“Things we can do” 

Attached are some “Things we can do” – which are also found at this Google link:  Statement of Support to immigrants and refugees    

(Isaiah 6:1-13)

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.  Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings; with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.  And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.  And I said: “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.  The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.”  Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  And I said, “Here am I; send me!”  And he said, “Go and say to this people:

‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand,’ 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,” 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; until the Lord sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.  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.

Well, this is an interesting text, isn’t it? It does have some confusing parts, as you heard.  So, we may have to work a bit to find meaning for ourselves.

            Let’s notice the first phrase, “in the year that King Uzziah died.”  With this, we are given a way to date the prophet Isaiah’s work, which, then, gives us an idea of what was going on in Judah, the southern kingdom of the Holy Land.  The date is likely around 740 BCE. 

What we know about Uzziah’s reign is that it was fairly calm and that Judah was independent during that time.  When Uzziah died, both the Northern and Southern Kingdoms began to be threatened by the Assyrians.  So it is clear that the people to whom Isaiah is being sent are feeling frightened.  You could say they are experiencing a national crisis.  (You may observe that this seems to give us something in common with Isaiah’s audience right off the bat). 

But listen, we’re getting the inside story of Isaiah, not yet a prophet, having a meeting with God with all the smoke, fire-breathing creatures and shaking foundations.  All the fuss with the Lord sitting on the throne and the seraphs with faces and feet are the makings of a vision that Isaiah received that made it clear that God had come to him.  If you think this sounds like the book of Revelation, you are right.  This is, indeed, apocalyptic literature.

 Isaiah was hearing himself being called to be a prophet to his people who were in the middle of a national emergency.  But Isaiah was resistant, as any sane person would be. 

He told God, “I’m lost.  I have unclean lips, and I live among folks who have the same problem.”  Then Isaiah’s mouth was touched by the hot coal, and he was healed of his guilt and sin.  But because he claimed his lostness and his unclean lips, it turned out that he was still very able to identify with the rest of the people.

So, you can imagine, then, how painful it was for Isaiah to hear what God was telling him to say to the people: “Listen hard… but you’re not going to get it.  Look hard… but you won’t catch on….  You won’t turn around, and you won’t be made whole.”

Why would anyone want to bring that huge load of bad news to their own people?  What a mission that Isaiah was being called to! 

But even more importantly today, for us as listeners, it sounds really hopeless, doesn’t it?  Isaiah’s audience is going to be coming up-close and personal with the bad news: they were in this hopeless situation because they had been trying to play nicey-nice with the Assyrians who would ultimately overrun them.  And, in fussing over their neighbors and trying to buddy up to them, their attention and faithfulness was being taken away from what needed to be their focus, and that was simply, keeping God at the center of their lives.

It is hard to hear that God had turned God’s ears away from these folks. It is really hard to hear the bad news, the judgment that seemed to carry no hope at all.  Now, we know in the context of God’s complete message that there was, there is, and there will be both judgment and salvation as God’s people (that’s us) navigate life.  But this can unfold over centuries of misery.  We’re not used to that.  Sometimes we modern interpreters, we modern preachers, want to jump too quickly to the happy place.  Our listeners want to hear that too. 

It is so difficult to listen when God says an emphatic “no.”  But because we don’t let ourselves hear God’s no, sometimes we are apt to miss God’s yes when it appears in all its fullness.

The hard truth is that in certain situations things need to get worse before they can get better.  I hadn’t yet learned this lesson when I was raising my children, I admit.  I tried to intervene all the time with them, thinking my talk, my advice, my protection would teach them their lessons.  What I found was that when they were little I may have been able to protect them now and again from being hurt, and that was really important.  But when they were getting older I tried everything I could come up with to protect them from the inevitable painful lesson-learning.  I tried talking, yelling, pleading, weeping, negotiating, getting others to lecture them.  Most of the time these things did not work.  The truth is they had to learn their own lessons the hard way.  

My favorite addictions counselor had advice for me that I remember to this day.  She told me to pray for trouble because sometimes it is only trouble that will teach us our lessons.

In my own experience with myself and what I observe in others, it is true that we all must find our own path through life.  And, much to our own disappointment, sometimes we have to be face to face with disaster for us to consider making any changes.  Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. 

It’s pretty clear to me that we’re in the midst of a crisis in our nation (and our world for that matter).   I won’t opine about how this has happened other than it is absolutely time for all of us to move from a self-centered stance to thinking about what is best for humanity, for our nation and for our world.  Our responsibility is always and ever to keep the greater good before us.  Our responsibility is to keep our focus upon God and God’s will. 

Part of the brokenness in our nation has to do with the greed, dysfunction and self-centeredness of our leaders, our people and our culture.  We have all participated in this craziness in one way or another, and now we are reaping what we have sown.  Of course, I know that this doesn’t apply to every one of us, but I do know that many of us have been filled with hatred and loathsomeness—on both sides.

In today’s lesson, God’s word to Isaiah says that, again, sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.  …I do not want to hear that.  I do not know if anyone has learned any lessons or whether we’re sitting in our corners just whining and opining and hating on each other.  I don’t know if we have changed anything even though we have been living in these very scary times.  I don’t know if we have really looked hard at ourselves.  Are we, as citizens of our nation, ready to make the profound changes that will address the mess we’re in?  I wonder….  Because there are many of us who thought that we were fighting for the right causes. 

As I’ve said often, the church ought to have a lot to say about the state we’re in.  I believe the Gospel message of Christ clearly has timely advice for all of us who claim to be Jesus People, but will we be able to hear it?  Or will we, like Isaiah’s people, look like we’re listening, but not comprehend; appear to be paying attention but not understand?  Will God get fed up with our inattention in these times of desperation?  Will we just keep repeating the same mantras over and over, yet not take actions that may make an impact on a very sad, very scary situation?

In preparing for this sermon I rediscovered a quote from Annie Dillard that is a stark reminder of God’s role in the world and in our lives.  Isaiah was learning it in today’s lesson as God was preparing him to be a prophet to Judah in their national emergency.  These words are from Teaching a Stone to Talk.

 “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” (Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

Does Christ’s church, do WE, have the courage to stand up in this time?  Do we really know what we are calling on when we invoke the name of Jesus Christ?  Surely we don’t think we’re dealing with sweet Jesus, meek and mild when his children are starving or dying for lack of health care, or separated from their families; when WE are going our merry way, distracted by our toys, obsessing over that which we have made into gods, fussing over what we don’t have rather than giving thanks for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

 Jesus would be kicking over some serious table if he saw us being unwelcoming in his church or unjust and uncompassionate anywhere on God’s earth.  We better get out our crash helmets, for God does not take kindly to our not placing God at the center of our lives.  Jesus does not like it when we aren’t looking after each other.  Does this have to get worse before it gets better?  When are we going to stop pointing fingers at each other?  When are we Christians going to roll up our sleeves and follow Jesus?  How much worse does it have to get?

This morning we have a page to distribute with some suggestions for how we can respond to the immigration crisis that is happening right under our noses here in Northeast Ohio.  You can make phone calls.  You can write letters to your Senators and Congresspeople.  Folks, let’s be Jesus People, not Democrats or Republicans or Trump People or Anti-Trump People.  Jesus People.  For Christ’s sake, people, (and I mean that literally), let’s do this, let’s fight for God’s way.  For God has made it clear to us.  Let’s open our eyes and ears.  Amen.