Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13)
Epiphany 5 - Year C
Comment 1: To be a messenger without a message seems strange. So to stop at verse 8 seems strange. Let's be a little careful with that later section, though. It has been used in anti-semitic way since very early on in the Christian experience.
Comment 2: Verse 5 is intriguing because of the variety of ways in which it has come to us in English. In particular, the issue of "seeing" G*D/YHWH Sabaoth/etc.
I am doomed for my own eyes have seen [Revised English - early in verse]
for mine eyes have seen [King James - late in verse]
and my eyes have seen [New International]
yet my eyes have seen [New Revised Standard]
Little 3-letter words lead me in different directions.
"For" gives an explanation, early or late, for the claim to be unclean.
"And" increases the sense of uncleanness.
"Yet" suggests that uncleanness is not the last word.
Different folks are drawn to different ways of looking at this business of seeing.
My preference is "yet." The past and present may not be all I had desired, even so I am not automatically excluded. Now I can see the unseeable and this will make all the difference for the future.
The little word "yet" brings to my mind another little 3-letter word, "but." Things can be different. These are important words for prophets who don't give up. An experience of "yet" in the midst of life brings a word of real choice. The Christian Community Bible comments, "From then on, Isaiah will know and will say that it is necessary to choose...."
We have not spoken effectively about the choices before us. Yet we persevere.
This all prefaces verse 13 - yet stumps are holy seeds. If you can catch a glimpse of GOD in a lowly stump as well as high and lifted up, now you are seeing more clearly and are able to take that more wholistic message so the choice of living new and now becomes more desirable.
Unclean, hopeless stumps, arise. You have nothing to lose.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/february2004.html
Guilt is very powerful. Whether it is appropriate or inappropriate guilt, it has a controlling presence in our lives. We find ourselves reduced when it is felt and monstrous when it is absent. In some sense, guilt is something we can't live with or without.
Even when we have previously experienced guilt departing from us and the freedom that opens, we usually forget that sequence and hang on to the next guilt as long as ever we can. A great benefit of a congregation is the reminder system available to help us remember that it is more possible than we thought to be relieved of guilt - just in time to be burdened by a particular calling.
The Natural Church Development folks talk about gift-based ministries (pdf). One of the blockages to this is personal and congregational guilt (note: guilt operates on every level in which we do - ideational, national, personal, theological, congregational, etc.).
It makes a huge difference when guilt is taken away or cast away (directionality here probably doesn't make any difference, though it would be very important to some to have it fit their theology/philosophy).
Remember a time your guilt was removed. Apply that to a current guilt. Go ahead.
- - -
trapped - touched - freed -
an on-going cycle
moves us from stage to stagethe current play of our life
takes a lot of staging
it is hard to take it on the roadthe next stage of our life
asks us to put down
guilty baggagewhen staging our next act
there will be a different audience
we will know through playhonoring our current stage
honoring our next audience
ahh, play is the thing
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html
The year before old Uzziah died, Isaiah was feeling good. Uzziah's long reign was known for its lack of warfare and its prosperity. Uzziah's early following of his advisor Zechariah had born much good fruit. Surely Uzziah's difficulty with leprosy from one small convening of theocratic law (then equivalent of international treaty) would soon come to an end with his full restoration.
As Uzziah comes to an end it becomes obvious to some that the relative peace and prosperity during his reign of Judah was not going to last long. This political timing brought with it a "thin space" for Isaiah. He becomes realistically separated from those who presumed their past paradigms and politics would suffice. Any difficulty could easily be blamed on the new king and never need to take into account changing economies, relations with former partners, or a new power on the horizon.
Isaiah's guilt of complicity in the former realm and misguided understanding of where security and wholeness lay was taken from him, like morning film from sleepy eyes. From this moment of awaking, Isaiah would not return to the fold of prevailing thought.
It turned out to be easier than first thought to dull the minds of those around Isaiah. Past mantras, such as "no taxes", became a source of weakness, not strength, for the country. When a community is more concerned about sustaining wealth than the poor, it is not only an opening to a thin space of reorientation, but it is the culmination of an era.
May you be "a holy seed in the stump" of our current political transition time. In a coming of "nothingness upon the land" (see The Neverending Story and be sure to get this edition, for the two second color print for the story within the story is well worth the price) may your own response to your guilt of complicity with a past way of denial be transformed into a beacon of hopeful action.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/02/isaiah-61-8-9-13.html