Year C, Epiphany 5 (Isa. 6:1-8; 1 Cor. 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11)
(Video starts at 14:30)
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – Amen
Good Morning –
Often the Collect will summarize the theme of the readings of the day. Today is one of those days. Our Collect reads: Set us free, O God from the bondage of our sins and give us the liberty of that abundant Life which you have made known to us through Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. This theme of saving us from the bondage of our sins goes through all three readings today. When I initially wrote my sermon, I went through all three readings. This morning about 3:30, the Holy Spirit tapped me on my shoulder and said you need to edit. Therefore, you are spared from an extra 5 minutes of me talking today. Hopefully, the edits are fine. Today, I want to focus on Isaiah and the vision that Isaiah has. This vision begins with the seraphs. In Hebrew, “seraph” simply means the burning one. It’s the same word that Moses uses in the Book of Numbers (Numbers 21) to describe the serpents said attacked the Israelites because when a snake bites you, it burns.
I want you to close your eyes and listen while I read our verses from Isaiah again. I want you to see what Isaiah sees. Feel what Isaiah feels. And experience what Isaiah experiences. Listen:
In the year that King Uzziah died. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Angels were in attendance above him. Burning Angels of six wings. With two they covered their faces. With two they covered their feet. And with two they flew. And the Angels continually called to one another: “Holy, holy, holy/ is the Lord God of Host. The whole earth is full of his glory.” Their voices made the Temple shake to its very foundation and everything filled with smoke.
Isaiah is describing his theophany – his visible encounter with God. Isaiah lived and worked in the Temple in Jerusalem, and therefore, he uses the imagery that he has at hand to describe what he experienced in coming into the very presence of the living God. He is trying to convey to us his wonder and his awe, his amazement and his incomprehension of the event.
Having come face to face with God himself in his full power and glory, Isaiah sees just how unworthy he is compared to God. He understands that although he may be created in the image of God, there is a gap between who God is and who he is. Isaiah confesses “Woe is me! For I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips of a people of unclean lips. And I have seen God.”
This gap or separation is inherent within our fallen sinful human nature in which the image of God is defaced and we find ourselves feeling separated from the love of God from the love who is God. We can discuss where this separation comes from and speak in terms of mythology, philosophy, or psychology, but our knowledge of this separation is very real. It’s inherent in our nature.
If we look deep within ourselves, at least if I look deep within myself, I viscerally understand Isaiah’s distress. We know that there’s this gap that separates us from the Divine, and it should terrify us to be in the very living presence of God. It should fill us with a sense of our own unworthiness, a sense of our own inadequacy, and a sense of our very fallenness.
When we look at our other two lessons today, we see the same thing. Once Peter understands who Jesus is he simply falls to his knees and says “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.” And in our lesson from First Corinthians, Paul calls himself “unfit.”
The problem that we encounter from our recognition of this separation, is that we think, or at least I think, that we can close this Gap on our own. We think that if we’re good enough, if we’re smart enough, if we just have the right positions on the questions of the day, if we just vote for the right people, or if we just give up a sufficient amount of our time, talent, and treasure, then we can close the Gap, we can overcome this separation, and we can make ourselves at-one with God.
Again, I can’t answer for you, but I can answer for myself, that I have tried that and I have found my efforts to be wanting and to be quite unsuccessful. You see, no matter how good we are, no matter how much we study, no matter how much we pray, no matter how much we give away, the separation remains.
Think about Isaiah. Isaiah is a prophet in God’s temple in Jerusalem. Isaiah is surrounded by the offerings and the sacrifices made to God every day and he participates in them. There are burnt offerings, grain offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings, but when Isaiah is face to face with the living God he knows the gap remains, and no offering made by human hands is sufficient.
Or we can think about Paul. In Philippians, he writes that before his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was zealous in following the biblical laws and he was righteous and blameless before God. But, in coming into the very holy presence of God in Christ, he realized the gap and he understood that no amount of behavior modification would close that gap. Paul goes on to state that the entire moral system under the law is simply rubbish, because it teaches that if we’re just good enough, and obey the moral rules well enough, we have the power to close the separation.
The question that every religion, philosophy, and self-help book seeks to answer is how can we close the gap. The answer that the Gospel gives is that we can’t. You cannot make yourself holy enough or good enough to be in God’s presence. We simply lack the capability.
Rather what we see in Isaiah and in the other readings today is that the Gap is only closed by God himself. It is God that closes the gap, not us. In Ephesians, Paul writes that is through the grace of the Father, the faithfulness of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit that brings about that closure of the Gap. It is only through this Grace, and Faithfulness, and Power of God that makes us at one with him.
When Isaiah exclaims that he is lost and unclean, God sends his angel to go with a piece of hot coal to touch Isaiah’s lips. The angel tells Isaiah “Your guilt has departed you, and your sin is blotted out.” It is God, not Isaiah that brings about his cleansing.
When God appeared to Isaiah, Isaiah was not on any particular spiritual quest. He had not climbed a mountain looking for God. He was simply going about his daily life. But then God appeared to Isaiah in all of God’s glory, and exposed the separation that existed between the two. And having exposed that separation, God then closes it himself. Isaiah’s overwhelming experience of God’s grace ultimately came down to one Central purpose and that purpose was to Go! Having blotted out Isaiah’s sins, God asks the rhetorical question “Whom shall I send, who will go for us?”
This is the Gospel in a nutshell. There is a separation between God’s glory and our fallen human nature. There is nothing we can do to close that gap – there is no sacrifice we make or behavior that we can modify that will suffice. It is only through God’s grace, God’s faithfulness, God’s power that we are made at-one with God. The only request made of us is simply Go and to spread this Good News.
In the Episcopal Church, every Sunday we are invited into the very presence of God. Every Sunday in the Eucharist, we sing the same hymn that Isaiah heard the angels singing in his vision and which shook the very foundations of the Temple. Every Sunday, in the Confession of Sin, we too proclaim that we lost and are unfit to stand before God.
But, every Sunday, here is what God says to us in the Eucharistic prayer – here is what Father Kevin reads:
- that in Christ Jesus you have been delivered from evil,
- you have been made to stand worthy before God.
- You have been brought out of error into truth,
- out of sin into righteousness, and
- out of death into life.
Now, I cannot answer for you, but there are times in my life, probably more times than not, and sometimes even here in church, when all I know is the separation. We all, I think, too often dwell on those things that we have done that have separated us from God and us from each other.
Think back to Isaiah. The live coal carried by the angel was not simply the means of cleansing Isaiah but was the very sign from God that Isaiah had been cleansed by God. At the end of the Eucharist, Father Kevin will come down into the well. As you approach him with an open palm he will place this wafer in your hand. Like the live coal, this wafer is both a cleansing agent and a symbol of God’s cleansing grace through Christ. It is both the sign and the signified.
As Father Kevin gives you the wafer, let it touch your lips, and at that moment, know that you are no longer a person of unclean lips. And as you allow the wafer to pass through your lips, experience the grace of God coming upon you – in all of its wonder and awe and its amazement and incomprehension.
Know the Grace of God in Jesus Christ, like Isaiah, Peter, and Paul knew. Understand that your guilt has departed you and your sins have been blotted out. And experience, that the gap has been closed and that you are now at-one with the living God. And as you leave here today, proclaim that Good News to all the world.
Amen