Scripture: Isaiah 6: 1-9; John 6:35, 41-51

“And they cried out to one another in this way, ‘Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh Sabaoth. His glory fills the whole earth.'”

-- Isaiah 6:3

He is called Isaiah of Jerusalem to distinguish him from one of his disciples whom we usually call Deutero–Isaiah and who 200 years later, in exile in Babylon, wrote the chapters 40-55 that are included in the biblical book named for him. He lived and worked in the 8th century BC, like Amos and Hosea, and not the 6th like his disciple. He worked in Jerusalem rather than the northern capital Samaria where Amos and Hosea worked, and so represents 8th century prophecy in the other kingdom than the one we have been concerned with to this point. He is so important in his time and so influential for his future that we shall spend the rest of our summer series on Isaiah of Jerusalem. That means that I shall have spent all my time this summer on the 9th and 8th century BC prophets and must leave the prophets of the 6th century, Deutero-Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel for next summer.

Isaiah of Jerusalem is the prophet who gave us our concepts of the Holiness of God, the nature of faith, and the person and work of the Messiah, that is, he the prophet of divine holiness, human trust, and the Messianic kingdom. So three sermons are the fewest we can devote to him, and today I want to take up the idea of holiness by examining his call to be a prophet. God called him by a vision while he was worshiping in the temple in Jerusalem one day in the year that king Uzziah died (740 BC). The details of his vision have stamped themselves indelibly into our Christian worship. You cannot fail to have recognized the song of the seraphim “Holy, Holy, Holy,” as the text of the Sanctus in the canon of the Eucharist. We shall analyze those lines in due course, but first let me tell you more about Isaiah of Jerusalem in general.

Unlike Amos and Hosea who were relatively unsophisticated types, one a shepherd and both outsiders, whose Hebrew style and language could at times be crude, Isaiah is an urban aristocrat and an insider. The kings don’t send their high priests to pay him to go away from the door of the temple, rather they invite him to their quarters for a chat about foreign policy. They wanted his political advice in time of war and when they followed it, it turned out to be good advice. He was a man of many parts. For instance the editors of the Jerusalem Bible describe him as follows, “The prominent part played by Isaiah in his country’s affairs made him a national figure, but he was also a poet of genius. Brilliance of style and freshness of imagery make his work pre-eminent in the literature of the Bible: he wrote a concise, majestic, harmonious prose unsurpassed by any of the biblical writers who were to follow him. But his greatness lies above all in the religious order. The vision in the temple at the time of his vocation, a revelation of the transcendence of God and the unworthiness of man, left a lasting mark on the prophet. His monotheism has a note of exultation in it but also of awe: God is the Holy, the Strong, the Mighty One, the King. Man is a creature defiled by sin for which God demands reparation (JB. p. 1124).” Let us stop there and use the description of his monotheism as exultant, of his God as Holy, Strong, Mighty and Royal, as a segue to our theme of holiness and our text for today..

God is holy, three times holy. In Hebrew such repetition is a way of saying very, very holy, but you must pardon the Christian exegetes who see it as a reference to the Holy Trinity. Why does he say “Holy” three times? Because God is one, in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  In the Hebrew couplet Holy is parallel to Glory, and that says that they have the same basic meaning, which each word states in a different way, bringing out a different nuance. “Holy,” (KADOSH in Hebrew) means, “set apart,” “radically different,” “definitely other,” “unique,” and “Glorious,” (KABOD in Hebrew), means “heavy,” “hard,” “grievous (in the sense of deeply affecting),” “rich,” and “honorable.” That means that God is uniquely heavy, hard, grievous, rich and honorable. I had a colleague in the sixties at Claremont who used to chant the Sanctus, “Heavy, heavy, heavy, is the Lord of Hosts,” “heavy” being hippy language for “totally significant.” These days I do not know if there is an equivalent slang term; I have the impression that nothing is totally significant any more, and the most important quality is one called “cool.”

Holiness in the Bible is definitely not cool; it is hot and heavy; the seraphim are the angels of fire, and smoke fills the vestibule of the sanctuary, the place of the great altar and the great candlestick called the Menorah. When the vision comes Isaiah is probably witnessing a whole burnt offering on that great altar, which metamorphoses mysteriously. The flames of the burning victim turn into the fiery angels called seraphim and the great cloud of smoke obscures the scene. All is transfigured in his consciousness and as he hears the accolades of the angels he feels he is in the throne room of heaven. His first response is dismay. “Woe is me,” – in the Hebrew, “Oi Li” (“Oi Vey” is the plural form) – “I am a liar and everyone I know is a liar, and here am I in the presence of the Holy One whose Word is the Way, the Truth and the Life!” Thus he makes the absolutely fundamental point that the divine holiness is opposed to human sinfulness, that the holy, wholly other is not only metaphysically other, but morally other, and especially so. That is, God does not approve or encourage sin, is never a co-dependent or an accomplice in our sin. God understands but God never condones. We must deal with our sin, or rather, let God deal with it.

Did Isaiah know that God was about to commission him to speak? Is that why he immediately confessed his lying lips? In any case, let us let him tell us the rest of the story, “Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding in his hand a live coal which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. With this he touched my mouth and said, ‘ See, now this has touched your lips, your sin is taken away, your iniquity is purged.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying ‘Whom shall I send? Who shall be our messenger?’ I answered, ‘Here am I, send me’ (6:6-9).”  Thus God dealt with his sin, because he confessed it, and what option had he, here in the presence of the Holy One?

There is always too much in the passages we choose to think about to do more that scratch the surface in a sermon. I trust you will take these few hints of mine home with you and read and re-read this great passage until things begin to metamorphose for you and you feel the need for God to cleanse your lips, and then send you to do His work. Here are the saving antitheses of our biblical faith: God is holy, we are unholy, God is strong we are weak, God is honorable, rich hard and grievous, and we are the opposite. That’s the good news. The better news is that God will send his angel from the frightening darkness of holy awe to purify us and prepare us to work with God in this world, if we confess. The best news of all, however, is that in the fullness of time, God decided no longer merely to send angels, but to come Himself, so that we might the more easily be in the divine presence and so be moved to confession.  For this reason he came from the realm of awesome holiness into the world of lying lips, made himself very small and inconspicuous, so that even shepherds and folk like us, who are not insiders in the corridors of political and financial power, nor given visions in the vestibule of the Holy of Holies, might nevertheless see the Lord, Yahweh Sabaoth, high and lifted up, on the lap of a young virgin in a stable.  For, as the prophet says, “…the maiden is already with child and will soon give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel“ (7:14).

On the next two Sundays we shall see how the Holy, wholly other God, told us beforehand that he intended to identify Himself with us all in the virgin’s son, not merely with the chosen privileged prophets, and how He is acting in history to bring in the Kingdom of God’s true Messiah.