Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-12
June 7, 2009
At the most recent Presbytery meeting, Dennis Day and I listened to a great sermon given not by one of the ministers in the Presbytery, but by an elder from the church in Ankeny. It was a refreshing sermon because she was talking about being called by God – and so often when we hear the word “call” we think that applies only to ordained ministers. But here was someone who had no intention of ever working in the church, but nonetheless felt a deep sense of call at many different points in her life.
She challenged all of us there to expand our understanding of this word. Pastors need to remember that we are not the only ones called. The truth is, being a minister does not automatically mean that you are doing what God intends for you. Someone might become a minister to avoid their true calling, and for sure some pastors have misunderstood their call. In fact, this preacher at Presbytery said, being called has less to do with what job you are in than with how you live your life in whatever place you find yourself at any given moment.
Each of you is called. That is part of our faith. We call it “the priesthood of all believers”. The priesthood of all believers doesn’t mean that we are all priests in the institution of the Church. It means that each of us has a priestly call of some sort.
There’s a passage in 1 Peter to remind us all of this:
“[Y]ou are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation…as a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for God called you out of the darkness into the wonderful light.”
You are royal priests, Peter writes, a holy nation. Not just one person or some people, but the entire nation. Everyone. This means each of us is a priest in every part of our lives, in every moment. We are to forgive, make things sacred, remind others of God’s Holy presence, show others the goodness of God. You are a priest in this way, and so am I because God has called us all out of the darkness and into the light. And that has nothing to do with whether we went to seminary.
So, we are all called by God; which means each of us is responsible for listening for that call – for discerning what God is asking us to do. But how are we called? How do we know for sure what our calling is?
There are many people in this world and throughout history who have had a powerful personal experience of God calling them to something very specific. Maybe you have. So, I’m wondering if any of you would like to come on up and share what it was like when you heard God call to you. Where were you? What did God sound like? What did you see? What did you feel?
Probably most of you are hesitant to do that. Even if I gave you fair warning and you did share what it is like to be called by God, I suspect not many people would have a story like the one David just read – Isaiah’s call story.
Seraphim speaking, buildings shaking, smoke pouring forth from nowhere, speaking directly with God. This scene from Isaiah is so extraordinary. And to be honest, on some level I think I don’t even really believe it. I don’t think that kind of thing is possible – at least not in the scientific, rational world.
As a minister I often get asked about my experience of call; because people incorrectly believe that ministers are somehow more “called” than others and they should have a good story about hearing God beckon them to seminary. And I have always said something to the effect that I didn’t have a dramatic moment when I all of sudden felt called by God to go into the ministry. I heard no voice, nothing shook, no heavenly choirs. It was a process over time. And I’m not sure God called me, specifically, to go into the ministry specifically. I mean, how can we ever really know?
And when I say all this in response to such a question, I don’t say it sheepishly or as if there is something wrong with that. I am quite pleased with my answer because I actually distrust call experiences like Isaiah’s. Surely he is just making it up, or over exaggerating, or embellishing. At worst, I think, he is just trying to legitimate his own life, claiming a dramatic call by God to make himself and others believe he has a divine mandate to do whatever he wants.
But…I have been rethinking my thinking this week. In more ways than one. First, I have been questioning whether I am writing off experiences like Isaiah’s and others out of something more like fear than because I know better. Second, I am rethinking the fact that I trust thinking more than any other path to knowing God. But what else is there? How else, besides our rational minds, can we gain knowledge of God and God’s will for us?
When we read Isaiah, it seems like he experienced a kind of sensory overload – and it was that multi-sensory experience which led to a direct, clear encounter with God where he was left with no doubt about what God wanted of him.
We’re quick to rationalize a like this passage away. I mean, it’s pretty “out there”. But, this morning, let’s not be too quick to dismiss his words. Let’s assume that what Isaiah reports in this passage is what actually happened. We can discount it later if we want, but I’m going to ask you to suspend your disbelief with me for a moment.
The first thing I notice in this passage is that Isaiah’s senses were alert; his sense of sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Isaiah sees smoke and the fire of the altar, and of course the seraphim. He even sees God. And, although he was surely afraid, he did not retreat. In part, because he knew, based on what he saw, that this was the Holy One speaking to him. He knew it very, very clearly. His sight led him to knowledge of the divine.
Isaiah also hears things. And he trusts that what he hears is real and significant. He hears the seraphim sing Holy, Holy, Holy, and we know, he doesn’t just see God, but he hears God speak. His ears were perked and he heard the sounds of the visions he saw. And he knew that it was God’s voice calling to him. His hearing led him to knowledge of the divine.
Isaiah not only sees and hears things others probably don’t, he feels things too – physically feels things. The foundation of the temple shook. And his lips were touched. For Isaiah, there was no mistaking that all that he was experiencing was real. You can imagine you see things, you can hear voices as figments of your imagination, but when something reaches out and touches you, you know it’s not just your imagination. He felt the coal touch him and immediately confer forgiveness and grace. And it touched his lips – surely he could also taste it. His sense of touch and his sense of taste led him to knowledge of the divine.
