What Do You Say? — May 26, 2024
May 26, 2024
Isaiah 6:1-8
What Do You Say?
My maternal grandfather, Henry Odell Creech, was a good man. We loved him. I really, really loved him. He was the very heart and soul of our whole family. He held us together. Although, truth be known, he couldn’t have done anything without my grandmother, who is my hero in more ways than I could tell you, but my grandfather was the visible center of our family. When you had a question about buying a house or what kind of insurance you should get for your car, or what kind of sparkplugs you should put in your car, you went to my grandfather. All my aunts and uncles and cousins would go to my grandparents every Sunday. We would eat fried chicken and potato salad, corn and tomatoes right out of the garden. It was wonderful. Good, good times.
When my grandfather died, I wondered what was going to happen to our family. Would we all just scatter? Would it make us draw closer together? Would the loss be just completely unbearable? I didn’t know, but I will say it was a hard loss for us all.
When I read our text for today from the Book of Isaiah, there is a phrase that just jumped out at me and grabbed my attention right there in verse one:
“In the year that King Uzziah died….”
King Uzziah was a good king. He wasn’t perfect – far from it; but for most of his reign he honored God. He provided Israel with a sense of stability and security for over 50 years.
Then he died, and then in the year he died things went south in the nation, things began to fall apart, the political foundations were shaken, the markets crumbled and all that had been familiar seemed far away.
The nation was in trouble.
So Isaiah’s visit to the temple that day occurred at a time when it was easy to look around at things in the world and be discouraged, a time when it would have been hard to look around and not be discouraged.
So, why did he go? Why did he decide to go to the temple to worship and not stay in bed and pull the covers over his head? Why did he go to worship? Was it to escape reality, because as Karl Marx would say, “religion is the opium of the people?” Did he to go the temple to avoid facing situations that needed to be addressed in the nation and among God’s people, and in his life, at least for a little while, or in order to find strength to face those situations?
We don’t know, but we do know that when worship got started, he was blown away by what he saw and experienced.
I do know that I come to church for different reasons. For one, I come because I get paid to be here. If I miss too much, you guys are going to have something to say about that. I come to church because my friends are here. I love you guys. I come to church because my wife sings in the choir. Sometimes I come to church because I just really want to worship God or I just really want to hear from God.
And sometimes I do, just not necessarily during the message. As we all know, we are just as likely to get a glimpse of God in the way the children walk to the front to light the candles as we are in whatever the preacher has to say.
Isaiah definitely got a glimpse of God that day he went into the temple.
I don’t know if it was just as the praise band sang or after the offering, but it was quite a day of worship.
It is hard to imagine exactly what he saw and experienced because it was part of a vision. Visions are hard to describe with any precision. I heard one preacher say, “whenever I preach from Isaiah 6, I’m tempted to get a big bucket of burning coals and place them down in front of the altar and ask who would like to be the first to pick one up and touch it to their lips. It wouldn’t be me. I don’t think he would have a lot of takers . . . Most people don’t want to have their lips touched with burning coals, but that was part of Isaiah’s vision in the temple that day.
He had hot coals applied to his lips, he saw angels flying around with their faces and their feet covered by their wings.
That seems odd. Why would they do that? Why would they cover their faces and their bodies? Because they didn’t want to detract from God’s glory. The angels didn’t want Isaiah looking at them, because worship is not about angels, worship is about God.
I know this is Memorial Day weekend and it is appropriate for us to have a prayer in honor of those we have lost while serving in the military as we have done, but worship isn’t about the Army or the Navy or our country . . . we worship God.
The angels wanted Isaiah to see God, seated high up and exalted on the throne. And he did.
Interestingly, however, if you look at Isaiah’s description of God, all that he describes is the hem of God’s robe. So even while he sees God high and exalted on the throne, God is far above and higher than even the temple. Isaiah just gets a glimpse of God that day, but it was enough, and he was never the same afterwards.
His first thought when he got that glimpse of God was that he was ruined, or undone, but it turns out he was just being prepared to serve God.
He came to worship, we don’t know why, saw this vision, thought he was ruined, but it turns out he was just being prepared to serve God.
Is it possible that anything like that could happen today?
Have you ever walked out of church and see someone moved in a powerful way and wonder if they were in the same service you were in?
Have you ever seen anyone really change through spending time in worship and wonder how it happened? Maybe think, you go to the same church I do, how did that happen? Or, you went to the same seminary I did . . . What is going on?
There may have been other people in the temple that day worshipping with Isaiah who didn’t see any angels, who didn’t feel the heat of any burning coals or smell any smoke or hear the voice of the Lord.
But Isaiah did and it changed him.
So what about us?
Do you think there are things we can do to be more likely to have a genuine encounter with God as we worship?
According to John Wesley, there are a lot of things we can do to help facilitate a genuine encounter with God.
He refers to those things as means of grace.
They can even be divided into formal theological categories. There are works of piety and works of mercy. There are individual and communal practices that fall under works of piety and individual and communal practices that fall under works of mercy.
Some of the works of piety include, reading, meditating and studying the scriptures, prayer, fasting regularly, attending worship, sharing our faith, sharing in the sacraments and Bible study.
Some of the works of mercy include visiting the sick, the homebound, those in prison, feeding the hungry, seeking justice, ending oppression, for instance John Wesley challenged Methodists to end slavery.
One means of grace that doesn’t always make the list, but that always helps me in my spiritual walk is music, and it doesn’t even have to be gospel music.
When I hear Stevie Wonder sing, I feel addressed by a reality beyond this world.
You might hear Stevie Wonder sing and not hear anything like that at all.
Maybe for you that kind of encounter comes through a walk in the woods or a day out on the lake.
The important thing isn’t how we experience a genuine encounter with God.
But what we do after those encounters.
Isaiah saw God high and lifted up on the throne, he was cleansed from his sin.
And his life was changed.
I don’t know why he went to the temple that day or what he was doing the day before, but I do know what he did afterwards.
After he saw the Lord lifted up and exalted, after he heard the Lord cry out, “who shall I send to serve me?”
He cried out, “Here I am send me.”
What do you hear? What do you see? What do you say?