Sermons

“Removing the Lightning Barrier”

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – February 10, 2019

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might embrace your mercy and goodness and accept your call.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

I wonder if you’ve ever had an interaction like this: you’re talking to someone about whatever and somehow the conversation turns to something about church, and so you tell them about something you’re involved with at church, and then you casually invite them to come visit some time.  (Because your pastor has been pestering you to invite more people to church!) But instead of giving you a straight answer, they kind of chuckle and proceed to tell you that if they were to set foot in this building, lightning would strike.  Or maybe they say that the ceiling would collapse.  Whatever.  The point is that they are claiming to be so unholy, so profane, so utterly irredeemable that God would be offended by their very arrival, to the point of engaging in violent, immediate destruction.

Have you had that conversation?  It occurred to me it might have happened to me more when I was living in Alabama, but I’m pretty sure it’s everywhere.  And obviously, there’s a lot to unpack with such an exchange. It says a lot about someone when they say this, even though there’s no reason to assume any of them actually believe it. It speaks to what they think they’ve done, how much judgement they’ve heaped on their own heads, and possibly, their level of willingness to change.

But more importantly, this common excuse reveals just how badly the church has failed at showing the world who God is.  I asked my friends on Facebook where they thought this idea of God sitting up in the sky, just waiting to smite people with lightning bolts comes from.  Now you need to know that probably half of my Facebook friends are fellow clergy, so that probably skewed the answers.  But here’s the thing: nobody seemed to know.  Nobody brought up Sodom and Gomorrah, which is kind of surprising in retrospect, given the whole sulphur and fire raining down from heaven thing in that story.  Then again. my clergy friends aren’t the type to be that into the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, except to explain that it’s denouncing lack of hospitality not homosexuality.

Most of them wanted to pin the blame on Zeus or Thor. They’re the ones associated with lightning bolts, right?  But if that’s the case, why does anyone connect that to attendance at a Christian church, where we definitely don’t worship Zeus or Thor?  There’s also the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, who drop dead one after the other after secretly not sharing all their wealth with their new Christian community and then lying about it.  But there isn’t any lightning involved in that story; they just keel over.  Plus, I don’t think lack of generosity is usually the sin the folks who try to use this excuse are concerned about, although maybe it should be.

So where does this dramatic, shared fear of God’s smiting lightning come from?  Maybe there isn’t an origin story.  Maybe it’s not something we learn about God; maybe it’s something we fear about ourselves. I suggest that because that same fear is present in both of our scripture readings this morning.  And in both cases, the human in the story is way more worried about it than God is.

Isaiah’s call story is pretty dramatic.  There’s a high and lofty throne.  There’s a robe so long and luxurious it fills the whole temple. There are six-winged seraphim, praising God with stentorian voices.  There’s smoke.  And perhaps most puzzling, there’s no explanation of how Isaiah got there in the first place, just a brief note that it happened the year King Uzziah died.  And how does Isaiah respond?  He’s terrified.  Why? Because he knows God to be good, but also knows himself to be not good.  “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!”

I mean, the building is already shaking, but it’s because those seraphs are praising God so loudly, not because God is bellowing condemnation down upon Isaiah’s head.  What is Isaiah afraid of?  Who started this rumor that if you saw God and you weren’t already utterly, blamelessly righteous, you would die?

It’s got staying power, this fear, because it’s still in operation centuries later when Simon Peter first meets Jesus in Luke’s gospel. He was happy to help with the logistics of getting Jesus out into the water where he could teach the crowds most effectively.  But then when Jesus suggested they should throw out the net again, and the haul of fish barely fit in two boats, Simon echoes Isaiah, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  What is he afraid of?  Is he worried Jesus will judge him?  Or is he concerned he will ruin Jesus’ reputation by his mere proximity?

