Perfection.

What a great word that is!

Imagine you have friends round for dinner and they describe your raspberry roulade as perfection!

What a thrill!

Having spent the day preparing the meal it is so nice to be told by your guests that they have enjoyed your cooking.

It’s even more of a thrill if they really believe you have made it yourself when in fact it’s from Tesco and your only real claim to culinary skill has been your cunning ability to hide the box it came in at the bottom of your kitchen bin where it will escape the gaze of prying eyes!

Yes! We have all done it. O.K... Maybe that’s just me then!!
 

Perfection.

Imagine a day out in the countryside.

You are out for a walk and a beautiful view of a charming valley stops you in your tracks.

‘Perfection’, you say.

Such a view may even reinforce your belief in God as Creator of the world we inhabit.

‘Perfection’. You might say this when you see photos of a model on the catwalk at a fashion show. Lovely clothes. Perfect grooming. Every detail just right.

But...what of perfection at other times.

You know, when dinner just doesn’t turn out right at all.

Or when the only view you have is the back of a lorry in a motorway traffic jam.

And what about those days when you just feel out of sorts and end up making everyone else feel grumpy too.

If we expect to live in a perfect world all the time then the chances are that we are not going to deal with these kinds of situations at all well.

If you are a perfectionist it can be doubly hard as your expectations of yourself and others and even life itself can lead to feelings of profound disappointment.

But cheer up! Help is at hand! It’s in the Bible and it comes from the relationship we can read about between God and the Prophet Isaiah in chapter six of the book of the prophet Isaiah.

‘Woe is me!’, cries Isaiah. ‘For I am undone and ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips’.

He is seriously upset. Upset with himself. Upset with everybody. He is upset to the extent that he feels he has completely messed up...big time.

Ever felt like that? Horrible, isn’t it? So, what’s to be done?

Well, in this case we need to find out just why Isaiah is feeling so desperate.

In the reading we heard that Isaiah has seen a vision of God. He has seen ‘the Lord sitting upon a throne’.

This vision of perfection has caused him to make a comparison between himself and God. He finds himself severely lacking as well as the people he lives amongst.

The religious teachings of the day did not permit regular people to feel that they could get as close to God as Isaiah clearly feels he has. He has gazed upon the perfect and now feels quite imperfect himself.

His vision transported him to the throne room of God and to the heavenly courts. So perfect is this experience that he feels that the Temple in Jerusalem is very lacking in comparison. He despairs of his society and his people and himself.

Such despair is all-consuming. Sometimes we can feel it to. It can be stifling. We can feel that we have gone far wrong in some way. We can grow weary of other people’s actions and behaviours. We can despair of the state of the world and its leaders.

And, like Isaiah, we can feel that there is nothing we can do to put the situation right.

However, we can take great comfort from what God does for Isaiah to enable him to feel good about himself again.

So, we read that, ‘then flew one of the seraphim (heavenly beings) to me, having a live coal in his hand which he had taken with tongs from off the altar; And with it he touched my mouth and said, ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity and guilt are taken away, and your sin is completely atoned for and forgiven.’

In the vision one of the heavenly beings has acted to make Isaiah feel better. The imperfection is taken away. God has inspired this action. Isaiah could not have achieved it for himself or by himself.

Isaiah feels inspired to carry on with his life and ministry to the people. So, when we read that he, ‘heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us?’ – we are delighted at Isaiah’s response, ‘Here am I; send me’.

To sum up then...Isaiah has learned that God is perfect, but that does not make the Lord unapproachable. Isaiah was feeling bad about himself and could not console himself. So God comes to him in the vision bringing healing and wholeness in a whole new way. We see this when the seraph touches Isaiah’s mouth with the live coal he had taken with tongs from off the altar.

In a few moments each one of us will be invited to place in our mouths the bread and wine of the altar. No matter how we are feeling today and no matter what we have done God will touch us anew.

God chooses to love us. God desires our wellbeing. God invites us to continue the journey of life today...
(John Foulds)