"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!' And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of Him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: 'Woe is me!' " (Isaiah 6:1-5a).
This month our theme has been "The Presence of God." It doesn’t take long for one to begin to consider the many emotions of such an opportunity.
It can be a joyful event: "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord!' " (Ps. 122:1).
It can be a quiet event: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you." (Matt. 6:6).
Today’s reading shares an event in God’s presence that is neither joyful nor quiet. Rather, it is truly "awe-full." Not awful in the modern sense of being very bad or unpleasant. For Isaiah it was awe-full in the sense of jaw-dropping, standing in silence, and feeling unprepared and ill-equipped!
Simply the train of Almighty God’s robe was enough to fill the temple. It caused the very foundations to shake and the beams and lintels to rattle. The sound of the seraphim’s "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts" was ear-piercing. And Isaiah is at a total loss. "Woe is me!" are the first words he can utter. He knows that he is totally laid bare as a sinner among other sinners, that any words coming out of his lips would be inappropriately "unclean," and that he has no right to be in the presence of God’s glory.
To Isaiah, God comes with a piece of burning coal taken from the altar. He alone can purify this "man of unclean lips" and transform him into a useful servant among the people to whom God would send him. To us, God comes in an equally personal way. It was Martin Luther who said, "I can know no other God than the one who comes to us as a babe in the arms of the Virgin, a man hanging on a cross, and in bread and wine at the altar." But even this should cause us to stand in total awe and amazement.
Being in God’s presence — what an awe-full place into which we have been brought! And what a wonderful place it is! — is where God touches our very lips and our lives with His burning Spirit so that, along with Isaiah, and relying on nothing in ourselves, we can stand before Almighty God and say, "Here I am! Send me" (Isa. 6:8).
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