SERMON: "Mercy's Mission"

Alongside the Community Church of Durham

January 26, 2019, The Third Sunday after Epiphany

Isaiah 6:1-8

See also Pushkin's "The Prophet"

1.

So we’re about eight centuries before the days of Jesus, before the ministry of Jesus in the ancient world.  And Isaiah’s a prophet, with a very specific calling to counsel the Judean king and serve the royal court; and in this role he attends one of the Hebrews’ great religious festivals in Jerusalem.  And these great festivals were rich in movement and ceremony, the old temple shimmering in light and color, its walls reverberating with drumming and music.  A great crowd gathering and chanting and bouncing off one another.  And Isaiah’s there because it’s his habit to be there, it’s his privilege to be there, it’s his duty to be there with his people.  For worship.  For prayer.  For the festival.

But this time it’s different for him.  He’s in a different space.  This time Isaiah’s open and receptive, and his habit yields to holiness.  Who knows why?  Maybe a midlife crisis, restlessness and despair calling his routine into question.  Or maybe things are wild at home, the kids are lurching through adolescence, testing his patience and his nerve.  Maybe his marriage is coming undone.  Or maybe it’s an international crisis, weighing on his spirit, nations hacking nations, drones buzzing and disaster looming at the border.  Whatever the reason, whatever the circumstance, Isaiah’s vulnerable this time, his heart’s open this time, and this festival’s different.  And his habit yields to holiness.  I imagine this happens to you and me, too.  Sometimes, the moment’s just right.  Sometimes, we’re just fragile enough to see something new.  Sometimes, the heart’s just ready. 

Now Isaiah’s had a religious orientation all his life.  His professional life is shaped and ordered by religious practice and theological habit.  But this time, this time Isaiah senses God’s presence, sees God’s mystery, receives God’s word in a very powerful and very direct way.  There’s this vision of something holy and new; and there are angels reaching out to touch him and touch his lips; and there’s smoke in the air and smoke in his eyes; and all of it, all of it moves him, shakes him, changes him.  What seemed ordinary is not.  What seemed routine is not.  Every heartbeat is communion.  Every face is an icon.  So habit yields to holiness.  Pushkin’s poem imagines this so vividly.  Did you catch it?  “And with his sword he cleft my chest / And ripped my heart out whole, / And in my sundered breast he cast / A blazing shard of coal.”  Can you imagine?  The heat.  The presence.  The immediacy of God.  He’s been going to the temple all his life.  But this time his heart’s scorched.  This time his heart is seized by Grace.  This time Isaiah’s face to face with Mercy.  Mercy with a capital ‘M’!

2.

So really, friends, it’s a simple message this morning.  Whether you’re at a midlife crisis of some sort (and there are many), or your kids are just dabbling in adolescence; whether you’re a teacher or a parent, whether you’re out of work or looking for work; whether you’ve been coming to the temple all your life or all this is new for you.  It’s a simple message.  This great Mercy is yours and ours and the very essence of God in the world.  If Isaiah is touched by Mercy, if Isaiah is called to Mercy, then so are you.  If Isaiah can “hear the shudders of the sky, / The sweep of angel hosts on high, / The creep of beasts below the seas, / The seep of sap in valley trees…”, if Isaiah can find Mercy in a broken and beautiful world, then so can you.  This great Mercy is not just for some, not just for the priests and preachers, not just for the wacked-out prophets of Israel.  The great festival is today.  The great festival is every day.  And just like Isaiah, we are spiritually wired to see.  We are deftly created to hear.  We are made to find God and God’s Mercy in broken and beautiful world.

Isaiah is aware, of course, of his own brokenness, of his own fragility, of the compromises he’s made along the way.  “I am lost,” he says, in this moment of transcendent beauty, in this festival of wild wonder and shuddering skies.  “I am lost,” he says, “for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”  But this awareness doesn’t trigger the hardening of his heart; this confession doesn’t make Isaiah miserable and mean and nasty in the name of God.  “I am lost,” he says.  And in just this moment, in this moment of raw vulnerability and honesty, in this moment of his brokenness before God, God reaches into Isaiah’s heart and plants a message of compassion, and Grace, and Mercy.  Yes, he’s lost.  Yes, he’s broken.  Yes, he’s as confused and as complicated, as wounded and as weary as the world around him.  But God, the Light of the Universe, the Love at the Heart of Being: God loves him.  And God sees him.  And God needs him.  And, friends, so it is with us.  So it is with us. 