Is Simon Peter foreshadowing these people who won’t come into our churches for fear of God’s lightning of wrath?  “If you’re embarking on a whole Messiah thing, you’d better steer clear of me, because God definitely won’t let that happen with me around!  We’re lucky those boats didn’t sink with you in them!  If you’d known whose boat you were getting in, you never would have done it. I’m amazed the crowd even stuck around to listen to you once you got me involved.”

Do you know, I think there are people out there who honestly feel this way?  Sure, they’ll make light of it and chuckle when they’re saying it, but deep down, they mostly mean every word.  Church, we have failed to show the world the God of Love.  So instead, the world has invented a god in the image of our worst fears, a god who is judgmental and full of wrath and vengeance, a god who is violent and destructive and primarily interested in punishment, a god for whom we can never be good enough.  This is who they’re assuming we’re in here worshiping, somehow mysteriously having gotten past the entrance exam and on the good side of this cruel, capricious deity. How on earth have we done such a bad job at telling the world the good news of great joy?

You know what’s even worse?  I think sometimes we let ourselves believe in that false god too. I know there are a lot of you who do a lot of amazing ministry around here.  I try to let you know on a regular basis how much I appreciate the various gifts and graces you offer faithfully and generously year in and year out.  But here’s a thing that I also suspect is true: there are some of you who have gifts for ministry that you’ve never dared offer, because part of you believes the lies about the you’ll-never-be-good-enough-god.  You see other people getting involved and assume they’ve got it covered, so you don’t need to risk offering your time too.  “I couldn’t do it like that anyway.  Nobody would want it how I would do it.  I tried once and someone laughed.  I’m just going to keep my mouth shut.”

I want to take a poll, but I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands.  How many of you usually that most everybody here prays more often than you do?  How many of you usually assume other church members know more about the Bible than you do?  How many of you assume other people have better relationships with their kids or their siblings or their parents?  How many of you see others as kinder and smarter and more loving and more generous than yourself?  How often do you assume that means they should be the ones running the church instead you?  You don’t necessarily think God’s sending any lightning bolts, but you can’t quite make sense of how you got here?  I’m not saying any of us feels like this all of the time, but many of us have our moments.

Thank God for Simon Peter!  What’s amazing about his story is that there is no burning coal in tongs to blot out his sin.  He tells Jesus he’s a sinful man up front; Jesus calls him to be a disciple anyway.  And then all throughout the gospels, he regularly proves that to be true: mouthing off when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, trying to build Jesus a shrine before he’s even been crucified, then denying he even knows him when it really matters.  He wasn’t wrong about the sinful thing.

But did you notice how much Jesus cared?  Here is our good news, friends!  “Do not be afraid!”  Jesus did not care, at all.  He knew Simon.  He knew Simon’s weaknesses.  He wasn’t bothered in the slightest.  Because being a disciple of Jesus isn’t about us being holy; it’s about us proclaiming that Jesus is holy.  It’s not about us proving how lovable we are; it’s about us proclaiming how much God loves everyone else out there. Sure, we can show that better if we’re loving, but sometimes asking forgiveness when we haven’t been loving is just as powerful an illustration.

Somehow, the world has gotten this idea that there’s a giant, angry judge in the sky, watching and waiting for a chance to smite all of us.  Somehow, they’ve connected that ugly caricature to what we’re trying to do here, following Jesus.  Church, we’ve got some misunderstandings to clear up!  In our own hearts and out there amongst everyone else.  We need to live like we believe in the God that Jesus taught us about, the heavenly Father, the Mother Hen God who just wants to gather us up under her wings, the God who sent his Son into the world, not to condemn us but to save us.  We worship the God of mercy and love here, and people need to know that.  They need to see how life-changing that can be.  So the next time someone talks to you about lightning, call their bluff.  Invite them again.  Tell them how the God you know, the God you try to believe in every day even when it’s hard, created lightning just because it’s beautiful, not because he might need it someday to smite them.  Who knows? They just might believe you.  You just might believe yourself!  Alleluia and Amen!