Know Thy God

"Know Thy God"
Isaiah 6:1-7

At the Egyptian temple in Luxor, there are two parts of that temple.  The External Temple is where the beginners were allowed to enter, and the Internal Temple where a person was only allowed to enter after proven worthy and ready to acquire more knowledge and insights. One of the proverbs of the External Temple is "The body is the house of God." In the Internal Temple, one of the main proverbs is "Man, know thyself.”  It is the proverb most quoted by the philosopher, Socrates.  So if you want to enter the inner temple, and seek the deeper wisdom, you can only do so by knowing yourself.

But how does that happen?  It’s been said by those who study the brain, that the only thing the brain can not totally understand is itself.  The brain can figure out how all other things work, except itself.  It seems the same is true for the self, whatever that is.  The self can reach out to all other people and environments the self encounters, and understand them.  But standing back from the self, in some way to understand all of what the self is, seems impossible.

And another philosopher, Pilonius, said, “This above all: to thine own self be true...”. But what if you don’t know your self?  What if you aren’t clear about who that self is?  How can you be true to something you don’t understand or really know?

I think a part of this ignorance of the self comes from when we start delving into the self, we find darkness and dark spots we’d rather not see.  There may be parts of us that are reprehensible.  Disgusting.  Ugly.  We get a glimpse of those and we decide to go no further in self-examination, or shed light on the dark corners of our self.

In his book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer says that God’s love for us is utterly realistic.  What Packer means is that at every point, God already knows the worst about us.  God already knows where all the dark corners are in our lives.  No discovery of skeletons in our closets will disillusion God about us.  We may get disillusioned by discoveries we make about others.  We certainly become disheartened about things we find out about ourselves -- what we are truly capable of.  Things we find out we don’t like about ourselves.

There is, though, great cause for humility (as well as celebration) in the knowledge that God sees all the twisted things about us that others do not.  God sees more corruption in us than what we see in ourselves.  And still, God wants us as friends.  God still desires to be our companion and has constantly worked at revealing that purpose to us.

One of the poignant ironies in that purpose of God is that probably the worst thing about us, that God must certainly see, is that we really don’t want a whole lot to do with God.  One of the characteristics that God evidently doesn’t become disillusioned over is that we know Him so vaguely, and don’t have too much desire to improve on that.  What we see of God is only a fragment, yet we are too easily satisfied with that.  And with what little of God we do see, we over generalize about the rest, making huge assumptions about what God must be like.

People, these days, are so God illiterate that they will accept anything said about God provided it’s spoken with some amount of sincerity and a big smile.  Our attempt at simplifying God has created immense spiritual poverty.  Our lives become tragically reduced.  A limited experience with God translates itself into a life of sloppiness, shallowness, fear, and narrowness.  Not a very deep self.

The amazing thing is that, as J.I. Packer has identified, even though God understands that, going in, still God wants us as friends.  God doesn’t mind being seen with us.  And God doesn’t mind us being seen with him.  Amazing.

When my kids were young, I’d walk them to school every day.  We lived in Colby, and we were a block and a half from the school.  We had some amazing and fun conversations on those short morning walks.  Then in a year or so they said, “Dad, you can walk us to the first block, but you don’t need to go the whole way to school anymore.”  Like they were doing me a favor.  I knew what was going on.  Then they said, “Dad, you can just stand on the front porch and watch us till we’ve crossed the street.”  Then, lastly, it was, “Dad, you don’t need to watch us anymore.”

They were growing up and the “cool” factor was setting in.  It wasn’t cool to be seen with the old man.  I missed our 10 minute conversations on those mornings.  I knew they loved me.  But being seen with me was bordering on the embarrassing.  I understood that, and never let it get in the way of my love for them.  God’s doing the same thing with us.  Even when we think it’s not cool, or even a little embarrassing to be seen with God, it doesn’t change God’s caring about us.  God may miss us, from whatever time we used to have with Him.  But it doesn’t diminish God’s desire to be with us.

Maybe the reason is that God hopes that whenever we are seen with Him, we will see a little bit more of Him.  And just maybe, when we allow God to be seen with us, we will see a little bit more of who we are.   We will grow in our awareness of our selves.

The song of the angel-seraphs, in the presence of Isaiah, lets him know about God:  God is holy, and God’s glory is visible throughout the earth.  What Isaiah discovers is that, in spite of what human alienation has done, it has not been enough to nullify God’s glory.

In the presence of God, Isaiah gains a different perspective about himself.  From his position before this scary self-revelation of God, Isaiah discovered, as he never had before, that he, and everyone around him had “unclean lips.”  That is, before almighty God, we are a people who pay lip service, not only to God, but a host of other things. In reality, with all that lip service, we have no idea what we are talking about.  Isaiah must face the music.  You and I must face the same music.

There’s a funny variation of the story when Jesus asked the disciples about his identity.  Jesus said to his disciples, “Who do the people say I am?”
They answered, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others that one of the prophets of old has come back to life.”
“And you,” Jesus asked, “who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the kerygma in which we find the prototypical standard for all our interpersonal relationships.”
Then Jesus said, “Huh?”

