other – Salvaged Faith

Text: Isaiah 6:1-8

“We keep a troubled vigil at the bedside of the world,” writes Howard Thurman, “Thus we clutch the moment of intimacy in worship when we become momentarily a part of a larger whole, a fleeting strength, which we pit against all the darkness and the dread of our times.

We don’t have to look too far to see darkness and dread hanging over our lives.
Illness and violence.
Poverty and oppression.
Impacts of the climate crisis.
Bullying in our schools and in our politics.
Grief and loss and discouragement.
These are the things that keep us up at night.

Thurman writes that “the moment of intimacy in worship” allows us to recharge our spiritual batteries and face once again the struggles of the world.

The moment of intimacy in worship.
The moment we personally encounter a holy, living, powerful God.
The moment when we become close to a God who is wholly other.

I think we often put God into a very small box.
Jesus is our friend and companion.
The Holy Spirit holds our hand and brings us comfort in tough times.
The Father tenderly calls us to do the right thing.
We imagine that God is just like us…
Or sometimes, that we are like God…

But the truth is, when we are facing a world of darkness and dread and problems that are just too big to tackle, we need an encounter with something… with someone… who is far beyond anything we can know or comprehend.

I am reminded of King Uzziah, whose story frames Isaiah’s encounter with the God from our scripture today.
King Uzziah was ruler over the southern kingdom of Judah and he came to be king at only 16 years of age. According to scripture (2 Kings 14:21, 15:1-7 and 2 Chronicles 26: 1-23) , he did what was right in the sight of God and had a powerful and successful reign over Judah for fifty-two years.
But all of the success God brought the nation went to King Uzziah’s head.
In the wake of military victories, Uzziah provided top of the line armor and weapons for his soldiers and fortified the city of Jerusalem with towers and archers and traps.
He was demonstrating his power, rather than trusting in God’s power.
His pride became such a problem that he entered the holiest place in the temple… that special room at the very center that only the high priest was allowed to enter, and he walked in like he owned the place and burned incense to the Lord.
Instantly, leprosy came upon Uzziah because of his prideful action and he was a leper until the day of his death.

Uzziah forgot that only God was holy.

But as his reign came to an end, Isaiah began to have visions.
He receives vision after vision of the failings of his nation, and the bloodshed and oppression his people have created when they relied upon their own might to solve their problems instead of relying upon God.

And in the year King Uzziah dies, Isaiah has an intimate encounter with the Lord.
A holy, living, powerful God.
Isaiah sees the Lord upon a throne, with just the hem of God’s robe filling the temple.
Winged creatures, seraphim flew about shouting to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Heavenly Forces! All the earth is filled with God’s glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)
As the room shakes and fills with smoke, Isaiah fears for his very life: “Mourn for me; I’m ruined!”
He cries out acknowledging his own unholiness.
His own unworthiness.
The unrighteousness of his people and his nation.
God sees it all… and then this wholly other and almighty God draws close.
A glowing coal touches Isaiah’s lips.
His sin and guilt are gone.
And God sends Isaiah back out to face the darkness and dread of the world with a renewed sense of purpose and power.

This vision of the holiness of God also inspires the apostle John.
He writes the book of Revelation in a time of persecution and distress and the visions he receives bring comfort to those who are oppressed.
But again, John doesn’t encounter a God who is our friend or who is just like us…
When we are faced with true darkness and dread, we need a power that is far beyond our comprehension.
John has a vision, in Revelation chapter 4, in which a door is opened to heaven:
“I saw a throne in heaven, and someone was seated on the throne. The one seated there looked like jasper and carnelian and surrounding the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. Twenty-four thrones, with twenty-four elders seated upon them, surrounded the throne… From the throne came lightning, voices, and thunder. In front of the throne were seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God. Something like a glass sea, like crystal, was in front of the throne.
In the center, by the throne, were four living creatures encircling the throne. These creatures were covered with eyes on the front and on the back… [they had different faces and] each of the four living creates had six wings, and each was covered all around and on the inside with eyes. They never rest day or night, but keep on saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is coming.”
As we move to the next chapter, the Lamb appears, and then we think we might find a familiar imagine, but John’s vision describes it in this way:
“I saw a Lamb, standing as if it had been slain. It had seven horns and seven eyes, which are God’s seven spirits, sent out into the whole earth.”

The holy one is nothing like us.
Nothing like anything we experience upon this earth.
Nothing else is worthy of devotion.
Nothing else is perfect in power, in love, and in purity.
Nothing else could have created all things.
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.

