Isaiah 6:1-8 6 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. 2 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. 3 And one called to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. 4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 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! 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 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. 8 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! 1
05.31.2015 Marked for Mission Lately in my spare time I have been trying to catch up with the television show Mad Men. Actually, it s too late for me to catch up with the show because the final episode aired just a few weeks ago. The show is over, but I still have yet to watch most of the seventh and final season. If you re unfamiliar with the program, Mad Men is a drama about men and women who work at a New York City advertising agency in the 1960s. The title of the show comes from the fact that Madison Avenue was then (and still is now) home to many advertising agencies. Hence, the men who worked there considered themselves not only ad men, but Mad men. The main character of the show is named Don Draper. He is the creative director of the agency, Sterling Cooper. As the creative director it is his job to come up with the ideas the words and the images that will present advertisers products to the American consumer in newspapers and magazines and on radio and television. Draper is tall and handsome. He has a commanding presence. But beyond his physical gifts he also as an uncanny ability to identify people s emotional needs. This enables him to come up with advertisements that create in people an emotional bond to a product. In an episode from the first season Don is charged with creating a new advertising campaign for Belle Jolie, a company that makes lipstick. All of their previous advertising has emphasized the many shades of lipstick that they offer women from pink to rose to red and a multitude of colors in between. Like chocolates in a box, they offer a variety of flavors. But Don and his creative team take the account in a new direction. They create a brand new campaign that s based on the idea that a woman doesn t want to be one of a hundred colors in a box she wants to be unique. She chooses the one that she desires. The scene in which Don and the other creatives pitch the new campaign to the client is one of the highlights of the first season. Here it is. [VIDEO]. 2
That is a clever ad campaign [SLIDE]. The woman marks her lips with the lipstick and then with her lips marks her man when she kisses him. She leaves her mark on him. She marks him as belonging to her. He is a marked man. In English, to be a marked man is usually a negative expression. It suggests that a person is marked, i.e., targeted for harm by another person. But the creative team at the advertising agency of Sterling Cooper turn the idea into a positive. We see a positive sense of marking as well in today s passage from Isaiah. Isaiah, too, is a marked man. He, too, is marked with a kiss, so to speak not with lipstick but with a burning coal pressed to his lips by a six-winged angel of the Lord. Now that s a compelling image! The Bible is filled with all kinds of fantastic imagery, and the calling of Isaiah is one of the most dramatic images [SLIDE]. I was able to find one depiction of it in art, which, frankly, doesn t do justice to the image that the words create in our mind. But they say that the book is always better than the movie, or in this case, the painting. It s interesting that this calling story of Isaiah happens, not at the start of the book, but in chapter 6. The book of Isaiah begins not with Isaiah being called, but with the prophet experiencing a vision. The prophet predicts doom for Judah, the Southern Kingdom [SLIDE]. Israel at this time is divided between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Isaiah dates his calling to the year that King Uzziah died. That was sometime around 738 BC. Uzziah ruled Judah longer than any other king. That s in part because he was only 16 years old when he became king, which he did after his father was assassinated. Uzziah ruled for fifty-two years longer than David or Solomon. He reigned during prosperous times in Judah. During his reign Judah was successful on the battlefield and in the marketplace. Uzziah expanded the nation s borders and strengthened its 3
defenses. He was also known for increasing Judah s agricultural output, making the land more fruitful through digging a series of wells. But this time of plenty was not all for the better. As Judah grew wealthier, the people became more and more obsessed with maintaining their own comfort and increasing their wealth, even at their neighbors expense. The first five chapters of Isaiah are filled with accusations from God spoken through the prophet. The prophet accuses the people of being rebellious and corrupt [SLIDE]: 23 Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts. They do not defend the orphan, and the widow s cause does not come before them. (Isa. 1:23) They are arrogant and face the judgment of the Lord [SLIDE]: 11 The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled; and the LORD alone will be exalted on that day. (Isa. 2:11) They abuse the poor [SLIDE]: 15 What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord GOD of hosts. (Isa. 3:15) They have no sense of justice [SLIDE]: 22 Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant at mixing drink, 23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights! (Isa. 5:22-23) In other words, the people have lost their sense of identity. They were called, chosen by God to be God s people, but they have forgotten who they are. Therefore, the book of Isaiah begins with this reminder to the people [SLIDE]: 2 Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. 4
