Atom“Getting More Than We Came For”
Isaiah 6:1-8, John 3:1-17
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me.’” Isaiah 6:8
There was a tractor pull last night here in town – at least there was supposed to be if it didn’t get rained out. The last time I was at a tractor pull was in Adams, Nebraska at the annual Community Day Celebration. As I recall, one of my friends on that occasion came away with more than he came for. He came away with a goat. And the way he got a goat was that his name was drawn in the “Goat Raffle.” And you are thinking, “Why would you ever buy a ticket to a goat raffle?” You don’t. Your friends do and they put your name on the ticket, hoping you will win! And so my friend left the celebration with more than he came for!
It happens. We go to the annual fund raiser for our favorite charity and we come away with the centerpiece on the table because our birthday is the closest one to the date of the event. We got more than we came for. Or we come to church one Sunday and we go home as a Vacation Bible School helper. We got more than we came for! It happens.
I have a hunch that Isaiah and Nicodemus got more than they came for in the lessons for today. And I think particularly Isaiah. I have a hunch that he came to the temple that day for comfort. It was probably his regular practice to come for worship, but on this occasion he felt a real need. King Uzziah had just died and all of Israel was in mourning and the country seemed to be sitting on the brink of disaster. King Uzziah was one of those good kings in Israel’s history, one who “walked with the Lord,” as the Bible says – at least most of his life. He was made king at the tender age of 16 and ruled for 52 years. And it was a good rule up until the end of his life when he got a little carried away with his own importance and forgot that it was after all God who had put him on the throne, and God to whom he should yet be listening even as an old and wise king. Be that as it may, Uzziah was the only king that Isaiah had ever known and as king he had pretty much kept the country on an even keel until now when the powerful Assyrians were threatening to invade and Uzziah had up and died.
So Isaiah came to the temple for comfort, to worship as was his custom, to hear the word of God read by the priests and to be a part of the sacrifice. But when Isaiah got to the temple he got more than he came for. He got God Almighty, fully present and accounted for! He got shaking earth and billowing smoke and hovering angels and the thundering voice of God. And this was way more than he came for…and he was afraid and rightly so!
Can you imagine? You come to worship on this nice Sunday, a bit down about the economy or an illness in your family and you come for a bit of comfort, expecting to see your friends and Pastor Dave and myself and to hear Karen play the organ and you get… ”God?” That would shake you up a bit, wouldn’t it?
But that is what worship is for. Worship is to give us a vision of God who knows and sees, a God who creates and orders the universe. And sometimes the result of that is that when we recognize the “wholly otherness” of God, we recognize also our own unworthiness, and how far we fall short – our sin – and that may be a fearful thing. This is what Isaiah found. He came to be comforted, to see God as bigger than his problems and he encountered a God way bigger than that, a God who was holy and mighty and awesome. “Woe is me!” says Isaiah. “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.” In other words, “I am a sinner. I fall short of God’s glory. I say I believe but do not live as if I believe. Woe is me.” We might do the same in the same situation.
In fact, I have a hunch that there are some folks who avoid worship at all costs because they don’t want to have such an experience. They don’t want a face-to-face confrontation with their limitations and their failings. They know they have them – we all do – but they don’t want to think about them and they certainly don’t want to think about them in the presence of God. None of us wants to end up in the place of Isaiah, guilty and afraid.
But God’s holiness is not meant to lead us to despair. Notice. One of the high and mighty angels, a seraph, takes a live coal and touches Isaiah’s unclean lips – his sin – and announces to him that his guilt has departed, his sin has been blotted out. He is new and clean before God. It sounds a bit like what we heard in John’s gospel today, doesn’t it? Not the live coal part, but the part about sin being blotted out and God not intending that our failing and frailty lead us to despair: “For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him…for God so loved the world (remember) that God gave…Jesus.” And that living fire of God that is in Jesus touches us and heals us and restores us. When we come into the presence of the living God we always get far more than we came for. We get honesty about who God is and who we are and we get the Son of God, Jesus, and we get life!
Of course getting more than you came for can be a bit unsettling. It change your life in ways you have not have planned for. The story is told of a young pastor who had just begun ministry in a small community. One of her early pastoral visits was to a care center where a middle-aged woman was recovering from a severe injury. They visited awhile and the woman told her pastor that she had healed about as much as she was going to, which left her still in a wheelchair. But she was dealing with it and had lots of help from her family and friends and was getting along pretty good, in fact really good.
Well, at the end of their conversation, the young pastor asked if she might pray. The woman said, “Sure,” and the pastor prayed, and not knowing what else to pray for, prayed for further healing. When she was finished, there was a great trembling and the woman said, “Something is happening here,” and next thing you know she was on her feet and skipping around the room. Her son, also present couldn’t believe his eyes and quickly excused himself to go and tell the rest of the family. When the woman was alone again in the room with the pastor, she looked her straight in the eye and said, “Now what am I going to do? I had my life all figured out. Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
It can happen in worship, too, this healing thing we didn’t plan for. We come for comfort. We come for direction and peace, and God meets us and suddenly our world isn’t quite the same as we thought it was going to be. Worship messes with us. Isaiah came to the temple and it messed with him. He was healed and restored. But God also opened his eyes and ears and life to the need of those around him. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God says.
We come to worship today to be comforted, even to hear again that wherever we have come from and however we might have fallen short this week, that God forgives us and heals us…and that God will take care of us, even in times of economic downturn. And that is all good. But then God also opens our eyes to something more. Some of you came to worship today not knowing Miquette would be here and while she is not quite thunder and smoke, her presence does mess with us. God sent Miquette to be with us this morning and to share her story again about how God used some folks here in Detroit Lakes to intervene in her life and give her hope and to tell us about our sisters and brothers in Haiti who also need hope. And her vision of God messes with us. It messes with me. I come to be comforted by God and God says, “I need you to comfort others.” I come to be healed by God and God says, “I need you to heal others.” I come to receive from God and God says, “There are others who need to receive from you. I have blessed you to be a blessing.”
You see? Worship and meeting God here messes with our world, because God says to me and to you, as God said to Isaiah. “I have chosen you, I have healed you, and I have made you mine…for a purpose…and you can’t go back to pretending you don’t see and you don’t hear and you don’t know.”
Isaiah got more than he came for. Because Isaiah met the living God, he could never be the same again. And because you and I have met the living God, we can never be the same again. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” God says. And because we have met Jesus and because we have received more than we came for, we say, “Send me.” And…God does!
Let’s pray…
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