These words from Isaiah chapter 6 and Revelation 4 inspired Reginald Heber when he sat down to write a hymn for Trinity Sunday.
He was a vicar in Anglican Church and had begun to put together a hymnal based around the church calendar. As he looked around for songs that spoke to the various times of the church year, he realized that he was lacking songs for that Sunday which emphasizes that doctrine of the Trinity. So, he wrote one himself.
Heber wanted to capture in this hymn the utter holiness of God in the midst of a world full of vices.
Stanton Nelson points out that the text “encourages the singer to join in an endless song” – a song sung by heavenly creatures stretching back as far as Isaiah and John and still being sung today.
Nelson also points out a few unique ways that Heber emphasizes God’s holiness.
First, if you look at the text, every line of the hymn rhymes with the word, “holy.”
Second, Heber doesn’t resort to any kind of “cheap emotionalism.” He allows us to sing of the Trinity without taking away from the mystery, the otherness of who God is.
As Heber writes, “though the darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful man thy glory man not see.”

In a world of darkness and dread, we cannot always see the holiness of God.
But the act of worship, we can open ourselves up to an intimate encounter with God.
Do we recognize the awesome and holy and other power of God in our midst?
When Moses encountered this God in a burning bush, he was told to “come no closer! Remove your sandals for the place you are standing is holy ground!” He hid his face, afraid to even look at God. (Exodus 3:5-6)

Are we aware that there is risk involved whenever we are in God’s presence?
The book of 2 Samuel tells of how David and his select warriors went out to bring home the ark of the covenant after it had been stolen away. They brought hearts filled with praise, but when one man reached out and touched that holy vessel by accident, he died on the spot. (2 Samuel 6:15-16)

We hear these stories from the Hebrew scriptures, but too often today, we underestimate the power of truly being in the presence of God.
We are comfortable in our sanctuaries.
We sit in the same seats near friendly faces.
We watch our children play and share stories.
We sing hymns in the same way we have sung them a thousand times.
Worship has sometimes become so routine that we enter this place like King Uzziah… we come in as though we own it and like we deserve to be here.

I think sometimes, we have lost our sense of what it means to truly encounter a God that makes us uncomfortable.
A God that can shake the very foundations of this room.
A God that has the power to topple kingdoms.
A God that overcame the forces of death.
A God that heals and restores and creates a new.
A God that was is and is and is coming.
A God that is light and in whom there is no darkness at all.
A God that causes saints and cherubim and seraphim to throw off their crowns and fall on their knees.

This intimate moment that we call worship has nothing to do with instrumentation or the style or the music or what we are sitting on.
It has everything to do with personally and corporately encountering the One who has the power to change everything about our lives and the world we live in.
It is a moment not where we show God how great we are, but we offer ourselves, with all of our flaws and weaknesses, and let God transform us and use us to counter the darkness and dread of the world.
Only God is holy.
Only God is worthy.
And when we open ourselves up… even for just one moment… to connect and be drawn close to this God… we do find the strength to head back into this world with a renewed sense of purpose and power.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Thursday night we had a wonderful and amazing event at our church. Over 25 people gathered together for fellowship, food, and fun. We had people of all ages – babies crawling around, preschoolers squealing for joy, teenagers running up and down stairs, parents and grandparents and friends.

As I sat there eating with everyone, I got to thinking about something. It felt just like a family reunion. It felt just like all of us gathered there were a big old happy family. Babies got passed from person to person. Teenagers pitched in and helped clean up. Adults took turns wiping the faces of little ones.

Both of my parents come from bigger families, and so these types of gatherings are something that I am very familiar with. Especially all of that face wiping! When I was little, I remember my mom, or my grandmas, or an aunt here or there spitting into a napkin to wipe a face clean. How many of you have had that done to you? How many of you have done it to others?

You know, spit is an intensely personal thing, and we don’t normally think of it as that clean – but I myself have spit on a napkin to wipe the face of my neice and nephew. I don’t know where the impulse to do so comes from – or why we do it, but it works! Spit can clean a face, a kiss can heal an ouchy. Hands can wipe away tears from faces and the pain that goes along with them.

But it’s only amongst family that we do those sorts of things. It’s only among the people we really and truly care about that we are willing to swap these sorts of bodily fluids. It’s only for our brothers and sisters that we are willing to get down and dirty and personal.

In the book, “Touch” Rudy Rasmas recounts to story of an orthopedic surgeon who for years performed surgery on all kinds of patients. As he tells the story he says, “Some of them, to be blunt, stank. When these people came to my office before and after surgery, I’d treat their medical problem, but I got in and out of the examining room as quickly as possible, and except for the medical examination, I avoided touching them. About a year ago, I was reading the Gospels about Jesus touching lepers, lame people, blind people, and all kinds of sick people. My heart was shattered. Those people He touched were the same kinds of people who come into my office every day.” (page 51-52)

This surgeon saw the people around him just as patients. They were clients that were to be dealt with as quickly as possible. In his eyes, it was easier not to see them as people who needed a healing touch, harder still to see them as brothers and sisters that he would go the extra mile for. Until he was reminded of how Christ treated those who were sick.

