These past months we have come to get to know much more about the Hebrew Bible as we have been encountering many different characters of the Old testament through our weekly study. We enjoy discussing their stories, often uplifting, sometimes unsettling, always quite colorful, and we realize that in the process we also learn much about ourselves and we also discover new ways to engage with God. Now King Uzziah is probably not the most well known character in the Bible, yet his story is much worth hearing about. Not only because King Uzziah had quite a dramatic life, but also because I don’t think we can understand what Isaiah is talking about if we don’t understand what he refers to, what is the context of this extraordinary vision of the Lord he had in the Temple.
Strangely our first lesson starts where Uzziah disappears: Isaiah tells us that what he is going to tell us happened: “The year that the King Uzziah died“. You could infer from that that the prophet wants us to have an idea when the vision took place in time, a historical marker if you will, how far it was in time when this happened. I watched a movie this week where one of the character said to the other that he wouldn’t take sentimental advice from him who last dated when Ike was president. The fact that Ike was president had no incidence on the dating life of the character of course. It was only meant to indicate how long it had been since the character last dated, and it was of course meant to be funny – because Ike was president a long time ago. It’s quite different with our story today though. Yes the death of King Uzziah is meant as an historical marker, and for us it was certainly a long time ago (8th century BC), yet in this case it’s very possible that there is also a connection between Isaiah’s vision and the end of the reign of Uzzaiah.
So let’s talk about it a little bit.
This is what we know about King Uzziah (From Wikipedia) He took the throne at age 16 and reigned for about 52 years. His reign is said in the Bible to have been “the most prosperous excepting that of Jehoshaphat since the time of Solomon.” In the earlier part of his reign, under the influence of the prophet Zechariah, King Uzziah was faithful to God and “did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord” (2 Kings 15:3; 2 Chronicles 26:4–5). He fortified his country, reorganized and equipped his army, and developed agriculture. He was a brilliant administrator and commander-in-chief, and it’s under his reign that the land of Judah was the most extended. The Bible mentions that “his name spread abroad, even to the entrance of Egypt.” (2 Chronicles 26:8–14). Yet in the end, it looks like Uzziah’s strength became his weakness. The Bible tells us that attempted to usurp the power of the priesthood in burning incense in the Temple where Azariah confronted him with eighty other priests, reminding him that burning the incense was the privilege of those who have been consecrated. As the story goes, we learn that an earthquake shook the ground, and a dent was made in the temple, the bright rays of the sun fell upon the king’s face and leprosy seized upon him. He was driven from the Temple and compelled to reside in “a separate house” until his death. He was then buried in a separate grave . A scholar explains: “That lonely grave in the royal necropolis would eloquently testify to coming generations that all earthly monarchy must bow before the inviolable order of the divine will“.
So that’s quite a story, but I think it’s worth hearing it because now we see the contrast, don’t we? Compare the prophet Isaiah and King Uzziah and see how the way they behave in the Temple is basically the opposite. The first thing the prophet Isaiah does when he sees the glory of the Lord is to fall on his knees and to confess his impurity and the impurity of the people, he confesses his indignity and it’s like he says has no business being in that place. On the other way around, King Uzziah had felt entitled. Don’t get it wrong, his intention to burn the incense didn’t come from a place of personal devotion, like when we light a candle when we enter the church, offering our intentions. Rather King Uzziah thought he could act like a priest, although he hadn’t been raised as a priest (they were from the descendants of Aaron, Moses’s brother) and certainly King Uzziah hadn’t been consecrated by the Lord. What it looks like is that he had been so successful, so blessed in everything he did, he had grown so powerful that he decided that he didn’t even have to defer to God anymore and he could act in the Temple as he would have in his own house or in his palace – being the one in charge and doing whatever he pleases.
The prophet’s Isaiah’s terror and the confession of his sin and the sins of his people come as a repentance for the King’s bad behavior. The lesson is rather clear: God’s throne is higher than any king’s throne and God’s holiness can only been approached in complete humility when one is cleansed from sin, the sin being in that case obviously the desire to capture God’s power. It wasn’t enough for King Uzziah to be a successful King, he wanted also to be higher than the high priest, as close to God as possible, not to honor God but to be in a position of privilege. His punishment is indeed, as our scholar observes, a good reminder for all the monarchy, for all king who forget their rank.
