Here I Am

Rev. Aaron Houghton
Feb 10, 2019
7 min read

This would be one of my worst nightmares: to have a dream or vision of the presence of God calling me to preach, preparing me to speak, then telling me that nothing I preach or teach or say or do will make a difference. Can you imagine how Isaiah must have felt? “No one is looking, no one is listening, no one will repent, nothing will change. Now...go prophesy anyway.”

Isaiah’s response to this message is, “How long will this go on? How long must I preach to deaf ears and demonstrate before blind eyes?”

And God says, “Oh, just until all those ears and eyes have been destroyed, utter ruin is imminent, everything will be burned to the ground...twice. Happy preaching.”

My gut reaction to this text was to run from it. To pull a Jonah...run in the other direction. This, of course, got me thinking about the story of Jonah. He runs from his calling because he knows if he preaches to Nineveh and they turn from their sinful ways God will forgive them and they will not be destroyed. And this is precisely what happens, and Jonah gets super angry and says to God: “I know that you are a merciful and compassionate God, very patient, full of faithful love, and willing not to destroy.” Jonah is angry about God’s compassion. Which brings me back to Isaiah’s call...where the heck is the compassionate God that Jonah ran from? Are we dealing with the same deity here?

So of course...I had to pick this text to preach on. I’ll back down from most fights, but when scripture invites me to a wrestling match, I’ll take it.

After spending a bit more time with the text, and reading through a commentary on this passage...I was still feeling pretty lost and uninspired. My second gut reaction to this text was also to run from it, but to run towards the saving words of the New Testament. I’m tempted to throw the Gospel of Jesus Christ over top of the parts of this text I didn’t want to listen to or look at, and make myself intentionally deaf and blind to the words of Isaiah. Which brings me back to the words of Isaiah’s call…”listen, but don’t understand; look, but don’t comprehend.”

I know what the gospel says, I know God’s grace and compassion, but I can’t tag out of the wrestling match with this text from Isaiah. If I’m going to get anything out of this text, I need to spend time with it and what it says. To do otherwise would be like going to an art gallery with a blindfold on, or going a symphony concert with earplugs in. And that is a lesson to be learned from this text. We cannot say, “Here I am,” if we’re not actually going to be present to reality. So how do we cope when reality is dark and foreboding and scary? And what do we do when God doesn’t seem to offer us much comfort or relief?

God speaks of upcoming desolation: the cities will lie in ruin, their inhabitants will be deported, and the land will be left devastated...and whatever remains will be burned again. Perhaps these were true predictions based on the threats posed by Assyria, to the North, and Babylon, to the East. But what seems more likely to me is that this text is referencing events that have already happened in the style of a prophecy. We know that in 732 BCE members of the northern tribes of Israel were taken captive and deported to Assyria. Israel continued to exist as an independent kingdom but was again invaded by Assyria in 720 BCE, and the rest of the population was deported, which became known as the “Ten Lost Tribes.” Only a small portion remained behind in the southern Kingdom of Judah...maybe a tenth of the original population. This would explain the “hopeless” nature of the text: the deportation and desolation have already taken place and there’s nothing that can be done to change the nature of this dark reality. I still find it problematic that this interpretation of the text implies that God knew this invasion was coming and chose to do nothing about it. What do we do with absence of God? They were a people of unclean lips, unworthy of being rescued from this fate. But this prophecy is not written for them, it is written for the remnant of the remnant...the holy seed that remains in the stump. A people who walk in great darkness and need to real with the reality of their situation. Pretending like their nation and cities and population hasn’t been ransacked and ruined will get them nowhere. There’s no room for false hope or unrealistic optimism. These people do need real hope and a sense of what is possible. They need a prophet who will teach them to walk in the dark. “Who shall I send?” God asks.

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote a book entitled Learning to Walk in the Dark, which opens with this excerpt from Chet Raymo, “There is a tendency for us to flee from the wild silence and the wild dark, to pack up our gods and hunker down behind city walls, to turn the gods into idols, to kowtow before them and approach their precincts only in the official robes of office. And when we are in the temples, then who will hear the voice crying in the wilderness? Who will hear the reed shaken by the wind?” [1] Learning to walk in the dark is a practice of being present to reality so that we might receive, what Isaiah will later describe in 45:3 as “the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places.”

