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/