out: that what comes out of our mouth reveals the truth of our heart; if our lips are unclean, it’s the presenting problem of something deeper that is wrong in our life.
In God’s presence, Isaiah is aware of the gap between his life and the holiness of God. Another translation of today’s first reading has Isaiah saying not, “I am lost,” but “I am undone.” Undone. Often when we are aware of our shortcomings, we compare our problems with those of others and we find ourselves saying things like, ‘At least I’m not as bad as
But while that may leave us feeling undone, is it a bad thing? I wonder. William James, in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, notes that religious belief—healthy religious belief—needs to be more than mere optimism (optimism being the notion that there’s always an answer to our problems and that things will get better day by day). No, healthy religious belief includes the awareness that something is wrong with us as we stand and as we are; that in the presence of God’s greatness and goodness we can see how we are neither as good or as great as we would like to be or that God means us to be. The book of Proverbs asks a question and yet knows the answer even before asking. “Who can say, ‘I have kept my heart pure; I am cleansed from my sin?’” Well, no one. Then where does that leave us?
Because if Mother Teresa and her greatness made people uncomfortable, if her goodness overwhelmed people with the sense that they probably should be doing more, why even bother trying to be good? If LeBron James stops by for a pick-up basketball game, I’m staying on the bench; though to be fair, in two seasons of attempting basketball that’s where I spent all but 45 seconds! If a celebrity chef asks you to cook a meal, say Giada de Laurentiis wanting you to cook Italian, what are going to do? Costco has great pre-made lasagna. Yet the holiness of God described in the scriptures is not merely meant to overwhelm with our shortcomings and faults to leave us feeling undone and helpless. If William James is right in saying that healthy religious belief includes the awareness that something is wrong with us, then people in 12 Step programs like AA can show us that by admitting our weakness, our lives are open to being filled with God’s strength, our sickness filled with God’s health, our sin met with God’s forgiveness.
So where does that leave us? All through the biblical story, people who are aware of the shortcoming and limitations of their lives—the small, the fallible, the fearful and overwhelmed—are not left where they are. God calls them to live as people of God in the world.
In today’s second reading, Paul offers his own life as an example. He had been a persecutor of the church, but God’s grace reached out to him and changed him. “By God’s grace I am what I am.” Now this was not a cozy experience. He was knocked off his horse; his life was redirected; everything he once thought he was, he lost so that he could be who he is now in Christ.
In today’s gospel, Peter sees the Lord behind the miracle of the great catch of fish and confesses his sinfulness, yet Jesus calls him to follow, changes him from a fisher of fish to gather up people to a life of grace and holiness, the new life of who he is now in Christ.
In the presence of the God’s greatness and goodness there will be times when we, like Isaiah and Peter, are aware we are neither as great or as good as we would like to be or that God means for us to be. Yet God’s grace makes us his people. God, who dwells on high and whose holiness and presence fills the Temple, is present for you in Jesus Christ. We may not be called the way Isaiah was; no burning coal from the altar will touch your lips today. Yet today, the God who encountered Isaiah in the Temple will touch your lips with forgiveness and strength in the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.
In the presence of God who is holy, we are called to new life, to “do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in”—not always comfortable but certainly called. This is a life that is more than happy, as CS Lewis notes. It is the life as the people we are meant to be, of who God makes us now in Christ: Holy.
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