"God is... Holy"

07-Aug-2011

“God Is….Holy”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196 corinthtoday.org

God, you are Something Else.

Isaiah 6:1-10

August 7, 2011

Pulling weeds

It was good to come back home this past Tuesday after being away for nine days. There’s nothing like driving up McDonald Parkway and realizing you’ll soon be back in a routine, eating home cooked meals, and sleeping in your bed.

A return home also comes with the realization there is a backlog of challenges that did not go away because I did. The Internet, for good or bad, keeps me in touch with some of those issues, but others greet my return.

Like weeds. I thought I did a fairly good job pulling weeds from my yard and trimming the edge of my driveway the week before we left. But it took me a couple of hours Friday morning, part of it in a steady downpour, to edge the driveway, pull crabgrass and Bermuda runners out of my mulch, and uproot some vines and stalks that must have cross pollinated with kudzu, judging by their growth rate.

In the life of faith as well, a brief neglect can damage what’s good and necessary, allowing the ugly and destructive to flourish. When you neglect the weekly rhythm of worship and Word, the weeds of worldly wisdom begin to feel normal.

It’s also surprisingly easy for me as a pastor to forget what why we are here. While I was away, I read the memoir of Eugene Peterson, who translated The Message. Peterson’s autobiography, titled simply, The Pastor, pulled weeds out of the identity I have at times allowed to be shaped by my American culture instead of the Bible.

Isaiah 6 calls me back. This is the central text in the Bible for grasping what worship looks like, all the key ingredients of worship – praise, confession, assurance, God’s word, our response. I read this text often on vacation, thinking about why we go to church. Isaiah 6 also helps me pull weeds.

Paying attention (vv. 1-2)

Isaiah begins the story of his call to ministry, “In the year that King Uzziah died….” 2 Chronicles 26 records a remarkable litany of Uzziah’s successes – spiritual, economic, and military – during his rule of 52 years. “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD” (v. 4). He built up his military machine and increased the size of his army as he defended his borders and expanded his nation. He built water towers and cisterns, the infrastructure for his agricultural society. People had jobs and crops flourished, for “he loved the soil” (v. 10).

Meanwhile, a neighboring superpower to the east, Assyria, was growing in strength as well. Ancient records say that Uzziah’s alliances rebuffed Assyria’s advances

Uzziah became so powerful that pride took hold in his life. He attempted to usurp the role of the priests in burning incense in the temple. When eighty priests confronted him, instead of backing down he lost his temper and raged at the priests. As he did so, leprosy broke out on his face (v. 20), and he spent the rest of his life in quarantine. Finally he died.

What would happen next? Imagine a country having had the same leader for almost as long as I’ve been alive. And he was a good king, presiding over prosperity, security, and opportunity. His downfall and death unnerved every person in Judah.

That year of uncertainty, change, grief, and fear was when Isaiah saw the Lord. Your greatest need during a crisis is to see the Lord. Eugene Peterson reminded me that my primary calling as a pastor is to help you see the Lord.

It’s far too easy, Peterson reminds me, to see myself through the lens of leadership metaphors in our culture – a CEO, a vision-caster, a God-marketer, a statistics analyst, an organizer, a therapist, a problem solver. People come to me expecting help to get through their current crisis. “How can I get my spouse to change?” “How can I pay my bills?” “Pray for me to feel better.”

I always hate to see people waste a perfectly good trial. Hardly anyone asks me, “How can I see the Lord in the midst of this crisis?” The job of a pastor, Peterson says, is “to pay attention and call attention to ‘what is going on right now’ between men and women, with one another, and with God” (p. 5). Coming to church is not about feeling better or being entertained or getting a little something to help make it through the next week. It’s not about getting God to see my desperate situation and do something about it. Worship is about helping me to see the Lord, letting the trivia that is my life be seen for what it is – a speck of dust on the floor before the One who is “high and exalted,” whose robe engulfs his temple.

Something Else (vv. 3-4)

It’s hard to see the Lord when you’re overcome with weeds. Our church campus is known in this area for its striking beauty, but not at the moment. Mountains of dirt, piles of rubbish, and gardens of weeds distract from the attractiveness.

