Passages for reflection: Isaiah 6: 1 - 12 and Luke 4: 31 - 37My grandfather liked to go walking. He’d walk from his house to the town every day for his beloved Daily Mail. And on a Sunday he would walk from his house, rest an hour in church, then walk on to our house for his dinner, then about 5.30 he’d do the same in reverse, resting another hour during evening service before going home for his cocoa. But eventually the walking was his downfall, because he’d shuffle along, his eyes on the pavement rather than what was ahead of him. Looking down all the time meant one day he fell and broke his hip and his days of walking were over.
If we look down too much maybe we too will fall. That’s my argument today. For some reason this week I’ve been thinking afresh about the call of the Church. I think we’ve lost our focus. I think we are looking down so much we are forgetting to look up. We are wondering in some places why it is hard and it’s hard because we aren’t looking up to God enough. We are like grandfather, shuffling along when God has so much for us to see and encounter if we will only look to him and for him again. We come to worship to encounter the living God. We come to glimpse his holiness and then we go to be holy and find holiness in the world. We look up in order to cope with what is down. If we don’t look up then what is down will feel overwhelming. Or even blight us like a spiritual broken hip.
Barbara Brown Taylor is a lovely American spiritual writer. Her wonderful book “An Altar in the World” has this challenge to us in it: “Whoever you are, you are human, wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.” We look up to notice the beauty of divine holiness, we go out to be holy people because God is holy. We seek God and lift our heads up.
The old hymn in the MHB said it “ looking upward every day, sunshine on our faces, pressing onward every day, towards the heavenly places.” A pop song in the 1980’s by Yazz and the plastic population said it “the only way is up.”
How do we notice holiness? It can take us by surprise. I’ve just joined the chaplain’s rota at Fountains Abbey. Apparently the local Methodist minister is included because he or she has churches within the Anglican Fountains Benefice. I’m not complaining! I get to wander about and speak to people visiting that beautiful place.
Some are tourists, but others make a pilgrimage and are deeply moved by being part of the story of divine encounter joining the monks of old, others just find having the space in a busy life to discover other priorities. Holiness does its stuff. Folk looking up, see a glimpse of the glory of God even if some of them don’t name their nice day out as that.
We can do that in church too, you know. We gather to notice the holiness already here. All our worship is a response to an encounter with a God who is above us and beyond us yet comes down to us in Jesus. I know we have to have discussions when we come about the boiler and how we pay the circuit assessment or another worry we have, but I just worry what seems to be coming first…
Maybe we need to learn from Isaiah. He could do no other than look up when he was in the Temple that day. He was overwhelmed by the theophany around him. You know the story recorded in the sixth chapter of the first Isaiah’s prophecy. There are three Isaiah’s of course. Here’s Isaiah number 1 at worship. He said “Woe is me. I am lost. He was undone, because he came before the great and wonderful God, he was worshipping with his whole being, and God was so great, he for a while felt inadequate.
King Uzziah’s reign was at an end, and Isaiah saw the true and eternal king, and heaven manifested right there in that Temple. Fiery angelic beings, seraphim, attended the king, they sang that his glory and holiness will fill the whole world. The foundations of the Temple were shaken by the noise of the hymn, and the smoke of the incense of the heavenly worship filled the building, and Isaiah cried out first that he was unworthy to be there, polluted by his own sins and those of his people. Surely he must perish!
But one of the seraphim flew to the altar of incense and with the priest’s tongs takes a burning coal and touches Isaiah’s lips and his sin is purged and expiated, and his lips in particular are ready for the service of God.
Isaiah had an experience of the divine, and is changed by it. He looked up and wow – he would never be the same. He noticed the holiness already there. I read a magazine article this week about daring to be in the presence of God, even for a little while and being really open to his will. It said you need to be receptive to what God might want to give you. I wonder what would happen if we spent time being honest about how we feel as we enter this place before worship and what emotions come here.
As a leader of worship, I am always conscious in the congregation are all sorts of moods, problems, joys, people in need, people feeling they don’t matter, people who need God to speak to them just as they are.
The writer went on to say that most important is offering a period of time to God and sticking to it, trusting that God will use that time, and asking the Holy Spirit to guide us.
Isaiah was transformed in the encounter with God from a man of unclean lips into a man ready to be used, God’s power would commission him to be of use in the world. He would be a changed person because of the encounter. He arrived there in despair – despair about himself and about the world.
Perhaps we come to worship in despair. Despair about what is happening around us in society, in the world feeling inadequate, world situations never changing. Despair about ourselves, a personal situation we have carried with us in private through the church door, despair about the church, maybe some of you are worried or frustrated about your church. I have eight Church Councils in the next month or so! Like Isaiah, very often we can feel that there is nothing we can do to put our life right or make the church grow.
