Where Have All the Prophets Gone?

Some folks say that the reason Isaiah saw the seraphs in the Temple was because old King Uz had died. Origen of Alexandria says that. Way back in the 3^rd century he said, “When King Uzziah was alive, the prophet Isaiah was unable to have visions. Uzziah had sinned and done what was evil in the sight of the Lord by deliberately breaking the divine law. He entered the Holy of Holies [the most sacred place in the temple], and for this his face broke out with leprosy. Hence he was forced to go outside of the city and live among the unclean. One way of reading the text then,” according to Origen, “is that it teaches that we will be able to see God only when we put to death the evil that rules our souls. This is the reason why the Scripture says: In the year the King Uzziah died I saw the Lord.”[1]

This is where the story starts. With the death of a king. And maybe it’s not just an extraneous fact thrown in there. Christians have been reading Isaiah chapter 6 for centuries. It’s one of our most important passages. And for all those centuries, whose name have they heard first? Old King Uz. Uzziah’s death is not unimportant. Old things are passing away. New things are coming. It’s just as true for us today as it was for Isaiah back in the day.

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” So says Isaiah. How can this be? People don’t just ‘see’ God. Even Moses only got to see God’s backside when he asked to see him. God told Moses, “No one can see me and live.” But he allowed Moses to stand in the cleft of a rock and when God got ready to pass by, God put a hand over Moses so he couldn’t see. Then when the glory of God had passed by God took that hand off Moses and all he could see was God moving on. [Exodus 33]

Sure, Abraham and Sarah met God when they hosted the three strangers in their tent, but they didn’t know what was going on until later. It was God in disguise. And, yes, Jacob wrestled all night long with a man by the river Jabbok and come daybreak realized it was God. He even named the place. Called it Peniel – “For I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved” [Gen. 32:30]. But it was God in disguise.

Sure, we touched God in a manger in Bethlehem. We were touched by him as he healed lepers and gave his hand to poor folks and welcomed children. We sat down with God at a table and smelled his scent and heard his voice, received his bread and drank from the same cup. We touched God. We nailed God to a cross and watched his blood flow. Sure, we saw God, we killed God, but we didn’t know what we were doing. Jesus said so himself: “Forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing” [Luke 23:34].

But Isaiah saw God. “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and raised up; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” Now understand this. The Temple is where God was supposed to reside. King Solomon had built God a house so that the people would know where God was. God had a home among the people. And the holiest part of the Temple was the place where God resided.

Only Isaiah knew something now. God didn’t reside there. What building could contain God? Yesterday we dedicated the new worship center at Camp Occohannock on the Bay and wouldn’t it have been folly if we had declared that that was where God lived now? It’s a nice spot. Looks right out onto the Chesapeake Bay. If I were God, I might choose a place like that to live. But God can’t be contained like that.

That’s why when Isaiah had this vision it was only the hem of God’s robe that filled the Temple. God was somewhere beyond, above, out there. And there were seraphim – celestial creatures. Two of them. They had six wings. With two they covered their faces, with two they covered their nether parts and with two they flew. And what were they doing but singing out the truth? “Holy, holy, holy” - the threefold statement for the Triune God. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of God’s glory.”

The whole earth. Not just this temple. Not just Jerusalem. Not just among the Jews. Not just among the humans. The whole earth is full of God’s glory.

Now the roof is coming off the place. The seraphim have raised the roof and the whole Temple is filled with smoke. For Isaiah the earth has been rocked. Who knows what other people saw around him? Perhaps for them it was a day like any other day. They saw but could not see. But for Isaiah it was as if the lens cap had been removed for just a second so that he could see the world as it truly was – filled with the glory of God.

“I’m a wretch,” said Isaiah. “I don’t deserve to be here. I should not be able to see God because I am a man with unclean lips and I live among a people with unclean lips. And yet…I’m seeing God.”

I’ve had moments where I have felt unworthy to the things I’m bearing witness to. Like when my children were born and I watched that amazing, messy process while I was feeding ice chips to Suzanne. And then holding that new life and not being able to find words…there were just no words. And, O Lord, you want me to be responsible?

Or, on another scale entirely, to come to the edge of a mountain and to look out on the vastness of the earth below and to feel so inconsequential and so vulnerable. Or to be in a small boat in a very large sea.

Why should such things make us feel unworthy? What have we done to deserve a feeling like that? Except that in moments like those we know that we are mortal and limited and not sufficient to the life that is within us and around us.

