In Search of the Holy First Baptist Richmond, May 27, 2018 Trinity Sunday Isaiah 6:1-8

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1 In Search of the Holy First Baptist Richmond, May 27, 2018 Trinity Sunday Isaiah 6:1-8 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. As long as he lived, Isaiah would never forget that moment. In the latter years of his life he would seek out perfect strangers, people who had never heard his story, just so he could tell it again. I saw the Lord, he would say. What? When? In the year that King Uzziah died. I saw the Lord! Where? I was in the temple, saying my prayers as usual, and then I looked up and there he was. He was sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. The hem of his robe filled the temple. What did he do? Well, nothing at first. But these seraphim were whizzing around all over the place saying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts! The whole earth is full of his glory! They looked like hummingbirds, you know? All glittery and green? But they each had three pairs of wings: with one pair they covered their faces and with one pair they covered their feet and with one pair they flew, but they kept calling out to each other, 1

2 Holy! Holy! Holy! And they were talking about him the Lord which made me feel that much more unholy. I thought, This is it. I m done for! I m a foul-mouthed sinner in a nation full of foul-mouthed sinners. And yet my eyes have seen the Lord of hosts. I didn t know how it was going to happen, but in that moment I was one hundred percent sure that I was going to die. Welcome to worship. Today is Trinity Sunday, and it s probably why the lectionary committee chose this reading from Isaiah 6, where the seraphim call out Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts! We hear that threefold repetition in the church and agree that the Father is holy, the Son is holy, and the Spirit is holy. We even have a hymn about it. But today is not only Trinity Sunday, it is the beginning of a new sermon series I m calling In Search of the Holy, where I plan to take a closer look at that word. Sometimes we talk about the Holy Bible, or the Holy Spirit. At a royal wedding we might even talk about Holy Matrimony. But what do we mean by such talk? What is holiness, exactly? Before you start shouting out answers let me suggest that we pause long enough to take the question seriously, and these Sundays after Pentecost may be the perfect time to do that. Over the next few weeks I will be preaching sermons with titles like Holy Sabbath, Holy Spirit, Holy Kingdom, Holy Faith, Holy Power, and then I ve asked Steve Booth to wrap things up with a sermon called Holy Purpose. But I want to begin with holiness itself, and this passage from Isaiah 6 appears to suit that purpose perfectly, because in the year that King Uzziah died Isaiah saw the Lord. He was in the temple on the Lord s Day, apparently, and suddenly he found himself in the presence of God, who is holiness itself. That s what the seraphim say, right? Holy, holy, holy is the 2

3 Lord! It s the only adjective they use. They don t say he is good, or kind, or loving, although he is all of those things: they say he is holy. So, what is that? What is holiness? Back in 1923 a German theologian named Rudolf Otto published a book called The Idea of the Holy that became an instant classic. i Otto wanted to get beyond rational or ethical descriptions of holiness, where someone might say that since God is good then holiness is absolute goodness. Instead he wanted to talk about the profound emotional experience he believed was at the heart of all the world s religions. He called it the Mysterium Tremendum, and he described it like this: The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitement, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures. The hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of The Mystery. That is what Isaiah was and that is where he found himself in the year that King Uzziah died: trembling in the presence of the Lord. Otto calls this creatureconsciousness, or creature-feeling, and describes it like this: It is the emotion of a creature, abased and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme above all creatures. It is what Isaiah felt when he saw the Lord high and lifted up. It is what the Bible often refers to as the fear of the Lord. It was the original meaning of the word awe, before everything became awesome. Otto claims that, It first begins to stir in the feeling of something uncanny, eerie, or weird : the prickling sensation that something or someone is there. That may have been what caused Isaiah to first look up from his prayers in the first place. But then, when he saw that it was the Lord, he became 3

4 creature-conscious, that is, he became conscious of himself as a creature in the presence of the Creator. In that moment he may have felt something very much like fear in the way we usually talk about it, or as Otto writes: a feeling so overwhelmingly great that it seems to penetrate to the very marrow, making the man s hair bristle and his limbs quake. Woe is me! Isaiah thought, 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! In other words, Isaiah thought he was going to die because, as it says in Exodus 33:20, no one can see God and live. Have you ever had a moment like that, where you thought you were going to die? Can you remember what you felt in that moment? Rudolf Otto would say that the experience of the holy can have that quality about it, that when you find yourself in the presence of God you may find yourself trembling with fear, shuddering with dread, afraid that something terrible is about to happen, and that it s about to happen to you. The vast difference between who God is and who you are in that moment can make you feel so sinful, so vile, so despicable as to deserve nothing better than death. Just kill me now! you might say, which is what Isaiah might have said, but then his story took a surprising turn. One of the seraphim took a live coal from the altar with a pair of tongs, he continued, and he flew over to me and touched my lips with it. It hurt like well, you know, but I could also tell that it had burned away my sin; I was clean. And that s when the Lord asked, Whom shall I send and who will go for me? And for the first time in my life I felt like I could say yes. So I did. I said, Here am I; send me. 4

