Fourth Sunday before Lent
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Readings: Isaiah 6 and 1 Corinthians 15: 1-11
I’m sure many clergy on hearing the reading from Isaiah 6 this morning will be taken back to the day of their Ordination, as that chapter is almost always read at Ordination services. If others had the same experience as I did, they would have had very similar feelings to those of Isaiah: willingness to serve God and a definite sense of calling, but also a sense of unworthiness, of unpreparedness and trepidation.
At Portsmouth Cathedral, where my own ordination took place, we had to prostrate ourselves on the floor as a symbol of submission to God’s will. That was a very powerful moment. We’re not told if Isaiah lay prostrate on the floor of the Temple, but we are told of this great vision he was privileged to experience. The Jewish people used to talk about going into the temple ‘to see God’, but that was really more a way of talking than real expectation. But Isaiah did see God – high and lofty; sitting on a throne. As with all visions of God in the bible, the stress lies in the mystery of the encounter. The hem of his robe filled the Temple – just imagine that; seraphs in attendance, calling out those words with which we have become so familiar – Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the first hint in the bible, I suppose, to the three persons of the Trinity whom we acknowledge and call on still.
So suddenly, for Isaiah, this up-to-now unknowable God reveals himself. ‘Holy, holy, holy’: what is this holiness? What is it to be holy? We could give many different answers – set apart, perhaps, or divine, wonderful in creation. But here we find that he is a moral being and a morally demanding God. Without God saying anything, in the presence of this majesty and mystery, Isaiah becomes aware of how inadequate was the people’s response and his own response. He bemoaned the fact that he was a person of unclean lips and lived amongst a people of unclean lips. And yet, in spite of his unworthiness, he had been allowed to experience this great vision. Have you ever had a chance encounter with someone, or lived through an incident of some sort, and later wondered ‘what might have been the meaning of that?’ Somebody writes that true worship is not a matter of warm or even awed feelings, but must issue in practical obedience. ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’ – the priest bids the congregation at the end of the Eucharist.
For Isaiah, his moment of meeting with God was soon followed by a calling and a challenge. But first, there is cleansing. A seraph flew to him with a burning coal, surely meaning judgment. And it did, but that wasn’t the end. This judgment was cleansing, purifying; so it would be with the nation as a whole. The prophet had to learn in himself the hard truth which he would then announce to the people.
Now in Ordination services, the reading from chapter 6 normally ends at verse 8: ‘Here am I, send me.’ Very appropriate for those about to be ordained. You’ll see too from our readings sheet that there is the option to close today’s reading at verse 8. But if we go on to the remainder of the chapter, as we are today, we are quickly reminded that working for God is not intended to be a bed of roses. Isaiah’s mission is to speak to a people totally immune to his words. The Lord predicts that the people will be indifferent to his will and law, and that this will lead to judgment. Isaiah’s uncomfortable commission is to inform God’s people of inevitable exile coming their way.The nation will be like a tree felled and burnt. But when the worst has occurred, and the smoke clears away, the stump of the tree, blackened and ugly, may again put forth new shoots. After exile there will be life.
The Church of England priest and writer, W.H. Vanstone, recalled how dispiriting an experience he had when working in a housing-estate parish in the north of England, in fact Kirkholt, a part of Rochdale, back in the 1960s, where a new church was being built. He described how when he stopped to talk to people he was always received with easy friendliness, but there was never a suggestion that there was any need for a clergyman or for a church in the district. He wrote ‘Perhaps I should eventually find some satisfaction in my role as their vicar; but in truth, if and when the new church came into being, it would be a matter of no importance; its presence would make no significant difference to the district; its presence would be, at the best, a harmless hobby – an alternative to, and on a par with, the activities of the Dramatic Society or the Scout Group.’ It seems to me that that is exactly how people view the Church today. Vanstone went into a bit of a depression. But he took note of the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis in 1945. Bonhoeffer taught that the Church must learn to minister to man not in his weakness but in his strength. Vanstone came to see that it would still be important for the Church to be established on that housing estate, even if nobody appeared to want or need it. I just mention all that to reinforce what Isaiah found, that not all ministry is immediately rewarding or pleasurable. If you want to know more of Vanstone’s experiences, you can find it in his book Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense.
One of the aspects that links the calling of Isaiah and the calling of Paul, in the reading from 1 Corinthians today, is their feeling of unworthiness – impostor syndrome, we might call it today. We heard Isaiah bemoan the fact that he was a person of unclean lips. Paul is surprised to find himself an apostle. ‘I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.’
Nevertheless, God used him so that the Corinthian Christians, amongst many others, could come to believe in Christ. He starts this chapter by reminding them of the very foundations of the gospel. What comes over is that there is a continual handing on of the tradition. He passed on what he had received – the important facts that Christ died for our sins, was buried, was raised on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures. These are all key elements of our belief which we still proclaim in our Creeds today.
Next Paul lists some of those who witnessed the resurrection; people who actually saw Jesus in those post-Easter days. The list does not entirely agree with the instances of resurrection appearances we find in the gospels, but that needn’t be a cause of concern for those who study the scriptures, because a good many lists we come across are selective. For every story we are told about people who have found faith, there are countless more – all about people receiving, firmly embracing the truth, and handing on to others.
It rather looks here as if Paul is trying to confirm his credentials as an apostle. Maybe some in the church didn’t value Paul’s authority because he hadn’t met Jesus personally; in the flesh, as Peter (Cephas) and the others had. But Paul says Christ did appear to him – ‘as to someone untimely born’ – on the Damascus road; a life-changing experience. We might think he then gets a little boastful – claiming to have worked harder than any of the other apostles, but he says that isn’t really of consequence; what matters is that the gospel has been proclaimed to the Corinthians and they have come to believe.
He does acknowledge that it was the grace of God that allowed him to have achieved what he did. The grace that grasped Paul reached out through him to grasp others with the good news of God’s victory over evil in Jesus’ death and resurrection. At the end of the Isaiah reading, when the nation has been brought down, it is like a tree felled and only its stump remains. But ‘the holy seed’ sleeps in the stump. We see it again in Jesus’ death. At Calvary, the tree is cut down; the holy seed sleeps in the stump. On Easter morning, a shoot comes forth from the stump with new life.
In the creed we say ‘I believe in God’. But as we look at Isaiah and Paul, we can say with confidence that God believes in us. He calls the most unlikely people, and the people least expecting it, to his service. What their past record is doesn’t seem to count in God’s providence. Poachers turned gamekeepers are often the best gamekeepers. Isaiah says he is unworthy. Paul says he is the worst of the apostles because he blasphemed God and persecuted the Church. Peter cried out, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.’ But God’s response is something like this, “I believe in you. Stop looking at your inadequacies. Concentrate on my love, my mercy, and my strength, and you can be my apostles; together we can do great things.”
God knows, as today’s Collect says, that ‘by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright.’ But we are still called to be humble instruments or channels who allow God’s love, peace and mercy to flow in and through us, and so to the wider world.