I read a book recently called Rapt, which was about the way our brains handle all of the input that comes our way each day. The book suggested that we can’t pay attention to everything that comes our way or we would just go crazy. And perhaps what we feel in moments like Isaiah’s vision or in those other moments I’ve described is that we are getting a sense of how much there is in the world and how overwhelming it is. As the early saint Augustine knew moments of rapture can never be captured in words because these moments are by definition beyond words.

What is God’s response to Isaiah’s unclean lips? A seraph is sent with a burning coal that was taken from the altar. The seraph touches Isaiah’s mouth with the coal and tells him, “Now that this has touched your lips, it will take away your transgressions and purify your sins.”

Now Isaiah can not only see, he can hear. And the first thing he hears is the voice of the Lord. He has seen God and heard God! And what he hears is God saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people?”

Probably before he knows what he’s doing, Isaiah says, “Here I am; send me!”

The text for the day ends there. A seemingly happy ending. A man has a vision and responds and he finds his calling in serving the Living God.

But it’s a terrible thing he’s asked to do. God goes on to tell Isaiah that he’s going to speak to a people who will not be able to have an experience like he’s had. They will listen but not understand. They will see but not perceive. They will hear what God has to tell them about how they should turn to God for healing but they will not respond. And they will continue to wander away from God until their cities are laid waste and they are taken away into exile. This is the message Isaiah has to take to the people and you wouldn’t know it if you stopped with verse 8.

This is the stark contrast: That Isaiah sees a God so grand and so awesome that no Temple could contain God. The earth is filled with the glory of God. All flesh should tremble at this sight. Yet they don’t.

Around Isaiah the people continue to go about their business blissfully unaware that God is rocking Isaiah’s world. The Temple is filled with smoke…the house…the house…the house is on fire…but nobody stops. Only Isaiah knows and only he has responded, “Here I am; send me.”

In the movie The Matrix there is a scene in which the main character is faced with a huge decision. Neo has been taken from his life as he has known it by a group of people who see the world for what it really is. Neo and all the people around him think that they are in control of their lives and that they can trust the reality they see. But these people who come to Neo, one of whom is named Trinity, tell him that really he and every other person are held captive by an enslaving force and they are only given dreams of an independent life to delude them.

The decision Neo faces is symbolized by two pills that are offered him by a character named Morpheus. If he takes the blue pill he will forget he has ever been approached by the rebel group and he will go back to living in the world of illusion. If he takes the red pill he will discover the truth about the Matrix he has been living in his whole life without knowing it. But having taken the pill he can never look back. He will have to face reality and perhaps death. He chooses the red pill and the adventure begins.

It is not too much to say that Isaiah faces the same sort of decision and all of us face the same decision when we are confronted with the Living God. We can go back to living a life of illusion, or we can choose to face a new reality that may demand our very lives. We can serve this God or we can serve the gods of unreality in a plastic world. What we can’t do is live a half-life where we pay lip service to God but go on to live as if God doesn’t matter.

That, however, is just how we Christians tend to live our lives. We give God and hour on Sunday but we go out to live lives in which it seems God doesn’t matter very much at all. We forget that the world is an enchanted place. We forget that every molecule of this planet is infused with life and power and God’s glory. We forget that we are meant for something more.

What’s it going to be, my brothers and sisters? What are we going to do? God hasn’t stopped calling forth prophets. And the world needs prophets to help it resist the charms of the carnival where the wheel of fortune spins away. The world needs to know what it is. People need to know who they are. The poor need to know they have not been forgotten. The oppressed need to hear of the coming day of the Lord. The children need to know they have a place at the table. The workers need to know there is justice. And the hard-hearted need to know that there is love.

The world needs prophets who will see and hear. Who will recognize Jesus in their neighbor. Who say to the Living God, “Here I am; send me.” Even me. Just me. All of me.

King Uz is dead. Long live the King. Thanks be to God.

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!"

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[1] Origen, trans. By Robert Wilken, found in Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, [Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, MI, 2007], p. 64.

The Spirit of a Fruitful Church

Benita Barnsley was never quite sure why she volunteered year after year to do the Greenwood Opry. She wasn’t the only one either. There were plenty of people in the town of Greenwood, Texas who thought the old institution should go. It had served its time.

Even though this wasn’t Virginia, though, tradition dies hard, even in Texas. So every year about this time Benita and the others would get together to organize the annual performance.

Now I’m assuming you know what an Opry is. This is not Luciano Pavorotti and the Three Tenors and Marilyn Kellan I’m talking about here. It’s not opera but opry as in Grand Ol’ Opry where all the country music stars sing. And in Texas there are lots of these oprys in little towns. Suzanne and I even performed in one when we lived out there. It’s just a time of getting together and showing off the local talent, usually broadcast over the local radio station. Some of these oprys have shows every week or every month.

