In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, the edges of his robe filling the temple. 2 Winged creatures were stationed around him. Each had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two their feet, and with two they flew about. 3 They shouted to each other, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of heavenly forces!
All the earth is filled with God’s glory!”
4 The doorframe shook at the sound of their shouting, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 I said, “Mourn for me; I’m ruined! I’m a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips. Yet I’ve seen the king, the Lordof heavenly forces!”
6 Then one of the winged creatures flew to me, holding a glowing coal that he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt has departed, and your sin is removed.”
8 Then I heard the Lord’s voice saying, “Whom should I send, and who will go for us?”
I said, “I’m here; send me.”
“From Haran to the Negev: When God Foretells Transition,” Week Four
I did not know this about the late comedian Sam Kinison, who hailed just a short drive from us over in Yakima: He began his career not as a stand-up comic, but as a Christian preacher, just like his father.
(In my defense, Kinison was sort of before my time. I didn’t know any of this until a few months ago.)
After his first marriage ended in divorce, though, Kinison made the drastic change in substance—but not, I can report from personal experience, necessarily in delivery—to stand-up comedy. It being the 1980s, he also became much more libertine in his personal life and use of substances.
He was killed by a drunk driver in 1992, at the age of only 38. Witnesses, including a close friend and his brother, reported that Kinison seemed to be having a conversation with someone—but not with them. He was asking them why—“But why?” he said, before repeatedly saying “Okay, okay, okay.”
Kinison’s friend who was there at the scene reported that “The last ‘Okay’ was so soft and at peace…Whatever voice was talking to him gave him the right answer and he just relaxed with it. He said it so sweet, like he was talking to someone he loved.”
It was reminiscent, to me, of Steve Jobs’s reported refrain of “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow” when he died almost seven years ago from cancer, and it reflects what is, I think for many of us, a common element of our faith: that when we die, we see God.
But what about when someone or something else in our lives dies? Not us, but another loved one, or our relationship with them? Where is God in that? Is God in that? And can we see God?
Such was the circumstance for the prophet Isaiah in the year of the righteous king Uzziah’s death. And he indeed saw the Lord.
This is both a new sermon series and my last sermon series for you here in Longview. With my last few weeks as your pastor, I want to speak to you in spirit and in truth about the nature of our transition into new roles in one another’s lives, and what my own hopes are for this mighty family of Jesus followers when I am no longer here.
To do this, our Lenten sermon series will cover different stories of transition, moving, and new starts throughout Scripture. We began this series with one of the oldest and greatest—the calling of Abram and Sarai by God to pick up their lives at Ur in Mesopotamia and relocate to Canaan by way of a place called Haran, from which this sermon series takes part of its name.
Haran is located in what is now southern Turkey (and is now called Harran, with the extra ‘r’), and its name comes from ancient Akkadian to mean “road” or “crossroads,” which is an appropriate name for both a waystation for a traveling couple and this series as we approach a crossroads in the life of our congregation. So, this series derives its name from it and from the ending of that passage from Genesis 12, which says that Abram and his household continued on toward the Negev.
From Abraham, we talked about the story of Moses at the burning bush. The voice of God has just told Moses that God has seen the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt and is sending Moses to right this historic wrong, but there is still more: Moses needs to know who it is that is sending him to undertake this monumental task. God simply replies, “Say to the Israelites, “I AM” has sent you.”
Last week, God sent another Biblical hero—the prophet Elijah, whose defining trait is the passion with which he opposes the worship of the false deities in the Old Testament such as Ba’al. It so determines Elijah’s sense of faith and public ministry that his name, Elijah, means, roughly, “My Lord is my God.” (From the Hebrew words “Elohim,” for “Lord,” and “Yah,” for “God.”)
Today, we arrive at the calling of the prophet Isaiah by God in a very famous passage from Isaiah’s book, in chapter six. Isaiah sees God high and lifted up, surrounded by angels and with just the hems of God’s robes—never mind the rest of God—filling the entirety of the temple. It is an image of sheer grandeur and divine majesty, one that takes place in a difficult time: Jerusalem has just lots its king.
And not just any king. Uzziah was one of the few kings whom the Hebrew Bible judges positively rather than negatively because of his faithfulness to God—a faithfulness that many of his predecessors and successors, including his grandson, Ahaz, who practiced child sacrifice in clear violation of Levitical laws prohibiting the practice.
With Uzziah dead, a new righteous voice in the kingdom is required, and so God asks Isaiah who will go and speak for God.
“Here I am,” says the prophet. “Send me.”
And God did. Into the unknown future.
God sends each of us, every day, into an unknown future. We can, should, and often do anticipate as much as we possibly can. We know that we will get up, make breakfast, come to church, and worship God.
But the world can always change for any of us in an instant. A car wreck. A diagnosis. And, yes, eventually death.
But in the year of King Uzziah’s death, Isaiah saw the Lord!
Isaiah, with what he confesses are unclean lips and a life among others with unclean lips, saw the Lord.
If you think of unclean lips as the words you speak, then, well, we all have unclean lips at some point. Including stand-up comics. But even with unclean lips, Sam Kinison may well have seen the Lord.
We have much to clean up in the words we say—and here in church, I am really not talking about the profanity of swearing, but the profanity of excluding.
If we are to answer the question of the Lord, “Whom shall I send, and whom shall speak for us?” with Isaiah’s “Here I am, send me,” then we must cast aside how we use our lips to communicate to younger and newer Christians our disapproval of how they dress, their material poverty, their need to be church a little differently than us.
That is no way to be the church. We cannot be allowed to pull rank in the church, because rank does not exist in the church. Longevity does not mean our preferences should be automatically catered to. That is how the church dies, not how the church lives.
And if you fear the church’s death, know that you are not powerless. You are not helpless. But change is required of us Christians. Change continues to be required of us. It never stopped being required of us, we simply decided to stop fulfilling that requirement.
So what shall we say, the next time that we see the Lord, whether in tragedy or in celebration, in wonderment or in fear? What shall we say when the Lord asks, “Whom shall I send, and whom shall speak for us?”
Even in moments of uncertainty or not knowing, can we at least be secure enough to know that we are to answer God’s call?
And even when rocked by waves of change and loss, are we still prepared to say yes to God?
Our years together are fast drawing to a close. You have experienced the Lord’s presence long before I arrived, and you will continue to experience the Lord’s presence long after I am gone.
In times of change, not just of continuity, the challenge for the church remains staying attuned to what God would have us do to become better, not what we would have us do to make ourselves more comfortable with that which is changing around us.
A tremendous change has taken place in Isaiah’s life. A new king sits upon the throne in Jerusalem.
And yet, Isaiah sees the Lord.
So may we all, when transition and change appear in our lives, so that we too can say as boldly as Isaiah did:
In the year of King Uzziah’s death, I saw the Lord!
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
March 11, 2018