Here am I, send me!

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

4 June 2023

Image: Mark Newton. Used under creative commons. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Isaiah 6.1-8

A few years ago now,
            Liz and I went to visit the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust
                        at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire,
and whilst we were there, we came across a sculpture by Kathleen Scott,
            which had originally been made as a war memorial
                        for her son’s school at the end of the 1914-18 world war.
 
The sculpture is of a young boy,
            standing on tiptoe with his arm raised, as if volunteering,
            and the text at the base of the sculpture reads:
                        ‘Here am I, send me’.
 
The implication is clear, he is volunteering to go to war.
            Underneath the text is a list of thirty-eight names,
            recording those from The Downs School who died in the first world war.
 
Whilst the sculpture brilliantly captures the tragedy of war,
            evoking the innocence of childhood
                        on the verge of abruptly giving way
                        to the irrevocable tragedy of the trenches,
as a piece of biblical exegesis
            I think it is somewhat wide of the mark.
 
The quote itself actually comes from the book of Isaiah,
            where the prophet hears the voice of the Lord saying
                        ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’,
            and responds,
                        ‘Here am I, send me!’.
 
And to take these words of the commissioning of the prophet Isaiah,
            and use them in the context of sending young men
                        in their tens of thousands
                        to their horrific deaths in the trenches,
            is, I think, to take them a long way from their original context;
 
and I baulk at the implication
            that those who go to fight for their country
            do so in response to God’s summons and call,
                        – not for ‘King and Country’, but for God –
            and that they are therefore fighting on God’s behalf.
 
There’s something I need to make very clear at this point.
            I have nothing but respect for the courage shown, and cost paid,
                        by those who have given their lives fighting for their country,
            and I treasure the story of my own grandfather
                        who died in the second world war
            as a Navigator in a Lockheed Hudson that was hit and downed
                        whilst guarding the transatlantic convoys.
 
But when texts like, ‘Here am I, send me’
            are used to add divine justification
to the sending of men and women either to their own deaths
                        or to inflict death on others,
            then I think we have something of a problem.
 
Scripture has all too often been used
            to justify the moral or ethical position of those in power,
to sweeten the bitter pill
            that the population are then asked to swallow,
or to defend the status quo
            against those radical voices who might question the necessity
            of whatever course of action is being proposed in the first place.
 
The propaganda machine which appropriates biblical passages such as this,
            is an essential part of the functioning of the state,
and it seeks by any means necessary
            to bring as many people as possible
            into line with the proposed course of action.
 
And our passage for this morning from Isaiah is not the only text used in this way,
            just think of Jesus’ prophetic words about the cross:
‘No one has greater love than this,
            to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’.
 
This saying, usually in its King James and very masculine form of
            ‘Greater love hath no man than this,
            that a man lay down his life for his friends’
appears on war memorials the length and breadth of the country,
            with the names of those who have perished listed beneath it,
and again the implication is clear:
            the sacrifice of life given
                        by those who have died fighting for their country,
            is a sacrifice to be compared with nothing less
                        than the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
 
Again, the death, destruction, and desolation of warfare
            is sanitised by the comforting thought
            that those who have fought and died
                        have done so at the instigation of Jesus
            and in fulfilment of nothing less than his personal command.
 
Sometimes, as Christians, we are too easily manipulated
            into thinking that ‘our people’ are God’s people,
            and that what ‘our’ people do
                        is what God wants them to do.
 
Tom Wright puts it rather well. He says,
 
‘The easy identification of ‘our’ side with God’s side
            has been a major problem
ever since Christianity became the official religion
            of the Roman state in the fourth century.
Ironically, as Western Europe has become less and less Christian
            in terms of its practice,
its leaders seem to have made this identification more and more,
            so that both sides in the major world wars of the twentieth century
            were staffed… by Christian chaplains praying for victory.’
(John for Everyone, Part 2, p. 73)
 
So this morning, as we hear the biblical account of the call of Isaiah,
            I wonder what we can discover about the nature of God,
            and about what it is that God calls us to.
 
The golden rule for avoiding misuse of biblical texts
            is to begin by putting them in context.
 
It’s been said before, and I’ll say it again,
            that a text without a context is a con.
 
So we need to know that the part of Isaiah we’re reading today,
            was written in the latter part of the eight century BC.
 
For many decades there had been a period of relative peace for Israel,
            which had split some centuries earlier
            into a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom.
 
But by the mid 8^th Century it was clear that the Assyrians were on the rise,
            and by the time of Isaiah the Southern Kingdom, based in Jerusalem,
                        had become a vassal state of Assyria;
            while the Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BCE
 
We’re still more than a century before the Babylonians destroy the Southern Kingdom
            taking the people of Jerusalem into exile in Babylon,
and although the later parts of the book of Isaiah cover that period,
            we need to remember that this early story of the call of Isaiah,
            is taking place in the midst of the political turmoil
                        caused by the threat of the Assyrians.
 
This text from Isaiah is one of the earliest examples
            of the genre of ancient writing known as Jewish apocalyptic literature.
 
We meet this in other Old Testament texts such as Ezekiel and Daniel,
            and of course in New Testament texts like Mark 13 or the Book of Revelation.
 
