Go Away, Little God

Isaiah 6:1-8 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.
And one called to another and said: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."
The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.
And I said: "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!"
Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out."
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I; send me!"


Luke 5:1-11 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."
Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets."
When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.
So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"
For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people."
When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.


In the year that Judah's earthly king dies, Isaiah is called from his ordinary life to that of a prophet, and the semi-hallucinatory experience is fraught with bold, subversive sentiment:
1.The immortal Lord is seen on a kingly throne at a time when the Judean monarchy has once again shown its frail, mortal nature.


2.Solomon's temple, in all its massive glory, can barely fit the hem of God's robe. Even this giant religious wonder of the world will not contain God.


3.God's attending angels take a hot coal from the altar and fly past high priest, attending clergy and ranking officials to recruit some punk kid as prophet.

We religious folks often fall into the mindset that our churches are something like God-dispensers. The intended effect of all this glorious architecture at such massive scale is to somehow communicate loft of concept and enormity of God. But instead, we often see it as a pinpoint location for holiness: a holy post-and-tether to keep God properly in the yard, and not digging in the neighbor's garden or wandering off into town.

Isaiah's message is not simply that the Temple is too small to hold God, but that it is also too small to hold God's will and wisdom. Those impossible seraphs flit past all those priests and politicians for a reason: God will do what God will do, and choose whom God will choose. So not only might it be better to worship under the stars of the night sky, at some precipice of the Grand Canyon, or at land's end facing out into the ocean if we want to experience the enormity of God. We also might better fall to our knees at the maternity ward or morgue with our prayers of intercession. We might better lift our voices in hymns of praise at the soup kitchen or on the shop floor. We might better offer our sacrifices to strangers on cold sidewalks and in hushed late-night conversations, staring at the bedroom ceiling with those most intimate.

So I say “Go away, little God.” I yearn beyond a God that demands only a 7th of my mornings. I hear beyond the voices of Reverend and Doctor. I see the horizon beyond the steeple, and the possibilities beyond even our most rarefied, incense-saturated air. A cathedral god seems too fixed and petty for me. I like a good show, but I prefer a good impulse. I enjoy ancient ritual, but thrive on a profoundly present Is.

Doesn't it all come down to what we learned in Mrs. Lewis' 2nd grade Sunday School class? God is everywhere – truly a revolutionary concept! God is not merely huge. God is ever-present and implicit. God is right at the tip of our tongues and at the core of our better natures; in both our grandest gesture and our smallest kindness. We are not simply of use to God, we can be most-favored conduits of holiness.

Jesus proves the point as he recruits his disciples. His prophetic ministry visited temple and synagogue, yes, but was most definitely of the streets. His was a holiness that played across children's faces and swam in widow's tears. Shouts of acclamation and songs of praise sprang best from leprous lips and hungry mouths.

The typical pictures of Jesus with his Pepsodent smile, anglo-saxon nose, and Tide-sanitized, blindingly white robes does us a grave disservice. Ours is a messiah who was no doubt caked in the dust of the road and the filth of his followers. Ours is a face-to-face Christ. Ours is a face-to-face faith.

And isn't that the core of the prophetic message? The Holy One is not limited to large buildings and the big picture, but is liquid and rampant, ready, willing and able to flow through all we say and do with each other, if only we would allow the flood gates to open and the blessings to pour out. If only we had the gall and the guts amid so much glory and grandeur to simply say: “here am I, send me!”