Sermon, Fourth Sunday Before Lent: 'I Saw the Lord'

.....human kind 
Cannot bear very much reality. 
Time past and time future 
What might have been and what has been 
Point to one end, which is always present.

T S Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’ from Four Quartets

That might, or might not be true in our experience, but what is real? For most of us, most of the time, we assume that reality is what we ourselves can see, can touch, can measure, can experience physically. We are creatures of time and space, and our living is done within these boundaries. But is that really all that there is?

The author J K Rowling, in her popular series of Harry Potter novels very successfully describes a world in which there are two parallel realities: there is the world we all inhabit, and a magical world which is present for some people, but invisible and inaccessible to most. At times, though, the two realities coincide, or overlap, and result in a breaking-in of the magical world to the physical one. 

Religious faith also deals in parallel realities: the world of the physical (that is, everything that we can see, touch, and measure), and the world of the spiritual (less quantifiable, more elusive, but no less real). And again, there are points when the two come powerfully together. The Christmas story—the incarnation—is a classic example. It’s set at a point along the timeline of history, in a place which exists on the map. Jesus is born, a flesh-and-blood child to Mary, a flesh-and-blood woman. But if we engage with the accounts of his birth, we soon learn that he is no ordinary child, but the result of Mary having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit; his birth is marked by angels, and by a rogue star. We have two overlapping realities, and we express this in terms of God’s Word being made flesh. As St John puts it:

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. 

(1 John 1.1)

It’s almost too much reality to bear.

Another example of this is found in today’s Old Testament reading. This is one of the most wonderful passages in the whole Bible, and one which been a great influence on the practice of Christian worship. In it, the prophet Isaiah writes:

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; 
and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 

(Isaiah 6.1bi)

This was a remarkable spiritual experience which was to have a lasting effect on the future course of Isaiah’s life. Isaiah actually saw the Lord. But the experience took place on a date in history ‘in the year that King Uzziah died’ and within a familiar physical setting: the Temple. Within this earthly timebound context, Isaiah experiences a different reality: something other-worldly and eternal.

The physical things around him – the doorposts of the Temple, the mercy-seat, the incense offered with the sacrifices – these become heavenly things: the Lord on his throne in his glory, the doorposts moving, and the house filling with smoke. Isaiah looks with the eye of faith and sees angels—seraphim— in attendance on the Lord, and he gives us a graphic description of them:

each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. (6.2)

In the midst of what was probably normal, routine, temple worship, Isaiah finds himself transported into a parallel realm – into the presence of the Almighty. And so powerful is the experience that he can record what it looked like, sounded like, and smelled like.

Do we, I wonder, come to routine worship—to the Choral Eucharist at the Cathedral—expecting to encounter a parallel reality. Instead of hymns, candles, a mass setting, organ music, an altar and vestments, what do we expect to see, and whom do we expect to encounter? 

The danger is that if all we expect to see is this present reality—the things we can see, touch and measure—then that is all that we will see. We shall say the words of the liturgy, sing the hymns, hear the readings, the sermon and the prayers, receive the Sacrament – but will we encounter the other reality, which is just as real: the presence of God himself? Do we come to worship with the eye of faith, a heart open to wonder, and a spirit of expectation?

But what was the result—and indeed, what was the point—of Isaiah’s experience? His first reaction was to be totally overwhelmed by his inadequacy and fallenness as a human being:

‘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!’ (6.5)

This is so often the case when we come into an experience of the living God. Some Christians speak of being ‘convicted of sin,’ others of being acutely aware that they are utterly flawed. But Isaiah goes on to describe how God dealt with his overwhelming sense of sinfulness. It wasn’t to berate him – to tell him off, or to call him to repent. It’s as if God responds by saying ‘Well, yes. You are a man of unclean lips; you are lost. But we are where we are – and let me help you do something about it.’ God met Isaiah where he was, and gave him the means to be cleansed from his sin. Isaiah writes:

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.’ (6.7-8)

Isaiah’s unworthiness to be in the presence of God turned out not to be a barrier, because God himself dealt with the problem. There was nothing Isaiah could do to clean up his act and make himself acceptable to God. God acted on his behalf, and declared through the angel, ‘your sin is blotted out.’

It's no different with us. We stand today in God’s presence as sinners—yes, but as forgiven sinners, because God has taken the initiative for us: in our case through the death of Jesus. Our sin is blotted out; a line has been drawn, and we begin again to enjoy the presence of God.

How wonderful that must have been for Isaiah. How lovely. He could now sit back and enjoy this most amazing of experiences: luxuriating in the song of the angels amidst the clouds of incense, a real piece of heaven-on-earth. But no. The vision had a purpose and that certainly wasn’t to foster Isaiah’s self-indulgence. Almost immediately, Isaiah hears a voice:

‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ (6.8a)

Who will go for us? For us? Is this perhaps the royal ‘we?’ If our Visitor, His Majesty The King were to command us to do something, then we would have to do it. I well remember issuing the liturgical instructions for the rehearsal of the Royal Maundy at York back in 2012. The Archbishop’s Chaplain asked the Almoner ‘Does the Archbishop really have to be at the rehearsal?’ To which the Almoner replied: ‘Her Majesty commands it!’

But no, this is not the royal ‘we’ speaking here. This is a profound insight into the nature and the character of God. As Christians, we are well used to the idea of God as a community—a Trinity—of persons: the Father, the Son and the Spirit. We sang about it in the opening hymn, and there is more than a hint of it in the song of the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision:

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; (6.3b)

But here we also have a glimpse into the sort of action God goes in for. ‘Who will go for us?’ God is a God who sends. The Father sends the Son; the Father (and the Son) send the Spirit. And the whole godhead—the whole Trinity—sends.... us: you and me. The question proved to be a lightbulb moment for Isaiah, and he found himself replying:

‘Here am I; send me!’ (6.8b)

The call to go was utterly compelling.

Like Isaiah, we are people of both flesh and spirit. Our physicality is affirmed by God both at the creation—we are part of what God made which he declared to be ‘very good’ (Genesis 1.31a)—and also in the birth of his Son Jesus: God in human flesh. Our spirituality is also affirmed by God at the creation: God breathing into our nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 2.7b), and in sending the Holy Spirit into our hearts (Galatians 4.6). As such, we were designed to live with these two parallel and overlapping realities: the physical and the spiritual. The physical world we inhabit points beyond itself to its creator, and in so doing, it acts sacramentally, pointing to spiritual reality.

In worship, we use physical things to help us draw near to God: the written Scriptures, the bread and wine of Communion, the audible sound of choral and organ music. But, as with Isaiah, worship offers us a window onto the things of God. And in this context, as our worship joins with that offered around the throne of God in heaven, we are reminded of the cleansing love of God—of sin forgiven—and of God’s call: ‘go for us.’ We are to be sent.

The question is: ‘Where are you – where am I – being sent today?’

God in Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—
grant us, we pray, a vision of your glory,
and the cleansing of your altar’s fire,
that we may hear your call
and go where you would send;
for your love’s sake. Amen.