Isaiah 6, revisited

"But I don't want to go to church!" protested Dietrich after asking what we were doing today. "I want to build a train track!" Not a bad idea after riding on the train to Chicago and watching the trains from the 94th story of the Hancock tower. It would bring his experience to his level, let him have control over how it turns, where the hills and stations could be. On an experiential level, train building would win out. But I told him that Sunday is the day we gather together with all the other people who follow Jesus. On Sunday we remember that we are God's. I spoke so matter of fact, as if all I needed was the Sunday gathering to keep me from being my own king, or queen or household manager.

I knew the Isaiah text was coming because we had listened to Sing for Joy while making pancakes. It's a St Olaf radio show that pairs the Sunday scripture readings with choral pieces sung by choirs around the world (though usually at least one is the Olaf choir). But every time I hear the beginning of Isaiah 6, "The year King Uzziah died..." I get a chilling memory of working through this text my first semester of seminary. Literally, the semester finished cold. The worst ice storm in 100 years blanketed Durham, North Carolina in ice and knocked out power on the days leading up to final exams. My Isaiah paper was due and two tests loomed large. I studied wrapped in blankets and huddled near a friend's fire place. I don't even remember turning in the paper, but I cannot forget the weight I still felt even when it was finished. I had studied the passage for months, written and rewritten each part of the paper and still was not sure I had anything to say about it. It wasn't the fiery seraphs and strong apocalyptic imagery that shook me, it was the incomprehension that the prophet is to put on the people. "Stop their ears so they cannot hear!"

But today the sermon took this passage and cracked it open for me. Why don't Lutheran's say "Amen?" I couldn't help but think of how a sermon like this in another setting would be a back and forth of revelation and affirmation. If the prophet lives up to the charge, the people will have nothing, will be nothing. Their ears are stopped (so they cannot hear themselves); their eyes cannot see (so they cannot trust their own visions); their minds cannot get their heads around it (so they do not rely on their own understanding). Even the land is made desolate so there is no false sense of security. There is nothing left but God. Then the pastor turned toward our neat confines we make for God -- confines that are dashed by a passage like this. It was a chilling sermon that took personal independence and threw it aside. You are God's, not your own! But you are not made desolate -- from this burned off stump, there is seed. God will accomplish it.

Telling my four-year-old that he is God's is more for me than for him, at least for today. The place I was in when I turned in that paper was a good place for this passage. It's not about understanding as much as it is about remembering -- literally putting the pieces of our body back where they belong -- in God's working out of the strange world before us.