Sermon: Outthh!! Thad reawwy hurtthh!
When I was in
high school I was very religious. At age
12 I had had a conversion experience and was baptized as a believer into the
church. At home I read the Bible and said
prayers every day. At church, I attended
worship, either attended or taught Sunday school, belonged to the youth group, was
even president of it for a while. I also
felt a call to ordained ministry, and was preparing for it.
I was like
Nicodemus – committed to the faith and to the church, a leader in ways
appropriate to my training and education, and continuing to move ahead in the
call I felt to be a leader in the community of faith.
I was like
Nicodemus as well in the undercurrent of restlessness and questioning that I
felt. A vague – sometimes not so vague,
un-ease. At times a sense of emptiness
or longing for something just a little bit more of God or of truth or of godly
life than what I was able to experience in the place where I was.
So one night I
went by myself to a Bible study and prayer meeting that a friend had told me
about. It was the days of the Jesus
People movement – that charismatic, counter-cultural revival that caught up so
many dis-affected young people in the late 60’s, and this Bible study meeting
was somehow related to it – was part of the Jesus People movement in Winnipeg.
The study was in
a big old house in another part of the city.
I didn’t have a car then, and didn’t want to tell my parents where I was
going – the Jesus People movement was not looked on too favourably in our
church, so I couldn’t borrow the family car.
So I took the bus – about a half-hour ride, and found my way to the
house. I went in, and it seemed there
were about 60 or 70 or maybe even 100 people squeezed into every nook and
cranny and piece of furniture and floor that was available. I didn’t know anyone so I found a little
floor space in a far corner and sat down cross-legged.
For two or three
hours we sang, prayed, listened to Bible readings and teachings, and shared
words of witness and testimony. It was
wonderful. It was scary. It was unlike anything I had been at before.
And then it
happened. It began as a kind of humming
in one corner. Something musical
sounding. It grew a little bit and then
subsided. It grew again. I couldn ‘t make out the words. If they were words, they were very
strange. But it was wondrously musical,
lyrical in its own way, powerful in its attractiveness and beauty. It lasted maybe a few minutes – maybe 5 or
1o. And then it quieted, faded and was
gone.
In the profound
silence that followed, I knew I had just heard speaking in tongues. Glossolalia.
Charismatic speech. It was a
little scary. I knew I was in the
presence of something or someone far greater than me and anything I had known
to that point. And I was immensely happy
– deeply and profoundly filled with joy.
I went back a few
more times that summer, and the experience was repeated once or twice. I didn’t want and never asked for the gift
myself.
I wonder now what
might have happened if I had. Might I
have learned to be more free and open than I am, and than I have been in my
life and in my spirit? Might I have
become more open to, and more able to express simple joy and delight than I am? Might I have struggled less with these things
than I do? Maybe openness to the holy
really is healing and redeeming for us – for each of us in our own particular
way?
I don’t
know. We never know what effect an
experience of the holy, and openness to it might have on us. What change, what demand, what gift, what
challenge it may have for us. I just
know I was too timid to go there at that point in my life. Probably still am.
But at the same
time, it did open me. It helped me see
there was more – much more to God than was contained in the worship and the
life of my church and my own little spiritual practice. It reminded me – and its own way opened me in
a way that cannot be undone, to the greatness of God’s beauty, joy, vitality
and wonder that no single religious tradition or set of spiritual practices, as
good as they are, can ever begin to encompass.
The prophet
Isaiah is one who was not afraid or too timid to go
there.
When King Uzziah
dies it is the end of an era for the kingdom of Judah which Isaiah serves as a court
prophet. Uzziah reigned for 40, maybe 50
years and most of his reign saw prosperity and piety throughout the kingdom –
from the king on down. But in the king’s
later years pride got the better of him.
He became more self-centred and self-important. Faithfulness to God and God’s way took second
place. Just leadership of the people and
compassionate care of the poor and weak fell off his list of priorities and he
ruled mostly for the benefit of his own family and those closest to him.
So when he dies, the
kingdom is at a crossroads. It will find
its way back to real faithfulness, or continue to fall into disarray and
irrelevance. In the midst of this crisis
Isaiah goes one day to the Temple to do his job of trying to discern the will
and word of God for the kingdom. And
it’s then that he has the vision of God that changes everything for him, about
him, and for the people he serves.
In the Temple he
sees God high and lifted up, surrounded and lauded by great winged angels,
great and terrifying to see, obscured in smoke and mist, the sound of the
angels and their heavenly worship of God shaking the foundations of the Temple,
maybe the foundations and stability of all the earth as Isaiah has known it to
that point.
Isaiah is
overcome. “Woe is me!” he says. “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips…we have spoken of God, assumed we
were speaking the truth, assumed we knew what we were talking about … but now I
see how little we know, how poorly I in my prophecy and my people in their
living say anything true about about the God we claim to love and serve … in
the presence of almighty God, who am I and what am I? I am lost.”
At which point an
angel flies to him with a burning coal taken from the altar of God, touches his
mouth with it, and says, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt is
gone, your sin is blotted out.” Then the
voice of the Lord calls out, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us, to
speak what the people really need to hear?”
According to the
Scripture, Isaiah answers, “Here am I; send me!”
But I wonder if
the first words out of his mouth – his first open and honest response to God
and to how God was touching and opening and redeeming his life, were maybe just:
“Ouuttthhh! Thad reawwwy hurttthhh!”
Because it does.
When we encounter
the holiness of God beyond the limits of our tradition of faith and our own set
of spiritual practices, it can be pretty scary because it usually shakes at
least some of the foundations we have known.
When we are exposed
to the greatness of God beyond the constraints of what we’ve been taught and
have maybe taught others, it can make us afraid of going into new and uncharted
territory and of losing control.
When we are
touched by the real Word of God in any situation, and maybe feel ourselves
caught up even a little in the movement of God’s Spirit in our time, it can
hurt and make us feel bad about where and how we have been to that point, can
make us feel the pain of changing our mind and changing our tune and maybe even
the direction of our life.
No one ever said
that being opened to God, hearing God’s word, and living God’s way is
easy. But it’s those who do, whose lives
and words and deeds will really count, will help lead into God’s future, and
will survive and be told for years to come as part of the story of the holy and
almighty God in our little time and place.
And I wonder what
all of that means for us, in our little corner of the great kingdom of God.
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