NRS Isaiah 6:1
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. 2 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.
3 And one called to another and said:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory."
4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 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!" 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.
7 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." 8 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!"

* "I'm a good person. I do my best to treat people right.
* "I'm a good person. I get along with my neighbors and try to help out in the neighborhood.
* "I'm a good person. I don't run around. I come straight home after work and my paycheck goes straight to the bank.
* "I'm a good person. I give to charity. I volunteer my time as I can.
* "I'm a good person. I love my spouse, cherish my kids, honor my parents, and when it's not raining, I walk the dog.
* "I'm a good person. I pay my taxes and revere my country.
* "I'm a good person. I'm not a serial killer. I don't go around knocking off banks or breaking into houses. I recycle. I'm always trying to improve myself. I work hard at my job. I believe in a full day's work for a full day's pay.
* "I'm a good person…
* "So why should I go listen to some preacher tell me how to live? What does 'organized religion' have to say to me that I don't already know? I'm as close to God in the deer blind or on the lake or having my morning coffee on the patio as when I'm in church. What's wrong with that?''

Short answer: Nothing. There's nothing wrong with quiet time out in nature or on the back porch. Actually, it's a good thing, and we could all probably use some more of it. Just like personal morals are obviously good things. It's good that people love their families, and do good works, and try to do right by their neighbors. In fact, it's not just good, but very good. The question, though, is whether it's good enough.

What I'm about to say is maybe a little counter-intuitive, but stick with me and see if it's not true. If you step back and try to get the big picture on life, I think what you'll see is that most of the truly horrible, really horrific things in human history have mostly been done by good people. The wars, holocausts, genocides, and enslavements of whole nations may have been inspired by evil leaders, but it still took a whole lot of mostly good people to make those terrible things happen. The many vast atrocities of the past 100 years were largely perpetrated by people who had high moral standards, who took out their garbage and kept up their yards. When some of these people have been brought to account for their part in these great crimes against humanity, they've often defended themselves, saying that they were only doing their jobs. They were defending their country, or protecting their families, or just trying to make a better world, all good things. Even the great monsters of this past century were not all bad. Stalin loved to sing and write poetry. Hitler was very devoted to his mother and was devastated when she died of breast cancer at the age of 47. He loved his German shepherd Blondi so much that he had his own personal physician put the dog down right before he committed suicide. Okay. Bad example. (I was just checking to see if you were listening!) But here's a better illustration.

I think a hundred years from now historians will still be writing books on this series of corporate fraud cases we've been witness to these past 7 or 8 years. Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, the list goes on and on, and I'm sure that years from now investigators will still be figuring out how so many people were defrauded of so much money. But we already know this. We know that it wasn't just a couple of bad apples running amok in the executive suites. Larceny on this grand a scale required not just a few ring leaders, but more like a cast of thousands. For this kind of thievery, you need legions of lawyers, armies of accountants, multiple financial institutions, not to mention the cooperation of credit rating agencies, regulators, legislators, a docile press, and all sorts of other directors, investors, and bankers willing to look the other way, not ask the hard questions, and concern themselves with nothing but the bottom line. The vast majority of these people, of course, did nothing illegal, and when they went home in the evening, I'm sure that many of them coached Little League or baked cookies for their church youth groups. But at the end of the day, tens of thousands of people lost their entire life's savings.

The Bible is not about making good people feel bad about themselves. The point of biblical preaching is not to tear down peoples' self-esteem or provoke them to the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. And given the spectacular and highly sensationalized failures of so many pastors, priests, and religious leaders in just these last few years, most preachers would, I think, do well not to presume to "tell other people how to live." But the Bible is not, finally, a book of moralisms or how-to steps for self-improvement. The Bible is a book of revelation, and what the Bible reveals is a God of such awesome and staggering goodness that to behold this God is to be changed from just "a good person" and to be joined to a people who hunger and thirst for the goodness and rightness of God.

Take, for instance, the story of the prophet Isaiah. In or around the year 742 B.C., "the year King Uzziah died" (Isaiah 6:1), Isaiah was either a priest or a prophet attached to the Temple in Jerusalem. He was clearly a holy man doing holy things in what was then believed to be the holiest place on earth; in other words, a good person. But one day as Isaiah went about his holy duties in or near the sanctuary of the Lord, (quote) "I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple" (6:1). As the six-winged seraphs attended to the Lord, singing "Holy, holy, holy," the whole building began to shake and the room filled with smoke. And it's exactly here that Isaiah did not say, "Wow! Get a load of this! Cool!," but instead, confessed, "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!" (6:5). But before Isaiah could dig a hole for himself in the floor of the Temple, the Lord purged him of his impurity and called him outside himself and his own notions of goodness to pursue the wholly good and gracious will of God.

What God did for Isaiah all those centuries ago, God does for us now in the cross of Jesus. When we truly survey that wondrous cross, we behold in the suffering and death of Jesus a love so pure, a faith so strong, a holiness so radiant that we cannot help but see how flawed and flimsy are our claims to goodness. This is what Martin Luther called God's opus alienum, the strange work of God that shatters our presumption and brings us to our knees. But that same cross also reconstitutes and remakes us from people who seek our own good to people who are drawn into the goodness of God, who find our meaning and the purpose of our lives in the God who calls us beyond what is good just for us and for our kind.

The cross is not, however, a lesson that you can check off and say, "Got it," and then move on to bigger and better things. We are constantly confusing our will with God's will, constantly patting ourselves on the back while God's good creation goes to rack and ruin. Often we substitute our will for God's will, and then put blinders on our eyes, ears, and consciences so that we are convinced of our "okay-ness" without ever once noticing the evil and harm we may be doing or contributing to. And that's why we keep coming back here, week after week after week. It's not that we're all so bad, terrible, or rotten. It's that only God is finally and fully good, and apart from that goodness, we are lost.

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.