Unclean Lips Are No Obstacle

Isaiah 6:1-8 (NRSV)
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!"

The thing that I have to say today is a simple thing. But it is a hard thing. It is simple because when I say it you are going to nod your head and think, “Yes, that’s exactly what we Christians believe. Amen.” It is hard because even though we profess it with our lips, our actions show that we fight against it with all that is within us. The thing that I have to say is this – God can use every part of us to serve the purposes of God and we should offer God every part of us. God can use every part of us and we should offer God every part of us.

Now on one level this sounds very affirming. Of course God wants to use me. God gave me gifts and talents to use in service. God gave me family and friends and others to nurture me along the way. God has given me so much; of course God can use those parts of me. But what about those parts I hold back? Those secret places, those places I keep hidden from public display, those wounds and hurts and sins and habits that I would rather not talk about and would like to forget about? Does God use those parts, too? Do I want God in those parts of my life?

Isaiah came to the Temple one day. It was not such an unusual thing. Isaiah was of the priestly class. He was in and out of the Temple all the time. Maintaining the fire on the altar. Offering sacrifices to God. Isaiah was not unfamiliar with the Temple.

But on this particular day Isaiah came in and it was as if the roof of the Temple had been blown off. This space, this holiest of places in Israel, was meant to contain the presence of God but on this day God would not be contained. God was sitting on a throne somewhere above and the glory of God was so great that just the hem of God’s robe filled the Temple.

Around God were seraphs, human-like divine creatures that flew around the throne of God. They had six wings, one pair covering their faces as a sign of humility, one pair covering their feet, a lowly part of the body, as a sign of respect, and with one pair they flew. And they sang to each other as they flew, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of God’s glory.” Did you hear that? It wasn’t just the Temple with its roof blown out by this awesome display of God’s greatness. The whole earth is filled with God’s glory! The whole earth! From the mighty Himalayas to the deepest depths of the sea. From the wide plains of Argentina to the great lakes of North America. From the dusty desert of the Sahara to the fertile marshes of the Eastern Shore. From the stars in the sky to the center of your soul, the whole earth is filled with God’s glory!

As they spoke to one another the seraphs’ voices rattled the building and shook the stones of the altar. There was smoke filling the space. Like the voice of the Lord in the Psalm we read for this morning, this was an awesome display, stripping forests bare and flashing forth flames of fire. This is not what Isaiah was used to seeing each day in the Temple.

So he cries out, “Woe is me! I am lost!” Interesting, isn’t it, that suddenly for Isaiah it’s all about him. He is not “lost in wonder, love and praise” as we think he might have been to see this glorious sight. He is not joyful or ecstatic. He doesn’t jump up and give thanks for being chosen for this vision. His first response is not to move out from himself, but to look within.

Suddenly he feels exposed, like every part of him is on full display. It would be natural to feel small and insignificant in the face of this but Isaiah feels vulnerable, sinful and unworthy of the sight. Why is it that the first thing that angels say to people in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid”? Because the first reaction of people when they are confronted with sheer holiness is to know how far they are from being holy themselves. And so they are afraid.

Isaiah says, “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!” Isaiah knows, you see, that God’s holiness is so profound that it can be deadly. When the people of Israel were coming out of Egypt and Moses went up on Sinai to speak to God, they had to be warned not to touch the mountain because it was holy and those who touched it, because they were not holy themselves, would die. Moses himself was only permitted to the see the backside of God as God passed by the cleft of the rock where he was hiding. What could Isaiah say? He had unclean lips! What could he do? His whole nation had unclean lips! And how did they get unclean? Because their lips were neglecting to do what they were made for, which is to praise the God who gave them life. Their lips were spouting off loyalty to other gods and other loves. Their lips were slandering their neighbors and abusing the poor. Unclean lips were epidemic and Isaiah knows that they are not worthy of God. In fact, they can be deadly.

So there is Isaiah, all opened up before God – his entire, sorry life on full display before the great judge of the universe – and what can he do? No fancy robes can cover his unworthiness. No sacrifice, however great, can ever take away the extent of his sinfulness. In a world filled with the glory of God, there is no place to hide any longer. But God wants to use Isaiah. God will use Isaiah. God will claim Isaiah and will begin by burning his lips, the very part of him that he is most aware is unclean.

One of those flying, thunder-toned seraphs flies to the altar and uses a pair of thongs to pick up a coal still burning with fire. It brings it to Isaiah and burns his lips and says, “Look, now that this has touched your lips your guilt has departed and your sins are blotted out.”

