Meditation on Isaiah 6:1–8
Pastor Karen Crawford
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Trinity Sunday/Memorial Day Weekend
May 26, 2024
I can’t remember the moment when I heard God calling me to parish ministry. I don’t think it was just one moment, actually, but rather a gradual illumination, a slow dawning, that this was God’s will for my life.
Looking back at those first years of ministry, I remember many joys and sorrows, highs and lows. Some of the most difficult struggles weren’t the challenges of the wintry climate of Minnesota or my flock, but those that were within myself—when I began to doubt my own abilities and gifts.
The one lesson that the Lord is trying to teach me—and all of us, I believe—is that our feeling of not being worthy or good enough to serve the Lord and God’s people has nothing to do with God’s call and claim on our lives. In fact, I might argue that the feeling of inadequacy almost always goes along with the call. If you aren’t feeling inadequate, then maybe you don’t understand what the Lord is requiring of you.
And if you’re someone who is kind of a perfectionist, then you are always going to feel like you aren’t good enough. Who am I talking to, now, when I talk about perfectionism? You will focus on your flaws and past mistakes and believe that everything in the scheme of things must be fixed and perfect before God can use you. This is, in fact, a sinful way of looking at things because it doesn’t acknowledge Christ’s suffering work that accomplished our forgiveness, once and for all. Our sins have been blotted out—not with a hot coal, but with the One who died on a cross and lives, again. Those with perfectionistic tendences believe that we have something more to do to somehow earn or achieve God’s forgiveness and our worthiness to follow God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
Here is my most recent struggle. I’ve shared with some of you that I am still experiencing some blurred vision and headaches after my eye surgeries, particularly when I am reading and writing and working at the computer. A doctor this week told me that the lens implants have become cloudy, something that can happen. The way to correct it is to have another surgery, in three months or so.
This little setback has worked on my confidence—made me become concerned that I would be able to do what I need to do for my class that starts in Austin in about a week.
That’s what I mean about the struggle with self-doubt and fear of failure—and how this is the REAL cause of our hesitation in answering the call to serve the Lord with our lives—devoting ourselves more fully to following Christ. This is what leads us to say, “No, Lord. I’m not the one. I’m not good enough. Don’t send me!”
Are we surprised that Isaiah has an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy in the presence of a Holy God, sitting on a throne, high and lofty, in his vision recorded in chapter 6? The hem of God’s robe filled the whole temple! Seraphs, snake-like creatures with wings, are all around. Isaiah describes them as each having “six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.” And they calling to one another, singing: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’”
The pivots shake with the voices. The house of the Lord is filled with smoke. Isaiah says, “‘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!’” His personal and communal confession makes us wonder if this is just the ordinary inadequacy of sinful human beings in the presence of God–or is there something more going on?
In part, the answer lies in the time in which he lives, “the year that King Uzziah died,” around 738 BCE. This is a pivotal point in Israelite history. “Uzziah’s death marks a transition from political stability to the looming Assyrian crisis. (And) yet it is far more about a change in God’s time,” says biblical scholar Robert A. Ratcliff. This is a time when the “will of God can be more clearly seen and the presence of God more clearly felt.” [1]
Terrible things are about to happen, right when God’s will and very presence would be revealed to Isaiah, for the sake of God’s children. The Lord is about to do a new thing in the midst of a war, which will lead to the Assyrians’ capture of Samaria, the capitol of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 720 BCE, and many of the Israelites being carried off into captivity.
So you are wondering, right now, how then, can we relate to Isaiah’s story, those of us certainly living in difference circumstances, in the 21st century? We can connect with his call story, because it raises “the daunting question of what it means to be chosen to fulfill God’s purposes.” [2]
For we, too, are chosen. Yes, we are !
In Scripture, frequently those who receive the call realize its potential to upend their lives” [3] and so they resist. “Jeremiah objects due to his youth and inexperience in public speaking.” Moses pleads with God to send someone else, saying that he has a speech impediment, a stutter, when he is really terrified to return to Egypt, where he is wanted for murder. When God calls Jonah to go and preach to Israelites’ enemies, the Ninevites, Jonah heads in the opposite direction, rather than obey the troubling voice of God.
But after Isaiah’s initial resistance—and the seraph’s touching his mouth with a burning coal, so that his guilt has departed and his sin has been blotted out—Isaiah answers God’s question, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ with an obedient and enthusiastic, ‘Here am I. Send me!’”
Isaiah will have his work cut out for him. The people will not listen to Isaiah’s prophetic word. They will resist God’s claim on their lives and refuse to embrace the Lord’s call to return to their faith and faithfulness. In his lifetime, Isaiah, the one whose name means, “The Lord is my salvation,” and is a descendant of Judah and Tamar, is ridiculed and persecuted, enduring beatings and imprisonment during his 55 to 60-year ministry, which will end in martyrdom. He would never know the importance of his life, ministry, and writings for God’s people in Judaism or for Christianity. You may not realize that “his writings are mentioned more than 400 times in the New Testament, making it the most popular Old Testament book (for Christ’s followers), along with the Psalms.” [4]
I come to the end of my message, and I feel the heavy burden of perfectionism, once again—stirred by Isaiah’s terrified outburst in God’s presence. If Isaiah, God’s prophet, felt inadequate with God’s call on his life, then how can we ordinary, flawed human beings become comfortable, confident, and secure in what the Lord is calling us to do as individuals and as a church of Jesus Christ?
Because we are all called to do our best to develop and use the gifts that God has given us for God’s glory and Kingdom purposes. All of us are ministers—even the youngest child in our church family is called to love and serve God and neighbor and proclaim our hope in Christ through words and acts of kindness. This is what ministry is all about—living our faith.
The answer is surely the Trinity, who makes it possible for us to live into and embrace our callings and be faithful to the One who never expects us to be perfect. Our Creator has made God’s choice! And it’s YOU! And it’s ME! Don’t be like Jonah and run from your call. Remember how his story ends with him spending time in the belly of a whale praying, before coming to himself and vowing to do what God calls him to do.
Be like Isaiah, who was aware of his own sinfulness in the presence of a Holy God, yet still allowed God to use him in a mighty way.
Christ has given us the Spirit to guide and empower us to do even greater works for God the Father than Jesus and his first disciples were able to do. This whole focus on “perfection” in our society, is a distraction from living out the fullest expression of our faith.
I don’t like to say that it was God’s will that I would struggle a bit with my vision right now. I don’t know what the Lord has planned for me. But I can trust in God’s love. Isaiah says in chapter 55, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
But maybe this is a pivotal time in my life, when I will realize and feel keenly, through some of these struggles, the power and presence of our loving and gracious God.
So, what are you thinking? What stands in the way of your stepping out of your comfort zone and being more faithful to God’s call?
What will it take for you to let go of your fear and insecurity and say, with Isaiah, “Send me!”
Will you pray with me? Let us pray.
Holy, holy, holy, Three in One! We are fearful and intimidated by your call on our lives, knowing that being faithful and obedient will involve some struggle, but also that we can rely on the strength and guidance of your Spirit, always present with us. Help us now to overcome the temptation to perfectionism anything that stands in the way of our confidently answering your question to Isaiah, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ ‘Here am I; send me!’ In the name of our Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we pray. Amen.
[1] Robert A. Ratcliff, “Isaiah 6:1-6” in Connections, Year B, V. 3 (Lousville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2021), 5.
[4] Harold Songer, “Isaiah and the New Testament” in Sage Journals, v. 65, issue 4, December 1968.
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