5 Let me suggest that in this brief episode from Isaiah 6 we can find all the elements of authentic worship: 1. Isaiah was in the temple. And I know: you don t have to be in church to worship. You can find yourself in God s presence almost anywhere, and almost by accident. But if you want to be intentional about it, if you want to put yourself in the place where God is most likely to show up, then church is an excellent place to start. Isaiah went to the temple. And then 2. He saw the Lord. I can t promise that this will happen, but if you come to church you might also find yourself in the presence of the Lord. And when that happens seraphim will probably not begin whizzing around the sanctuary like hummingbirds but in some other way, almost certainly, you will be struck by the truth that the Lord is holy, holy, holy. 3. Isaiah said, Woe is me! Because when you find yourself in the presence of God you can t help but measure the distance between his holiness and your own unholiness. You experience that creature-consciousness Otto describes, in which you realize that the One who made the clay pot you are could just as easily smash it into a million pieces. 4. He was cleansed. In Isaiah s story one of the seraphim came to him with a live coal from the altar. He touched his lips and purified him. We don t have seraphim. We have Jesus, who has done the same thing for us. The author of 1 John says, If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins he is faithful and just, and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1:8-9). 5

6 5. Isaiah was called. Once your sins are forgiven you are free, free to do whatever God might call you to do. Whom shall I send? the Lord asked, and Isaiah couldn t stop himself. His hand shot into the air and he said, Here am I; send me! 6. He was commissioned. It s not in today s text, but after Isaiah volunteered God gave him a distinct commission, and sent him out to accomplish it. When worship is at its best, we leave the sanctuary in the same way, eager to help God do his work in the world. At this church we do our best to create a worship experience that includes all those elements. We try to provide music that will usher you into God s presence, prayers that will lift you up to his throne, sermons that will convict you of your sin and convince you of God s love, invitations that will move you to respond, and charges that will send you out on mission. And sometimes not always, but sometimes those elements line up perfectly, and you have an experience of worship you will never forget. It happened to me on Thursday. I was in Washington for a national preaching conference called the Festival of Homiletics when I heard that Michael Curry was going to be in town. Do you remember Bishop Curry, the preacher who wowed the world at the royal wedding? He is part of a movement called Reclaiming Jesus and there was an event scheduled for 7:00 on Thursday night at National City Christian Church, right next to my hotel. I decided to go. But so did 1,800 other preachers who were there for the Festival and a whole lot of other people who just wanted to see Michael Curry. I had to squeeze past a whole lot of knees to find a place on the pew, but as soon as I sat down I knew it was going to be special. 6

7 The Howard University Gospel Choir began to sing, and, mercy, those children could sing! Within a few minutes they had the whole place rocking, and I looked around me at all those introverted preachers from the Mainline Protestant tradition Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and they had been transfigured. Their faces were shining! They were clapping their hands and singing along. But then the speakers for the evening filed into the room and it was like watching the gods assemble on Mount Olympus. There was Bishop Curry, wearing his purple shirt, but there, also, was Tony Campolo, Walter Brueggemann, Sharon Watkins, Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Carroll Baltimore, James Forbes, and Richard Rohr, just to name a few: the Elders of the Ecumenical Church in America: Episcopalians standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Evangelicals. But then they began to speak, and it became clear that they were calling for a recalibration of our nation s moral compass, and they were doing it by taking us back to the clear and uncompromised teachings of Jesus. We are living through perilous and polarizing times, they began. We believe the soul of the nation and the integrity of faith are at stake. It is time to be followers of Jesus before anything else. And then they said: 1. We believe each human being is made in God s image and likeness. Racial bigotry is a brutal denial of the image of God in some of the children of God. 2. We believe we are one body. In Christ there is to be no oppression based on race, gender, identity, or class. 3. We believe how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner is how we treat Christ himself. 4. We believe that truth is morally central to our personal and public lives. Jesus promises, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32). 7

8 5. We believe that Christ s way of leadership is servanthood, not domination. We support democracy, not because we believe in human perfection, but because we do not. And finally, 6. We believe Jesus when he tells us to go into all nations making disciples. Our churches and our nations are part of an international community whose interests always surpass national boundaries. We in turn should love and serve the world and all its inhabitants rather than to see first narrow nationalistic prerogatives. ii I tell you, as one person after another climbed the steps of the pulpit to speak I was seized by the Mysterium Tremendum. The pivots on the thresholds shook, as Isaiah says. The house was filled with smoke. And I remembered that on Sunday I had asked you to pause at Noon every day during the week and pray that God s Holy Spirit would come and I thought, Oh, my goodness! It worked! Those Baptists can pray! It was like Pentecost all over again. And no sooner had that thought occurred to me than Jim Forbes said from the pulpit, I don t even know how to describe what s going on here except to say that this is what the prophet Joel was talking about: 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 the crowd went wild. I m telling you last Thursday night I was in church and I saw the Lord. He was high and lifted up, and his holiness filled the sanctuary. The words of his Son Jesus were lifted up, and offered as the only way of bringing in God s Kingdom. The Holy Spirit was 8

9 poured out on every man and woman in that room, and they went out prophesying. That s what can happen when you search for the holy. Sometimes, when the conditions are just right, You can find it. Jim Somerville 2018 i Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, ii Full statement and resources available at ReclaimingJesus.org 9