Here Am I, Send Me
Isaiah 6:1-8
This commissioning service for Grace Mishler provides us a wonderful opportunity to celebrate those who have chosen to answer God's call to ministry in particular ways. It also provides an opportunity for each of us to once again hear God's call and claim upon our own life ... to hear again God's question, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"
God's call and claim upon the lives of God's people echoes down through the ages -- both in the pages of recorded scripture and in the oft unrecorded calls of Christian leaders since the compilation of scriptures.
One of the earliest calls can be found in Genesis 12:1-3:
Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
What an awesome call God extended to Abram. Unfortunately, we're not given much insight in to what was going on inside Abram's head. Verse 4 simply states Abram's response to God's call with these words:
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him... And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
Today we can look back on Abram as the Father of the Faith -- one who heard God's call and claim on his life to go and let God work through him to create a new people who would live in a covenant relationship with God.
Another story of God's call can be found in the 3rd chapter of 1 Samuel where we find the young Samuel serving in the house of Eli, the priest. From the dark and quiet God's call came, "Samuel! Samuel!" Samuel awoke and said, "Here I am!" and ran to Eli. But it was not Eli who was calling Samuel, it was God. Three times the call comes, three times Samuel responds and runs to Eli before Eli perceived that it was the Lord who was calling Samuel and instructs him to respond, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." And when Samuel responds to God's call it is the beginning of a life-long relationship.
Ah, but not all calls from God meet with such a simple, straight-forward response.
Exodus 3-4 records for us the story of God's call to Moses. You will recall how Moses' life had been spared as an infant when he was pulled from the river by the daughter of Pharaoh and raised in the palace. Even his name means "one who is drawn out", but Moses later fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian who he saw beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
As Exodus 3 opens, Moses is tending sheep for his father-in-law when the angel of the Lord appears to Moses from a burning bush. And there amidst his everyday work, Moses hears the call of God:
"Moses! Moses!"
"Here I am."
"Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. ... I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."
In this call, God identifies the need to which Moses is being called:
"I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry... Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land flowing with milk and honey...."
Imagine with me for a moment, if you will, an enthusiastic Moses whose heart has been breaking for his people groaning in slavery. Moses hears the words of God's deliverance but has not yet heard God's call and claim on Moses' own life. But God continues...
"So come, Moses, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people...out of Egypt."
God's plan for deliverance, which had sounded so good to Moses just moments ago, suddenly seems flawed. "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" Moses certainly cannot be the one that God wants -- he is a murderer, he is no one to Pharaoh, he does not even know God's name, he's not an adequate speaker ... and the list goes on.
Does Moses sound like anyone you know? Is his response to God's call more likely than that of Abram or Samuel or even Isaiah?
Remember Isaiah? His story was read in our scripture text. Isaiah had a vision in which he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple.
The Seraphs sing: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.
And Isaiah confesses: "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips; and yet
my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
Then comes forgiveness as Isaiah's lips are touched and forgiveness is granted:
"your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out"
For some of us, that is an appropriate ending to the story; for God's forgiveness is what we seek. But as we see here and in countless other places in scriptures, forgiveness of sins is not the end but the beginning. For after Isaiah's sin is blotted out, Isaiah again hears the voice of the Lord saying,
"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"
And Isaiah responds: "Here am I; send me!"
As we have gathered this afternoon for Grace's Commissioning for Christian Service in Vietnam, I would remind us that God still calls men and women today to be the hands and feet and voice which God will use to continue the work of Jesus in our world today.
The hymn by Daniel Schutte, "Here I am, Lord", is based on Isaiah 6:8, the passage which vividly describes a vision of God in the temple. Isaiah says, "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 refrain of the hymn goes like this:
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
Sylvia Mill, former Acting Regional Minister for the Christian Church in Indiana, writes (1):
We...each and all of us...are called to "hold God's people in our hearts." To hold someone in our heart is a very powerful phrase. It includes, and goes beyond holding someone in our thoughts and prayers. It means we suffer when they suffer -- rejoice when they rejoice -- and that we hold their lives and hopes tenderly within our own being. And we are called not only as individual persons to "hold God's people in our heart", but we are called as a connected community of Christian witnesses to hold God's people near and far away in our hearts!
As we commission Grace for Christian service in Vietnam, she is already beginning the process of holding God's people in a new community in her heart. Today we join in holding not only Grace, but also the people she will serve in Vietnam, in our hearts.
Grace, we have come together to commission you for Christian service in Vietnam, but your response to God's call also serves as a reminder to each one of us that the call of God continues to come today, saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? May we respond, with Isaiah: Here Am I; send me!
Commissioning sermon for Grace Mishler
by Herman Kauffman, District Pastor
Union Center Church of the Brethren
August 20, 2000
1. Sylvia E. Mill, "A Pastoral Word", on Christian Church in Indiana Web site, 8/97.