Eugene Peterson’s book got me thinking again about the importance of where we worship. As the pastor of a new church, he had the opportunity to design a church building from scratch. The one feature that became most prominent about the worship space was its spaciousness, its roominess – the “elbow room.”

As I read, I thought of our own sanctuary. Gothic architecture is designed to overwhelm the worshiper with the greatness of God. Our sanctuary has tall ceilings, wide aisles, leg room between the pews, a wide open crossing and chancel. Currently our Fellowship Hall, where we have contemporary worship services, feels cramped. But we’re making progress toward a new space that I hope will feel spacious and roomy.

Never discount the function of the senses in worship. Isaiah saw the Lord in the temple. He heard the seraphs calling antiphonally to one another. He felt the doorposts and thresholds shake. He smelled the smoke filling the temple.

All of those senses combined to reinforce the words of the angel chorus: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Here’s another misconception about what pastors do. Peterson reminds me that my job is not to explain or defend God. We began this summer’s sermons on pursuing God by saying that God is knowable. Knowable is not the same as understandable. I know my wife, and she knows me. But we do not always understand each other. When a relationship loses its mystery, it becomes about control. “I’ve got you pegged” is a way of saying “I’ve domesticated you…I own you.”

The word “holy” is the Bible’s most important and consistent adjective for God, God’s things, and God’s people. Its first use in the Bible is when God rested on the seventh day and called it “holy” (Genesis 2:2). Here in Isaiah 6 and in Revelation 4, heaven worships God as thrice-holy. Jesus taught us to begin prayer, “Our Father in heaven, let your name be holy.” Holiness is a consistent theme in the Law of Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets. The third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit.

What do you think of when you hear the word “holy”? If you’re like me, probably there’s an ethical or moral connotation. I’m supposed to “be holy” – to be good, to do the right thing. There are certainly places in the Bible where this meaning is used. “Be holy as I am holy” (Leviticus 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16).

But the primary idea of holiness is being separate, different, other. When Isaiah sees the Lord in the midst of his crisis, God doesn’t show up to make himself understandable, or even accessible. God isn’t there to “answer prayer” in the sense of dispelling the threat from Assyria or stabilizing the kingdom when its throne is vacated.

Instead, Isaiah’s jaw drops as God appears in his majesty and glory. What matters is not what God’s going to do about Isaiah’s crisis. What matters is that Someone still is on his throne – God Almighty. His angels call out to one another, “You’re Something Else, Wholly Other, Different from all human experience and understanding. The God of the Angel Armies is holy!”

One sermon (vv. 5-7)

Isaiah’s response to this scene is in verse 5. The Hebrew is brief, just two syllables: Oi li. “Woe to me.” A good paraphrase would be, “Oh, no!” Isaiah recognizes not only his own sinfulness (“unclean lips”) but that of his people.

In response, one of the angels touches Isaiah’s lips with a live coal, and assures him that he has been forgiven. Forgiveness is at the heart of faith, and there is no forgiveness without confession.

Eugene Peterson tells of a conversation he had with his son, Leif, who was in graduate school studying creative writing. One day as Eugene neared the end of his thirty-year pastorate, Leif said to his father, “Dad, novelists only write one book. They find their voice, their book, and write it over and over. William Faulkner wrote one book. Charles Dickens wrote one book…Ernest Hemingway wrote one book.”

Peterson wasn’t sure he agreed, but decided not to argue with his son about literature. A few days later, however, the subject turned to pastors. “Remember what I said about novelists only writing one book? You only preach one sermon” (297).

That was a little tough for the elder Peterson to accept, having spent thirty years carefully avoiding clichéd consistency. But Leif Peterson was right. One of the reasons people move from church to church, including from Corinth, is that they’ve already heard that pastor’s one sermon often enough and they’re ready for something different. The wise in the congregation realize God placed them there to hear that sermon week by week through the varying circumstances of their lives and choose to make it fresh.

I only have one sermon as well. I just repackage it every week. It’s Isaiah 6:5-6. “Be humble.” Stop making excuses for yourself. Stop defending your culture and your era. Stop blaming others for the destruction and pain you bring on yourself. Stop accusing others or comparing yourself with them. Own your sins and blind spots – the ones you recognize and the ones you choose to overlook. Humble yourself before God and say, “Woe is me. I’m done for.” It’s the only path toward the grace that reconciles you to God and others.