Greenwood was too small for a regularly-scheduled opry so they staged theirs as a once-a-year event with the proceeds going to the Greenwood City Park Garden Fund. They’ve been doing this since World War Two and the group that organizes is called the Greenwood Opry and Lovely Landscape Institute – a volunteer group better known by its acronym – GOLLI.

GOLLI was made up of people, like Benita, who were very experienced at producing the Opry – which means they had been doing it forever. They had also watched that City Park grow from a bare patch of Texas dirt to a garden full of roses and exotic cacti – so full that any further donations were probably pointless without the addition of somebody like a Hedy Leutner or a Kim Owens, but they didn’t know how to change and so the show went on.

At least, that’s how Benita saw things. She was considered a new member in the group since she had only joined thirty-five years ago, and as such she was ineligible to hold any senior office in GOLLI, though she was expected to sing “Coal Miner’s Daughter” in her best Loretta Lynn voice. They chose this song because it came out about the same time Benita joined the club. That’s the way they chose who sang what – by when you entered the club. So most of the other members were singing classics by Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb.

Yes, it was a ridiculous system. Poor Florida Tarback, who founded the group was still singing “Smoke on the Water,” an old Hank Wilson song about victory over Japan in the war. And you know she’s never really been the same since her throat surgery back in ’84.

So the meeting began with Benita looking out the dusty window of the City Hall meeting room where GOLLI always met to discuss their plans. She was just wondering if she’d make it home in time to watch Jon and Kate and Eight when Lucinda Johnson asked the opening question: “So, what shall we do this year?”

It was one of those questions that you really can’t answer but one way. Like when you ask the groom at the wedding, “Will you take this woman to be your wife?” If he says anything other than, “I will,” the whole thing is going south.

Florida Tarback gave the ritual answer. “Well, I brought the song sheets and I’ll pass them out. I’m sorry about all the yellow tape holding yours together, Benita, but I’m sure you know it well enough by now to get through the sections that are covered up. Dixie Philips has agreed to play the piano for us once again…” And on she went. It was going to be just like every other Opry for the past umpteen years.

Then it happened. Benita didn’t know where the inspiration came from, but all of a sudden she had an idea. It was a miracle that it ever made it out of her mouth. It was just a strange convergence of events. Benita felt inspired at the very moment that Florida dropped her copy of The Yellow Rose of Texas and stopped talking long enough to pick it up. That’s when Benita blurted out, “How about the Clodhoppers?”

I don’t know how to describe to you how unexpected it was. Dixie Philips nearly lost her teeth. Florida hit her head on the table coming up from retrieving the song sheet. Everyone else just stared, gobsmacked, until someone managed to say, “The Clodhoppers?”

“Yeah, you know…the clogging group that meets in the community center.”

It was a spark. A spark like the tongues of flame that ignited over the disciples’ heads at Pentecost so long before. Everybody considered for the first time inviting cloggers to the Greenwood Opry. They all started talking at once and the ideas were flying tick and fast. Somebody remembered that Harold Newcomer told a great Texas tall tale. Someone else volunteered to play the fiddle. Florida Tarback offered to sing a Celine Dion song.

It was amazing. Then someone raised the point that not many of the people they were inviting were actual members of GOLLI. There was nary a pause. It just didn’t matter.

That year the Greenwood Opry was the best it had been since 1947. It was a huge success. Lots of money was raised for the Garden Fund – money they didn’t really even need. But Benita had a plan for that, too. She was going to suggest that the overage go to help the hospice that had just opened in town. Now that would cause the group to have to change its name, but golly, stranger things have happened.

It’s a stretch to say that the coming of the Holy Spirit is like that meeting of the minds in Texas, but that’s how my mind works sometimes. There’s something about Pentecost that reminds us that we can become too comfortable, too insulated, too content with old certainties and that maybe the thing God is calling us to is an element of risk in trusting that the Spirit is moving us out into the world to discover what new things God has in store for us there. Sometimes the change is welcome, sometimes it’s scary, but the Holy Spirit is not content to leave us where we are.

The Pentecost story may seem very familiar to you. As we read in Acts it takes place during the Jewish festival of the Pentecost, or Shavuot – a harvest festival that took place 50 days after the celebration of Passover. For Christians it is now observed 50 days after Easter Sunday. For the Jews it was a high holy day and people of many different places would gather in Jerusalem for this festival. All those folks that we heard about in the reading – the Parthians, the Medes, the Mesopotamians, the Elamites, the crystal lights, the baysiders, the seasiders, the people from Tangier – they’re all there.