Taylor uses “darkness” as shorthand for anything that is frightening, scary, worrying. Eliminating darkness is high on the human agenda, she says, “not just physical darkness…[but also] psychological, emotional, relational, and spiritual darkness.”[2] “Darkness” includes the potentially desolating realities that threaten our well-being. “The absence of God is in there, along with the fear of dementia and the loss of those nearest and dearest to me. So is the melting of polar ice caps, the suffering of children, and the nagging question of what it will feel like to die.” [3] I would add to this list of difficult topics the very pressing need to be honest about the reality of racism. These “dark” topics cause us discomfort and fear, and we have traditionally equated things that frighten us with things that are bad, or evil.

Taylor writes of the dangers of what she calls “full solar spirituality,” “staying in the light of God around the clock, both absorbing and reflecting the sunny side of faith.” [4] “You can usually recognize a full solar church,” she says, “by its emphasis on the benefits of faith, which include a sure sense of God’s presence, certainty of belief, divine guidance in all things, and reliable answers to prayer...this sounds like heaven on earth.” [5] But how does a dark text like the call of Isaiah fit into full solar theology? What do you do when darkness falls: “you lose your job, your marriage falls apart, your child acts out in some attention-getting way, you pray hard for something that does not happen, you begin to doubt some of the things you have been taught about what the Bible says.” [6] This is the danger of full solar spirituality, it doesn’t teach us how to walk in the dark. Full solar spirituality might say something like, “God will not let you be tested beyond your strength, just have faith!” The implicit message under the surface of this, however, is that if you’re struggling with darkness in your life, it’s your fault for not having enough faith. [7]

Taylor writes her book to help and encourage and teach us to be present for the darkness that will inevitably fall in our lives in ways that allow us to learn from it, be enriched, grow out of it.

“Maybe you are a young person in deep need of faith right now, but the kind you inherited from your parents is not cutting it. You want something with a sharper edge, a keener sense of purpose. You want something that asks more of you than to sit and listen quietly while someone else tells you how to live. You know it’s out there, but where? It may be time for a walk in the dark.

If you are in the middle of your life, maybe some of your dreams of God have died hard under the weight of your experience. You have knocked on doors that have not opened. You have asked for bread and been given a stone. The job that once defined you has lost its meaning; the relationships that once sustained you have changed or come to their natural ends. It is time to reinvent everything from your work life to your love life to your life with God--only how are you supposed to do that exactly, and where will the wisdom come from? Not from a weekend workshop. It may be time for a walk in the dark.

If you are [growing old], you are losing a lot more things than you once did--not just your keys and your vision, but also your landmarks and your sense of self. You are going to a lot more funerals now than before. When you read your class notes in the alumni news, they are shorter and nearer the top every time. You know full well where all this is heading, but you also know that you are not ready yet. So how are you supposed to get ready? What is the work you have left to do before you enter the Great Beyond? Clearly, it is time for a walk in the dark.” [8]

Isaiah was a prophet whose calling was to lead the people who walk in great darkness--to lead a people full of understandable doubt and fear. I’m not here to tell you that it’s always going to be easy. In fact I think I’m saying that it will definitely not always be easy. But here’s what I want you to hear and know and trust: when you find facing reality to be difficult, know that you are not broken or weak because you feel that way. Facing difficulty is not the sign of a weak faith, but proof of a strong one. It takes great strength to acknowledge the presence of darkness in our lives, rather than ignore it. When we’re not looking, shadows embed themselves in our subconscious. It is better, healthier to acknowledge their presence. You might think that acknowledging our darkness would empower it, but the opposite is actually true. It empowers us. We are less likely to be subconsciously manipulated by our fears and insecurities when we know they are there. We carry so much weight around without even knowing it. The first step of letting go of these burdens is acknowledging their presence, being honest about the reality of their existence. We must take a trip to our dark side in order to leave what’s heavy behind. There will be times when we must be willing to stand bravely in the darkness and proclaim, “Here I am.”