What can we say February 6? 5th after the Epiphany

    Isaiah 6:1-13. Years ago, I heard a sermon where the preacher cleverly produced a 3-point sermon on the three aspects of holiness: being set apart, being pure, and then social holiness (a profoundly Wesleyan emphasis! – works of mercy, advocating for peace and justice, visiting the prisons, etc.). Tempting, and a helpful trellis on which to grow a sermon! – but not what the seraph was thinking. The preacher could paint some personal images of what holiness looks like – and I’d look for the non-traditional, not-so-pious examples from people I’ve known.

   Mind you, holiness in general isn’t talked about nearly enough. Ours – but really in the first place, God’s! A marvelous guide to the holiness of God is A.W. Tozer’s less well-known little book, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life.  Chapter by chapter (23 of them in just 117 pages) he explores some holy attribute of God, from God’s mercy to God’s incomprehensibility, from wisdom to justice, from self-existence to omniscience.  Like turning a precious diamond in your hand, holding it up to the light, awestruck: we ponder God’s holiness. That alone would make a terrific sermon.

   Two great hymns expound this text. “Holy, Holy, Holy” – my personal lifetime favorite (and a focus in my newest book, Unrevealed Until Its Season), and the newer “Here I Am, Lord,” written by a 31 year old Dan Schutte for a friend’s ordination. We worship – but then we’re not done with our worship. I have a pastor friend who ends each service by saying “The worship has ended, now the service begins.”

   It’s fun to say “Uzziah.” The opening reminds us God’s Word happens in history, to history, for history. Was it 742 BC? That had to be a year of upheaval, turmoil, jockeying for power, anxiety – maybe like 2020, or 2022. You have to love the way the architecture, the fixtures, the art of the sanctuary came to life. I wonder if I can tease that out for my own sanctuary, helping people imagine such a miracle that just might be the unseen reality. I love Amos Wilder’s thought on worship: “Going to church is like approaching an open volcano where the world is molten and hearts are sifted. The altar is like a third rail that spatters sparks. The sanctuary is like the chamber next to the atomic oven: there are invisible rays and you leave your watch outside.”

    Isaiah 6, like more texts than we realize, is about God, not us. My best advice in The Beauty of the Word is that sermons should be about God more than about us, our faith, our goodness, our doubt, our life and struggles. We “take time to be holy” when we get close to the holy God and then quite naturally mirror God’s heart, mind, being. It’s not struggling to be holy enough so God will draw near. We dare to draw near to God, or make space to notice God’s nearness. As we praise and soak up that glorious holiness, we become holy. Singing it is a good start.

   The preacher might notice the Bible’s repeated Call pattern, when the one called explains why he or she is insufficient, then God reassures – not that he or she is sufficient, but that God will use whom God will use. In Isaiah’s case, he senses his unholiness, rendering him unfit for holy use. When we interview candidates for ordination, they generally speak of their abilities, education and cool experience; not many speak of their unworthiness, their unholiness – which seems to be what this God is looking for, not ability but availability, and maybe even disability. These thoughts and others led me to write Weak Enough to Lead – which explores the Bible’s thoughts on leadership, which are vastly different from, and almost antithetical to ours.

   For us who preach, we may find ourselves properly humbled, discouraged, and then encouraged to find ourselves in great company. God says Go, tell them. Isaiah says (or sings?) “Here I am Lord.” God, not leaving well enough alone, clarifies that they won’t understand, their hearts are fat, their ears heavy, their eyes are shut. It will turn out that they won’t get your message – at least not for a very, very long time. Such is the preaching life. We preach, maybe, not to get results, not to grow the church, not to gauge my worth or their worth, but because God says Preach. It’s for God.

   For the preacher, maybe not for the sermon: verses 9-10 are so strange, yet what every preacher has in fact experienced. God calls us to utter a word that won’t be recognized, understood, or comprehended. How long? indeed. Do you hear and feel the prophet’s agony? Preaching is a marathon, with more failure than success. Isaiah’s regular message is “a remnant shall return” – which sounds lovely until you recall that if there’s only a remnant, much has been lost. Like Isaiah’s tree here. The hope is a mere stump. I think of Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree, where the tree loves the boy and gives up apples, branches, and his trunk until the boy is old and comes back just to sit on the stump. Or the way stumps aren’t really dead, but little green surprises pop up here and there.

   1 Corinthians 15:1  Into our DaVinci Code world of skepticism about who Christ really was and what really happened, Paul still speaks. More than 500 saw him – and most are still alive! Go ask them. How easy would it have been back then for cynics to debunk Christianity? And it’s worth pondering Paul’s claim that Jesus appeared to James – his brother! If anybody was in a position to say Jesus was just a guy, it would have been his brother, who shared a bedroom and household chores for years. 

   Hard to isolate this from the rest of chapter 15. Notice Paul offers no theory of the atonement, but simply recounts in summary fashion the story – echoed by Robert Jenson, who points out that what saves isn’t any theory of the atonement, but simply the narrative of what happened during Holy Week, on Good Friday, and of course Easter.

 

   Paul then, with bombastic humility, claims that he himself is the “least” – a point of pride, underlined by his next brag that he outworked those other apostles! Paul’s great character flaw – and part of what made him Paul, and saved the world, despite Paul.

   Luke 5:1-11. On the heels of the rejection at Nazareth, we have this! Luke shifts a somewhat earlier scene to this in his timeline. Jesus, of course, encountered hopeful responses and hostile rejections at every turn, so the timeline is less intriguing than the persistence of opposition – which every clergy person understands.

   You have to notice the “Put out into the deep water,” not the shallow waters! It’s deep with Jesus! The new church built at Magdala, commemorating the women of the Gospels, and at our newest, freshest archaeological site on the Galilee shore, is a lovely church (dedicated, uniquely and fabulously to the women in the Gospels) where the entry says Duc in Altum - cast out into the deep! which is what we do with Jesus, or not at all.

   The ship image is rich. My seminary, Duke, had has as its logo a ship, as if going with Jesus puts you out onto the water with those original sailors! Navis, a word meaning ship, is implies richly in the nave of any church, the ribbed vaults echoing a ship turned upside down!

   I read somewhere the incredible insight that, in the Gospels, the disciples never catch fish until Jesus is there – and then they catch plenty! In our text, partners in the “other boat” are signaled to come and help. Is this ecumenism? Or the challenge within a divided denomination to help one another, despite divisions, to help bring people to Christ?

   Again we find Zebedee and Sons, that great fishing industry from first century Galilee, leaving everything and following Jesus – and what intrigues is that it’s just at the moment when business was booming! – either giving them space to follow, or to radicalize their following!