In simple or complex ways, we all are guilty of the unclean lips of God-talk.  Isaiah, already a prophet, thought he knew the One of whom he spoke.  But when the reality of God appeared, Isaiah discovered the bankrupt nature of his own God-talk.  Suddenly, in the holiness and glory of the presence of God, Isaiah realized how unclean, how dirty, how undignified, how shallow, how far from reality his speaking of God has been.

Isaiah, who becomes every one standing singularly before God, recognizes how lame his praise of God has been, how lifeless the songs have been sung, how trite the prayers have been, and how insipid his preaching has been.

Benjamin Franklin once told about a boy who was so smart he could name a horse in nine languages, but was so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on.  Isaiah found out he had some intelligence, but that intellect only served him, now standing before God, to understand how little he really knew.  Isaiah could talk about God, but in terms of the depth of his spiritual understanding, he might as well have been riding a cow.

We might say that we have a coffee shop understanding of God.  There, at the coffee shop, rumor and gossip is passed off as truth.  Most of the information garnered there is from “reliable sources,” and so goes unquestioned.  Assumptions are coupled with half-truths, and we walk away thinking we know something.

But then we come face-to-face with the person behind the rumors and gossip, and find out in a startling way, what the truth actually is.  We also discover in the scary moment of that personal encounter how we have contributed to the falsehoods and misinformation.  We come face-to-face with the harm we have unthinkingly perpetrated.  Such is what we discover about the bankrupt and harmful coffee shop talk about God, when perchance God reveals himself in His glory, like He did to Isaiah.

Part of the issue here is that it is not only important for us to know about God for our own sakes, but as was the case with Isaiah, there are going to be times when we will have to talk to others about God.  We will be called upon to give some sort of testimony about our relationship with God, and what, exactly, it is that we have come to know and believe.

Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once commented that if he had asked his fellow philosopher, Hegel, for directions to a street address in Copenhagen, Hegel would have given him a map of Europe.  Likewise, some of us, if asked by another for directions to find God, would not have the slightest idea how to answer.  You might be able to talk all around the God-territory, but never be able to home in on any exact location.

So how do we get out of this fix?  How do we grow past the coffee shop chatter about God?  How do we make sure that we aren’t just passing along rumors and gossip about God?  How can we speak out of authentic relationship?  How do we move from shallowness to depth?  How can we sing the song of the angel-seraphs?  How can we know God?

Well, the good news is that God wants to know us.  As I began this message, God wants to be in relationship with us, regardless of what God already knows to be true about us, regardless of the way we have treated God in the past, regardless of how shallow our faith may be, regardless of how much we have tried to hide the fact that we hardly know God at all.  Still, in spite of all that, God wants our friendship.

So much does God want that friendship, that God takes the first big step and appears.  Sometimes, “high, exalted!” as to Isaiah.  Sometimes in a “bush on fire, but not being burnt up” as to Moses.  Sometimes as a baby in a cattle feeding trough, as to those in Bethlehem.  All the time it is God, trying to break into our little spaces, trying to get our attention, trying to get us to look up from our assumed religiosity and really see God for who God is.

In every instance it is a humbling experience.  Isaiah thought he’d be a dead man, because he looked at God as He is.  Moses took off his sandals because he knew he was on holy ground.  Paul fell to the ground before the light and Voice of God.  The shepherds and magi knelt in awe before the child Jesus.  It is something overpowering to smell and see and touch the holy presence of God.

Or to be touched by it.  As if you were being touched on the lips by a live coal from a fire, held in tongs by a flying, singing angel.  You know that when you are touched by such an experience you have come in contact with something so real, so burning, that it will leave its mark on you forever.

There was a pilot on a jumbo jet with a full passenger load coming in to land.  The pilot discovered the wheels had not released.  He radioed the control tower and was told to circle the airport, dump his fuel, and then come in for a belly landing.  Meanwhile, the ground crew would grease the runway with foam and have ambulances, fire engines, and emergency vehicles along the runway.

The plane made the approach.  It was a white-knuckle landing.  As the plane slid along the runway, metal against concrete, the screams of those inside the plane drowned out the sound of the screeching outside.  Miraculously, nobody was injured.

As the passengers left the plane, a priest who was aboard, said to the stewardess at the door, “Remember, now, the rest of your life is a gift.”  The stewardess, who must have been in the presence of God before, responded, “It’s all a gift, sir, from the very beginning.

Isaiah thought he was doomed.  He was doing a belly landing, of sorts, before the very throne of God.  His life was flashing before his eyes, as he stood transfixed and staring at the Almighty.  At that point, everything that he had been, seemed forfeit, that it was all chaff suddenly blown by the winds of God’s amazing and startling presence.  Everything that he had seen for himself and his future was instantly erased.  He was a no one, going no where, thinking he knew everything, but in reality knew nothing.

By the sheer love and friendship of God, Isaiah’s life was not turned to cinders, but was given back to him as a gift, cleansed and purified.  It was a second chance, only this time with the authentic presence of and relationship with God.  With Isaiah, we discover, as we look back and now look forward into an authentic future with God as He is, it is, truly, all a gift, splendidly wrapped in the awesome display of the holiness and glory and tender, grace-full companionship of God.