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Sunday, February 22, 2009
Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?
8th in a series on Questions from the Bible
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8 Good News Bible Translation
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. He was sitting on his throne, high and exalted, and his robe filled the whole Temple. 2 Around him flaming creatures were standing, each of which had six wings. Each creature covered its face with two wings, and its body with two, and used the other two for flying. 3 They were calling out to each other: "Holy, holy, holy! The Lord Almighty is holy! His glory fills the world." 4 The sound of their voices made the foundation of the Temple shake, and the Temple itself became filled with smoke. 5 I said, "There is no hope for me! I am doomed because every word that passes my lips is sinful, and I live among a people whose every word is sinful. And yet, with my own eyes I have seen the King, the Lord Almighty." 6 Then one of the creatures flew down to me, carrying a burning coal that he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 He touched my lips with the burning coal and said, "This has touched your lips, and now your guilt is gone, and your sins are forgiven." 8 Then I heard the Lord say, "Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?"
You may recognize the connection between the story we read from the prophet Isaiah and the hymn that is one of the favorites in our hymnal. The song, Here I Am Lord, is based on these verses from the prophet Isaiah when he was in the temple in Jerusalem and received a personal “Call” experience. He felt himself in the presence of God, felt himself unworthy, then felt himself forgiven, and then he felt called by God to speak to the people about their need to change and to be more fully God’s people! This “Call Story” is very similar to a couple of other stories about major Bible characters as well.
Isaiah was the prophet Jesus quotes the most. He lived 700 years before Jesus in a time when the Assyrians were a major threat to Israel. As Isaiah understood God and God’s invitation there in the temple, the more serious threat to Israel was from within. They had turned on themselves. They had become complacent and had forgotten that they were to be an example of faithfulness to others, a light to the nations. They had forgotten they were called to care for the stranger, the newcomer, the widow, the orphan and the vulnerable. Their selfishness and inwardness was going to be the seed of ruin.
Isaiah went on to speak some hard words to his people but he felt called by God to do so from his time in worship. “Whom shall I send and who will be our messenger?” Isaiah said yes to God even though he did not know where this, Yes, might lead him. He said, in a step of faith, “I will go. Here I am. Send me.”
In Isaiah’s Call Story, in his, Yes, to God, the story is similar to other examples in the Bible. I talked last week about the simple, beautiful story of Ruth in the Bible. Ruth felt called to leave her own country and go back with her mother-in-law to the country of Israel where she met a man who became her new husband. Ruth eventually became the great grandmother of King David. We could think about the story of Abraham who, at the age of 70, felt a Call. It was an invitation from God to leave his roots in Haran and to go to a new place, to take a step of faith into the unknown and to settle in Palestine some 1700 years before Jesus. When Abraham said, yes to God, God said to Abraham, “I will bless you so that you can be a blessing.”
We could remember other Call Stories in the Bible where people felt God at work in their hearts and took a risk, took a step of faith into the unknown. People like Moses and Paul. Moses almost didn’t say yes to God. Paul was an enemy of the new movement called, Followers of the Way, but he got his life turned around and became its greatest advocate and missionary.
All of these people took a risk and made a leap of faith believing that there was more than just reason and fact involved in their decision. They did not know all of what would happen to them when they moved ahead, but they felt that their step on a different journey was the right thing to do. They felt a powerful nudge. They felt called and they said, “Here I am. I will go.”
Have you ever felt that? Have you ever acted on a nudge, a call, an invitation, and taken a risk, taken a step of faith? In our 40 years in Colorado, I have been pleasantly surprised to hear a great number of people who moved here from elsewhere because this is where they wanted to live, and they moved here without a job. Their move was a step of faith. They said, “We don’t know exactly what we will find and we have gathered some information, but, we don’t know all the facts. We still feel that this is the right place and that this is the right decision and we have enough light, enough facts and enough faith to say yes to this move.”
You may have done that, or your step of faith may have been to start a new business after you had done your homework and your research and you had good information. Even with that research, there may still have been some unknowns, but with those facts and with the unknowns you said yes, and you took a step of faith.