I don’t know (vv. 8-10)

Not until verse 8 does anyone speak directly to Isaiah in this text. Until now, he’s just overhearing, witnessing the angels calling to one another in awe of God’s holiness.

“Whom shall I send?” the Lord says directly to Isaiah in verse 8. “And who will go for us?” Isaiah answers, “Here am I; send me!” That is the proper response to God’s word. But listen to what God says next, from Eugene Peterson’s The Message:

He said, "Go and tell this people:

   "'Listen hard, but you aren't going to get it;
   look hard, but you won't catch on.'
Make these people blockheads,
   with fingers in their ears and blindfolds on their eyes,
So they won't see a thing,
   won't hear a word,
So they won't have a clue about what's going on
   and, yes, so they won't turn around and be made whole" (9-10).

It’s been an interesting week for me getting my feet back on the ground in ministry. I’ve prayed and sang at the bedside of a dying woman. I’ve counseled a cohabiting couple about marriage. I’ve dealt with the discovery of pornography and the ripple effect on relationships. I’ve warned a man about the perils he faces as his professional life succeeds and his personal life is in shambles. I’ve dealt with yet more delays in what should have been the simplest part of our building project – moving the modular units. I found myself in the middle of a longstanding and unresolved conflict between two people. I was rebuffed by someone who I thought saw me as a mentor. I met with a local prophet who had a “word from the Lord” for me about how I – and all other pastors in Hickory – should spend some of our time each week.

I wish I could tell you I did the right thing – or am doing the right thing – in handling each of these circumstances. I can’t tell you any such thing.

Peterson says that the pastoral calling is messy and it is unique. Pastors “make far more mistakes in our line of work than other so-called professionals. If physicians and engineers and lawyers and military officers made as many mistakes in their line of work as we do in ours, they would be out on the street in no time.” Then he adds this poignant sentence: “It amazes me still how much of the time I simply don’t know what I am doing, don’t know what to say, don’t know what the next move is.”

I thought maybe I was the only pastor who felt that way. Twenty-five years into this vocation, am I not supposed to deal with new problems out of wisdom and confidence, knowing exactly what to do and say? I deeply respect Eugene Peterson’s life and writings, and find myself encouraged by his retrospective humility.

He’s right, too, that pastors like everyone else are tempted to develop alternate competencies that make it look like we know what we’re doing. Because it’s so difficult to get people to pay attention to God, we become experts in administration, marketing, theology, or something else. I hope one thing I learn from reading this book is that I don’t have to be feign competence at anything to call people to pay attention to God. And often the wisest words a pastor can say are, “I don’t know.”

When God called Isaiah, he told him in advance, “Nobody’s going to listen to you.” I don’t know if anyone listens to me or not. What I do know is that it’s not my job to make people listen. At the same time, I can’t settle into a pity party or a blame game if “they” (you) don’t change. And when people tell me, “Well, no wonder I don’t grow more – you only preach one sermon,” rather than defending myself, I am learning to say, “You’re right.” And by the way, I don’t know what I’m doing, don’t know what to say, and don’t know what to do next. What if we agree to travel that uncertain path to who knows where together?

The Table

So…back to my “one sermon”. Is it just me, or is humility really what Isaiah is after in this passage?

Humility brings us to the Table of the Lord today.

We come with our crisis. Maybe it’s a crisis of desperate need, or maybe it’s just a crisis of weeds, of neglect. But we come to this Table knowing that Jesus Christ knows what it’s like to want the cup to pass, and to feel abandoned by his Father.

We come with our worship. “God, you are Something Else.” You are holy – beyond my understanding or control. Your ways are higher than our ways, as shown in the incarnation and the cross.

We come with our confession. “Oi li.” It’s simple, it’s short. “On no!” No excuses. I’m a sinner and my people are unclean. The cross of Christ is God’s atonement for our guilt.

We come with our service. “Here am I, send me.” With such great love, what can I do but say, “Lord, however and wherever you need me, I’m yours”?