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God’s Holiness – and Ours
Isaiah 55:6-9 2nd Timothy 1:8-14 Mark 6:14 -24
A “holy Joe” is someone who oozes religious sentimentality, religious sentimentality devoid of worldly
wisdom and earthly sense. The holy Joe, with his head in the clouds, may be mildly amusing, even laughable, but there’s
nothing about him that we want for ourselves.
The “holier-than-thou” isn’t merely unattractive; she’s downright offensive.
She regards herself as spiritually superior. Worse, she advertises herself as spiritually superior. Worst of all, she expects
to be recognized as spiritually superior. While the “holy Joe” may be somewhat amusing, the “holier-than-thou”
is out-and-out repulsive.
A “holy roller” is something else again. The “holy roller” is someone whose
religion fizzes up into an emotional binge. This binge, like any binge, involves loss of self-control and a public display
that most people find pitiable and repugnant in equal measure.
It would seem that the word “holy” keeps bad company. Yet “holy” is a most
important word in the Christian vocabulary. It is one of the most frequently used words in scripture. While Presbyterians
argued fiercely, 450 years ago, over predestination, in fact the “predestination” word group occurs approximately
15 times in scripture. The “holy”, “holiness” word group, however, occurs approximately
830 times in scripture. We use it constantly in hymns and prayers and lessons. We speak of “Holy Communion”
and “Holy Scripture” and “Holy Matrimony”. Frequently the congregation sings the
hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy”, or one like it. We refer to the Holy Spirit in every service.
Then what do we mean when we say “holy”? What’s the holiness of God? This matter is
crucial to me, for I wince every time I hear God’s name used carelessly. “Oh my God, it’s begun
to rain just when I was going to hang out the washing.” “For God’s sake swing the bat”
someone shouts as another Blue Jay hitter is called out on a called third strike. I wince whenever I hear God’s
name used thoughtlessly. I feel like a man whose wife has been belittled, her name sneered at and her reputation dragged
through the mud. Why do I feel like this?
I feel like this because nothing looms larger with me than the holiness of God. God’s holiness is bound
up with who God is and therefore with what I’m trying to do as a minister and even with who I am as a person. Having
said this much, however, I still haven’t told you what’s holy about God or what’s supposed to
be holy about us or even what the word means.
I don’t think that my telling you would be the most helpful way of approaching the topic. It would be better
if we examined what’s associated with the word, for then an impression of God’s holiness would be stamped
upon us forever.
I: (i) – Let’s start with worship. One Sunday, John, exiled to the island of Patmos , sent there
to rot by a hostile Roman government, began to worship when he – when he what? He couldn’t say at the
time. A few hours later he was able to write something down. When I saw him”, John penned in the last book of
the bible, “I fell at his feet as one dead.” Nine hundred years before John, Isaiah was at worship in
the temple, the service no different from any other service, when he found himself God-engulfed. “The whole earth
is full of God’s glory”, he cried out. At this moment he didn’t chatter, wasn’t distracted
by something extraneous going on in the service, didn’t comment on the preacher’s smoothness or lack of
it. He was overwhelmed.
Worship isn’t a matter of tossing off a hymn or two prayers and reading and address added. Worship is finding
ourselves taken out of ourselves as we are overcome by the One whose worthiness startles us. Worship points to the holiness
of God and gives us a clue to it.
(ii) – Something else associated with holiness is awe. People are awestruck when they come upon a beauty more
beautiful than they can imagine; when they are visited with a love more tender, patient, persistent than they can dream of;
when they are pardoned with a forgiveness so free and full as to overflow the word. The person who has been awestruck by
any aspect of God has a clue to God’s holiness.
(iii) – Also associated with holiness is fear. Not merely awe this time; rather, awe with something added.
All biblical faith begins in the fear of the Lord. What is it? It’s adoration, reverence, obeisance, homage, humility;
at least it’s 98% this. And the other 2%? Pure fear, sheer fear. The 2%, sheer fear, keeps everything else honest.
It keeps our adoration and reverence from becoming presumptuous, or stale, or mindless. Let’s remember that the
Jesus whom we call “gentle, meek and mild”; he said to his followers, “Don’t fear
people who can merely beat you up; you fear HIM who can destroy you utterly.” Of course we are to love God. But
don’t give me the line a woman gave me at the door of the church one Sunday early in my ministry: “Victor,
I don’t fear God; I love him.” John Calvin insisted that we don’t genuinely love God, profoundly
love God, unless we fear him.
