Isaiah 6:1-13
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany | 9 February 2025 | Isaiah 6:1-13 | Samuel David Zumwalt |
Isaiah 6:1-13 Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” 4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.” 8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” 9 And He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ 10 “Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed.” 11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered: “Until the cities are laid waste and without inhabitant, the houses are without a man, the land is utterly desolate, 12 The Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13 But yet a tenth will be in it, and will return and be for consuming, as a terebinth tree or as an oak, whose stump remains when it is cut down. So the holy seed shall be its stump.”
[Our parish’s overarching preaching theme for 2025 is Holy Pastors, the fifth of Martin Luther’s seven marks of the true Church in his “On the Councils and the Church.”]
HOLY PASTORS: SEND ME!
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Unclean
The internal evidence of the book of Isaiah begs the readers and hearers to see the prophet, like Samuel, as first a priest. Unlike Samuel, Isaiah appears to come from a prominent family, because he has access to kings. How many times had Isaiah worshiped in God’s house and served Him there without ever having had a profound experience of the awesome presence of the thrice-holy God? If not ever, and certainly not in the way Isaiah describes in chapter 6, then, doubtless Isaiah had never before had such a profound awareness of his utter sinfulness before God. Only God is holy in Himself. Only when God reveals Himself to Isaiah in a vision does Isaiah move from a, let’s call it, textbook definition of the thrice-holy God to an actual awareness of the thrice-holy God speaking to him and calling him by name. No wonder Isaiah says, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
When I was a baby pastor in my first call, I happened upon, in a Lutheran bookstore, John Doberstein’s The Minister’s Prayer Book. Now, I don’t think it was coincidental. In fact, I’m sure it was not, because I was just becoming aware of my inadequacy to be a pastor. Oh, I knew how to lead worship, how to preach, how to teach, how to meet people, and certainly, after a year of chaplaincy in a major trauma hospital, how to care for people in crisis. As an old friend used to say, I had a degree in God (a Master of Divinity…which is an oxymoron if ever there was one!). But all the bravado of a newly installed, first-time parish pastor had worn off. There in that little mission congregation with a mortgage it couldn’t pay by itself, I was the fourth pastor in eight years preaching to about 35 people each week. And, now I knew I had the training to “do the job,” but I was suddenly all alone in the pastoral ministry in that place, and I felt both unclean and unprepared.
I bought that little book looking for help. He had a daily and weekly plan for a pastor’s devotional life. As I read, I found a simple quote from St. John Chrysostom, the greatest preacher of the early Church. He said: “It is a miracle for a priest to be saved.” I began to turn that over in my mind. The thrice-holy God spoke to me through that: “You can become so comfortable in the holy place handling the holy things and the holy people that you lose the awareness both of the Holy One and of your utter unworthiness before Me.” I wish I could say that it was one and done, but repentance does not work that way. Repentance is to be daily reoriented from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. In Holy Baptism, we are crucified with Christ. That crucifixion is daily, and when it ceases to become daily, then the thrice-holy God becomes not the thrice-holy God but a mere projection of one’s own desires (as in “God, my Buddy”). God is not our Buddy!
Are you here today out of mere habit, obligation, or sense of responsibility? Are you here today because this is your extended family where you get together with friends? Are the leaders, including the pastors and the deacon, the musicians and others with key worship roles, comfortable in God’s holy place doing holy things with the holy people today? No matter how large the crowd. No matter how aesthetically pleasing or satisfying the “worship experience.” No matter how competent, engaging, or polished the assembly may be in all the various roles. Are you aware you are in the presence of the thrice-holy God and aware that you are sinful and unclean?
Sent
There can be no Gospel without the Law. There can be no Yes without the No. Indeed, as Martin Luther emphasized, the death of God’s Son Jesus is wasted if in any way one holds out the false hope that he or she can make him- or herself right with God apart from Christ Jesus. “…This is indeed why the Law must be preached in all its severity. The old Adam or Eve in us must fall under judgment. For there is no other name [than Jesus!] under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). For this reason, St. Cyprian, the 3rd century martyred bishop of Carthage, Tunisia could say, “There is no salvation outside the Church.”
Only God’s Son Jesus, truly God and truly human, born of the Virgin Mary, can save. He does that through the Church and not by praying the sinner’s prayer in one’s living room during a commercial on Fox News. From the day of Pentecost, Holy Baptism is the way one becomes a Christian (Acts 2:38). From the day of Pentecost, the 3,000 newly baptized Jews “continued in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Indeed, God sent His only-begotten Son to live the perfectly obedient life we cannot and to die the perfectly innocent death we cannot, because God alone is holy in Himself. We are all unclean from the moment of conception in our mother’s womb. We need to be reborn by water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:8), and that new birth happens through our mother, the Church.
