Angels and all that
Sermon preached in St Salvator¿s Chapel, St Andrews on Sunday 26th April 2009 by the Most Rev Dr Idris Jones
Readings: Isaiah 6: 1 ¿ 9 and Acts 3: 12 - 19
Sermon
Our eldest son likes to share any jokes or entertainment that he comes across on the Internet. Some of them I should blush to mention in detail to the innocent members of this congregation but one in particular I do want to describe . Some of you may well have come across it yourselves.
The instruction appears on the screen to concentrate very hard for a minute on the pattern that is presented . Then to close your eyes for some seconds and when you open then to look at a blank wall .
What then happens is that you seem to see a pin-point of bright light that gradually expands to a large circle of light into which comes the picture of a man with shoulder length hair and a beard. The portrait is not unlike the picture of a Christ that might have been painted by a Pre-Raphaelite artist.
What I suppose has actually happened is that the brain has absorbed the pattern on the screen although it at first appears only as a scrambled image . That part of the brain that then recognizes and makes sense of images translates that in some way into a pattern that is suggestive of a religious subject . In one way it is perfectly right to say ¿I have seen Jesus¿ because that is what the senses tell you has happened ¿ although you may be well aware that this is about some function of the brain that is making sense of some stimuli that are otherwise without meaning . No one can tell you that you haven't seen the image ¿ they can tell you that they have not and there is nothing there ¿ but when they follow the instructions on the page they do invariably have the same experience .
I was both fascinated and saddened some years ago to listen to a programme about individuals whose brain does not have the capacity to recognize patterns at all . The phrase ¿I remember your face¿ is one they can never use even of family members or partners whom they may have been speaking to just minutes before . It has a catastrophic effect on socialization ¿ the good news was that in many cases some improvement is possible once the condition is recognized. So this ability to recognize patterns or make sense of what appears to be the case around us is one we take for granted .
In the case of the web-page what was of great interest to me was the fact that when the image appeared on the blank wall I instantly felt I knew if not who it actually was ¿ at least who it was meant to be . Of course my expectation of what Jesus actually looked like is highly suspect conditioned as it is by culture and decades of art . The early church quickly identified in the words of Isaiah the prophet a description of Jesus as the servant who suffers ¿ and there is nothing pre Raphaelite about that description . ¿ He had no beauty, no majesty to catch our eyes , no grace to attract us to him. He was despised , shunned by all , pain racked and afflicted by disease- an object from which people averted their gaze¿ . Isaiah is painting a picture that is more than about physical characteristics it has to be said , but it does raise the question of whether our conditioned expectations might not be too comfortable in that regard .
In our first reading this morning we are introduced to Isaiah at the beginning of his work as prophet . We know that the book of Isaiah covers the ministry of more than one person ¿ in fact a succession of prophets who speak in the same vein as each other but to different times and circumstances in the life of the nation of ancient Israel . But in chapter six we are given a description of what the prophets vision was whilst in an ecstatic state of religious experience. It may well have been part of being in the Temple in Jerusalem because we know that worship there during a national festival would have been a highly dramatic affair . We might well have appreciated the music and liturgical performance ¿ I doubt it many of us would have been in sympathy with the wholesale slaughter of the animal sacrifice that was involved. But it would have been in the proper use of the word an awesome spectacle and so it moved Isaiah to have a sense of the presence of God so close as to become uncomfortable . It was his experience ¿ he records what he saw , not that this was what happened to everyone there .
My purpose is not in some simple and reductionist way to suggest that it was entirely a product of an imagination that was expecting something to happen . Human experience is too varied and unexplored to be able to pretend that we have an explanation for everything : but I am fascinated by how Isaiah interpreted or tried to make sense of whatever his religious experience was and to learn from it if possible .
I doubt if many of us have shared such an intense sense of the sheer holiness of God ¿ in other words I don't suppose many of us would want to claim we had had that sort of vision ¿ or if we had we would want to keep quiet about it rather than risk the consequences. Still it is possible to ¿see¿ some pretty strange things when our brain gets going . We do have a sense I think of whether the conclusion that Isaiah came to rings true . I think that it does .