The disciples are gathered together in a room where they have been waiting. Jesus has ascended into the heavens and they have been gathering to pray. You might think of them as a huddled mass yearning to be free. Then the Holy Spirit busts into the place and all heaven breaks loose.

As you hear this story you also ought to be thinking about another biblical story. I think it’s intentional that these stories are connected. The other story is the Tower of Babel in Genesis chapter 11. That story takes place at a time at the dawn of human civilization when all the people of the world still spoke the same language.

These early people of earth decide to make themselves a great tower into the sky. The people were trying to make a name for themselves by building this tower to the heavens. They are front and center in this story. The people make the bricks and the mortar and people make the decision to build. But they fail miserably. They do build an impressive tower, but they don’t reach the heavens. We know that because when God comes to see what’s going on, God has to come down to see them. The name they had built for themselves was insignificant in comparison to God.

The Bible tells us the reason that the people built the tower. They built it because they were afraid of being “scattered abroad upon the face of the earth” [Gen. 11:4b]. They were scared of what was going to happen to their community. They wanted to preserve it against the threat of falling apart. Like the planner of the opry, they didn’t want to see a sure thing dissolve into something unknown.

God has no such worries, though. God sees what they are up to and decides to confuse their language by creating new ones. Then God does the very thing they fear the most – God scatters them “abroad…over the face of all the earth” [Gen. 11:8a] with the result being the sea of languages we have today. After all that human action, God’s action in this story is to spread people all over the place.

Now look at that story next to the Pentecost story. There’s a difference and a similarity. The big difference is that it is not human initiative that brings about the action at Pentecost. All the disciples do in the story is to gather together, though they had been preparing themselves through prayer. From that point on, the action happens to them as they are filled with the Holy Spirit and are given the ability to speak in other tongues. The actor in the birth of the Church – the inspiration for the action to follow – is God through the Holy Spirit. That’s the big difference from Babel. God’s the one getting the ball rolling.

The result, though, is the same. The tower-builders were scattered and now so are the disciples. They had developed a strong community in Jerusalem, but now they are scattered to the four winds – to all of the places mentioned in the text – to Mesopotamia, Egypt, Libya, Rome...Tangier. It was in the world at large that they were called to do the work of Christ.

In Babel the human work was undertaken for fear of scattering. In Jerusalem at Pentecost the divine work was undertaken in order to scatter. The disciples could no longer afford to be an insulated community. The work of the Church required them to risk moving out into new avenues of growth and mission. They not only existed in the world but for it.

It’s not easy. We like our comfort zones – places where we feel safe and warm. We grow to love what is familiar and we don’t dare risk change for fear that what we hold dear will fade away. Sometimes we hold on to things even when they are threatening to kill us.

The Spirit will not leave us there, though. I believe that if we are attentive to the restlessness in our souls we will know that there is something holy that still threatens to invade our comfort with energy and fire and new life. When that happens, God help us if we don’t respond. That fire of the Holy Spirit can burn us.

The writer Kim Chernin describes initiation in a way that seems akin to this movement:

“Initiation is not a predictable process. It moves forward fitfully, through moments of clear seeing, dramatic episodes of feeling, subtle intuitions, vague contemplative states. Dreams arrive, bringing guidance we frequently cannot accept. Years pass, during which we know that we are involved in something that cannot easily be named. We wake to a sense of confusion, know that we are in dangerous conflict, cannot define the nature of what troubles us. All change is like this. It circles around, leads us a merry chase, starts us out it seems all over again from where we were in the first place. And then suddenly, when we least expect it, something opens a door, discovers a threshold, shoves us across.”[i]

I actually don’t think the option before is to change or to stay where we are. There will always be Benita Barnsleys in the world who will feel the wind and the fire and who will remind us of the continuing power of the Holy Spirit. There will always be that inner compulsion within us that circles around like the Spirit hovering over the waters of creation and then opens a door and shoves across. It’s when we ignore the song of change that we experience that inner death that we give a thousand names – depression, despair, burnout.

I don’t mean to diminish the value of comfort zones. We all need places of safety and security from which to move. Churches need them, too. But if we insulate ourselves from the world and from change to the point that we fail to participate in it, then we just may suffocate.

The Holy Spirit wants us to breathe. To be open. To cross the threshold. God energizes human activity through the Holy Spirit and sends us out to invite others to join us in creating new communities where Christ lives and love grows. The Holy Spirit is calling to this church and to you personally to take the step of risk to discover God in new ways. How will we respond? How will you respond? How will you live, if you don’t breathe? Thanks be to God.

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.'

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[i] From Reinventing Eve, quoted on the blog “The Painted Prayerbook” by Jan Richardson, http://paintedprayerbook.com/2008/05/05/pentecost-fire-and-breath/.