I’m reminded of the story the great anthropologist Loren Eiseley tells: How once, on ancient Earth, there was a little boy walking along a beach.  And there had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands.  The boy knew the starfish would die there, on the dry beach.  So he began to fling the starfish into the sea.  But every time he threw one into the sea, another would wash ashore from the storm’s surging waves.  And an old man happened along that morning, and he saw what the little boy was doing.  And he called out to him: “Boy, boy, what are you doing?”  “Saving the starfish!” the boy replied.  And the old man said: “But your attempts are useless.  Don’t you see!  Every time you save one, another one returns.”  So the boy thought about this for a moment, with a starfish held gently in his hand.  And he answered the old man: “Well,” he said, “it matters to this one.”  And then he flung the starfish out, out, out into the welcoming sea.

3.

To have touched Mercy in our own hearts, to have seen the face of Grace and received it as the great gift it is: to know God’s love is hear the call.  “Whom shall I send?”  “Whom shall I send?”  “Whom shall I send?”  Think about it.  In a world where fear pervades almost every institution, almost very public setting, almost every government, God seeks out messengers of Mercy, and sends out ambassadors of love and grace.  Flingers of starfish!  Prophets of peace!  Lovers of life!  “Whom shall I send?”  “Whom shall I send?”  Wherever you are on the journey, however frail or fragile, however broken or bewildered, God yearns for partners in the planting of compassion and kindness and joy.  God yearns for you.  “Whom shall I send?”  “Whom shall I send?”  If you’re a mother, if you’re a father, and you’re in that season of your life raising children: don’t miss the call.  God reaches for you, God partners with you, God needs you to plant compassion and kindness and joy in the lives of your children.  And their friends.  This is no small thing.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.  It’s the biggest thing.  It’s a prophetic calling.  So you can say, right here today, you can say: “Here am I!  I get it.  I am yours.  Send me!”

Or maybe you’re retired, maybe you’ve entered into a quieter time, and there’s more space in your life, and some solitude too.  God reaches for you, God partners with you, God needs you too to plant compassion and kindness in the world.  Even as life slows down.  Even as you begin to let go.  You can be a flinger of starfish.  You can be a prophet of peace.  You’ll do it your way.  With prayers for your friends, with letters to elected officials, with a loving face and loving heart, recognizing the power within you to bless and bless and bless again.  And you too can say: “Here am I!  I get it.  I am yours.  Send me!”

The point is this: to open your life to God, to invite the Spirit into your heart, is to meet Mercy for yourself and to touch the face of Grace.  You are made for this.  You are worthy of this.  And if there are messages you’ve picked up along the way—messages that diminish you, messages that make you question your place, messages that make you question God’s love—well, let us, once and for all, debunk and delete and dismiss them all.   They’re just not true.  They’re just not true.  God is love.  God made you.  And God doesn’t make mistakes.

Indeed you are made for Mercy.  And you are wired for Grace.  Every one of us is cherished and worthy of God’s love; and every one of us is summoned and called and sent to plant love’s sacred seeds.  You might be depressed and struggling this morning: but you’re summoned and called and sent.  You might be pummeled by an abusive relationship or a bad memory: but you’re summoned and called and sent.  You might be heading off to prepare tomorrow’s lecture or write your great novel: yes, in this, you are summoned and called and sent.  Or you might be heading out this afternoon to collaborate and organize with our Immigrant Sanctuary Network: you, too, are summoned and called and sent.

What we are is a community, a communion of the summoned, called and sent.  What we are is choir of affirmation and lovingkindness, a choir of the summoned, called and sent.  That’s what this is all about.  So as you greet one another after worship, maybe you’ll remind a friend; maybe you’ll look in her eyes and remind her that she’s the one God’s been looking for, that she’s the one God’s needed all along.  And maybe your love, maybe your confidence, maybe the your courage will be just what she needs, everything she needs…so that she can say today, in the great temple of the church, in the great festival of faith…so that she can say today: “Here am I, God!  I get it.  I am yours.  Here am I, God!  Send me!”

Amen.