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Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17
A couple of weeks ago, my kids were preparing for final exam week. One of them had been reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding for English class, and that book was going to be the basis for the final exam. I somehow managed to make it through high school without ever reading that book, so I decided to check it out from the library and read it so that I could help with any studying for the final, if needed. I posted on Facebook that I was going to start reading the book, and lots of people told me either that I definitely needed to read it, or that they hated the book and couldn’t understand why anyone would read it voluntarily.
Over the years, I’ve heard people say over and over again how terrible and violent and depressing Lord of the Flies is, so I went into it expecting that. Instead, I came away frustrated with the author for having such a low view of human beings. Is it really true that apart from civilized society these children would be unable to find any sense of common good and care for each other? Was it true that unless we had someone telling us what to do all the time that we would always choose what was selfish and harmful and bad? It seems that William Golding agreed with philosopher Thomas Hobbes view of human beings. Hobbes believed that apart from the watchful eye of a strong government, human life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Hobbes believed that without civilization to impose laws on us, we would devolve into tribalism and violence.
Call me an idealist, but I don’t think that’s how it is at all. Or, at least not how it has to be. Are humans selfish? Yes. Are we sometimes so horrendous to each other that it defies reason? Sadly, way too often. Do I also believe that because God created us that we have God’s fingerprints all over us and sometimes choose what is good and beautiful and kind? Yes. Thanks be to God. Do we need a lot of help to get there? Definitely.
Our Scripture passage from Isaiah was written about a stressful and fearful time in Israel’s history. King Uzziah, who had been a good king for most of his reign, died, and his death led to a lot of uncertainty for the people. Would the next king uphold God’s laws? Would he rule the people with justice and kindness? Or would he be a tyrant who led the people astray? It is into this chaotic and scary time that Isaiah encounters the presence of God. Seraphs were flying and calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The house filled with smoke. The pivots on the threshold trembled. Isaiah immediately realized how small he was, how imperfect, unholy, how human he was. All throughout the Old Testament, it says that no one can see God and live. And yet, here Isaiah is having a clear vision of the holiness of God. He must have been terrified!
Isaiah says, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” In God’s holy presence, Isaiah immediately recognizes his unholiness. He says he is not worthy, nor are the people he lives among. And then something unexpected happens. Usually, God calls a prophet by name and tells him or her what the mission is. In this case, God asks a question: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And Isaiah volunteers, “Here am I; send me!”
In Isaiah 6, we discover an outline of what it means to be a person attentive to God in this world. This same outline appears again in many other places in Scripture, but it is also evident in our passage from Romans 8. This outline, this pattern, looks like this: 1) We meet God, who is holy, and we realize we fall short, 2) We have the opportunity for repentance/for leaning on God instead of ourselves, 3) We claim our place as children and heirs of God. When we view human beings as so bad and broken that everything we do is evil all the time, we don’t ever move from step 2) repentance and leaning on God to step 3) claiming our place as children and heirs of God. We get stuck in self-doubt, in fear, in the helpless feeling of being too broken, too far gone, too unfixable. The hope and joy of the Gospel gets lost.
This story from Isaiah reminds me of the conversion story of one of my favorite authors – Anne Lamott. Anne was deep in addiction to drugs and alcohol when she stumbled into a church and sat in the back pew. She raced out before the sermon began, not even really sure why she had ended up in the church in the first place. She repeated this pattern for a while, when she had a profound experience with God. She was at a rock bottom point in her life, in bed, and very intoxicated when she had the sense that she wasn’t alone. She wrote about it this way in her book Traveling Mercies:
“After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there–of course, there wasn’t. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.”
After this simultaneously unsettling and comforting experience, Anne said she kept feeling like something was following her everywhere she went–like the alley cat that just won’t go away. Eventually, she decided to sit through the sermon at the church she kept visiting. Before the benediction, she ran out of the church crying. She opened the door to her houseboat, shut the door, and then hung her head. She writes: “I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said… ‘I quit.’ I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in.’”
She encountered the holy presence of God and couldn’t bear to admit the brokenness in her life. But when she finally decided to lean on God instead of her own strength, she found the beginning of a new journey of love and acceptance and worth. She didn’t linger in that place of self-loathing because in Christ, she discovered who God had created her to be–a beautiful daughter who had a family resemblance to Jesus.
In Romans 8, the apostle Paul writes, “So then, brothers and sisters,l we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh…” We don’t owe our sinfulness anything. We aren’t called to see our brokenness and linger there in a place of self-doubt and self-loathing. Seeing our brokenness is meant to cause us to lean on God and reclaim our place as God’s children. Paul continues, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.” The word that is translated as “adoption” here is a compound word which literally means “sonship.” As adopted children of God, we are eligible to receive the inheritance of a son, and because of this, we don’t live with any obligations to our old selves. We don’t have to remain shackled to the mistakes we’ve made, the missteps we’ve taken. Our place in the family of God is secure.
Every Sunday, we repeat this threefold pattern: we come into the presence of God and we recognize we have fallen short, we confess our sins and choose to lean on God once again, and we are reminded that we are God’s children who are beloved and called. We do this every Sunday because we need to remember it, but we don’t have to leave this pattern here. We get to bring it with us every single day. When we make a mistake, when we get angry with someone, when we break a promise, or when we do something that makes us feel like we’ve never learned or grown at all in our faith, we get to repeat this pattern again. We are never, ever, ever too far gone or too sinful that we’ve lost out on our belonging as God’s children. We just need to stop, see God for who God is and ourselves for who we are, and reconnect with what it means to belong to God.
A pastor named Jay Speights from Rockville, Maryland and his whole family had been trying to learn more about their African heritage for years. He decided to do one of those DNA tests, and he was shocked to discover that he had royal DNA. It turns out, Jay was a prince in the country of Benin. He went to visit the country, and when he got there, he discovered the people of the country were throwing him a welcome party. They had a parade in his honor, and because he had no idea what it meant to be a prince, they sent him to a royal school so that he could learn about the customs and etiquette of being Benin royalty.
All of this was quite a shock for a man who lived in an apartment and didn’t own a car. All he had known about his family of origin prior to this was that they had been descended from slaves. Speights said it wasn’t even so much about learning he had royal DNA as it was about being able to point to a map and say, “I’m from here.” Learning about his heritage and where he had belonging, he has committed himself to projects to better life for people in Benin. He is working for them to have better access to running water in the villages. When he learned who he was, he began to care in a whole new way.
Are William Golding and Thomas Hobbes right that if we are on a deserted island without the laws of civilization that we would turn on each other? I know humans don’t always have the best track record. But, maybe…just maybe if our beginning point is that every person is created in God’s image, we will be more like Speights. Upon learning who he was, and upon seeing the need of his people, he began to take care of others.
May we be people who, like Isaiah, encounter God, ask God to lead us and restore us, and then say, “Here I am, send me” to whatever God calls us to do. May we reconnect with what it means to be children of God who belong to each other and who are called to share that belonging with others.