Sermon: Where Have All the Prophets Gone? Isaiah 6: 1-6 5/26/2024
The preaching text for today is the call story of the prophet Isaiah. In this story, Isaiah stands in the outer chambers of God’s heavenly court. From there he can see God’s robe flowing down from his throne, the air is filled with smoke and the sound of angels singing God’s praises. Isaiah is terrified, for no one can look upon God and live, so he cries out, “Woe is me, for I have seen the Lord!” Then, Isaiah says the strangest thing. “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”
There is a formula to the call of a prophet. First, the prophet has an encounter with either God or a messenger from God. Then the prophet is commissioned to speak God word or do God’s will, to which the prophet almost always objects, claiming unworthiness. Then the prophet receives reassurance, and there is usually some sort of ritual act that takes place symbolizing the prophet’s role. So, for instance, when Moses is called, he objects, saying that he is slow of speech. This is often interpreted as meaning he has some sort of speech impediment, such as the tendency to stutter. God responds by offering to send Moses’s brother, Aaron, along with him to speak for Moses. Once Moses stops objecting, then God gives him a staff with which to perform miracles.
Isaiah also objects, with an excuse about his inability, or rather, his unworthiness to speak for God. Isaiah says he has a filthy mouth. Then he goes on to say that his people all have filthy mouths, as if to say, “I have a dirty mouth, but then, that should come as no surprise, because all of my people have dirty mouths. How can I serve you, speak your word, with a dirty, profane mouth?” He doesn’t just point out his unworthiness, but throws the whole Jewish people under the bus.
Then comes the shocking part. How does God reassure Isaiah? How does he remove the obstacle of Isaiah’s filthy mouth? He sends an angel, who by the way, is a terrifying sight in itself, to pick up a set of tongs, pluck a burning coal out of the blazing fire that is filling the room with smoke, and touch it to Isaiah’s lips and purify his mouth! Youch! Ezekiel is just told to eat a book of God’s words, which he can then simply regurgitate to his people. And the book tastes sweet. But not poor Isaiah. He gets his lips scorched. It makes me wonder…does he flinch? Does he lean in and kiss the coal, press his lips against it, or does the angel just jab it into his face, the way you might thrust a branding iron against a cow’s hip?
Isaiah doesn’t cry out in pain or shock, like you might expect, so obviously, this is only a vision. Isaiah isn’t really in heaven, looking upon the throne of God. There is no fiery coal burning his lips, making them sterile. This isn’t a physical experience, but a spiritual one, more like a dream than like Moses’ real burning bush on the very real mountainside. But still, what a terrifying image! You’d think that having a burning coal pressed to your lips would be enough to snap you back to reality, to wake you from a dream in a state of terror. But it doesn’t. Instead, Isaiah hears the angel pronounce him clean, forgiven, sinless, purified—his objection obliterated. Then he hears God’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go?” And Isaiah volunteers.
What? After having his lips seared, Isaiah volunteers? God doesn’t even address him directly. The text makes it clear he can’t see God’s face, because that would be fatal. He isn’t even in the same room. I really makes me wonder how God speaks those words. What is the tone God uses? I get the feeling that God says it the way an annoyed judge might say, in an angry and possibly threatening tone, to an attorney who’s been making all sorts of ridiculous, baseless objections in a trial, that have been overruled, “Do you have any more objections?” I imagine Isaiah’s “Send me,” is less a volunteering and more of a surrender, “No, Sir, Your Majesty. I’m good. I got the point. I’ll do it.” I wonder if Isaiah is surprised to hear those words come from his own, burning lips? Would this be your reaction?
In the next few verses, God tells Isaiah that he must prophecy to his people, but not expect them to understand. His people will not see or hear, or accept his message. but will harden their hearts, until the cities are destroyed and deserted, and the people taken into captivity. To top it all off, God will order Isaiah to walk around barefoot and unclothed, preaching, for three whole years. It’s not clear whether he is even permitted to wear a loincloth! I wonder if Isaiah knew what he was getting into. I bet he wished he’d asked for a few more details before accepting this call. Would you volunteer for this job? This wasn’t a high paying position. There were no benefits: no retirement accounts, no medical or dental insurance, and no vacation time.
