I Can’t Take It

We all know what it can be like to feel overwhelmed. It might be a time of suffering or a sense of helplessness, a deadline creating a crisis, or a tragedy we cannot absorb. More than once we have all been overwhelmed by unbearable, negative situations.

Is it possible to be overwhelmed by the good? Have you ever been stopped in your tracks by something astonishingly good, astoundingly true, or unspeakably beautiful? It’s an open question; I will not try to give examples. I am convinced you could give me examples. I am thinking of the wide categories of encountering The Holy.

It does happen. It might be the extraordinary facing you within the ordinary. The ordinary conditions of river erosion, rain, ice, and wind chiseled the Grand Canyon and every canyon. If your inner disposition is in a certain shape, peering into a canyon can blow you away. What list of scenes of natural creation has done that to you? It happens when something is so wondrous, you just can’t take it. You are no longer examining the object of your senses, it is taking you in; you are reverently present to the scene before you, addressing you.

In other cases, humans can be overwhelmed by the extraordinary without the medium of nature, art, or the written word. We may not be aware of the stimulus that puts us there. It does happen that the Wholly Other somehow beckons our near presence. We get a “creature-feeling.” We find ourselves in awe, part of everything else that has being, standing before the One who is the Source of being. The creature meets Being Itself.

The readings for Eucharist on Sunday, (The Fifth after The Epiphany) reacquaint us with three figures who endured such encounters with The Holy. We see Isaiah in the theophany of his calling, Simon Peter experiencing the awesome holiness of Jesus, and Paul referencing the Risen Christ’s appearance to him personally.

I see them all as spiritual experiences related to their respective callings. These figures were each called into the service of God’s designs for human redemption. My whole point of raising it is to suggest that you are too. God can and does call you, sometimes within the ordinary and sometimes in mystical experience. In the days ahead I will go into the examples of Peter and Paul. Today I challenge you to acknowledge: you are called by God, and you might be summoned by encounters with The Holy so striking, you almost can’t take it.

Read this passage from Isaiah 6, and pity the overwhelmed prophet:

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 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. And one called to another and said:

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory."

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 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!"

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 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." 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!"

It fits what the writer to the Hebrews declared centuries later “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31)

I am not wishing you to be overwhelmed by things horrible to bear; may you if possible be spared such. I do want us to pray for each other to encounter the overwhelming goodness, truth, and beauty of God. The Holy One calls us. Despite the unbearable wonder of holiness, may we each respond, “Here am I; send me!"