Now the parallel story of King Uzziah and Prophet Isaiah is for us today as well. We may start rolling our eyes because there is probably lot to say about political entitlement, it’s obviously not about protecting the rights of the priests or defending their privileges, but we still have lots of opportunities to observe how for some of our rulers common laws just don’t seem to apply, some of the powerful have obviously become too powerful and it seems that as a society we are also guilty of letting that happen. But I won’t walk down that road now because we all have eyes to see and ears to hear and I am not sure it would accomplish anything to dwell on that.
More productive I think would be to look at ourselves and maybe wonder which side of the story King Uzziah/ Prophet Isaiah we belong to. Most of us would clearly choose to behave like the prophet, but we also need to be aware that we aren’t safe from finding ourselves in the same state of mind as the king. We learn that Uzziah used to be a pious young man looking to do his best, it’s very sad to realize that it is because of his all his success that he lost his way. The devil does not always tempt us by enticing us to do bad things, sometimes he can use even our own desire to please God and to become good people. We need to be aware is that there is always a thin line the devil would be all too happy for us to cross, the thin line between trusting God and becoming to self confident, feeling protected and feeling invulnerable, feeling blessed and feeling entitled, receiving God’s gifts and believing God owes us something. Maybe we should feel grateful when things don’t always go our way, it could be God’s way of protecting us from ourselves.
Now I don’t think many of us walk in the Temple with the arrogance Uzziah displayed, that’s not my point. I think most of us come to church out of a genuine desire to know God better and to love better our neighbors but we cross the line with God out of confusion rather than out of defiance, out of familiarity with God rather than out of enmity. And I think I know that because that happened to me! Losing the sense of God’s holiness, this holiness the prophet Isaiah was so strikingly reminded of in his vision, a holiness that goes along with a deep awareness of our weaknesses. Instead of seeing God’s splendor, we end up making God a little small. It’s not about our worship, whether it’s elaborate and sophisticated or rather plain and simple. It’s really about, indeed, our vision of God. I am not sure we see God the way Isaiah saw God, in all of God’s majesty. I am currently reading a devotional where basically most prayers are about asking God to help us organize our day, get along with our family, give us rest, make sure our finances and health are okay. Well, there is probably nothing really wrong with that. But there’s nothing that’s going to sweep us off our feet either and invite us to this profound desire to change and be changed the prophet Isaiah experienced.
I had an opportunity to visit a nearby church this week and it made me sad. It made me sad because as I was walking the building through the 2nd floor, I realized that all the Sunday school classrooms had become storerooms for broken furniture, dusty stickers and dried out color markers. And you know what came to my mind, what came to my mind was: How much have we taken God for granted. How much have we taken God for granted, thinking that God will be there always, waiting for us, that we stopped bother coming to meet Him or teaching our children about Him. They’ll decide later, but how could they decide if the option isn’t even on the table. Now it’s easy to cast a stone at people who don’t go to church. How are people going to come to church if the story of God’s holiness, mystery and beauty isn’t told in our churches, and beyond? Churches have become another building where people gather, if we lose the sacredness then what’s the difference between a Eucharist and having brunch with friends, an option most have chosen now for their Sunday mornings?
Maybe what the story of the King and the Prophet has to say to us is that we have failed to confess God’s glory – and confessing God’s glory this is all what this feast of the Holy Trinity should be about today. Yes, we want to be close to God, intimate with Him, and certainly that’s what the Trinity is about. Jesus has come to live among us. But maybe we have ended up making him just a good friend. Maybe we have taken Him for granted. Oh yes Jesus loves us all. Well, we certainly lose God if we see God so high in the sky that he won’t come to us, but maybe we lose God as surely if we make him so close there is nothing so special about him, nothing that really invites us to change the way we are and the way we live, nothing that sweeps us of our feet. Certainly we don’t want the angry God we may have grown up with, we don’t want the judgment and the fear and rightly so. But maybe out of our desire to make God so benevolent and accessible, we have made believing in Him irrelevant. Maybe awe is what we are missing, as well as a better sense of our limitations. Worshiping the Holy Trinity is holding both the mystery and the intimacy, the proximity and the distance, the holiness and the friendliness of God.