Sermon

Isaiah 6:1-8

Four Letter Words to God

The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

GLORY TO THE FATHER
AND TO THE SON
AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGININNG
IS NOW
AND WILL BE FOREVER, AMEN.

I don’t know what it is about four letter words but when we think of them, they are usually bad words. Now I’ve read that the words we are offended by were used by the Anglo-Saxon peasants at the time of the Norman Invasion of England in 1066. The Norman overlords used French which was considered more genteel than the direct, four-letter words which were considered earthy and unrefined. You can say the same thing using Latinate words or French words and it is socially acceptable but not the simple old words—think boeuf, beef, instead of cow or mouton, mutton, instead of lamb or those words which came to your mind when you thought of four-letter words.

One of the pastors in our text study this week remembered growing up in New York City and meeting Jews for Jesus on the streets. You may have your own opinion of these folks but their tracts and brochures are often very clever. This pastor recalled that one was entitled, “Four Letter Words to God.” It said that when one comes before the Lord the only appropriate response is the four letter phrase, ” Oy veh !” “Woe!” And later when one has grown to love and serve God, the word is ” Hineni.” “Hear I am.” Both have only four letters in Hebrew. And both are found in our Old Testament lesson today. The experience of the prophet Isaiah is that of every believer. When we come before God, we can only beg for forgiveness, Isaiah said,

“Woe is me! I am lost,
for I am a man of unclean lips
and live among a people of unclean lips.”

Simon Peter recognized that Jesus was the Messiah and he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Lord, I am a sinful man!” Our response to the presence of the Lord God is to confess our sin.

A SERMONWRITER SUBSCRIBER SAYS: “Richard, you have no idea how much I look forward to finding an e-mail from you. It’s a positive delight to journey through the exegeses with you as you open up the scriptures for me. Please don’t change a thing.”

Last year, Pastor Robyn and a great number of youth directors and pastors from the Lutheran Church met in Texas. I remember her coming back with a characterization of young people today. It had been set forth by Christian Smith in his book, Soul Searching. What she said about our youth is really true of most of us. Our religious faith is really moralistic, therapeutic, deism. We have a difficult time with particularity. We want our God to be a Supreme Being that is acceptable to people of every religious tradition or none. We have a much harder time saying that the only true God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, this God of Israel who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible is either true or false. The God witnessed to in the Scriptures is the God who created the heaven and earth, who sits on the throne of heaven, whom the angels adore, who came to this earth as a Jewish man, a carpenter from Nazareth, who was crucified, died and rose again. It has been called a scandal of particularity to confess faith in this God because to do so means following that commandment: Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” Deists believe in a prime mover, more a force than a person. This is not the God of the Bible.

And we want God to reward good people and punish the bad—and bad people are usually other people not us. Folks, in human history many times it is the righteous who suffer and the wicked seem to be rewarded. In Rabbi Harold Kushner’s words, “Bad Things Happen to Good People.” As believers and followers of God bad things may happen to us. I do not know how many times people have asked me as pastor, “Why isn’t life fair?” We try to do the right thing, act decently and kindly, we finish school and get a job and get married and pay our taxes, and yet bad things happen to us.

We have a moralistic faith; we like the idea of karma, that what goes around, comes around, that every good deed is rewarded and evil deeds are punished. As Robert Browning put it, “God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world.” Of course it doesn’t always work out that way. It really doesn’t.

And therapeutic: What is the good of religion if it doesn’t help me get through the day and the week? Now the Bible invites us to claim God’s promises, to ask for strength and to rest assured that God will provide. God provides us our daily bread, everything we need from day to day—that is what God has promised.

But God doesn’t promise that our faith will help us avoid life’s unpleasantries and difficulties. Christians get cancer; they lose their jobs; their children get in trouble. Remember the Bible also talks about the discipline we have from the Lord; that those whom God loves, God chastises. Paul talks about the sufferings of the present time as not worth comparing with the glories to come—but the glories are still to come. We are guaranteed nothing in the here and now.

Both Simon Peter and Isaiah fell to their knees and confessed their sin. Oy veh ! Woe is me (actually it isn’t exactly that in the Hebrew— Oy is in there but Veh is a Yiddish word). When we are confronted by God we can only see ourselves as we really are—sinful men and women, part of a sinful and self-centered people. But God does not leave us in our sin.

Now, Jesus could have reassured Peter saying, “Oh, Simon, you are a pretty good fellow, no worse than anyone else.” No, Jesus spoke kinds words to Peter, “Do not be afraid,” but also gave him the challenge, “From now on you will be catching people.” God could have just said to the prophet, “You are forgiven.” Instead, Isaiah’s sinful lips were purified by a burning coal placed on his lips by the six-winged seraph. Forgiveness always hurts.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship warns of cheap grace: Preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship. Real grace is costly. Bonhoeffer writes:

“It is costly because it calls us to follow
and it s grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

It is costly because it costs us our life
and it is grace because it gives us the only true life.

It is costly because it condemns sin
and grace because it forgives the sinner.

Above all, it is costly
because it cost God the life of His Son.”

Following Jesus cost Simon Peter his way of life—he would now be a fisher of others instead of fish. He would leave his home by Lake Gennesaret and end up in Rome. It cost Isaiah a blistered lip and the task of calling his people to repentance in the face of the coming judgment. When we respond to Jesus we must count the cost for ourselves. Our lives will not be the same. We too may be called to take unpopular stands, leave familiar ways and change our priorities.

So what’s the second four letter word for God? Isaiah responded to God’s call with the simple, “Hineni,” “Here am I Lord. Send me.”

Today we will be commissioning sixteen people for Stephen Ministry at Central Lutheran and eight people for a mission trip to Guatemala. Some are the same people. Being a Stephen Minister is very rewarding but it is not easy. Listening to people with special needs, caring, regularly praying and keeping confidence are special gifts. It is a call these people have heard and responded to—”Here am I. Send me.”

I am going with the Guatemala mission trip this year. I can paint but that is about the limit of experience. I’ve never done concrete work or masonry. I know nothing about electrical work and I hope someone will show me how to roof. Boy, I hope it is a single story building because I’m pretty afraid of heights. But I’m willing to try and learn and work. “Here am I. Send me.”

My daughter Anne telephoned and said she was being trained to be an assisting minister at her church in Chicago. The pastor asked her. She has a nice voice and she has certainly been to church a lot. But it is a scary thing standing up in the congregation leading worship and singing before so many others. But she said “Yes.” “Here am I. Send me.”

You may be feeling a tug or pull to do something for God or your neighbor. It has been said that your calling is where your passion and the world’s need meet. Some of you were called to build a house for a homeless family in our Habitat for Humanity project or to work with Food for Lane County or the homeless shelter, to work with our middle school or high school youth, to sing with the choir, to teach Sunday School, to serve as a volunteer at the hospital or in a school or community organization. Maybe you feel a call to work for peace and justice issues, to set an example by living simply. God may be calling you to grow in your faith by setting aside time to read the Bible and pray.

Take a deep breath and ask yourself, “What is God calling me to do?” Consider how you can follow God’s prompting everyday. God is calling each one of you to faithfulness, to living out your baptism in your daily life. Each one of us can look at ourselves and consider what God wants of us.

Then out will come the four letter word, “Oy veh.” We are people of unclean lips, sinful men and women. But we are forgiven through the costly grace of Jesus Christ. It may hurt to receive forgiveness as we change our habits and attitudes and lives. And then we respond with a second four-letter word, “Hineni.” “Here am I, Lord. Send me.” Amen.

Copyright 2007, James D. Kegel. Used by permission.