Snakebite Mafia




Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

How does one communicate a vision? How does one put into words a mystical experience, a religious ecstasy, which by its very nature exceeds anything that mortal speech could either conceive or describe? We must do the best that we can, I suppose, utilizing images, symbols, metaphors that make some semblance of sense both to our neighbors and to our addled minds.

Thus we find a sort of dream-logic at work. The rational part of our souls, our intellect or nous, attempts to translate the infinite into the limited, the eternal to everyday. It’s got to be more art, more poetry, than anything else, because it is so real. The goal of describing our experience of religion is to lead others to experience it for themselves, to experience God for themselves. And God is beyond all words.

Isaiah has a vision of the Temple. “In the year that King Uzziah died,” he writes, somewhere around 740 BC, “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple.” It’s not entirely clear whether Isaiah is in the Temple when he sees this. For indeed he is a prophet of the royal tribe of Judah, not a priest from the religious tribe of Levi. As such, he cannot access the inner workings of the Temple. But he gets the gist.

The Temple in Jerusalem is the house of God on earth, or at least the house of His name. It is a microcosm of the universe, a second garden of Eden. At its center lies the Holy of Holies: a chamber empty save for the Ark of the Covenant, and a pair of winged lions, guardian cherubim, standing as sentinel statues. The Holy of Holies is separated from the sanctuary by a veil, though more substantive than it sounds: a curtain 30 feet high, 60 feet wide, and six inches thick, rewoven by Temple women twice a year and hung with the help of 300 priests.

In the sanctuary stands a seven-branched oil lamp—a tree of life bearing the fruit of illumination—along with a table of sacrificial shewbread, and an altar for burning incense. The fragrant smoke would rise over the veil, into the Holy of Holies, representing the prayers of the people entering into the presence of God. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, one man, the High Priest, would be permitted to penetrate the veil from this world to the next, to stand in the presence of God and His angels, offering expiation for the sins of the people.

The Temple, in other words, was heaven on this earth. The Temple was forgiveness.

Isaiah’s vision sees the truth these sketches represent. He sees the Lord God Almighty enthroned on high, such that the mere hem of His robe fills the entirety of the Temple. Above Him soar His seraphs, each with triple pairs of wings. Now, a seraph is a serpent, specifically an asp or Egyptian cobra. And they served to avenge the honor of the gods. The Hebrew word “seraph” means “fiery one,” or more literally something like “burner-snake,” due to their venom.

In the Book of Numbers, such serpents infamously attack the Hebrew people when they complain against God, until Moses fashions a bronze image of one such serpent in order to cure the afflicted. Or think to the cobra on King Tut’s head, from the crown of Lower Egypt, guarding the body of the god-king Pharaoh. In the Ancient Near East, offending a god called down the wrath of cobras. When St Paul gets bit by a venomous snake on the isle of Malta in Acts, what do they say? He must have done something awful, something to offend the gods.

So Isaiah sees the Lord enthroned in the heavenly Temple, and flying about His divine head are the six-winged seraphs, fiery serpents, calling out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!” And quite naturally Isaiah is terrified. It’s like meeting a mob boss and having his enforcers say, “Show some respect!” The seraphim will mess you up if you get out of line. The whole Temple is shaking, the air’s full of smoke, and Isaiah cries, “Oh, nuts to me. I’m a dead man.”

For indeed, another trope of the ancient world is that those who see a god, as he truly is, die, such as when Semele glimpses Zeus in all his glory. People are basically made of tissue, and we burn up in the presence of pure unfettered divinity. And so one of the seraphs flies down, plucks a coal from the altar of incense, and uses tongs to touch it to Isaiah’s lips—which probably freaks him out all the more. But the fire doesn’t harm him; it only purifies. It divinizes him. Thus cleansed of his sin, Isaiah is prepared to proclaim the Word of the Lord.