God speaks from the throne, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”

Now Isaiah is ready. His lips still burning from the purifying fire, he says, “Here I am, Lord.” Here I am. I have nothing to hide. I have nowhere to go. I was ashamed and wanted to hide. I wanted to turn inward because of my fear. But if you can use me, Lord, here I am. Send me.”

God can use every part of us. That’s the message today. Unclean lips are no obstacle. God can use every part of us and God will use every part of us.

The writer Annie Dillard is someone who is very aware of what it means to be exposed before God. I love her writing because she does not blink or look away from the parts of our lives that we like to keep under wraps. For her God’s call is revealed as much in our weakness as in our strengths and God’s work is all about burning away those parts that resist God’s will.

In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk she talks about how oblivious we can be to the impact of God’s holiness: “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of 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 someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

The waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. I think that’s what we really fear. It’s not really the case that we are terrified of being struck down by God. As good Christians who have sung the old hymns (“What a friend we have in Jesus” and “And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own”) we have become pretty used to the notion that in Jesus we know that God is on our side, calling us to salvation. But we have not gotten very good at following Jesus, at offering ourselves to God, at offering all of ourselves to God for transformation. We hold on to things we shouldn’t hold onto, we despise things about ourselves we shouldn’t despise and we do not offer them up to God to die and be reborn.

Writing about this passage from Dillard, a twentysomething young woman said, “I think I am more afraid of being drawn out to where I can never return than I am willing to admit. I have problems, yes, but they are familiar. I’m used to them. We live together comfortably. If you take them away from me, if I grow beyond them, I might not be so comfortable. It sounds ridiculous, right? But it’s true. I might not be happy with how things are, but neither do I really want them to change.”[1] In other words, I’m kind of comfortable with my unclean lips and I’m not sure I want to go through the burning required to deal with them.

Many of us are used to the phenomenon of making excuses for the bad things we’ve done. It’s very easy, when confronted with a failure for me to find a number of excellent excuses for what I have done. “It wasn’t really me. I was really trying to do this and it was an unavoidable oversight, you see? I wouldn’t have done it all if it hadn’t been for this circumstance. Me?! No, it was really him or her. Well, I have this condition that makes me prone to such errors. It all goes back to my mother, you see? Hey, bad stuff happens! Mistakes were made.” There are a whole lot of ways I can use to avoid claiming my failures.

But maybe you also have the experience I sometimes have of diverting praise because you know a deeper truth about yourself. “Well, I appreciate the compliment, but if you really knew who I was you wouldn’t say such kind things. You don’t know what I have done in the past. You don’t know the mistakes I’ve made. You don’t know how petty and selfish I can be. You don’t know what forbidden desires still move me. You don’t know what huge anxieties still motivate me and how many things I do out of sheer fear. You don’t know my small addictions and my large, gaping wounds. And you don’t know how hard I work so that you won’t see them, so that the world won’t see them, so that God won’t see them. I have unclean lips, you see, and if God were to show up in the fullness of glory with seraphs and smoke and tree-stripping shouts, I would say just what Isaiah said – Woe is me!”

God can use every part of us and we should offer God every part of us. My unclean lips? God wants them. My enduring regrets? God wants them. My long-lasting faults? God wants them. My paralyzing fears? God wants them. My dark depressions and deadening doubts? My tender spots and my unreformed habits? The sins I have rejected with my mouth but held on to in my heart? The places that I hold onto because to live without would seem like losing myself all together? God wants them because God wants every part of us to be transformed.

But how? How can I do that? How can I go to those places that are so raw within me? Even I don’t want to go in there. How can I trust that I won’t be wounded even more?

If what God offers us is deep, deep healing, then it is exactly those spots that need healing that we should offer. As Jesus says, “It’s not the healthy that need a doctor – it’s the sick.” Go to those places that are crying out for healing, redemption and transformation and there you will find God ready to walk with you out of the darkness and into the light. Go in prayer, go in silence, go in the company of other Christians who can covenant together with you to walk this road…but go. Because God is calling. Like God called out in the Temple. “Who will go for us? Whom shall I send?”

And there was Isaiah responding despite himself. “I’m here, Lord. All of me is here in your presence. I am holding nothing back. Send me.”
Thanks be to God.

