"Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 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.' 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!' " (Isaiah 6:6-8)
Encountering God is never an endpoint, really. Once we have been brought face to face with the presence of God--as awesome as that is--God has a way of then sending us outward in a new direction, for God's purposes, bringing God's message to someone else. All of that is to say, it doesn't end with me. You and I are indeed called into God's own presence, but then we become like runners in a relay race, sent to bear God's word to the next set of ears who need it.
And of course, we will be changed in the encounter. That, too, is part of what Isaiah's call story tells us, as we continue exploring this passage that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. As we saw yesterday, Isaiah found himself in a vision in the very heart of the Temple seeing God depicted as the True King, and he just about needed a change of clothes from being so awestruck and undone. When we left off yesterday, Isaiah blurted out in the presence of God and the six-winged seraphs, "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips!" He saw himself as unworthy of being in the mere presence of God because both he and his whole people were complicit in rottenness. Isaiah felt like he was about to be vaporized by the brilliant light of God's holy presence--and, as we said yesterday, all of us would feel the same if we were stripped of all our pretenses, defense mechanisms, and illusions in the presence of God.
But God doesn't zap Isaiah for being a sinner or punish him for being entangled in the communal sin of his complacent culture. Instead, God purifies him. God removes the rottenness, like an antibiotic will cure an infection or activated charcoal will draw out an ingested toxin. And since Isaiah's assessment was that he was "a man of unclean lips," well, God takes him at his word and sends one of the seraphim to touch his mouth with the live coal from the altar fire in the temple, as if to say, "Okay, if that was the problem, I have now resolved it. You are worthy now to be my messenger." Isaiah is changed by this encounter with God, and his mouth is no longer meant for crude speech, arrogant boastfulness, or pompous bloviating. He will be a spokesperson for God, and God will now bring God's message to the people, rather than whatever profane or futile things he might have spent his days talking about otherwise. (We'll see tomorrow and Friday what that message will involve, because it ain't rainbows and unicorns, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.)
The thing I want us to notice here, though, is that Isaiah's unworthiness doesn't stop God from commissioning him to speak God's message. Rather, God changes him--God makes him into something new, removing the sin rather than condemning him for it, and erasing the stains that should have otherwise disqualified him. And from there, God commissions him. "Now that this touched your lips," the seraph says, "your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out." Isaiah no longer has to run and hide from the presence of God, but can now bear to be in God's holy presence, and so he can hear the call of God, "Whom shall I send?" God makes it possible for Isaiah to respond, "Yes." And so when he answers, "Here am I, send me," it is in a very real sense a working of grace. God has transformed him so that he isn't shaking in his boots and melting with shame in God's presence, but now can say, "I am willing to go. Send me." And from there, Isaiah will go. It doesn't end with Isaiah having a nice "me-and-God" moment. It starts with that encounter, and goes out into the world.
And of course, that's just it: when God gets a hold of us, it is never just to leave us on a shelf like an heirloom or a knick-knack gathering dust, but to send us as changed people into the world for the sake of God's purposes. The life of faith is not merely about obtaining a ticket for a non-stop flight to heaven, but rather about being sent beyond our comfort zones out into the places God wants to reach through us. We cannot ever be the same from the encounter, and it doesn't merely end once we've answered God's call with a "Here am I, send me!" That's just the beginning.
For Isaiah, that would mean an awful lot of difficult work, telling the truth to kings who don't want to hear it but would prefer to hide behind royal propaganda... waking the people up who were content in their complacency... warning the Big Deals and powerbrokers that they were steering the nation into disaster and exile... and also reminding the Respectable Religious Crowd that God's love included outsiders, too. If Isaiah thought it was unsettling to find himself standing in the heavenly throne room as the seraphs flew around him, he was in for an even bigger challenge the moment he stepped back into his ordinary life with this new commissioning.
And let's not kid ourselves, either. We are in for the challenge of a lifetime if we are brave enough to let God in close enough to look us in the eyes, to touch our mouths, and to commission us to bear God's message to a world that often prefers to cover its ears or turn up the background noise. You might add your voice to advocate for what is just, or what is merciful (or both--they are not mutually exclusive!), to the people in power around you. You might be the one who risks an uncomfortable conversation that your conscience won't let you ignore. You might be the one who refuses, like Isaiah, to just accept the slogans and talking points of the palace, but to speak an alternative word about God's Reign. You might be the one who musters up the courage to invite a friend or a neighbor to come with you to worship on Sunday where you know God's Good News will be spoken and Jesus' meal will be shared, over against the bombastic headlines and fast-food value meals of the culture at large.
All we really know for sure when God touches our lips and calls to us is that we will be changed, and that we are really at the beginning of the story. From there, we can only guess at where God will lead any of us. We only know it doesn't end with "me."
Lord God, give us the courage to answer your call, and to follow as you lead us where you will.
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