Made Clean

Isaiah 6: 1-8
Romans 8:12-17

The passage in Isaiah is a very well known text to most Christians. The song of Holy, Holy, Holy is used by many denominations during Communion and the hymn, “Here I am, Lord” comes from this text. It is a scripture passage that speaks of glorious things, Isaiah sees God and the Seraphim and he is so overcome with God’s holiness that he becomes completely awakened to his own uncleanly state.

There is so much raw emotion in this vision of Isaiah’s that it can be overwhelming to us readers. Here we see the need to acknowledge our sins, and we find that God has an answer to our unworthiness. We read about how Isaiah is cleansed and as soon as he is, God begins to call him to new and glorious things. With his heart now pure, Isaiah can say without subterfuge, “Here I am, send me”.

Isaiah shows us all the need to realize our guilt and sinfulness. When he has his vision of God who is so big that only the hem of his robe fills the temple, he is besieged by God’s glory. There are winged creatures flying everywhere, singing praises to God and Isaiah for the first time sees himself clearly.

 Isaiah probably considered himself to be a good person. He probably thought he was a good Jewish man who loved God and was willing to do what God commanded him. He may have even prided himself on keeping the commandments and knowing a lot about the Old Testament.  At the moment of this vision, everything Isaiah knew about himself was flipped on its head.

 Face to face with God, Isaiah knew he was not a good person. He understood for the first time that the things he had always prided himself on, were not relevant. If we are created in God’s image, Isaiah was seeing a very distorted view of who he was and who he should be. It made him cry out in pain and despair, “Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips!”

There is a seminary professor who often told his classes that he compared people to the two brothers in the Prodigal Son, the good son being the one that stayed to help his father with the farm and the bad son being the one who leaves the farm in search of adventure. At the end of the story, the prodigal comes back and is welcomed with open arms by the father, and it is the good son that stayed that watches on the periphery as the bad son is given such a warm welcome. The professor stated that it is not the people who know they are sinners that he worries about, it is people like the brother in the story who consider themselves good people and yet are not in the Father’s embrace.

There are many people who consider themselves Christians and to be fairly decent folk. They are the ones that fulfill their responsibilities, they go to work and come to church and they help others. The danger in being a person that is relatively good, is that sometimes we forget to depend on God. We forget that a sin is a sin and so even if we are not out stealing or killing people, that holding grudges, lying, and spreading gossip are also sins. Compared to what some people have done, they may seem minor and insignificant.

It is Isaiah that reminds us during this vision that he is just like us sitting in these pews. He was a good person; he was like the older brother in the story who fulfilled his responsibilities. And yet, when face to face with God, Isaiah could recognize that he was still unclean.  He is a sinner. We may not like acknowledging it and we certainly try to pretend to others that it isn’t true, but we are all sinners in this room. We have all done things that when we come face to face with God, we too will cry out, “I am a person of unclean lips!”

But God knows that. God knows us better than we know ourselves. God sees you. God knows you. There is no hiding the truth from Him. And so when we cry out our guilt and shame and remorse, when we confess our sinfulness, in that moment we are freed from it. Isaiah confessed his guilt and his people’s guilt and the Seraphim flew to him with a live coal and placed it upon his lips, making him clean.

All it takes is a confession, an acknowledgement that we are far from the perfection of God and that is when God takes mercy upon us. This is why we confess our sins within the first ten minutes of church. Once we have confessed our guilt, we are given the freedom to worship God in peace. We are free to open ourselves up to the Spirit of God so that our souls may be refreshed. We are reminded of the gift Jesus gave to us when he died for us so that our sins would be forever washed away. In those moments of confession and pardon, we go from being outside the Father’s arms to being held securely in His embrace.

For Isaiah, after his confession and cleansing he is then able to hear God clearly. Now, in that moment of righteousness, he hears God say, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” Isaiah lives among a people of unclean lips, he has been cleansed but they have not. God has given a gift to Isaiah by making him righteous, and now God has called Isaiah to help the rest of his people to also be righteous.

It is not enough for just one person to be saved. God wants us all to be saved. This is the reason for all the prophets and why Jesus was constantly sending his disciples out to spread the Good News. This is why his last command before ascending to heaven was to tell the disciples to spread the Gospel to all four corners of the earth. Jesus did not sacrifice himself for just the Jews. God did not send his son for just those of us sitting in church today.

Every person is worthy of being saved. Every person has the ability to receive eternal life. Every person deserves the chance to choose God or to walk away. That means for every person saved, that is another person God will ask, “Whom shall I send? Who will go?” God tries to send us all out, but how many of us are willing to go?

Not everyone is given the task Isaiah has been given. God is not asking everyone in here to become pastors or missionaries. God is asking each of us to not hide our light, the light of the Spirit given to us on the day we said, “I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” God is asking us to not be afraid to be different from the crowd. God is asking us to think for ourselves and to pray to Him for guidance instead of the world. God is asking us to not be meek but instead to own who we are in Christ. God is asking us to be willing to step out of our comfort zones and to stand by Him.

God wants us to love Him as he loves us. God is asking us to not be ashamed of Him or to be ashamed of being a Christian. If we are to change the way the world looks at Christianity and Christians, then it has to be through what we say and do. If we stand idly by while others call themselves Christians and then do ungodly things, we are letting God down.

I’m a Christian and I don’t hate Muslims. I’m a Christian and I don’t judge others. I’m a Christian and I try to always love others. I’m a Christian and I have gay and lesbian friends. I’m a Christian and I believe in pro-choice. I’m a Christian and I try not to be a hypocrite.

The world is tired of Christians saying they follow the bible and Jesus, and then they do the complete opposite. People are angry at our inability to see our own sinfulness. People are angry that the bible shows Jesus as loving and accepting, and yet his followers are often the most judgmental and hardheaded of people.

The only way to change the world’s perception of us is to make sure we acknowledge our sins. The only way to be different is to admit that sometimes we don’t have all the answers and that God needs to lead the way. The world will not accept us or Jesus if we cannot say, “Woe is me! I am a person of unclean lips!” because they will see we are liars. We are lying to ourselves, to them, and to God when we pretend we are better than them. God wants us to admit our faults and then move ON so that we can help others as we have been helped.

God’s calling to us all now, “Whom shall I send? Who will go?” Are you willing to give as you have received? Are you willing to bless as you have been blessed, or will you forever be a hypocrite?

Amen.