[1] Karibeth, http://rmfo-blogs.com/karibeth/archives/2004/10/17/an-annie-dillard-sunday/

When All Heaven Breaks Loose

Acts 2:1-21 (NRSV)
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs -- in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."
All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?"
But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'

I had a dream. It’s June now and June for United Methodist preachers is a time we approach with lots of joy and a little anxiety. It’s joyous because we look forward to the Annual Conference - that time when clergy and lay people gather from all over Virginia for three days. While we’re there we will listen to great preaching and have great times of singing and we’ll ordain new clergy for our conference and we’ll hear reports of how our Church is engaged in mission around the state and around the world. We will dedicate these kits which we are dedicating this morning. We will take up an offering for new mission work in places like Mozambique and Brazil - the same offering we are taking up this morning.

But most of all, for many of us it will be like a reunion. We clergy have been many places over the last year. We have a lot of stories to tell about what God is doing. And we will enjoy being together.

June also means anxiety for preachers, too. At the end of the month is a day marked on the calendar as “Moving Day”. That’s when all the changes in pastoral assignments will happen. It’s a day the moving companies love because they can always count on business the last Wednesday in June from preachers leaving one church and moving to another. Last year we were going through that to come to you here at Franktown. Praise God, we’re not going through that this year. But I know it is a time of some anxiety and the occasion for tearful farewells. We’ll do some of that this afternoon with the Hewitts as he leaves the Shore on Moving Day to take a new appointment in Winchester. Our brothers and sisters at Epworth will be doing that as well as Tammy Estep moves to Parksley.

So with that as the background, I want to tell you about my dream. I dreamed that the bishop had called and told me that I would be moving. In this vision I was sent back to Trinity United Methodist Church in Orange, Virginia, which is the church I grew up in. Now Orange is not a big place. It’s a very small Piedmont town not far from Charlottesville. In times gone by it was home to James Madison and Zachary Taylor. It was the place where Confederate troops under Robert E. Lee wintered in 1863 and 1864. But today it is a struggling town that has seen its textile industries close one by one, along with the sheet metal plant and the telephone company service center. Unemployment is rising and young people are leaving as fast as they can for better opportunities elsewhere. As they say, Orange is a good place to be from. At the same time it is a place where a lot of new development is taking place as northern Virginia begins to creep further south. That is a worrying development for the people of the town.

But in my dream this is where I was sent. I stood before the congregation in the pulpit on my first Sunday. I looked out at a smattering of glassy-eyed faces dull with fatigue and not daring to hope that they would find something here worth listening to, much less worth living for. I cried out to the Lord. I said, “Lord,” I said. “Can these dry bones live?” And God said, “Ezekiel, that’s my line. I know that they can. Now deliver the word.”

So I turned back to this congregation and I recognized faces. There’s Billy Herbert who just lost his wife to cancer. There’s Judy Johnson who lost a child to a debilitating illness and who has MS herself. There’s Benny Moumaw who lost his eyesight and then his job because of it. There’s my fifth-grade teacher. There’s my Mom. There’s my Dad. Deliver the word. Yes, Lord. Deliver the word to Orange. You know, Lord, that a prophet is never accepted in his hometown. “Deliver the word,” came the reply.

So I spoke: People of Orange, I said, I don’t know why I have been sent to you but I know what I have to say to you. I know that you have struggled. I know that you have despaired. I know that your children and youth look up and down the deserted shops along Main Street and dream of the day they can leave. I know that the workers down at the lumber yard are looking over their shoulders wondering if they will be the next to see their jobs sent to another town or another country. I know that you have to travel many miles to see a doctor now. I know that you feel tired and despondent, sick and worried, and worried sick. I know that you feel you have no power.

And because you feel you have no power to change this place which has made us who we are, we seek power in whatever small ways it can be known. We argue over things that have no lasting import. It’s a lot easier to stoke the fire for an argument over the color of the carpet than it is to figure out how to reach out to the children we know are out there in need. When you feel you have no power you try to lock down whatever you can--your position in the community, your control over family members, ownership of the TV remote--somewhere we need to feel that powerlessness does not define our lives.

I know all this about you, people of Orange. And I am here to say that you have the power. I am sent here as a United Methodist pastor and if I do not say this to you each and every time that I deliver the word (how am I doing, God?), then it is time for me to move on. John Wesley told his preachers not to stay in any one place any longer than was strictly necessary and if I am not fulfilling my call, it is time for me to be on my way, because the call that I have is to proclaim the good news that in Jesus Christ, you have the power.