The sad truth is that this is what being a prophet was like in the Old Testament. It was a thankless job, with few, if any perks. And having a dirty mouth probably came in handy. Regardless of how hardened a people’s hearts may have been, a prophet’s job, at the outset, was to get the people’s attention, shock them with harsh and terrifying language and bizarre prophetic acts that would, in today’s world, land a person in a rubber room in a psych ward pretty fast. The main goal was, of course, to get the people to repent, to change their ways, to establish and maintain justice. Although prophets were occasionally priests, most of them were just ordinary people with extraordinary courage and the gift of vision, and poetry. They were almost never among the wealthy, the powerful or the political elite. Amos raised cattle and sycamore trees. Ezra was a scribe. Some were women. Some were appointed as advisors to Kings because of their gifts of wisdom and vision.
The job of a prophet was to speak truth, ugly, unpleasant truth, to power. To call out and expose injustice in a very public way, and demand change—and to do it all poetically. A prophet was never popular, like Jesus or John the Baptists, although they probably did draw crowds. But the attention they received from the one’s they were sent to, the rich, powerful, elite—the ruling class—was not that of adoration and welcome, but contempt, anger, threats of violence. This was a difficult and dangerous job that required total faith and commitment of mind, body and soul. There was no turning back, and no softening the blow. The language and the prophecies only escalated in their harshness and the consequences for ignoring the message, for failing to respond with repentance and change of heart and policies, became ever more violent. Isaiah would not only witness the destruction of the temple and the city, but was ordered by God to go into exile in Babylon with his people, to help them remember who and whose they were and resist become willing participants in an oppressive empire, and to comfort them, reassure them of God’s love and forgiveness, inspiring hope for a future they couldn’t see.
The violence that the Biblical prophets threatened came to them in the form of prophetic visions of the future. The prophets received these visions, and then had to interpret them. They did so through their understanding of God and the world. They believed that God was absolutely in control, and that nothing could happen to the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, unless God ordained it. So when they saw destruction and death, exile and captivity, they understood that to mean that this was God’s judgment and that God, himself, would carry out the sentence through an agent of God’s choosing. They attributed the horror as a product of God’s righteous wrath, for there was no arguing that the behaviors and policies that they addressed were clear and flagrant violations of covenant law. Israel was understood to be God’s child, and according to biblical wisdom, a misbehaving child required discipline, punishment: spare the rod and spoil the child.
But I don’t see it that way. I have knowledge about God that the Old Testament people didn’t have. I interpret these scriptures through the lens of Christ, the revelation of the character of God in the person of Jesus. Our God, Israel’s God, is a God of Love, a God who loves the entire cosmos, all people, so much that he chose to come and live among them in flesh and blood, and to lay down his life to ransom them with his own flesh and blood, in order to redeem them and save them from themselves and their proclivity to sin. My God would never mete out violent punishment on children he loves so much.
As I see it, the prophets were an expression of God’s love. They were sent to warn the people that they were headed down a path toward self-destruction, and to convince them in any way possible, to change course, while disaster could still be averted. God began sending these prophets to Israel and Judea 200 years ahead of their demise—long enough to change their ways and avert the impending disasters, if they had only listened. People have agency. Our decisions and our actions have consequences, for us, and for the land and the nations in which we live. If only the people in power had listened…it didn’t have to happen that way. God never wanted or intended their destruction, their suffering. But they didn’t want to hear it. The wealthy were profiting at the expense of the peasants and the paupers. They wouldn’t, couldn’t relinquish their wealth and power.
I was told, as a teen, that there are no more prophets—that Jesus was the final word from God, and that there would never be another. But I didn’t believe it, and don’t believe it now. Our God, who desires relationship with us so much that he became flesh and dwelt among us, and sent his Spirit to inhabit us and work in us, would never stop trying to communicate with us, trying to prevent our self-destruction. I believe there have always been prophets, and there always will be—we just don’t recognize them or name them as such. I think Martin Luther was prophet who spoke truth to the corrupt power of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, but we call him a reformer. They don’t all use the same tactics as the Old Testament prophets, but they still speak unwelcome and unflattering truth to power, and risk their lives doing so. Some succeed, others die trying. I could name others: Ghandi, Nelson Mandella, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Alexei Navalny, just to name a few. Today we call them protestors, rebels, activists, agitators, among other things. We seldom recognize them until it’s too late.
Are there other prophets in our midst today—people who forecast gloom and doom unless we change our ways, people who speak out in poetry, like Wendell Berry? Musicians or rappers who sharply criticize the status quo? Reporters who reveal truths and atrocities hidden from our view, and call for change? Environmentalists and Nature Conservationists documenting societies crimes against nature? Who is speaking truth to power and wealth, and calling for change in order to avert certain disaster approaching from the horizon? Who should we be listening to? What will be the consequences if fail to respond to their pleas for repentance, if we don’t change our attitudes, our actions, our laws and policies? What will it take to avert the disasters they foresee?