Here I am: A reflection on Isaiah 6:1-8.

 

A short reflection on Isaiah 6:1-8, delivered to the third year students of Queens at evening prayer on May 14th 2022. 

A story. It’s ten years ago almost to the day. It’s about 9 o’clock at night and it’s raining. Out walking in the rain is a distraught young woman. She’s a mum of three very young children, aged 1, 3 and 8 and she’s just had a miscarriage. She has a husband who is home and he’s also very distressed. The same week of the miscarriage he found he’d been made redundant. He’s lost his job and he’s the sole breadwinner for his young family, and the worry is overwhelming.

The woman is walking to clear her head. She walks and walks for hours and then eventually she ends up at a church, though she doesn’t know why. It’s like her feet just carried her there by their own volition. The vicarage is attached to the church and she feels compelled to knock on the door. It’s now 10pm.

A vicar answers the door with a look of mild surprise. He knows the woman vaguely because she’s recently been taking her children to his toddler group.

As if driven by a powerful compulsion she blurts out: “I’m really starting to worry that there might be a God. Can I talk to you about it?”

And without hesitation, the Vicar says: “Of course. Come in.”

Let’s pause and return for a moment to our reading from Isaiah 6, that hugely arresting statement that’s traditionally read at ordination services, both Anglican and Methodist.

“Whom shall I send and who will go for us?”

We’re so familiar with the response. “Send Me.” That was the deal we signed up for, with some teeny caveats here and there, of course. Not for all the essays and paperwork, as much as we LOVE it, but for the sending out. We want to be like the twelve, marching out to help heal the sick and cast out demons, prepared to go to those places no one else wants to go to. This is a heady calling. Who will go for us? ME. I will go. I am up for this challenge Lord.

But the part of this reading that might be forgotten amongst all the sexy excitement of being sent out, is the first part:

“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? And I said, Here I am.”

Here I am.

At the bedside of a dying parishioner. Here I am.

Telling a story at toddler church. Here I am.

Answering a call from the funeral director. Here I am.

Opening the church early to say the morning office. Uttering prayers that no one other than God will ever hear. Holding someone’s hand. Sweeping the church hall. Asking the right questions. Speaking words of comfort. Preparing the altar. Joining in with the song. Telling the God story, listening to the human ones.

Here I am; in the church, at the hospital, at the school, on a street corner, engaging in holy loitering whilst wearing a collar or a cassock, the recipient of unexpected questions and wonderings. Answering the door on a rainy night in May to a bewildered, upset and curious young woman, who returned home hours later, lit up from the inside out, on fire for God, and wanting to devote the rest of her life to serving him. Here I am.

Class of 2022, we do not do this alone. Where we are, God is there also. As ministers in God’s church, our presence bears witness to the presence of God who says here I am. We are a human signpost to the kingdom of Heaven, a living banner and declaration of holy presence, for good and bad. Here we are.