Now I know that you have begun to doubt this power. I know that you do not expect this power. Life has worn you down. Trials have torn you down. Others have put you down. Troubles have shut you down. Abuse has pulled you down. Addiction has dragged you down. The economy has sucked you down. And it’s hard to look up when you’re always looking down.

So I see you coming in to worship and not daring to hope that today could be different. Not daring to believe that tomorrow will be different. Not daring to trust that what the risen Christ says is true that “Lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.”

You know we’ve been in this situation before. The church--it has been in this situation before. The disciples, even after spending so much time with Jesus, after listening to his teaching, after watching him heal and welcome and challenge and speak to the deepest needs of those he met, after witnessing his death and disbelieving his resurrection and then sharing in awe and wonder for forty days with the risen Jesus…after all of this, they were in our situation. Jesus ascended into the skies and they stand there, looking up after him, and you can just hear the wheels in their heads spinning, “Oh, man. What do we do now?” They stare so long that two angels have to come along and nudge them along saying, “O.K. folks, why are you still looking up in the sky? Jesus will come back in the same way but in the meantime, focus, people.”

So they come to their senses, just a little bit, and they wander back into Jerusalem, and they do what any good Methodists would do considering the circumstances, they pray and have a nominations committee meeting to elect a replacement for Judas. It’s not bad, what they do, but it’s not the power they were expecting. Maybe because they weren’t expecting power.

But then the power does come and you know what happens next. It’s Pentecost. They’re sitting there in Jerusalem, which is filled with Jews from all over the known world. And then there’s wind and there are tongues as of flames resting on their heads and they are speaking in tongues that they have never spoken before and the visitors to the city hear them and they can understand. They hear them praising God. They hear them in their own languages praising God. And they are amazed and astonished…well, all of them except those who think they’re just drunk. But no, Peter says, no, they aren’t drunk. In fact what they are is possessed. They are possessed by the Spirit of God who is proclaiming a new day like the day the prophet Joel proclaimed when he said that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all flesh and people with no earthly wisdom…sons and daughters would prophesy….people on the margins of society, old people would dream dreams…people with no status and no freedom, slaves would proclaim the good news. Here’s the good news, brothers and sisters, people who are powerless will know that in Jesus Christ, they have the power.

People of Orange, do you hear the good news? Power is not to be wasted only on those who already have earthly power. Power is not to be postponed until some glorious time in some undetermined future. Power is not to be rationed out as if it is in limited supply. What you may not realize is that when Jesus Christ said, “Repent, for the reign of God is at hand,” he meant, “The reign of God is at hand. The power is here.” Jesus did not say to the transformed tax collector Zaccheus that salvation would come or might come…when he took that little man out of the tree and set him back on his feet Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house. The power is here.” When Jesus stretched out his arms and died on the cross he did not say, “It will be finished” or “It may be finished.” Jesus said, “It is finished. It is completed. The power is here, even on this ultimate symbol of powerlessness.”

The question for you people of Orange is do you believe that you have been given the power to live in a new day? Can you once again expect something to happen when you walk in those doors so that you can expect something to happen when you walk back out of them? Or will you be like the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz, refusing to believe that you have courage until the humbug behind the curtain verifies it for you? What the lion could not believe, though he had it all along, was that he had the power! Even Dorothy, the small and meek, couldn’t believe that she had the power to go home all along. People of Orange…you don’t have to wait for permission to be God’s people. You don’t have to apply for a grant from the conference office to claim the promise. You don’t have to wait on an authorizing body to start loving the community around you. You don’t have to look beyond Orange to know that you have every resource you need to transform the world. What you have is the Holy Spirit!

And who says that we can’t once again be vessels of that Spirit? Who says these open hearts, open minds, and open doors that we proclaim can’t be the vehicles for others to experience the power the world misunderstands? Who says the days of wind and fire and healing and proclamation are captive to history? Unfortunately, the answer is…we say that. I think it would be well and good if we were to experience the tongues of fire once again but settled beneath our posteriors instead of on our heads because we need to be launched from our seats to cry, “Love, Peace, Hope, Liberation, Joy, Life, Power” to a world that is thirsting…that is dying to hear those words.

Well, that’s what I dreamed when I had my vision. I don’t know what the congregation in Orange did when they heard these words. I don’t know if that was my last Sunday in the pulpit or not. But I know that the next time I step into the pulpit, I want to expect the skies to part and the wind to blow and the fire to fall and the voices to proclaim that God is here…to stay. And my goodness…that would be today. Thanks be to God.