Would that the one Baptism, about which St. Paul writes to the Ephesians, could make us completely holy with every last vestige of our uncleanness removed in that washing. But the Old Adam or Eve, the old sinner in us, is a good swimmer, and dogs all our days until we draw our last breath in these mortal bodies. We think of St. Paul’s confession, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice” (Romans 7:19). Only the Lord Jesus Christ can deliver us from this body of death. In Holy Baptism, we are joined to the death of the One whom the Father sent to suffer and die the death we deserve. There is no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of Blood! Only the Precious Lamb of God can take my sin and my death to His cross and give me His life and righteousness as a free gift. John the Baptist declares: ““Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). St. Paul declares: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
God’s No must kill the old sinner in us repeatedly until that sinner is completely destroyed at our last breath. The repentance which John the Baptist preached (Matthew 3:2), then our Lord Jesus in His earthly ministry preached (Mark 1:15), and, finally, Peter preached on Pentecost (Acts 2:37) is not one and done. It is on-going repentance, daily dying to self that we might be raised to a new life in which Christ Jesus lives in us day by day. In short, Christians live our Baptism by daily repentance (literally, a change of heart and mind from me in the center to God as Center).
When the thrice-holy God called and sent Isaiah, it was to speak God’s No to His people who did not fear, love, and trust God above all else. In the midst of that judgment that God spoke through Isaiah both to Israel and Judah, Isaiah also proclaimed God’s Yes. The Lord God would send His Messiah, God-with-us, Emmanuel, to save them. One day, that Messiah, God in human flesh, would make all things new, a return to Paradise where His people would share in the heavenly banquet. God sent Isaiah to preach the One whom the Father would send: Jesus the Messiah. Many purposelydid not listen to Isaiah then. Many purposely do not listen to Isaiah today!
Return
The Hebrew word translated “return” in both v. 10 and v.13 is from “shuv,” which means to turn around as in to come back to God. Think of the prodigal son in Luke 15 who returns to his father. Think of the baptized who come home to mother Church after having been away. Luther writes in the Large Catechism that Baptism is like a ship that you can always climb back into when you’ve fallen overboard into a sea of despair, wretchedness, and self-destruction. When we return, that is not our doing but the Spirit of God who calls us through the Good News that Christ Himself has died even for the worst sins we have committed. It is Satan who wants to steal, kill, and destroy all people including the children of God. Your Father says, “You can return to My loving embrace. I sent My Son to die in your place, to take your punishment, to redeem you.”
The thrice-holy God wants no one to be lost, all to be found, yes, none to be damned. The death of God’s Son is big enough for every sinner of every time and place. That some will choose not to return. That some will choose to stay lost is the epitome of not being able to fix stupid. As one preacher wrote, “You have to be a fool to go to hell, because God doesn’t want anyone to go there!” God says to Isaiah that a tenth will return, a faithful remnant. Nevertheless, we ought never to give up on anyone, never stop praying for everyone, and hope that all would yet come to the waters of Holy Baptism and to a saving trust in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God!
Each day, the Holy Spirit calls the baptized to return to our Baptism, which is to return from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. Indeed, returning and repenting are one and the same thing. Already at the moment of your conception, the Father had a plan for your life. He gave you certain native gifts to be developed and honed. He gave you a web of relationships into which you were received. He imagined the person you would be. But already at conception God’s plan for you was fractured by your being born broken into a broken world in which sin, death, and evil held you in its grip. Already before the foundation of the world, the Father in heaven decided to send His Son to take into Himself our humanity in order to destroy the power of sin, death, and the devil. We do not return in order to receive God’s grace and mercy but because God’s grace and mercy has called us out of death into life. We, born dead in our trespasses, can be made alive by the power of the Holy Spirit working through God’s Word and Sacraments (His visible Word).
