A young woman in her late 20’s had a question for Amy Dickinson of “Dear Amy.” She wrote: “Lately it seems I have been hearing people say obnoxious, racist, and/or just ‘wrong’ things more often. I’ve always been a very quiet person. I’m terrible at speaking to strangers. However, whenever I hear something and don’t say something, I feel awful….I’d really like to get better about this, because I feel like I am not only not helping, but my silence is making things worse. Could you help me?” The experience she’s describing isn’t unusual. It doesn’t happen only to people who are shy. We can call it ‘bystander guilt’ and cover a whole host of circumstances, like failure to challenge a rude comment, or stand with someone who is being verbally abused. This young woman recognizes her silence as a betrayal of values she holds dear, such as tolerance and respect for others. Saying nothing makes her complicit and she desperately wants to challenge the degrading words. In her urgency perhaps we can hear the spirit within her nudging her toward speech. The God who calls Isaiah in our first reading is also calling her, helping purge her guilt and shame, so she can find and use her voice.
Her question underscores the words of Isaiah as he stands before God wrestling with his own failures. “Every word I’ve ever spoken is tainted! blasphemous even!” he says. “I am a person of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips. I’ve used words that corrupt and desecrate! yet here I am standing before the Just One who created the universe! Woe is me! I am doomed.” Guilt and shame overwhelm him as he recognizes that the disregard and contempt he has shown toward others has, in reality, been directed toward the Creator of the world, the Creator who isn’t separate from creation. Disrespect of others is profound disrespect of the God who made them, the God who is within them, the God who is embedded in all things. Everything and everyone is HOLY because God is HOLY. All the earth and all its creatures are filled with God—God’s glory shines in and through them all.
Seeing this for the first time Isaiah is overcome with remorse. The door opens for healing to enter. We have to see our mistakes and failures, we have to own them and release our false pride, our defenses, for humility to take over, for deep, inner change to take place. That’s what healing is about. The angel brings the burning coal from the altar. It burns away Isaiah’s attachment to being ‘right’, to being anything other than who he is—a flawed human being needing a course correction in order to hear and respond to God’s plea for hands and hearts to help in the task of saving, of healing, of leading the people toward right relationships, toward justice, toward speaking the truth and living in integrity. This burning coal purges the source of Isaiah’s disrespect—his false pride. He can now speak words that are true and bring healing to the people.
When we think of prophets we often think of these ancestors from the Hebrew Scriptures—folks like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea—men (usually) who were summoned and sent by God to deliver a message of warning or encouragement or healing to the people. They were often ignored and ridiculed, pursued and threatened, while God continued to urge them on. There are many prophets in the world today, many of them vilified because their words threaten the status quo. And there are large, almost cosmic, questions and issues facing humanity that can overwhelm our senses and lead us to believe we have no voice in the matters at hand. We don’t see ourselves as prophets, as people called to bring a message of hope or challenge, a message of justice or mercy to our people. It is tempting to simply throw up our hands and back away because it’s difficult to believe that our one, tiny voice matters in the great scheme of things.
Isaiah didn’t believe his voice mattered. How could it? He was “a person of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips.” God couldn’t want him! In his letter to the Corinthians Paul writes: “because I persecuted the church of God I don’t even deserve the name ‘apostle’!” And Peter, filled with fear when his fishing nets were filled to overflowing, says to Jesus, “Leave me, I beg you, for I am a sinner.” All of these voices are those of people aware of their shortcomings who had to be persuaded to speak, to act on the guidance they were given, to respond to the nudges from spirit, however frightened and ill-equipped they felt. The young girl who wants to speak up when disrespectful remarks are made at least trusts that her voice might matter. Whether anyone listens to her or not, she wants to live with integrity. She models ‘faith’ seeking its voice in an overwhelmingly complex world.
Isaiah, Paul, Peter—all struggled with their own ineptitude, their fears, their flaws, their disbelief that their words and what they had to offer was good enough, that they were good enough. But they said yes when called. They wrestled with their fears, found their voice and lived with both self-doubt and courage. All of us who are here on this planet at this time MATTER. Our sensitivities matter. Our voices and our actions matter. When we face our flaws and shed false pride we become humble instruments in God’s hands. We become the prophets and the healers God needs to save our fractured world.
“Who will go for us?” God asks again. “Who can I send?” If you are ready simply stand before God in your imagination, muster your courage and humbly whisper, “Here I am. Send me.”
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