Isaiah 6.6-8

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! 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!’ Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’

The Six-winged Seraph, Mikhail Vrubel1905

In just a few hours we will be in the Temple; well the Cathedral anyway. The Lord will be on His Throne – and I don’t mean the Bishop! And the invitation will be there if we will accept it to sense the holiness of his presence, and say yes to his holy mission. Here we are: send us.

It’s a response that you have been making in faith for a long time now; for which huge thanks; and for which the Lord bless you and keep you, and give you peace.

Because it is no easy response to make. All our motives are mixed, and need to be purified. All of us have anxieties as well as joys. All of us are aware both of strengths and shortcomings, not to mention straightforward sin. You’d be remarkable if the odd collywobble hadn’t crossed your mind these last few days.

So “Woe is me!” you might think. But into our predicament comes God, who reveals that we thought was our journey is his journey, and makes our purposes his too. So you are here humanly and wonderfully for a whole variety of reasons – mine certainly were as mixed as they come – but as T S Eliot put it in Little Gidding (which we’ll keep coming back to alongside Isaiah):

what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled

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