For Isaiah it was his sight, his hearing, how he was touched, his smelling the smoke, his tasting the coal that led him to knowing God and how God was calling him. It wasn’t that he read the Torah, thought about what it meant, and through this thinking came to believe that God called him to be a prophet. It’s after this multi-sensory experience that he is convinced. We can’t read between the verses, but given the way Isaiah reported this experience, I suspect he didn’t hesitate for a moment when God asked who should go and speak on God’s behalf: Here am I! Send me! And notice, he says this with absolutely no indication of where Yahweh will send him and what he will be asked to do.
There are other stories like Isaiah’s of prophets being called through extraordinary, and what we would consider implausible, means. And most of us haven’t had an experience like these. This all has me wondering: Maybe the prophets felt such a strong call because they heard and saw and felt things more deeply than other people. Maybe they were more in tune with their five senses and they trusted what they learned through these senses as much as what they learned with their thinking.
I, on the other hand, am a concrete person. I trust science and the laws of nature. Being a concrete person has, without a doubt, served me well over the years. But is it possible that it has also stifled my imagination and creativity and therefore cut me off from any knowledge of God that might come from the less-than-concrete world. Because I shut off my senses, trusting only what I can make sense of with my brain, I miss all of these avenues to knowing and understanding. And maybe I miss God’s powerful call to me to be a prophet.
Most of us are more like Nicodemus than Isaiah. Nicodemus relies heavily on what he knows to be rational and logical. Bu clearly, in this passage, Nicodemus misses something important. He is a Pharisee; he’s someone who believes in God, goes to synagogue, reads the bible and tries hard to live like he thinks a good Jew should live. Nicodemus trusts the law as God’s voice and so he believes the Law will lead him and others to God.
But Jesus tries to give him a new way of knowing, and Nicodemus just can’t quite accept it. Jesus says, no one can “see” the realm of God without being born from above – as if it’s possible to actually see with our own eyes the realm of God. We are all rational people. We know the realm of God is not some concrete place here on earth. There is no place where wolves and lambs lie down together, where all swords are turned into plowshares, where there is no weeping, where the poor are the honored guests at banquets.
And like Nicodemus we don’t know any physical experience of birth except through the mother’s womb. But Jesus invites us into an image – being born from above – that can only be experienced via our whole selves if we are to believe it – to know it in our souls as well as our heads. Otherwise, we remain in the concrete world and we will not see God’s realm. Maybe we will be able to think about it, ponder it, see it as a metaphor, but our sight will be terribly limited and consequently, our knowledge about God and God’s realm will always fall short.
Well, I can’t keep my disbelief suspended indefinitely and maybe you can’t either. The truth is, I don’t believe that the seraphim really flew and the coal touched Isaiah’s lips and that God spoke with a voice just like a human being’s. What I suspect, from my concrete, post-enlightenment point of view, is that Isaiah is describing a dream. But, even if that were true, that it was just a dream, I’m not sure that diminishes the power of Isaiah’s call or how important a role our senses play in knowing God. Maybe Isaiah trusted that what he experienced in his dreams was as real as what happened in his waking life. While that may seem strange to some of us, there are certainly those in this day who do think our dream lives are significant and we can potentially gain great insight through our dreams and visions, even if those dreams include such implausible things as flying angels touching coal to our lips.
We miss things if we are only concrete people who distrust visions, dreams, experiences where our senses are evoked in new and strange ways. Maybe these two passages give us permission to trust all of our senses as guides to knowing God. Maybe Jesus invites us, along with Nicodemus, to leave the concrete world for a while in order to see something we’ve never seen before, and feel something we can’t think our way into. Maybe we should value our dreams a little more than we do now. Maybe we should take time to cultivate our senses – that is if we really do want to expand the ways that we know God and understand what God intends for you.
Which for me is a big “if”. After all, what Jesus promises is that the Holy Spirit will blow us in whatever direction she pleases. If we are attuned to that spirit with all of our senses and allow that spirit to guide our decisions and lives, we really don’t know where it will take us. And we might not be ready for that – and that’s okay. But, maybe here in worship, just during this hour on Sundays, we could try to engage some of our senses as well as our minds in an attempt to meet and experience God in new and deeper ways. We could try to really see the table and the font and contemplate what they might be saying to us just by their visible presence in the sanctuary. We could try to really smell the bread and taste the juice see what happens. When we pass the peace, we touch one another, and for some of this is our favorite part of the worship. We long for touch and maybe there is something divine in that longing, and when we touch one another, maybe we learn something about how God reaches out to us. Maybe we try to let our minds go silent when the music begins and close our eyes and let our hearing be the conduit of God’s musical voice. And maybe, if we’re really daring and ready to take a risk, in our prayers we might ask the spirit to touch our lips, consecrate us in a way that we can feel it with our whole selves. Maybe then we might hear God’s call, and without hesitation we will answer, “Here am I. Send me.” Amen.