I want us to take inspiration from this story. Look up and notice the holiness already there. Isaiah felt inspired to carry on with his life and his ministry to the people. His response was definite – when God asks who will go, he says, “Here am I. Send me!” He saw service as response to the divine. God through the angelic beings brought to him healing and wholeness in a whole new way.
O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness… then share the rumour of the Holy in the world by being holy.
Isaiah was given a responsibility – and it would not be easy.
If you read on in the prophesy you’ll see that the work will be hard, there will be rejection as he will be saying there will be exile and ruined cities. Note the warning by God, that people will not be receptive.
My Old Testament tutor at Hartley Victoria, one David Wood said never ever end the call of Isaiah reading at verse 8 with send me, but remind people what we might be sent to!
Can holiness change not only us but the world? In the Gospel story, when the man with an unclean spirit cried out to Jesus, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God”, Jesus rebuked the spirit, saying “Be silent, and come out of him!”
Some commentaries on this passage, point out that it was impossible for a man with an unclean spirit to be allowed in to the synagogue. If you were possessed by an unclean spirit, you were not allowed at all to live in the community let alone to enter the synagogue. This person might have been expelled from his family and friends, marginalised from the entire world that he used to live in.
On the day Luke records, Jesus’ presence freed him from the unclean spirit and gave him his place back in the community. It also challenged the people who were trapped in their own pride and prejudice that they were qualified to be present in the synagogue. Jesus destroyed the boundary between the sick man and the comfortable congregation, and there’s a lesson for us about where holiness and divine work happens… not just in here but out there. Maybe the holiness of God is ahead of us. Maybe the holiness of God calls us to make a difference. Maybe the holiness of God leads us to make a stand when things are wrong. Maybe God is doing a new thing for us to notice, so we need to chill out and look…
Have you ever walked into a church for an act of worship and walked straight out again? I have! Yesterday. I was invited to be at the ordination and induction of the new pastor of the baptist church in Ripon. I walked in in a face covering. I was stared at by some men in the foyer. One of them handed me an order of service without saying a word. I went into the church and the congregation were packed in, no distancing and not a face covering in sight. I didn’t feel safe so I turned round and left, past the staring men and out the door. Across the road I found Blossomgate Barbers and I needed a hair cut. There I met Sean, what a great name for a barber, and we had a good twenty minute conversation about life, the church, what I do all day and God. He was fascinated I was quite ordinary and he told me he doesn’t do church but that “God is everywhere, isn’t he, mate?” We were discussing holiness. The congregation across the road had an hour’s sermon that was really quite uncomfortable. Apparently everyone but strict and peculiar Baptists are doomed.
Are we needing to rediscover the Holy as a priority to be revitalised as a church no matter how many of us there are? Or as children of God?
I’m beginning a four week series on Thursday evenings this month on a Methodist Way of Life in my two Ripon churches. John Wesley’s early Methodism was a commitment to a holiness project. For John Wesley holiness of life was, ‘the aim of his life, the organising centre of his thought, the spring of all action, his one abiding project’.The purpose of the Methodist movement was to ‘spread scriptural holiness throughout the land’. Wesley once claimed that there was no holiness but social holiness. It is within Christian community that holiness of life is to be realised.
Are we needing a new commitment to take time to notice the holiness already there? This may mean more expectation that God might do something in our worship time, it may mean we spend more time in prayer, it may mean being where God wants us to be to spread it about a bit.
Do we shuffle along and fall, or are we prepared to look up, and notice God again? I’m making two out of my three congregations this Sunday say part of the Te Deum. It’s a mighty piece of writing.
We praise you, O God, we acclaim you as the Lord; all creation worships you,
the Father everlasting. To you all angels, all the powers of heaven,
the cherubim and seraphim, sing in endless praise:
Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,
heaven and earth are full of your glory.
The glorious company of apostles praise you.
The noble fellowship of prophets praise you.
The white-robed army of martyrs praise you.
Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you:
Father, of majesty unbounded,
your true and only Son, worthy of all praise,
the Holy Spirit, advocate and guide.
If we have had an encounter with God in our Temple this Sunday, revealed to us today as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, we will be all-embracing, loving, respectful, at all times, to whoever comes here, and whoever we meet wherever we are. And we will be God’s people countering all that is wrong.
Our conversations, meetings, decisions, priorities all should be pure response. This is my 25th year of doing this. Those moments when we get it right, when we treat each other with kindness and respect, when we get a tingle in us that comes when we see his possibilities, when we see his light shine and his grace shared in the world we are noticing his holiness and believing holiness can change the world, beginning here.
No matter how we are feeling and no matter what we have done, God will touch us anew. God chooses to love us, in Jesus. God desires us to be his people. God invites us to respond.
Having met God, how will you be his people? Will you look up?
I hope so.
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