The Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany

The Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany – February 8, 2004

Isaiah 6:1-8

Have I mentioned my friend Dave to you? After a couple of other careers he has now decided that he is a comedian.

Dave asked me the other day if I realized that I had a photographic memory. When I said, “No,” Dave told me that it is indeed the case. “A photographic memory, how could I have a photographic memory,” I asked Dave. “Well, you do, Bob,” he said, “You do have a photographic memory. The problem is you are missing the film!”

So, if I forget something, please know it is only because my photographic memory lacks film!

I thought about that joke as I read all three lessons for this morning. All of them have to do with believers who have been called by God to tell others of God’s love for them. It made me want to ask the question, “Do you realize that all of you believers are called by God to witness?” And, unlike my photographic memory, nothing is missing.

Have you thought of your faith-life that way, that as you believe, so you are called to witness?

It begins where Isaiah the prophet begins. He is in the Temple and has a vision. He has a vision of God and immediately knows that as a believer, he is a sinner. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.” Those are his words.

Seeing the very majestic glory of God all Isaiah can say is that he is not worthy. Indeed, Isaiah is telling it like it is for all of us. In the very presence of God we are not worthy. We are like the Seraphs as they cover their eyes, lest they see God and die. God is so holy that we who are sinners will die if we look upon the glory of God.

Unclean lips today are lips that do not tell of God. I recently read a story about Garrison Keilor, the famous radio host of “Prairie Home Companion.” It is told of him that people would say to him, “Garrison, you tell so many stories about Lutherans and Roman Catholics on your radio show, you should go to church.” And Garrison did not go to church. Then, one person said, “Garrison, you tell so many stories about Lutherans and Roman Catholics on your radio show, come with me to church.” And he went with his friend. And he worshipped. And he joined the church.

The words were, “come with me,” not, “go to church.” You see one is an invitation and the other is a command. Our unclean lips give commands to others: “Go to church.” To tell of God, we invite, “come with me.” It is the difference between wanting to be right and having a relationship with another sinner who God redeems. It is the difference between being in control and living by grace.

Isn’t that the basic issue? We want to do it ourselves? So, we command instead of inviting people?

Isaiah reminds us today that we do nothing except by the power of God. In the first lesson you see that power when you hear, “The pivots on the thresholds shook…and the house filled with smoke.” God’s power is seen as the foundations shake and the incense burns.

How do we see power? I have noted a recent ad on TV where a young married couple with a small child buys one of those huge SUV’s. Toward the end of the ad, dad is holding this young boy with the hood of the vehicle open before them. Dad points at the gigantic engine, and says, “Can you say ‘hemi?’” The little boy barely gets the word out, but does. What is the moral of the story? Power is a 5.6 liter gas guzzling motor in your SUV.

God has a different perspective on power. It is not the power you lift the hood to see. It is power made perfect in weakness. It is power seen in the cross. Real power, God’s power, is the power of forgiveness.

Isaiah knows forgiveness when the Seraph flies to him with the burning coal and cauterizes his unclean lips. “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Yes, here is forgiveness, God coming to us graciously forgiving. Only for us it is not a burning coal to cauterize our lips, but a cross where Jesus dies that we may know God’s loving forgiveness.

The amazing thing about the power of the cross, the power of God made perfect in weakness, is that it transforms us. Our sin is blotted out by the cross so that we can now hear those amazing words: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”

The answer comes quickly to our lips like it did to the lips of Isaiah: “Here am I, send me.” It is an answer we give remembering that the call is to invite, not command. “Here am I, send me,” is the answer that recognizes the difference and reminds us inviting others is what our faith-life is all about. My “photographic memory” according to Dave may lack film, but you do not lack the words, “come with me.”

You have the power and the words through the cross of Jesus Christ. As you say, “Here am I, send me,” God calls you to invite others, “come with me.” Amen.

Pastor Robert F. Holley