In Luke 5, today, Simon Peter’s response to the power and presence of the Holy One of God, Jesus Christ, is like Isaiah’s, “Woe is me.” Simon says, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Likewise, when the Holy Spirit calls us into this holy place in which the thrice-holy God is present in His Holy Word and Sacraments (Baptism, Absolution, and Eucharist), we begin by confessing with Isaiah and Simon Peter, “I am a poor, miserable sinner.” He speaks His Mighty Word of forgiveness through the Blood of Jesus. His Word speaks His No to the old sinner inside and raises us up again by His Marvelous Yes in the Crucified Son of God. He fills us with His Very Body and Most Precious Blood, the Medicine of Immortality, that we may be sent out to those caught in the nasty web of the devil, his works, and his ways. When we declare what His grace and mercy in Christ Jesus have done for us, the Holy Spirit uses us beggars to show other beggars where to get the Bread of Life. How will they hear if we beggars don’t go to tell them?
Joyfully leaving the Lord’s altar today, will you answer gladly: “Here am I; send me; send me?”
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Bulletin Insert
Holy Pastors: Send Me!
Praying
Lord God, we ask you to keep your Church and household continually in your true religion, that those who lean only on the hope of your heavenly grace may evermore be defended by your mighty power; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen” (The Daily Prayer of the Church, 611).
Listening
Isaiah 6:1 “… I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up…”
St. Cyril [5th century Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt]: “No one can deny that the prophet saw the Son in the glory of God the Father… that the throne is said to be lifted up means that the reign of God transcends all things. That God is sitting refers to his immovability and that his blessings are everlasting and unchanging” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Isaiah1-39, 48).
Isaiah 6:3 “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”
St. Ambrose [4th century Bishop of Milan, Italy]: “They say it not once, lest you should believe that there is but one; not twice, lest you should exclude the Spirit; they say not holies [in the plural], let you should imagine that there is plurality, but they repeat three times and say the same word, that even in a hymn you may understand the distinction of persons in the Trinity and the oneness of the Godhead, and while they say this they proclaim God” (49).
Isaiah 6:5 “Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;”
Gregory the Great [Late 6th – early 7th century Bishop of Rome, Italy]: “To take part in the talk of worldly people without defiling our own heart is all but impossible… Why should we be surprised the, if God is slow to hear our petitions when we on our part are slow to hear God’s command or pay not attention whatever to it?” (53).
Isaiah 6:8 “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’”
St. Jerome [Late 4th – early 5th century translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible]: “As long as Isaiah’s tongue was treacherous and his lips unclean, the Lord does not say to him, whom shall send, and who shall go? His lips are cleansed, and immediately he is appointed the Lord’s spokesman; hence it is true that the person with unclean lips cannot prophesy, nor can he be sent in obedient service to God… Would to heaven this solitude were granted to us, that it would clear away all wickedness from our tongue, so that where there are thorns, where there are brambles, where there are nettles, the fire of the Lord may come and burn all of it and make it a desert place, the solitude of Christ” (55).
Reflecting
1. Do I approach the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with awe and wonder as the thrice-holy God?
2. Do I come before the Lord God with the profound awareness that I am a poor, miserable sinner living in a broken world filled with poor, miserable sinners?
Learning
THE SACRAMENT OF HOLY BAPTISM (from Luther’s Small Catechism)
As the head of the family should teach them in a simple way to his household.
Second
What benefits does Baptism give?
It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.
Which are these words and promises of God?
Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Mark: ‘Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned’ (Mark 16:16).
Doing
1. Pray for every unbaptized child, youth, and adult you know and for the child’s parents, too. Place their pictures and/or names in a prominent place as a reminder to pray for them
2. Pray for your unchurched loved ones and friends. Place their pictures and/or names in a prominent place as a reminder to pray for them. Invite one or more of them to worship.
3. Discuss with your spouse, your family, or a friend what benefits Holy Baptism gives and how that relates to the Risen Lord Jesus’ word and promise in Mark 16:16.
4. Consult Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 181, for the daily lessons appointed for the week of Epiphany 5 (Year One) and read them daily before saying your daily prayers.
5. Do your best to discover the date of your Baptism, the place, and the officiant. Make a regular practice of observing your baptismal birthday every year with dear ones.
6. If you are a confirmed Lutheran transfer or have already completed our New Disciples Class, please email dcapozio@stmatthewsch.org to register for the New Member Orientation on March 1 at 9 a.m. The next New Disciples Class will be May 17 from 9am-noon.
7. Begin preparing yourself and your dear ones to keep a holy Lent, a time of baptismal renewal and of growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sign up for the Lenten prayer retreat on Saturday, March 8, from 8 a.m. – 1 p.m.
For Husbands and Wives
Repeat daily: “I (name) take you (name) to be my wedded wife (husband), to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish until death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge you my faith.”
©Samuel David Zumwalt, STS
St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina USA