Burned by the Word: Isaiah, and how Sometimes it Hurts to be a Christian

Isaiah 6:1-13

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!”

My daughter, Joy, is on the cusp of being able to get into things that could hurt her. A few weeks ago she figured out how to roll over, and now her favorite thing to do is roll all over our living room floor. She can quickly make it across the room, so there is no leaving her for a flash to run into the kitchen and grab a drink of water. There is no putting her down to answer the phone in another room. There is no leaving her just long enough to go to the rest room on the other side of the wall. She’s mobile; therefore, she’s dangerous. Sure, it is exciting to see her learning all kinds of new ways to explore the world around her, but I can hardly stand to think about the kind of accidents she could get into and really hurt herself. I would love to spare her of any pain at all, if only I could figure out how to avoid the situations her life will surely encounter that will be difficult and painful.

I know as well as you do, however, that this is not possible. Joy will grow and learn and experiment and explore, and she will come home with broken skin, perhaps bones, and from time to time, a broken heart. To keep her from feeling pain would be to keep her from experiencing life as she was created to experience it. It would keep her from living her life at full stretch, the way God intends for her to live.

We feel this for ourselves, too. We do not like to experience pain or suffering. We want life to be easy. We want to live the joys and happinesses of life and avoid the pain and sorrows at just about all costs. Consider our brother Isaiah, whose story we receive today. The king of Judah named Uzziah had reigned for 41 years. During that time Judah had grown in land and prosperity. It had lived peaceably with its neighbor to the north, Israel. They had formerly been a unified nation, but throughout their history as 2 separate nations, Uzziah’s reign represented a time of peace between the 2 kingdoms. But on the horizon was the rise of Assyria who would, in just a few years time, who would cause the fall of Samaria in Israel and Jerusalem in Judah and the destruction of the temple. The people of God had come to enjoy a kind of domesticated Hebrew life, even a kind of domesticated God who seemed to be always on their side and supporting their prosperity and growing dominance over others.

Then, God called Isaiah, and everything changed.

Knowing he was from a people who had displeased God, Isaiah immediately freaked out when God called and began pleading with God not to put him on the spot. To say he was a man of unclean lips was to say that he was from a people who were not faithful to God in their practice. They did not refer to God with proper reverence in worship. Their words were likely empty praise, giving thanks to God for life all the while believing that it was their own hands which had brought them prosperity. I even imagine them gathering to hear the Word of the Lord read in worship, to pray the psalms, and then to go away from the temple patting themselves on the back and getting back to the work of expanding the kingdom and bringing wealth to the land. They likely were not interested in what brother Isaiah had to say.

The kind of transformation Isaiah and the people of Judah faced was one that would change their world of power and prosperity to one of crisis and subservience to another nation. The wealth they had built for themselves would disappear before their eyes. They would watch their nation crumble to the power of another, and they would be distraught—wondering what happened and how they would get out of it. Would they ever see economic prosperity again? Would they ever have religious independence again? Isaiah was being called to a very difficult job: to bring hope to a people who would find themselves drowning in a sea of hopelessness. It was a huge job. It was probably meant for someone who was really prepared, had studied for it, was someone that people would listen to.

God called Isaiah.

God called a man who was afraid of the job. God called a man who had no idea how to respond to the presence and voice of God. God called a man who was not only not worthy of the job but also, and probably more importantly, not ready for the job. Isaiah was none of the above, at least in his own opinion. But God fixed that. The seraph was the member of God’s court in charge of healing. So the pain that Isaiah experienced was actually pain that helped him to heal that in his life which held him back from being able to say yes to God. The vision of God in the holy temple tears Isaiah apart; he is made painfully aware of his shortcomings and inadequacies. He calls himself out as being of “unclean lips,” and a seraph places a hot coal to his lips. But this is ultimately a healing action, and God’s call in his life is not just to get his own self and life straightened out but also to do all he can to help straighten out the broken, hurting world in which he lives.

The rest of Isaiah’s story and legacy is his engagement on God’s behalf of what is wrong in the world by imposing a vision of what is right. God’s vision for the world is still alive and could be close at hand if Isaiah can help turn the hearts of the people. It is a hard job; nobody wants to change, especially when things seem to be going so well with or without God. Why would the people of Judah want to listen to Isaiah when they are living in a period of prosperity and cannot see the devastation coming on the horizon? It was hard work for Isaiah; painful work. And it was the call of God upon Isaiah’s life.

Much of what we are called to do as Christians is hard work. And sometimes we have to go through our own kind of hot coals on the lips to be truly ready to be a follower of God in Christ. Isaiah is an example of someone who declared himself unready, unworthy, and the last one on earth God should call. Yet, without his career as a prophet, where would the people of God be today? Without the example he set of speaking truth to power and hope to hopelessness, where would the people of God be now? Because of Isaiah, we have a tradition of hoping for things that seem impossible which prepared us for the story of Jesus: his life, death, and resurrection. It was the story of Isaiah that echoed when Mary Magdalene came to the empty tomb and believed what she saw there.

And it was those hot coals that made it possible. It was the coals—the pain of being called and transformed for a life of service to God that touches even our generation of faith and give us courage to say yes to God’s call in our lives. And God is still calling.

God calls us to stand up for repentance, for change. We need to participate in the prophecy of the Word of God in this time and this place. Where are the places we see injustice? Where are the walls that need to be torn down, the words of hope that need to be spoken, the hubris that needs to be checked so that God’s word of salvation and hope can be heard and believed and lived out in our lives?

Before he could truly live into God’s purpose for his life, Isaiah had to experience pain and accept the humility with which one must respond to God’s call. How has your life as a Christian been painful? Can you relate to the story of Isaiah—a story of calling of a very ordinary person with some skeletons lurking in the proverbial closet?

Is God calling you to something hard, something big, something painful, for which you don’t think you are ready? God’s vision of restoration is still at work in the world, and to make a God-sized vision come true, God still needs Isaiahs, people of unclean lips, of prideful nations, who will say yes to the painful and glorious work of the transformation of the world. You see, these people, these ancestors, these brothers and sisters of ours are not far away, fanciful characters of the past. They are you and me. I am Isaiah, and Isaiah is you. We are called to speak truth when no one wants to hear it; to be faithful to the word of God and the hope that the world can and will change, and that we are an important part of making that change a reality. We are today’s prophetic voices; we are the ones sharing the hope of Christ with the world—the world that is hurting because of occupation, economic hardship and injustice, hatred and violence, and isolation from God.

But friends, we believe that things can change or we wouldn’t be here today. We believe Isaiahs are still out there spreading the message of God, and some of us are those Isaiahs. Our dear brother of long ago simply said yes. He didn’t know what God would ultimately ask of him, but he said yes anyway. In retrospect, it was probably the easiest decision of his life, the one he worked the hardest to fulfill. It wasn’t easy. It caused him pain, and probably the loss of some friends, family, and in the short run, respect. But because of Isaiah, the unworthy and unready, the story of Christ has been heard, accepted, lived, and passed on for generations. The faithful members of the Civil Rights Movement in this country, Archbishop Desmund Tutu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, and the many, many faithful fighting hard against discrimination directed legally, theologically, and personally against members of the LGBTQ community are the Isaiahs that God continues to call.

And we gather here today waiting for the next word from God.

Whom will the Lord send? Who are the Isaiahs here today? Who will go into the world with the good news of hope and God’s grace? Will it be you?