(iv) – Also associated with God’s holiness is God’s loftiness. He towers above us. He
isn’t an extension of us or a projection of us. He is uniquely God, exalted, transcendent. Through the prophet
Isaiah God insists, “My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my ways.” He isn’t
our errand boy; doesn’t implement our agendas; won’t be co-opted to our self-important schemes.
A crusty atheist, veteran of the World War I, used to tell me that during the Great War Anglican bishops blessed aircraft
as they rolled off assembly lines, while a few miles away Lutheran bishops blessed anti-aircraft guns designed to shoot them
down. “Now”, the crusty old fellow would say with a glint in his eye, “wasn’t that
an awkward predicament for the Almighty to be in?” No, it wasn’t awkward for God at all. It was heartbreaking
for him, but not awkward, since his thoughts aren’t our thoughts or our ways his ways. We don’t have
him on the end of our string. God’s loftiness is a clue to his holiness.
II: -- If we add up the clues, we have more than a little insight concerning God’s holiness. God’s
holiness is his unique Godness. God’s holiness is that which renders God entirely distinct from his creation, entirely
independent of his creation, entirely independent of us. God isn’t the noblest element in humankind. God isn’t
another word for our profoundest aspirations. He is God, he alone is God, and he will remain God whether anyone knows him
or not, acknowledges him or not, loves him or not. Kierkegaard gathered it up pithily when he spoke of “the infinite
qualitative difference” between God and us.
Earlier in the sermon I said that God’s unique Godness, his holiness, has ever so much to do with my vocation,
the huge gravitational “pull” in my life. It has ever so much to do with what moves me and motivates
me, and therefore with what I am always trying to do in my ministry. I have spoke frequently here of my summons to the ministry.
I never wanted to be a minister. I went to university to become a lawyer, fell in love with philosophy, and decided to become
a professor of philosophy. And so I tried to suppress the vocation I knew I had had since I was 14 years old. By the time
I was 23 years old I was at a crossroads in my life, the crisis upon me no little crisis. I knew that either I was going
to obey the God who was hounding me or I was going to defy him disobediently and suffer for it. I surrendered. I finished
up my work in philosophy and moved over to theology. A short while earlier my parents had given me a book as a graduation
gift. In it they had written a verse from the book of Daniel: “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness
of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever.”
What does God’s holiness, God’s Godness mean to me? It means, among other things, that if I ever
turn my back on the summons I have received, I’m finished. Finished in Schomberg? Finished with the ordained ministry
elsewhere? More than that. FINISHED.
What does God’s Godness mean for you? How is it all related to you?
III: (i) – First of all, the apostle Paul speaks of the holy calling with which all Christians are called to
faith in Jesus Christ. The call is holy just because its whence and wither are God. The call is holy in that it’s
a call from God uniquely and it’s a call to God uniquely.
Recently a Via Rail train conductor retired after 30-odd years of working on passenger trains. When asked what single
statement gathered up his work for 30 years the conductor replied, “I have spent my entire working life helping
people get home.”
To be sure, it’s the task of the church, the total ministry of the church, to “help people get
home.” At the same time, we must always be aware that the church’s ministry is that of a megaphone: we
are merely amplifying the voice of God who sounds that summons which comes from him and calls people to him. If our calling
is from God and to God; if it originates in God, sounds forth and gathers up men and women with it, and finally returns and
returns them to God, then the call wherewith we are called to faith is holy.
The holy calling by which God brings us home to him is heard in the voice of Jesus his Son as the Master invites us
to become and remain disciples. Discipleship, we should note, isn’t a static matter. We don’t become
disciples and then “remain” disciples in the sense of standing still: “I am now a disciple”.
Discipleship means following. Our Lord’s invitation is always to follow: “Follow me.” He uses
a verb tense that means “Keep on following.” Since our Lord is always out in front of us, when he says
“Follow me” he plainly means “Come to me; keep on coming.” In other words, the holy
call by which you and I are summoned to him is a call sounded relentlessly, daily. As we do follow, come, respond, we shall
find ourselves living ever more intimately with him, learning ever more from him, and rooting ourselves ever more profoundly
in him. Our faith in him is confirmed day by day.
(ii) – Yet we are not merely confirmed in faith. We are also conformed in faith, conformed to his mind and
heart and will. In other words, our holy calling issues in holy conduct, as the apostle Paul reminds us.