One , the prophet caught a hint of what is possible through worship that is offered in sincerity and truth ¿ and that is that we do gain a feeling of the presence of God . Quite frankly why would we offer worship if we didn't ?
For Isaiah the image of God being present in the Temple was mediated by the kind of clothing that he could see around him in the sanctuary . So he speaks of the hem of a cloak filling the Temple . And a time of national crisis when the king who had produced a great reign had just died ; the prophet senses that God is among his people . God is present among us in sorrow and in joy an ¿ever present help¿ .
The thought of the immediacy of God provokes in Isaiah a normal reaction which is a feeling of sorrow and repentance of the unbearable incomprehensibility of the creature before the creator . It is the same response as St Peter , confronted by Jesus - ¿depart from me O Lord for I am a sinful man¿ . And the response of God in the Temple is at one with that of God the Son Jesus Christ ¿ to reach out and to offer the remedy that stands as any obstacle between us and God .
In Isaiah chapter six , this is mediated in a merciful way ¿ it would be intolerable for the Divine to in a direct way . So it is through the merciful action of the seraph that the remedy is produced and all impediment to a life of service is removed by God's action .
It can lead to only one conclusion and so it does . When the voice of God poses the question of how and who God's message is to be communicated to the people the answer comes ¿Here I am Lord , send me ¿ .
That is the authentic response of those whom God calls - Mary the mother of Jesus ¿How can this be - let it be to me according to your word¿ or of her son in the Garden of Gethsemane ¿if possible take this away from me : yet your will be done¿ . It is the prayer we were given by Jesus and which we repeat over and again ¿ Your kingdom come , your will be done on earth as in heaven¿
We , like Isaiah have to face the consequences of that engagement with God . How can the will of God be done if not by us ? How is the message of the desire of God to touch every human heart and bring cleansing and healing and hope for the future if we do not offer to take our part in making it happen?
Who will go for us - it has to be me and you so I hope that everyone is open to respond to that question in whatever life we are called to follow . Some of you may be given the call to ordained ministry in some way ; all of us by virtue of baptism are called to be disciples of Jesus and to live and work as Christians in industry , in the laboratory , in the class room , in supporting others - in every kind of work or profession in which we may find ourselves.
It would be a great gift to the community if those who claim a faith would be not like some scrambled image that required a complex process to work out what they were meant to be ; but a true and living example of what it means to be human in a whole and meaningful way ¿ if Christians started living the faith that we proclaim . Or rather I should say when not if because the world is certainly able to recognize the real product ; and if we don't live it , the faith will fail to commend itself to others and what we truly need is for Christians to be confident in what they are about .
In Scotland many churches are taking part in Back to Church Sunday in September. The director of the programme was in Glasgow a few weeks ago to help us prepare for it . Last year he had commissioned thirty people who had no knowledge of the church to go and visit thirty different congregations and come back and report on what they had experienced . Oh no ! I thought I don't think I want to hear this ¿ but how wrong I was . Welcome extended on every side and to the surprise of the visitors as well . When asked what they would like to say to the churches the message that they sent was this .Tell them to be confident in what they believe and do¿
Woe is me , said Isaiah , I cant do this - God acts and the impossible becomes imaginable ¿ and when the question comes next ¿ who , the prophet is a changed person instead of ¿I cant do this¿ he now volunteers ¿ send me !
So here is another meaning in the event in the Temple -that change is possible and that confidence can come out of hesitation and that what makes the difference is an experience of God that brings release and empowerment.
Its possible to pick up this theme in our New Testament reading as well ¿ but I am not about to embark upon a second sermon . Here again the question is what people saw or thought they saw and the reality of how the action of God when it is accepted brings about new life and new beginnings ¿ in this case an unexpected gift of healing . But what they thought they had seen ¿ Peter and John acting as special people ¿ was in fact the power of a risen Christ making clear the new order in which new life could begin .
Who will go for us ? If you and I are prepared to say yes , then empowered by the Holy Spirit that new life can be restored to our crippled churches and the hope that the world so desperately needs can be released to the glory of God and the fulfillment of his purpose as it is expressed in Jesus Christ Our Lord.