The Peripatetic Preacher
Please note that sly little five-verse section included in today’s text selection, encased (and thus deep frozen?) in those parentheses. There is perhaps unintended irony on the part of the lectionary collectors when they dropped those verses into their choice for today, because for me those verses are nothing less than the key to the entire passage, though heaven knows vs.8 has become the hallmark verse for most people when they think of these famous words from 8th-century Isaiah. But if you read vss.9-13, you will finally discover just what it is that Isaiah is supposed to do when he is called by YHWH. And what that task is is decidedly not for the faint of heart or weak of will. Hence, if one is going to avoid a soupy sentimentalizing of these words, vs.9ff will toughen you up quickly.
It has long been recognized that Is.6:1-8 forms the basis for the order of worship in the vast majority of mainline churches for centuries: opening hymn, confession of sin, both individual and corporate, assurance of pardon, call to mission, and positive response of those called. That is all well and good, but such stylization of the text avoids the very powerful human drama that the temple scene enacts. Isaiah’s call in the temple of YHWH is initially painful and promises long-term anguish besides. This God-call stuff is terrifying, and no one should ever become sanguine, no matter how often we croon “Here I am, Lord,” that ubiquitous hymn that accompanies so many worship experiences that feature calls to ministry and service. I admit that I enjoy singing that rousing rather folk- like tune, but I fear it can fall into a slough of nostalgic goo lest we are careful to hear the full range of what Isaiah is asked to do.
And what he is asked is nothing less than bizarre! Just listen: “YHWH said, ‘Go and say to the people: Keep listening but do not comprehend; keep looking but do not understand.’ Make their minds dull, and stop their ears, so that they may not look with their eyes, or listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed” (Is.6:9-10). I beg your pardon, God? What am I to say? Listen and look, but do not grasp what you are hearing and seeing? Make sure they remain stupid? Yes, but there is more. Clarify nothing for them. Stuff their ears, making them deaf, so that they understand nothing. We, Isaiah, you and I, would not want them to turn around and find healing, now would we? I dare you to say “amen” to that! Or, how about: “This is the word of God; thanks be to God?”
Can it be little wonder that Isaiah responds to that ridiculous demand by howling, “How long, YHWH” (Is.6:11)? How long indeed? Why in your good name, YHWH, would I wish to spend my prophetic time making your people so unaware of what you wish for them to do and be so that they will be incapable of finding true healing? I thought healing was the business that you are in? And I imagined that the prophetic task was to call people toward healing, not away from it.
Isaiah’s cry of “how long” is plainly designed for YHWH to provide him some encouragement, to open the way for YHWH to say something like, “well, Isaiah, this hard task will not be forever; how about a few months, followed by words of hope and future possibilities?” But YHWH’s words offer nothing like that at all. “You ask how long? Until cities lie in ruins, without occupants, filled with houses without people, crushed on a land utterly devastated, until YHWH sends everyone far away, until there is nothing but a vast emptiness in the land. Even if a tenth of it remains, it will also be burned, like any tree stump that is chopped down and burnt along with the rest of the tree” (Is.6:11-13). Those who would claim that the last line, “the holy seed is its stump,” is some sort of hope for the future, fail to take the image seriously. It was just said that the stump will be burned, along with the tree; all will be burned; all will be destroyed; all that will remain is emptiness. Isaiah, says YHWH, must speak in such a way as to bring on the utter destruction of all that he has known, of all that YHWH has created in the chosen people in their promised land.
Well, God, thank you very much! I have always wanted to be the cause of the ruin of the many, to be the thorn in the sides of my own people, to be the party-pooper who announces doom and destruction near the chips and dips and makes himself anathema to all the revelers. Who could not want that for a vocation? In the light of that kind of divine call, the later prophet Jeremiah proceeds to fulfill all that and more, thus making his life a continual series of miserable days and nights, without wife, without children, without friends, without joy, until he at last accuses YHWH of tricking and raping him; yes that is what the word actually means in Jer.20:7, rather that the NRSV’s too polite “entice”. To answer such a call is to invite the assault of God and people. How long indeed!
What are we to make of such a grotesque demand from a supposedly loving God? I can only suggest that what YHWH asks Isaiah and Jeremiah to do is to seek to destroy the institutions and forces that stand in the way of God’s will for the people. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and you and I are called to speak words of truth to power until those forces are defeated, until they are nothing but a vast emptiness, until those people can neither hear nor see the truth, thus making way for God’s full truth to shine into the world, moving it toward the light. If you are willing to take such a task on, an obviously risky and dangerous one, then open yourself to the call of God and prepare yourself for a wild ride with the God of justice. Do not expect comfort and success, but rather anger and rejection. Still, it is vital work, and a necessary part of what God wills in the world. God needs prophets, but it is not work for everyone. Be careful that you understand what it is you are signing up for.
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