We even do that when we get married! We are in love, we have established trust, we feel a covenant with this person, but still we will never have all the information about what the future will hold and our yes to this other person and our yes to God is an act of faith. We trust that God will give us enough light. Sometimes there is only enough light to see the next step and not the entire path, but the light for that next step will be enough. Has this ever been your experience? You felt called on a journey and you only had a little light to see, but you felt called and you said, yes, and it was the right thing? This is common for most of us when we try to listen to God’s direction, God’s nudges, and God’s call in our lives.
Speaking of people getting married, I had the privilege, about a year ago, to officiate at the wedding of Kelly Jo Eldredge and Eric Mott in our sanctuary. They had both tried online dating services to meet other people, lots of other people, and had almost given up until they finally met each other. It is a beautiful story, and, God bless Eric and Kelly Jo, they wrote a book about all of their unsuccessful experiences and about their successful experience of meeting each other. They wrote a book titled, We Met at Starbucks.
The act of writing a book is an act of faith, it is a risky step. You don’t know how it will be received. It makes you vulnerable to write a book and to tell, especially in this case, so personal a story. They felt nudged, they felt called, and I am so pleased they said yes to that call and took a step of faith. I commend the book to you. Eric wrote me about another example of a similar step of faith when Kelly Jo decided, two years ago, to quit her secure job and take up the insecure and risky job of being a free lance writer. She now has more work than she can handle and a waiting list for clients!
You and I have taken similar steps of faith in our lives individually, but also as a community of faith. This exceptional congregation has been on an exciting, and sometimes scary, journey together over the 49 years of church our life. We have taken some risks and, I believe, followed nudges and callings from God into some unknown territory. When we have done that, some people have been angry at the change and some people have left to find a different place. I also I believe God has allowed us to fulfill our purpose to invite and nurture and form each other from admirers of Christ into disciples of Christ.
We have used these Call Stories from the Bible as examples for us over the years. We used this when we were making the scary decision ten years ago to relocate and buy a very expensive new 16 acre site so we could reach out to more people. We read each other the story of the Israelites when they were wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land and they sent spies into Canaan and to scope it out. Do you remember that story? The spies returned and most of them were very scared by what they saw. Most of them said, this is a good and rich new land, but the people there are giants and we can never be successful if we try to do such an ambitious thing. It is too risky, we are too weak. We will fail. By the way, those are words that we heard in every step of the past 15 years of our history, and they are words you will hear if you take any bold steps of faith in your personal life and in your work life as well.
In the story of Israel, there were two other spies who had a different opinion. Joshua and Caleb, said, “This is where God is calling us. We can do this with the help of God and God is calling us to move ahead.” You can read the rest of this story in chapters 13 and 14 of the book of Numbers in your Bible.
Today in our all church meeting, we are deciding about another step in our congregation’s journey of responding to God’s call to make room and to reach out and invite. We will be voting on a resolution that will let us spend the money that has been donated for our new building and that has been given so we can expand ministry to those who are not here. We are voting to gather information to let us later decide about expanding our space. It is an important vote and it is part of a series of votes in which the St. Andrew community is responding to what we have sensed as God’s invitation and together we have said, here we are, send us to do your work in a region where congregations like ours are woefully needed and are seriously underrepresented. Some of us, over the 49 years of the congregational life of St. Andrew, have felt called to be offering a congregation of Open Hearts, Open Minds, and Open Doors.
Our building committee’s over the years have done good research and good homework. That is the case in our current plan of expansion. We have said to each other as leaders in the past two months, this is a very uncertain time. This is a very worrisome time, a time like most of us have not experienced in our lives. We want to be very prudent and responsible. We want to be careful and wise stewards of our community’s resources. And we also want to respond to the invitation and the call that has always been part of our 49 year history. We want to remember that in some of the decisions in our personal lives, we may only have enough light to see one or two steps ahead, but that may also be enough light to go where God is leading us!!
Where have you had to combine facts and reason and faith in your personal life, your family life, your life at work, and your spiritual life? Where have you said, like Isaiah and Abraham and Moses, “Here I am, Lord. Even though I don’t know all of what the future holds, I know that you hold my future.” What has happened when you have done your homework and have combined both facts and faith, reason and spirit in saying yes to God?