And the thing to understand about apocalyptic material such as this
            is that the vision it describes
                        always unveils a deeper spiritual reality
                        that lies behind the observable reality.
 
When the ancient Israelites pictured God,
            they commonly imagined him as a male figure,
                        seated on a throne in heaven,
            surrounded by seraphim and cherubim
                        holding court over the affairs of the earth.
 
In other words, they imagined that God
            looked like a heavenly version of an earthly king,
                        surrounded by courtiers and attendants,
            ready to dispense justice, and fight for his people if needed.
 
The Israelites also had a firm belief that God was holy:
            so holy that his glory could not be seen by sinful human eyes.
 
We see this in places such as Moses on Mount Sinai,
            coming down the mountain with a veiled face
            so the reflected glory of God would not terrify the people.
 
And within the Jewish apocalyptic tradition,
            there emerged stories of visions of heaven,
where the person receiving the vision
            was shown round by a kind of heavenly tour guide,
            who could mediate between them and God.
 
We see this in, for example, the Jewish Enoch tradition,     
            where the biblical character Enoch,
                        a bit-part player in the early chapters of Genesis,
            gets a whole new role showing people around heaven in their visions,
                        on the basis that scripture doesn’t say that he died,
                        but rather than he was ‘taken’ by God (Gen 5.21-24).
 
But with Isaiah it’s different -
            he’s not shown around by anyone;
rather he just suddenly finds himself in the heavenly throne room,
            unexpectedly face to face with God.
 
And it’s immediately clear that God’s just as holy as ever,
            with the creatures around the throne singing their ‘holy, holy, holy’ song
            to make the point that God’s holiness is not in any way in doubt.
 
So how, wonders Isaiah, can it be
            that he, a man of unclean lips,
            can be looking directly at God?
 
And the first thing Isaiah has to learn
            is that despite him seeing himself as unclean,
            God sees him as clean.
 
His personal sense of unrighteousness,
            does not extend to God’s opinion of him.
 
And I wonder, how many of us need to hear that too?
 
How often do we cast judgment on ourselves,
            ruling ourselves out of God’s presence or favour,
when in fact God is longing for us to see ourselves as heaven sees us,
            and to realise that we are, in God’s eyes,
            entirely worthy of love and acceptance?
 
But Isaiah’s call is not simply to be in God’s presence,
            it is a call to prophecy, to speak for God,
            and for this he needs a commissioning.
 
In a liturgical act that echoes the mouth purification rituals
            of other ancient Mesapotamian religions,
Isaiah’s mouth is touched with a burning coal
            from the brazier before God’s throne,
            on which the incense burns.
 
In the book of Revelation, the incense arising from the heavenly altar
            is described the prayers of the faithful rising before God,
and it may be that something similar is intended here,
            as Isaiah is commissioned to speak and pray.
 
And the people to whom he is called to speak
            are a nation who will have to learn lessons
            about righteousness the hard way.
 
If Isaiah thought he was unclean,
            but heard God declaring him purified,
ancient Israel had it the other way around:
            they believed they are righteous,
but they needed to hear God’s declaration that
            they were actually living under judgment and on their way to exile.
 
And the book of Isaiah will track their journey
            through judgment and exile,
            to forgiveness and restoration,
and along the way they will discover that the nature of God
            is to draw alongside those who suffer.
 
And I find myself wondering
            how often do religious institutions in our world
believe that they are righteous,
            when actually they stand under judgement?
 
I’m thinking, for example,
            of those national churches through the twentieth century
            that supported the oppressive regimes of communism or fascism.
 
Or, more recently, what about the evangelical church’s zeal for Trump.
            Or, even closer to home, our own religious obsessions in this country
                        with moral superiority and judgment on sin,
            and in some cases a misplaced desire to drum up
                        feelings of persecution and victimhood
            rather than proclaiming loving inclusion and forgiveness.
 
Too often the churches of our nation spend more time
            proclaiming themselves righteous and others unclean,
than they do helping people discover deeper spiritual reality
            that they too are acceptable to and loved by God.
 
As churches we should be putting others first, and ourselves last,
            and always seeking to act in the public good,
            rather than complaining about supposed infringements of our rights.
 
Similarly, I might mention the frequent justification churches offer for war,
            such as just war theory,
and I might conclude that whilst one can always make a case
            for staying the hand of an aggressor,
there are nonetheless far, far too many examples of Christian collusion with violence,
            which brings me back to the examples of biblical exegesis
            with which we started.
 
Isaiah’s call is two-fold,
            firstly it is a call to enter the presence of God
                        and discover something about how God sees him;
            and secondly it is a call to speak that truth
                        to proclaim God’s word to his time, his place, and his people.
 
And I wonder if we can share Isaiah’s calling:
            can we discover for ourselves something new this morning
                        about how the God of holiness and love sees us?
            Can we hear the good news that we are pure, holy, and beloved,
                        and that none of us are unacceptable to God?
 
But also, can we hear the call to action:
            not to take up arms against God’s enemies,
but to be those who faithfully proclaim God’s love,
            especially to those who are themselves currently unable
                        to perceive the awesome truth
            that God is for us, that God loves us,
                        and that God has blotted our sins away
                        and released us from our guilt?