It’s a frightening scene, and it’s meant to be. Not because God is evil, but precisely because God is good and we are not. “Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is.” What comes next in this passage does not assuage our fears. For God commissions Isaiah to prophesy to the people, “Keep listening, but do not comprehend. Keep looking, but do not understand.” Preach my Word, in other words, but it shall do no good. They will not listen, will not turn, not repent.

Not until their world has been ravaged by their sin, like a tree cut down and its stump burned out. Yet after all of that—preach hope. Preach forgiveness. Preach new life amongst the dead. In this vision, God is terrible, or at least terrifying. Nonetheless, even in announcing His judgment, His justice, His righteous indignation, God is here to call His people home. He will never abandon them, never lie to them, never break His faith. They will die, and then they will arise.

Until they do, they will not understand. Yet Isaiah is to preach the truth regardless of result. Jesus says something much the same in His own day and age: the people will not understand, cannot understand, until after His Resurrection. Once they experience the vision, the power, the presence of the Risen Lord, the living God, for themselves—then they will know. God has always been with them. God has always been for them. God in Christ will never let them go.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Peter undergoes something similar to Isaiah. He is not a prophet by family or by trade. He’s a fisherman, a lakesman. His revelation is not of Yahweh enthroned above the Temple, encircled by serpentine angels. Rather, Peter experiences the presence of God where he is: on the lake, in a boat, catching fish. Lord knows just why he reacts in this way on this day. Surely he has seen miracles before. He has witnessed Jesus’ healings, the wonders He can do.

Maybe it’s because this particular sign appears to be for him directly, and not just for others. God comes in Christ to Peter in a way he understands: via superabundance within the natural world, their nets full to bursting in ways they’ve never been. And Peter reacts the way that Isaiah reacts: with terror, with fear. Not because Jesus is wicked—very much the contrary—but because Peter knows he’s unclean. Peter judges himself unworthy of God’s mercy. And he is. But God loves him anyway. Such is the nature of grace.

I mean, let’s be honest. The things that Jesus does are scary. If we take the Gospels seriously at all, then we have here a Man who heals diseases, who walks on water, who calms storms, rebukes demons, raises the dead! That’s terrifying. The things of which we’re most afraid are all afraid of Him. Who then must He be? What then must He be? That’s the whole question of the Gospels. And it’s answered in the Resurrection, when we place our hands in His wounds, and experience Him for ourselves. Jesus is Risen. Jesus is Lord. Alleluia.

The Temple is gone now, its priests all swept away. Not one stone was left upon another. Yet God has come to us, not enthroned upon the heavens, but incarnate in this person Jesus Christ. He is the Image and Son of God, the Word beyond all words. To know Him is to know the Father, for they both are one. We encounter Him today in Word and in Sacrament, in bread and in wine, in water and oil and community together. Here He has made us His Body; here we may breathe in His Spirit; here we are His sainted sinners sent out for the world.

Upon this Altar, is heaven come to earth, God to humankind. Every Sunday, we wrap our wings about ourselves and join the singing seraphs: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts our God.” And it’s true we are impure. It’s true that we are sinful. But the fire of His Spirit, the incense of His prayers, purifies the wickedest among us and within us. He makes us worthy, makes us His, purely by His grace, purely in His love. He pours Himself out for us here in infinite superabundance.

And it’s more than we could put into words, more than we could ever understand, precisely because it’s so real, so beyond and below and beside us. Nevertheless, He calls to us: “Whom shall I send? Who shall be My fishers of men?” And in our ecstasy, our terror, our overflowing joy, what can we respond, but “Here I am, Lord! Send me!”

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.







Pertinent Links

RDG Stout
Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RDGStout/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsqiJiPAwfNS-nVhYeXkfOA
Twitter: https://x.com/RDGStout

St Peter’s Lutheran
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064841583987
Website: https://www.stpetersnymills.org/
Donation: https://secure.myvanco.com/L-Z9EG/home

Nidaros Lutheran
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nidaroschurch6026

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