Fourth Sunday before Lent 2019

Isaiah 6:1-13 and I Corinthians 15:1-11 and Luke 5:1-11

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’

The whole earth is full of his glory. The whole earth. Full of his glory.

The first people to hear Isaiah’s account of his call, written down and read out, were far from Jerusalem. Indeed, the temple, in which Isaiah had encountered God’s glory, had been destroyed. The first people to hear the song of the seraphs were living in exile in Babylon. Babylon might have had a lot going for it, but it wasn’t home, it didn’t have their best interests at heart. And what they heard, perhaps as an echo, a rumour, was, the whole earth is full of God’s glory.

Isaiah’s ministry covered a span of forty turbulent years, the rising and falling of nations. The blessing and destruction and destruction and blessing of all the nations surrounding Judah. The siege and deliverance and siege and exile of Jerusalem. And the glory of the Lord of hosts is, according to Isaiah, made visible in all of this. And within it all, hope of deliverance and restoration. This is a story about death and resurrection. Let the listener understand where they find themselves in this story: they are in the grave, dead, but awaiting resurrection.

The whole earth is full of his glory, in the breadth of its political geography, and the depth of Sheol where dust returns to dust.

There was a man by the name of Luke, who wrote an account of the life of Jesus and his first followers. He wrote against the backdrop of the Jewish War, that ended with another siege and destruction of Jerusalem, this time at the hands of the Romans. The first witnesses to the events Luke records were already dying, but the community on the Way had begun to spread throughout the Roman empire. This, too, is a story of death and resurrection. Of a coarse fisherman and his partners in their joint family business, who laid down their nets and followed Jesus to catch-up men and women instead.

Simon Peter’s call echoes that of Isaiah: a revelation of the holiness of the Lord, revealed in the person of Jesus and in the response of creation to her Lord; a recognition of personal unworthiness; the tools of his trade— Simon Peter’s net, like Isaiah’s incense burner—repurposed.

Before the Gospels were written down, Paul was engaged in correspondence back and forth between himself and his co-workers and the churches they were planting. We see him wrestling with the saints in Corinth as they struggle to live out their calling. He reminds them that he himself was unfit to be called, and yet, touched by grace, his life was repurposed and transformed. This, too, is a story of death and resurrection. Indeed, the big Story is grounded in death and resurrection, rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus, in which we have a share.

This resurrection business, it isn’t to do with something ethereal and other-worldly. It has flesh and blood, earthiness. It is to do with the world we know, but not as we currently know it. It is the grounds of hope, as we face the present reality of death. And we are reminded at this time of year that we cannot avoid death.

People die. So do congregations, communities, cities, nations. Indeed, we die a thousand times before our death, and, indeed, as followers of Jesus we are called to take up our cross and die to self every day of our lives. That is profoundly counter-cultural: we expend enormous amounts of energy in denial of death, and, where it cannot be denied, we look for a scapegoat to blame. Our whole current national discourse is consumed with blame and fanciful speculation. But the whole earth is full of the glory of the holy, holy, holy Lord of hosts. Rising, and falling, and rising again are in God’s hands, and the glory of the Lord of hosts is revealed in it all—in drawn-out agonising death and in the emergence of new life from under the rubble.

That is what Isaiah and Luke and Paul want to train us to see, and understand: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ Can you see that glory, touch it, smell it, taste it, hear it here in Sunderland in February 2019?

This past week, I saw God’s glory at a funeral, in conversations with strangers and friends, in the privilege of preparing a group of Iranian asylum-seekers for baptism, and in the life-broken men and women fed by an army of servers here yesterday and the local businesses that contributed to the meal. I saw God’s glory in the manner of my godfather’s death on Wednesday, 88 years old and taking the opportunity of being confined to a hospital bed to tell nurses and doctors about Jesus, right to the end. I felt the awesome weight of holiness among the grieving, including those living in literal exile from their own land.

How about you?