This sermon was preached at Glenwood and Canoe Ridge Lutheran Churches, Decorah, Iowa, on May 27, 2018. It’s based on Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:12-17, and John 3:1-17. If you’d prefer to listen to it, find it at https://soundcloud.com/stacey-nalean-carlson.
How do we go from woe is me to send me?
For Isaiah, his woe is me moment is precipitated by a vision of God. Now that he has seen the overwhelming majesty of a God whose robe fills the entire temple, whose glory fills the whole earth, Isaiah’s guilt has emerged. Who is he to see God, to encounter God, to experience God? Woe is me, Isaiah says. 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!
Isaiah is guilty. His community is guilty. His country is guilty. Professor Charles Aaron sets the scene, noting how the first five chapters of Isaiah lay out the spiritual problem of the Judeans. They have forgotten and forsaken the Lord (1:4); their worship is futile (1:11-17); corruption marks their leadership (1:23). Greed has led to injustice (5:8).1
Woe is me, Isaiah says. Who am I to have this vision of God revealed to me? I’m not worthy. I’m not ready. I’m not able. Woe is me.
Have you ever been paralyzed by guilt? Silenced by shame? Have you ever felt unworthy, incapable? Have you ever been held captive by a spirit of fear? Are you doubtful, today, that you have a place, a purpose, in the kingdom of God?
Woe is me.
Isaiah acknowledges his smallness in response to a God who is bigger than anything he could have imagined. Isaiah confesses his sin and the sin of his people. They have unclean lips.
Have they cursed their enemies?
Have they prayed without conviction?
Have they condemned their opponents?
Have they lied to save face?
Have they spoken rightly, but then failed to act accordingly?
Have their words gone one direction while their feet have gone the opposite way?
However it is that Isaiah and his fellow citizens have been people of unclean lips, God now intervenes. One of the seraphs touches Isaiah’s mouth with a live coal and his guilt departs, his sin is blotted out. He is forgiven, healed, redeemed. He is made ready to speak God’s word. He is enabled to say not woe is me, but send me.
Who will go for us, God asks? Who will go for us?
Here I am, Isaiah says—changed, converted, capable by God’s grace. Here I am. Send me.
In our gospel reading for today, Jesus is the sent one—sent into the world not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
By water and the Spirit, we have been baptized into the body of Jesus, called into community, sent into the world. Forgiven, adopted, freed, we are bound no longer to woe is me. We are free to exclaim, send me, God. Send me to speak your word of peace. Send me to speak your word of hope. Send me to speak your word of grace and forgiveness and freedom from fear.
Send me to speak truth to power. Send me to speak truth in love. Send me to speak on behalf of the broken, to be the voice of the voiceless, to sing your praise—even in the midst of the grief and frustration—as a witness to your persistent, abiding, death-defeating love.
On Friday, I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I listened as survivors shared their memories of an experience beyond comprehension. I heard them recall lighting the ritual candles in the dark of the train car taking them to Auschwitz. The vast majority on that train would be dead before the next nightfall, but still they lit the candles against the darkness. Still, they prayed. Still, they praised God.
We are citizens of the kingdom of God. Like Jesus, we testify to what we have seen. Those with no reason to hope have been given a spirit of hope. Those with every reason to despair have become messengers of grace. Those despised by this world are those in whom we have seen the very face of God.
Those with every reason to say woe is me have instead said send me, and God has used their voices to call us to repentance, to restore us to life.
Every last one of us is created in the image of the triune God—born out of divine relationship into a life defined by our relationships with God and with our neighbors.
Every last one of us is already saved by a triune God, whose work and witness did not end on the cross, but descended to hell itself and then danced all the way to an empty tomb.
Every last one of us is home to a triune God who dances in our hearts, and stirs us to lift our voices and tap our toes in praise that has no end.
I had the great privilege of hearing Bishop Yvette Flunder preach during the Festival of Homiletics. She acknowledged the woe is me mentality that is so prevalent among us today. But she pushed back.
There’s too much lament, anxiety, worry, grief, anger, sorrow, despair. There’s not enough dancing. It takes faith to dance in a time like this. You don’t have to wait for the battle to be over. You can dance now. You know how the battle ends.
–Bishop Yvette Flunder
Woe is me. Woe is our world. But even greater is God’s glory. Even greater is God’s victory. Even greater is the voice of our triune God—calling all creation into being, speaking forgiveness for a world gone mad, praying for us with sighs too deep for words.
How do we go from woe is me to send me? We are transformed by the triune God: adopted by the Father, freed by the Son, empowered by the Spirit. Send us, God.
We know the God whose voice called all creation into being sent the Son to save this beloved world. We know that through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus has never stopped walking beside us, never stopped loving us into freedom and courage and compassion and bold witness.
Send me, God. Send us.
Our lips have been cleansed, our whole selves washed in the waters of baptism, and we have a word to speak to a hurting world. You are loved. You are forgiven. This is not the end. All creation will be set free from woe is me. Amen.
1 Read Charles Aaron’s entire commentary at http://www.workingpreacher.org.