3 The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand. (Isa. 1:2-3) The people have forgotten their God, but their God has not forgotten them. God raises a prophet to speak to them, to remind them of who they are and what they are called to do. That prophet is commissioned to bring this message to the people, but first he must be made ready. In the book that bears his name, we learn precious little about who Isaiah was before he was called to serve as a prophet. His life, as we know it, really begins with the vision that he experiences of God in the temple. And what a vision it is! The hem, the bottom edge of the Lord s robe, fills the entire temple. Seraphs, angels with six wings, attend to the Lord [SLIDE]. The root of the Hebrew word seraph means to burn, and so a translation into English would be something like burning ones or fiery ones. The presence of God is frequently associated with fire, from the burning bush that Moses encounters in the wilderness, to the burnt offerings made by priests on the altar of God in the temple, to the tongues of fire that come upon the disciples at Pentecost, as we read last week. When Isaiah realizes that he is in the midst of the presence of God, he panics. 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! According to Israelite, tradition, Isaiah had reason to be fearful. In the book of Judges, Samson s parents, believing that the angel who visited them to announce his birth was in fact God, are terrified. The husband says to his wife, We shall surely die, for we have seen God (Judg. 13:22). In Exodus, when Moses asks to see the glory of God to that he may know that he has found favor, God tells him, you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live (Ex. 33:20). In the presence of the holy God Isaiah knows that he is a man of unclean lips. He cannot speak to God, let alone for God; he must be purified. And so we have this 5
strange and marvelous image of the seraph taking a coal from the altar with a pair of tongs and pressing it to Isaiah s lips. Just as the impurities in raw gold are burned away with fire, Isaiah s guilt is burned away, refined in the fire of a live coal taken from the altar of the Lord. He is ready to hear the word of the Lord. He is ready to speak on behalf of the Lord. That s because Isaiah has not only been purified, he has been marked. He has been marked as God s own so that he may speak the word that God shares with him. That word begins with go [SLIDE] Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? God asks (Isa. 6:8). The Christian faith is all about going. Here in Isaiah God commissions the prophet to go to his own people. In the New Testament the risen Jesus tells the disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. God wants us to go places. Speaking of which, summer is here, which in the church means that it is mission season. This church, like many others, will send short-term mission teams around the world to share the Gospel in word and action. Our mission teams will go to Europe, Africa, and Asia. But not every place that we go on missions requires a passport. As Isaiah was sent into his own community, so God also calls us to go into our communities with the gift of the Gospel with the message of repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, and justice all encompassed in the love of God for people like us and for people like those we are called into community with. There is a world of need right here in Seoul. You don t have to go far to see the love of God have a far-reaching effect on someone. But what if we re not worthy? What if, like Isaiah, we are of unclean lips? What if we are sinners? Guess what we are! But that shouldn t stop us, for just as Isaiah was purified, so too have we been purified. We too have been marked by God not with fire but with water. You may not remember it; you were probably too young. What I m referring to, of course, is baptism. In the waters of baptism we experienced the washing away of sin as we were marked as Christ s own. Yes, baptism marks us 6
[SLIDE]. My home denomination is the PC(USA). The PC(USA) Book of Order refers to baptism as an identifying mark that both gives us our identity as people who belong to Christ and commissions us for ministry in the world. In other words, baptism tells us who we are and what we are to do. The day of our baptism was the day of our commissioning as Christ s disciples. God has been telling us to go since day one. Jesus tells the disciples to go and make disciples [SLIDE], and he also tells them to baptize to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Those words are especially fitting today, which is another significant day on the church calendar. Last week we celebrated Pentecost, which commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday. Unlike Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost, Trinity Sunday celebrates not an event but a doctrine. On Trinity Sunday we are called to remember the threefold nature of God who is Father, Son, and Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. If it s Trinity Sunday, then you might think the passage for today is a curious one. There s no mention of the word Trinity. There s no Father, Son, or Spirit specifically mentioned in the passage. That s true. In fact, the word Trinity does not appear in the Bible at all, not even in the New Testament. Yet Christians, from the very beginning of the church, have found in Scripture many references to the threefold nature of God. Today s passage is one of them. The reason for that are the words that the seraphim sing to God: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. Christians hear in those three holy s a hymn of praise to a God who is three in nature and yet still one Lord of hosts, whose glory fills the earth. What s more, we recognize that God is active. The very nature of God as three and one testifies to the activity of God. The triune God is a God who sends. Scripture shows us this: 7
The Father sends the Son. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (Jn. 3:16). The Son sends the Spirit. When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf (Jn. 15:26) And the Spirit sends us into the world to proclaim the Gospel. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). God has marked us for mission. As God did with Isaiah, God does with us. We have been called, marked, and sent into the world to proclaim God s Word. No, it s not a race, but still let me say on your mark, get set, go 8