Sermon from Nov. 17, 2024, by the Rev. Dr. Tara W. Bulger

Isaiah 6:1-8

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 seraph 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 was 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!” 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!”

I did not come to faith until I was an adult, and I came to faith out of this profound sense of brokenness. I was 28, and I was broken in a lot of ways, I was just broken enough to start praying and asking for help, and I had an experience of God. I feel like God spoke to me and God guided me. And from the moment I learned of Jesus' love, his love for me, my whole life was changed for the better. It became the principle around which I organized my whole life. Jesus' love for me gave me meaning and gave me purpose, and it might have stayed that way, just me and Jesus and his love for me, if I hadn't started reading the Bible.

I picked up the Bible and I started in the New Testament and over and over again I began to realize that Jesus doesn't save us just for us, but that Jesus saves us so that we can go about the work of trying to heal the world. I read the New Testament, and I read all the places where Jesus invited people in who had previously been excluded, where Jesus cared for those who were on the bottom, who had previously been trampled on. I read about Jesus caring about justice and care for all people. I believed the parable of the sheep and the goats where Jesus said, however you treat the least of these is how you treat me. No longer was my faith about me and Jesus and what he could do for my life. I suddenly realized that as someone who had been touched by Jesus, I was actually called to be a part of the world and to work for its redemption.

I read the part of the New Testament where Jesus said he came to fulfill the law and the prophets, and that sent me to the Old Testament, and I discovered that long before the time of Jesus, God had called God's people to work for the betterment of society. And that's what we have here in this passage from Isaiah.

We're at the sixth chapter of Isaiah, but what has happened before is that in the first chapter, Isaiah says to the people of Israel, you worship God, but you'd never know it by the way you look at our society. Isaiah said, we worship, but there's no justice. There are still people who are being trampled on, there are people who are not being cared for. Isaiah says it this way, that God calls us to cease, to do evil, to learn to do good, to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. Those three, the oppressed, the orphan, and the widow were the ones who were often forgot about in Isaiah's society at that time. And Isaiah, fueled by God, says to the people, your worship means nothing if your community doesn't bear witness to what God is teaching you.

In fact, in the second chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah goes on to tell them that God wants Israel to be the center of divine justice, that all the world could see, that they could see that that's how communities are supposed to be. They would be a witness to the rest of the world of the Lord God.

The third chapter, Isaiah goes in hard against those who are wealthy, that the people who are wealthy are not giving enough to the poor.

And then Isaiah begins to have these visions and these prophecies, and so by the sixth chapter we have Isaiah in the temple of the Lord having a vision of the holiness of the Lord God, the utter power of the Lord God and that God ask whom will I send to the people to call them back to my way? And we have those famous words of Isaiah, “here I am, send me.” The Lord God is looking for someone who will go to the people and will say to them, not only do you worship, but your life outside of worship should bear witness to all the love and grace that I'm giving you.

In fact, in our tradition, one of the purposes or great ends of the church is that we should promote social righteousness, that we should promote a society and a community where people are equally beloved and cared for. That's a pretty big job, isn't it? I don't think we're going to get it done this week. I wouldn't even put it off on this month, but the enormity of the work does not mean we get out of it. The enormity of the call does not mean that we just don't do anything about it. In fact, what it means is that it will take all of us. I think the church has never been more important than it is right now because there is a world that needs to hear about justice, love, equity, and grace, and you are the only people they can hear it from.

We are supposed to make our communities look like what it looks like here within the church, and it is enormous work, and it will not be done in our lifetime. It won't be done until Jesus Christ comes again. But we are still called to do it in ways big and small. In fact, I would say it's all the small ways that matter more. So, we don't get overwhelmed. We ask God to guide us and give us strength through the work. And we start each day asking, how can I work for the reconciliation of the world? Lord God, what can I do today? One of the things I love about the body of Christ, the church, is that we all have different gifts. We don't all have to do the same thing. Maybe you are someone who likes foreign mission and that is something that speaks to your soul and you go and do that.

Maybe you are someone who works with local organizations in our community mentoring or helping others, or maybe you are someone who tries to make an impact on everyone's life that you meet in the course of your day. We don't all have to do the same thing, thank God, but we all have to do something. Because our worship has to matter. Because this is one hour of our life, but we are called to go out into the world and work for a world where people are regarded with equality, grace, justice, and love. We are all God's beloved children. The church is the one who is called to this work.

So, I encourage you to start asking in your prayers what you can do for the reconciliation of the world. It may be something as small as recognizing all the people you meet in your day and praying for them as you go about your day. It may be something bigger, but the work is yours and the work is mine because we are grateful for what Jesus Christ has done for us. I also think there may come a day when we stand before the Lord God and maybe God in all of his holiness has on a robe that fills up the room like Isaiah describes. Maybe there will be seraphs there too, covering their eyes because they can't look at the utter holiness of the Lord God. And on that day, I imagine God will look at each of us and say, I called you. I called you to make the world better, to work for the reconciliation of society, for the promotion of social righteousness. I called you. And it's my prayer, that we can stand before the holiness of God, knowing that we made some difference because the Holy Spirit was at work in us.

Amen.