And [the LORD] said, "Go and say to this people:
'Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
keep looking, but do not understand.'
Make the mind of this people dull,
and stop their ears,
and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
and turn and be healed."
Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said,
"Until cities lie waste without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is utterly desolate;
until the LORD sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land..." (Isaiah 6:9-12)
My mother used to say to me and to my brother as we were growing up that the worst possible thing she could ever tell us was, "Go ahead, do whatever you want."
If we got to that point in the saga of parental discipline, she warned us, it meant she was done lecturing or scolding and was leaving us to our own devices... and we would have to endure the consequences of our persistent choices. If we got to the watershed of "Do whatever you want," it meant that my mother realized anything further she tried to say to us by way of correction would only make us dig our heels in further, and so she was giving up. And it further meant that she knew we were headed for disaster in whatever area of life it was (whether it was not studying for tests, not doing our homework on time, not telling the truth about something, not following through on our commitments, or whatever else). When she got to the point of "Do whatever you want," it also meant that if we were not willing to heed her advice, she was not going to interfere in the situation any further to stop us from feeling the brunt of whatever consequence was on the way--whether an in-house punishment, or the resulting grades on a report card, or a scowl of disappointment from a piano teacher. She knew, in other words, that sometimes her last message to us on a subject would simply be, "You are setting yourself up for pain, and since you seem bent on not listening to me--or my words only seem to make you more stubborn in your refusal to listen--I am now going to let your own bad choices do what they will to you."
And I've got to admit to you--in hindsight, those few times we got to the point of hearing her say, "Do whatever you want," were the most terrible sentences I ever heard come out of her mouth. And I was definitely afraid to hear those words. I have come to believe, not just from my experience in childhood but more and more from reading the Scriptures, too, that sometimes the worst thing God can do to us, as well, is simply to give us exactly what we have asked for. Sometimes the harshest form of damnation is when God says, "Fine. Have it your way." and then to leave us to our own devices. I shudder to think.
I mention all this because it all comes as unavoidable baggage for the newly-called prophet Isaiah, too, in the passage we have been exploring this week since many of us heard it in worship back on Sunday. And I'll confess that this second half of the story is the part few of us ever read, and fewer of us want to spend time wading through. We love the first part of the story, which culminates in that singable refrain, "Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night..." We love the idea of being called by God. We love the idea even of God equipping us, transforming us, even purifying us like the seraph with the coal on Isaiah's mouth, in order that we could be used for God's purposes. That much of the story is beloved by pastors, seminarians, and really anybody who has ever asked, "What could God be calling me for?"
The trouble is that once Isaiah responds to the call of God, he learns that his particular calling will involve bearing the burden of bad news... and in particular to people who will refuse to hear it. Isaiah has barely uttered his famous and often-copied response to God, "Here am I; send me!" and God's response to him is, "Okay, but so that you know, I'm sending you to be the voice that people will not listen to, and in fact, the more you speak my word to them, the more they are going to dig in their heels, stop up their ears, and ignore you--which means they will be ignoring me, too." God tells him that the people are approaching that precarious tipping point my mother used to warn us about, the point at which God would say to hard-hearted people, "Go ahead--do whatever you want. You're on your own." And that means that Isaiah begins his ministry knowing that much of his life's work will be spent upsetting people when they do listen, and provoking them to turn away so they can refuse to listen. That looks like--and often feels like--failure. Isaiah is being called, and by none other than the living God, to speak a truthful word to people who have already sold out to lies, and that will mean by any other outside measure, he will seem to have failed. He will be the voice that says, at long last, "God has been trying to get through to you, and you have kept turning away. So I'm the one sent in the end to tell you all now that you've made your own bed and now you'll have to lie in it. Good luck with that." Hoo-boy, talk about being led out of your comfort zones!
I know it's not fun or easy to have to read a passage like this--even less so for Isaiah to have had to live it! But we do need to acknowledge that sometimes God calls us to be those voice-in-the-wilderness kinds of people (a turn of phrase that comes from later in the book of Isaiah), speaking up for God's ways of mercy, justice, and faithfulness, and to do it even when we fear it is futile, even when we feel like failures because no one is listening. Sometimes we will be the voices that say the emperor is wearing no clothes, even if everyone else laughs at us for such a preposterous notion. Sometimes we will be the ones met with angry looks, or off-the-record whispering, or ears that just don't want to listen. And sometimes we have to be the ones who say, "The current trajectory is headed in the wrong direction. The way things are is not OK!" And when God calls you to be one of those voices, it is definitely going to take you out of your comfort zones if you were hoping to just keep your head down and fade into the background.
By the same token, it is uncomfortable--but necessary--for us to consider the possibility that sometimes we're not the ones appointed as prophets, but we might be the ones called to listen to voices we had managed to ignore. Sometimes God's word to you and to me is, "You're bent in on yourself in sin," and we don't want to listen. And sometimes the folks God raises up like prophets in our lives--the people who tell us the difficult but necessary truth and hold us accountable--have been trying to get through to us for a very long time. When that happens, will we be brave enough to listen to them, or will we take the comfortable route of covering our ears so we don't have to hear something we don't like?
I suppose all of this means that no matter what, we will need the grace of courage to face the day ahead. Whether we are being called to listen to the prophetic voices God puts in our lives, even when we'd rather cover our ears, or whether we are being called, like Isaiah, to be truth-tellers when it's not easy, we will need courage either way. Perhaps we had better face the new day asking for such bravery from the God who calls us.
Lord God, give us the courage to do what you call us to do, the wisdom to listen to your voice rather than ignoring it, and the clarity to know what you want us to hear.
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