In the Face of the Really Real--February 11, 2025

In the Face of the Really Real--February 11, 2025

"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.' The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 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!" (Isaiah 6:1-5)

I wouldn't say you should build a lot of your theology on the Indiana Jones movies, but at least one thing sticks with me from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark.  That is, if you dare to think you can look God in the face and not be utterly undone, you are fooling yourself.  That's especially true of all who arrogantly assume they can wield God like a weapon or control God like a lucky charm, and to some degree we have all been guilty of that.

In the classic movie with Harrison Ford on a quest for the ancient Ark of the Covenant, it's the literal Nazis who show up trying to stare God's powerful presence right in the face... and are utterly destroyed when they do.  In a scene that has likely been burned into the brain of many an 80s kid, one of the officers of the German Reich looks into the opened Ark of the Covenant (where God's power was supposed to dwell) and his face literally melts.  Now, of course, in the movie, the point is that you can't support the Fuhrer and not make an enemy of the God of Abraham and Sarah. But for any of us, too, it's a stark reminder that when we are in the presence of the living God, all of our puffed-up pretense and stubborn sin crumbles to dust.  None of us is ever in a position to keep God on a leash, and the fact that we so often think we have God in our back pockets means that we are in for a rude awakening at the very least.

That's the starting point for this scene from the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard this past Sunday as our First Reading.  And while we'll eventually get to the most famous part of Isaiah's "call story"--his poetic response to God's question, "Whom shall I send?" of "Here am I; send me!"--we need to first go with Isaiah into the opening verses, which definitely finds the future-prophet outside of his comfort zones.  

The story begins with a date stamp from Isaiah--all of this takes place "in the year that King Uzziah died." And even though all the kings of Israel and Judah were mixed bags in terms of their justice and wisdom, there is at least the sense of underlying turmoil.  When a king died in the ancient world, it was always an anxious time--there was the question of whether or not there would be a peaceful transfer of power, or a bloody coup that could further erupt into civil war (which happened quite a bit actually, even in ancient Israel's history, from the very beginning of its monarchy). So Isaiah is already feeling the uncertainty and instability of having the king die, and yet he is reminded in his vision that God was always meant to be understood as the true King, not just of Israel but of all the universe.  He sees God "sitting on a throne," and when he realizes who he is seeing, he blurts out, "Woe is me... my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"  Isaiah is being reminded at one level that even when the human rulers (who may be good or bad) come and go, God (who is wholly good) remains Lord, and God's Reign is not threatened.  God, it turns out, is not thwarted by a change of regime, and God is not to be equated or identified with any king, ruler, or administration, past, present, or future.  That much Isaiah understands for sure when he has this vision of God reigning from the temple.

And as far as that goes, it is good news to Isaiah's ears--and to ours.  It is indeed good to know that God's lordship does not expire with one king's reign, one party's majority, or one administration's tenure.  God outlasts them all, and to be sure, all of earth's empires crumble to dust in the presence of God. But that also humbles every last one of us, too, when we stand in the presence of that God.  Isaiah also learns that from experience here, as well.

This is the part of Isaiah's vision that yanks him out of his comfort zone--and us along with him.  When Isaiah realizes that he is in the very presence of God, he feels like those Reich thugs at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark--he feels like he is going to melt in the holiness of God.  "I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips," he exclaims, realizing that he is tainted with his own sin and complicit with the collective sin of his people. He cannot bear to be in the very presence of God, he knows, or he will be undone (again, picture the melting Nazi from Indiana Jones).  Isaiah knows the old stories, too, and how not even the great Moses could bear to be in the face-to-face presence of God.  Even when Moses only saw the "back side" of God passing by, as the story goes, his own face was struck with such light that it radiated a blinding glow; the people asked Moses to wear a veil over his face afterward because it was still shining too brightly!  And even the very angels in the presence of God shield their eyes from God's brilliant holiness and cover their own extremities out of modesty in the heavenly throne room (that's why they only use two of their six wings for flying--the rest are for covering their faces and their nether-regions). Isaiah knows that none of us can stand before God without trembling, or worse.  So he is frightened to find himself in the center of the Temple in the presence of the True King--God--before whom all emperors and empires turn to dust, knowing that he is just another ordinary sinful schlub.

This isn't the end of the story, of course.  And over the next several days, we'll continue to unpack and explore where it goes from here.  But for now, just let's stay with this humbling awareness Isaiah has that God isn't here to be any of our personal genie or celestial vending machine doling out prayer requests like wishes.  God isn't here to cater to our agenda, but rather calls us to be a part of God's agenda in the world.  And in a very real sense, to behold the fullness of God's glorious goodness is a lot like staring at the sun--even from ninety-three million miles away it is unsafe to look full on, but to be up close would melt us to nothingness, even though it is that very same sun whose light makes life possible for us and our planet.  To be in the unfiltered presence of God would remove the ways we try to hide behind petty and stupid things, like the value of our stock portfolios, the latest manufactured outrage on social media, or the nonsense of another day's front in a culture war.  We hide behind those things because we don't really want to deal with the full intensity of God.  Like T.S. Eliot put it, "humankind cannot bear very much reality," and God is the ultimate Reality--the Really Real.

Maybe that's really it, for both us and Isaiah.  We are so used to living within the illusions of our own little worlds, our own little social media and niche-news-channel bubbles, that we do not really want to bear the full and utter reality of God, who is always beyond our preferred narratives.  The real and living God will melt away all of those pretenses when we come face to face--and I think for a lot of us (maybe all of us at some time), we think we would rather live in the illusions.  And the Really Real One will not leave us there--the living God will pull us beyond our comfort zones where all the rest crumbles to dust.

So, fair warning: as we proceed through this story, and as we dare to seek the presence of the real and living God, we should be prepared, as Guns-N-Roses put it, to "lose your illusions."  And when we do find ourselves pulled into God's presence, we should be prepared, too, to have it change us forever.

Lord God, we are honestly a little afraid to ask it, but we will dare: draw us into your presence, burn away our arrogance and our illusions, and make us able to stand before you.