We have one of those healing stories in our gospel reading for today. A man is brought to Jesus who is deaf and who because of his deafness has problems speaking. In these times, any physical or mental deformity was seen as the direct result of the person or their parents sin – it was a punishment from God for their disobedience. And when people understand disabilities that way – it makes it a whole lot harder for that person to be fully accepted into a community. It becomes harder for others to see them as a human being. It is harder for that person of find love and care.

But Jesus takes one look at this deaf man and leads him off to one side. And Jesus gets up close and personal. I want you to really picture this for a second. He sticks his fingers into the man’s ears. He spits into his mouth! And he cries out, “Be Opened!” And the man can hear! He is healed! All because Jesus was willing to get close enough to him to spit in his face.

That’s the thing about Jesus. He doesn’t treat anyone differently because of who they are. He doesn’t shy away from people who look strange, or who talk funny, or who might smell bad or were born in the wrong family. He takes them by the hand, and he treats them like a brother or a sister. He isn’t afraid to touch them. He isn’t afraid to love them.

Philip Yancy said that, “Jesus moved the emphasis from God’s holiness (which is exclusive) to God’s mercy (which is inclusive). Instead of the message “no undesireables allowed,” he proclaimed, “in God’s kingdom there are no undesirables.” None of us are unworthy. None of us should be shut out.

That is a very hard message to follow. As we have already heard in our passage from James this morning, it is something that early Christians struggled with. They showed favoritism between the rich and the poor in their congregations. And they probably did amongst other people as well. They knew they were supposed to love everyone, but like we talked about last week, they were hearers of the word and not doers. Like the orthopedic surgeon, they would rather love from a distance than get up close and personal with someone. It was better for the poor man to sit at their feet, or to stand in the corner, than to take the place in the pew next to them.

Now, I know that this is a fairly welcoming congregation. I have seen us really treat one another like a family. We are willing to help out, we are willing to pitch in where we are needed. But how do we respond when strangers come into our midst? Or perhaps a better question – how willing are you to go out into the world into the parts of town and neighborhoods and cities where the strangers are?

In that same book, Touch, Rasmus includes an exercise that I want to share with you this morning. I want you to take out the slip of paper that was handed out with the bulletins and really think seriously and prayerfully and honestly about how you would answer this question. I want you to either mentally note, or if you have a pencil or pen handy, go ahead and circle, the descriptions of the people that you wouldn’t feel comfortable touching and sitting next to on a Sunday morning…

…few minutes…

Now, there are a few people on this list that make me uncomfortable. There are definitely people on this list that I wouldn’t go out of my way to touch – much less spit into a napkin to wipe their faces clean. But simply knowing that Jesus would, makes me want to change – makes me want to be better. Makes me want to love them, because Christ first loved me.

Remember that orthopedic surgeon? He heard about how Christ loved other people and he committed himself from that day on to giving big, long hugs to every person – especially the smelly ones – that come to see him.

The church that Rudy Rasmus helped to revitalize in Houston is probably the opposite of the church we hear about in James. It is a church where the homeless and drug addicts sit next to people wearing thousand-dollar suits and who are rising in the corporate world. And he writes that “unconditional love isn’t just good theology or church theory. It’s our practice, and we are very intentional about it. We teach our people to make it a point to reach out to every single person who walks in the door…”

He tells the story of a woman named “Neighbor” who carried everything she owned in a shopping cart. This woman came to church “every time the doors were open,” and she often did some covert panhandling at Sunday services. But after two years of this, she went up to the pastor and said, “Pastor Rudy, my name is Carolyn. Don’t call me ‘Neighbor’ anymore. You can call me Carolyn from not own.” Because the people in that church cared for her, reached out and touched her, her heart melted as she began to trust them. And she let them into her lives. She took off her mask of anonymity. “Carolyn would tell you that God has surrounded her with people who accept her just as she is. They didn’t try to fix her, they didn’t demand that she get cleaned up, and they didn’t expect her to respond quickly. They just kept loving her day after day, week after week, and they let her respond in her own good time.”

That is what church is all about. Loving people. Sharing the grace of God with them. Seeing them through the eyes of Christ. Bringing healing and wholeness to their lives by getting up close and personal. We can’t do that if we see one another as strangers. We can only do it if we recognize that we are all children of God – brothers and sisters in Christ – and if we are willing to get a little dirty rubbing against one another- and if we are willing to spit in a napkin to help make someone clean.

Amen and Amen.

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