Paul speaks of holy conduct in terms of clothing. We are to “clothe” ourselves with compassion,
kindness, humility, patience, and meekness, that peculiar display of strength that is exercised through gentleness. Yet the
apostle knows too that we can appear patient with people whom we secretly view with hostility. We can posture kindness (or
apparent kindness) as a way of manipulating them. We can display meekness (strength exercised through gentleness) because
strength exercised through force would get us attacked. For this reason, when he speaks of the clothing with which Christians
are to clothe themselves he adds, “And above all these, clothe yourselves with love, for love binds everything together
in perfect harmony.” (Col. 3:12-14) He knows that love prevents patience from degenerating into indifference; love
prevents meekness from becoming manipulative. Love is the preservative of every other item of clothing the Christian wears.
Love, he says, is also what keeps our “outfit” from clashing; love keeps our clothing colour-coordinated,
harmonized.
Eric Liddell, the Olympic runner we came to know two decades ago through the movie Chariots of Fire; Liddell was anything
but a gifted speaker. He admitted as much himself. No one remembers anything he ever said. But when the missionaries with
whom he worked in China were captured by the Japanese and interned in the Japanese-run prison camp in China , his fellow-missionaries
subsequently said they would never forget him. His kindness, his patience (genuine patience); a man with the smallest ego
and the largest heart; his self-forgetfulness – and above all (can you guess what’s he remembered for
above all else?) his ceaseless cheerfulness under unspeakably trying conditions. All this the people interned with him said
they’d never forget. Years later a fellow prisoner who survived wrote up the prison camp episode. He said that
the most noteworthy aspect of Eric Liddell during this trying time was his unfailing good humour.
We mustn’t think that Eric Liddell had a chance to be dramatic while we have none. There was nothing dramatic
about his situation. He lived among people who were anxious, weary, nervous, frightened. Some were short-tempered, some
hostile, and some treacherous. In other words, he lived where we all live. It was in the midst of the most undistinguished
ordinariness that his holy calling issued in holy conduct.
(iii) – Holy calling, holy conduct; lastly, Holy Spirit. If you are puzzled as to what to understand by “the
Holy Spirit”, always think in terms of effectiveness. The Spirit is the power or effectiveness of all that we apprehend
in Jesus. Jesus acts in the power of the Spirit. He rolls back evil in the power of the Spirit. He undoes paralysis and
death in the power of the Spirit. When he speaks, something always happens just because he speaks in the power of the Spirit.
“Spirit” means effectiveness or power, and the Spirit is holy in that what this power effects is of God.
I wasn’t in Schomberg very long before I informed the session that I simply could not say the words “Holy
Ghost.” “Ghost” is an old English word derived from the German word “Geist”.
Most of you have never heard of “Geist”. You haven’t missed a thing, and we shall say no more
about the German word. All of you have heard of “ghost”. In modern English “ghost”
refers to something nobody believes to exist, something nobody has ever come upon; something devoid of all reality and therefore
not a “something” at all but rather a “no-thing”, nothing. The reason I can’t
say “Holy Ghost” is that I see no point in saying “Holy nothing”. In fact, I believe
God forbids me to say “Holy nothing”.
So far from being nothing, the Holy Spirit is everything where effectiveness is concerned. Without the Holy Spirit,
the sermon is one person’s opinion on a religious topic. With the Spirit, the sermon is a human utterance that
God adopts and renders the occasion of his speaking to us, and this in a way that is both unmistakable and undeniable.
Without the Holy Spirit the communion service is pointless tokenism, food and drink insufficient to nourish a chickadee.
With the Holy Spirit, the communion service becomes the ever-renewed embrace of the crucified himself.
Without the Holy Spirit our worship is of the same order as the cheering at a football game. With the Holy Spirit our
worship is a public exclamation of God’s worthiness; and such worship, scripture reminds us, delights God.
Without the Holy Spirit the congregation is a social group of greater or less cohesion, doing more or less good work,
providing a social outlet for people of like interest. With the Holy Spirit the congregation is rendered the body, hands
and feet of Christ, whereby his work is done in the world.
Without the Holy Spirit the Christian life is a moral “grind” that soon becomes easy to give up.
With the Holy Spirit the Christian life is a counter-cultural adventure rendered effective by God, and appointed to end in
triumph and glory.
No one wants to be or be regarded as a holy Joe a holy roller or holier-than-thou. But we do want to be those who have
been startled at the holiness of God. As a result we want to be those who live in the company of Jesus Christ inasmuch as
he has called us to him with a holy calling. We want our intimacy with him to issue in holy conduct as we clothe ourselves
in the clothing that befits Christ’s people at all times. We want to be steeped in the Holy Spirit, for we crave
in all aspects of the Christian faith that invigoration and effectiveness which God alone can supply.
Victor Shepherd
September 2005
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