A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany Year C

 

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!

 

Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!

 

 

Isaiah in the Temple sees the majesty of God, high and lofty: and fears that he is lost. Peter witnesses a miraculous haul of fish breaking his nets -- and tells Jesus to go away. Something mysterious and powerful is present, something too awesome, too dangerous, for human beings to be near. In the presence of God, people are awe-struck. When the Holy is revealed, the response is often holy fear.

 

Yet, as someone once said to me, holy fear is not high on the spiritual agendas of 21^st Christians. To the contrary, we see holy fear as the unwelcome legacy of the fiery religion of our ancestors, including my own ancestor, Jonathan Edwards, the 18^th century preacher of the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  In those days, evangelical Calvinists like Edwards’ made more of holy fear than did our Anglican forebears -- but even 18^th century Anglicans would likely have sounded pretty fierce to us.

 

Today, our culture, both religious and secular, has little room for awe of the Holy. “Awesome” is a pre-teen’s word for the latest video game, not a response to the presence of God. Church has become a place to feel at comfortably at home – not where we go to be awed by God’s majesty.

The transcendence of the God who is utterly beyond us is seldom on our radar. Today's Evangelicals have become largely mute when it comes to God’s holiness: the “seeker-sensitive” mega-churches don’t attract thousands of feel-good baby-boomers by harping on the fear of God! If they speak at all of God’s awesomeness, it is the intimate awesomeness of having Jesus as your friend.

 

But if holy fear in the presence of God is unfamiliar to us, it is well-trod territory in the Bible. When Moses first sees the burning bush, he comes near because he is curious. But when God speaks from the flames, Moses takes off his shoes and hides his face -- he is afraid to look at God.  Isaiah has a vision of the LORD seated on a throne high and lofty in the Temple, surrounded by seraphs who cry out, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts! The whole earth is full of God’s glory!” -- and Isaiah fears he is lost. So it is again and again in Scripture down to today’s Gospel when Peter asks Jesus to go away after seeing a miraculous catch of fish. The presence of the holy in Jesus is too much for Peter to bear. 

 

Why does the experience of the divine evoke such fear? What makes people afraid when the Holy comes near? One reason is that the presence of the Holy God makes people painfully aware of their human sin. Isaiah feels his unclean lips burning; Peter tells Jesus to go away because he, Peter, is a “sinful man.” The contrast between the holy goodness of the divine and the unholy sinfulness of humanity is stark.

God is good and we, so often, are not. Sinful humans might well fear that the fire of the Holy One will simply consume them –  as happens in the climactic scene of the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazis dare to look into the holy Ark of the Covenant, and are destroyed by the divine spirits who come forth.

 

But there is more to holy fear than the moral difference between God and us; something yet more basic than our sinfulness and God’s goodness. It is the vast difference between Creator and creature; between the Holy One who made the “galaxies, suns, and planets in their courses,”  and we who inhabit a tiny corner of this “fragile earth, our island home.” The Holy One is Wholly Other: beyond us in ways we can’t comprehend, so different, so Other, so awe-some that we dare not come near.

 

Our best attempts to imagine how far beyond us God is fail. We say God’s infinite being extends through the universe and beyond, but the all we can imagine is something really, really big – not the One is beyond space itself. We talk of the Eternity in which God dwells, but all we can comprehend is a very, very long time, not the One who is beyond Time itself.

 

In my last parish, we occasionally had what we called Stump the Clergy question time with our Sunday School kids.  Always, one child would ask: “Where did God come from?” I’d always answer, “God didn’t come from anywhere. God has no beginning and no end. God always has been and always will be.” They would look at me blankly because I’d said something they couldn’t understand –  and frankly, neither can I. I’ve been to seminary. I know the theologically correct words.  But just like those kids, I can’t get my mind around what they are trying to point to.

 

And that’s the point. God’s divine being is so utterly different from our human being, so Wholly Other, so far beyond our comprehension that even a small glimpse of this Holy One who is the source of our existence leaves us awe-struck --  aware, suddenly, of how tiny we are before the vastness of God; how frail our being before the One who simply is. 

 

This is the Holy One at whom we fear to look, before whom we fear to stand, from whom we want to flee.  Is it any wonder that Moses hides his face,  Isaiah cries, “Woe is me!”, and that Peter wants Jesus to go away?

 

And yet… Moses, Isaiah and Peter don’t run away. The stay in the Holy One’s presence, and receive a call to speak, to follow, to serve, to act. And each, like Isaiah, answers: “Here am I -- Send me.” Powerful as is their fear in the face of the Holy, something yet more powerful draws them, attracts them, makes them want to stay with and serve the God who fills them with awe.

 

What is that keeps them close even as the are filled with awe?

 

What draws them near and moves them to serve is what the Psalmist calls the beauty of holiness:[1] the fire of divine love at the heart of God, a love so intense it inspires both dread and desire.

 

Such experiences of the beauty of holiness, at once awesome and attractive, are not confined to the Bible. A friend told me of having such an encounter on a walk in the woods in winter. As she came to the edge of an open field, a grove of birch trees on the opposite side caught her eye -- and then her heart. Walking slowly closer, awe overtook her – for the trees, mysteriously, seemed filled with the presence of the Holy God. She wanted to take off her boots and kneel in the snow. For minutes, she dared come no closer – yet felt pulled toward the holy grove. She stood there a long time, until the vision dimmed –  but on her walk home glimpses of holiness in the woods came again and again, filling her with awe and joy.

 

I think most of have known such moments in our lives, if perhaps less dramatic --moments when divine holiness has shone in some unexpected corner of nature, or in the eyes of baby, the touch of a lover, in the presence of death, or like Isaiah, in worship –  and we’ve been filled with fear and love; joy and awe, dread and desire. If you can’t recall such a moment in your life, I encourage you to pray it be given you -- or to ask to remember when holiness has come near to you.

 

Such moments if we let them can change us, as Moses, Isaiah and Peter were changed.  None of them could go back to business as usual. They worshiped the Holy One -then went to do God’s work: to liberate slaves, to speak the word of the Lord, to fish for people. We know what Moses, Isaiah and Peter did because their deeds were recorded in Scripture. But there are many others whose encounters with the Holy and whose work for God are not widely known, like my friend, who serves where God has sent her in her small way.

 

By God’s gift, the same can become true of all of us. We are here this morning to worship the Holy One, to join Isaiah’s seraphs in singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord.” And whether or not we are struck with holy awe today, we are invited this and every Sunday to seek those moments when holy fear has touched our lives and to pray that may come – the moments when awe and love, dread and desire have been woven together in the presence of God.

 

Rich and powerful as those moments are, however, they are not given simply to move our hearts.  They are given so that we may be changed, and then, like Moses, Isaiah and Peter to go serve the Holy One wherever we are sent.

 

 

The Rev. Jack Zamboni

February 7^th, 2010