Who speaks to you all today
saying,
“If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe,
how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”
If anyone were to come up to you,
uninformed, or even you have doubts yourself, as to whether or not the Divine
Service is a work of men instead of a work of God, I submit for your approval
the Call of Isaiah, in chapter 6 of his book. This Divine Service Isaiah has
been made a part of is the work of angels.
The similarities are that the Lord
fills the space, He is with angels and archangels, the song is the Sanctus,
holy holy holy, there is the Lord’s house, there is confession and absolution,
there is an Altar, and there is communion.
But all that doesn’t matter, does
it? I mean, just listen to St. Paul ’s
words in the Epistle reading. No one can know God. He is unsearchable. He shows
up on no intellectual radars. His mind is a closed book. His needs are all
hidden and He has no lack of anything. How can you be so uppity as to pretend
that you have a handle on what the Lord is doing in Isaiah?
All we need is God’s holiness. All
we need is His majesty. All we need is His omnipotence. And you know why that’s
all you think you need? Its because then you are right and are called by God on
your very own holy crusade. Yes, because your God is the one in charge and you
are His faithful hound, then whatever you do is justified and forgiven, no
matter who you steamroll.
This is what we all mean when we
say, “Its God’s will”. This is what we mean when we say, “God is in charge”.
Nothing bad will happen to us and our plans and even if we encounter sadness on
the way, that is just God’s way of showing that we are the chosen one to carry
out His will. Too bad for those of you with little faith.
And what does this kind of
attitude lead to? Who are the types of people that spout this type of nonsense?
We call them fanatics. We call them zealots, bigots, and hypocrites. If this is
all we are garnering from Isaiah 6, then we are no better than them. Worse, we
use this “favor” from God to justify interpreting the Bible however we want,
completely removing Jesus from Isaiah 6.
You do not have to take my word
for it. Neither do you even have to take any Lutheran’s word for it. Even
before there was a “lutheran”, Isaiah 6 had been nothing but Isaiah meeting
Christ and offering the Divine Service. Beginning immediately in the New
Testament, St. John
tells us that Isaiah saw the Lord’s glory here (Jn. 12:41), just as we have
seen His glory as of the only-begotten of the Father (1:14) in other words:
Jesus.
Even before this, Zechariah likens
the burning coals to Jesus saying, “Is not this man a brand plucked from the
fire?” (3:2). Moving ahead to the 4th century AD, St. Cyril comments that
when the angels say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”, they are referring to the
Trinity. The three, holy holy holy, in One, the Lord.
St. Chrysostom says that God does
not sit, so what or who was Isaiah looking at on the throne? St. John already answers that question in
Revelation saying that the creatures of heaven never stop singing the Sanctus
to Him Who sits on the throne, Who of course is the Lamb that was slain (rev.
4:6-9, 5:13).
Finally, St. John of Damascus
speaking from the 7th century, says, “Wherefore with all fear and pure
conscience and certain faith let us draw near and it will assuredly be to us as
we believe. Doubting nothing. Let us pay homage to it in all purity both of
soul and body: for it is twofold. Let us draw near to it with an ardent desire
and with our hands held in the form of a cross let us receive the body of the
Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the
divine coal, in order that the fire of longing, that is in us, with the
additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine
our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the
divine fire. Isaiah saw the coal. But the coal is not plain wood but wood
united with fire: in like manner also the bread of communion is not plain bread
but bread united with divinity. But a body which is united with divinity is not
one nature, but has one nature belonging to the body and another belonging to
the divinity that is united to it, so that the compound is not one nature, but
two.” (Exposition of the Orthodox faith, Bk IV, Ch XIII).
So now what do we do? We have not
only the Old Testament, but the New Testament, and the Church teachings from
the first 800 or so years after the Apostles all telling us that something more
is going on in this event with Isaiah. In fact, you may rightly conclude that
Isaiah has been taken up into the Divine Service that goes on in heaven for all
eternity.
I don’t make any of this stuff up
folks. I don’t sit in my study and think of how to sell my make-believe stories
about what the Apostle’s doctrine is. I’m not buying into the “gifts of the
spirit for home use” self-help books, and we don’t take spiritual gift
inventories for this reason: You don’t find any of that in the Bible or
history.
Thus, as a called and ordained
servant of the Word of God I am constrained by that Word to preach and teach.
Meaning, only what is found in there. And as we have just discovered, what is
in there is God’s glory of His crucified Son and the Spirit’s glory of the one,
true Church. That’s it.
So we either accept and believe
that the history of the Church has been kept holy by the Holy Ghost Himself or
we can reject it and find ourselves opposing God. St. Cyprian also says, “There
is no salvation outside the Church”. Likewise, “He can no longer have God for
his Father who has not the Church for his mother.”
In this way, very conveniently, we
find gathered all that is necessary for our salvation, as we talked about at
Pentecost. We find knowledge, understanding, counsel, piety, fortitude, fear,
and wisdom. We find the Word Incarnate, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, sins
forgiven and sins reproved, pastors called and ordained, public and
intelligible prayer, praise and thanksgiving, and the cross.
The gifts of the Spirit are the
gifts of Jesus. The gifts of Jesus are the gifts of the Father. The vision of
Isaiah is the vision of the Church. No higher and greater calling does a
Christian have than to receive the good things the Lord of hosts comes to give.
Jesus is born of the flesh and the
Spirit. He is high and lifted up on the cross. So now the depths of the riches
and wisdom and knowledge of God has been made man. His judgments and His ways
are the way of the cross. His mind and His counsel are set on forgiving sins
through means.
Truly, God is with Jesus. Truly,
truly the rebirth of water, fire, and Spirit is purchased and won on the cross
and given freely in the Church. We can’t help but be caught up in the times and
history that we live in and we did not choose the Way, the Way chose us. But
the One Who put us on this path and the One Who keeps us on this path is none
other than the one God in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity.
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