…relicts the seething and anonymous miasmal mass which in all the years of time has taught itself no boon of death but only how to recreate, renew; and dies, is gone, vanished: nothing – but is that true wisdom which can comprehend that there is a might-have-been which is more true than truth, from which the dreamer, waking, says not “Did I but dream?” but rather says, indicts heaven’s very self with: “Why did I wake since waking I shall never sleep again?”

–Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

My boss’s daughter got married this June, and I went to the wedding.  There is a strange quietness that besets a church when it is being made ready for ceremony.  People arrive and greet each other warmly enough, but there is a hushed silence prevailing over all that may not truly be broken until that ecstatic moment when the bride and groom turn to the congregation with the dizzied joy of ones who have just entered into a new world together.  But it was into this silence, penetrating my meditation like the tentative aria of the songbird before the first hint of daybreak, that words of glory and worship began to rise up before me.

Evidently the vocalist was a friend of Amy’s who had been asked to help with the service.  Nobody at Covenant even knew she could sing.  All she had accompanying her was a guitar and a piano, but there was little doubt that she didn’t need any help.  I have never in my life heard another voice like hers.  Without imagining myself to be in any capacity an expert on the subject, I am fully convinced that God himself got momentarily distracted from whatever he was doing at the time and stopped to listen and wonder at the beauty of her music.  She filled the whole entire sanctuary and captivated 600 people with these words: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty; who was, and is, and is to come.

It is not without significance that the word chosen by the seraphim as they covered their faces and feet before God, calling out to each other in mighty fear and awed adoration, was Holy.  It appears over 600 times in Scripture and is an idea that evokes within us – at once further away from God and more closely intimate with him than any angel ever was – feelings too vast and expansive to be analyzed.  Making it even more difficult we are not permitted with the archangel to turn our faces away from the glory, but as part of the family of God we are drawn into relationship with One who seems to be the ultimate, blinding antithesis of every discernible characteristic we can find in ourselves.  If I am unworthy, he is perfectly deserving; if vile, he is fully upright; if vindictive, he is completely just; if simple, he is wise beyond reckoning; if traitorous, he is the lamb who goes willingly to the slaughter; if faltering, he is the Beginning and the End.  Every door I open in the corridor of my condemnation, searching for the validation of the sorrows encountered in this life, only opens upon a new vista bright with the promise of his unending faithfulness.  In its essence (for humanity, at least) the idea of the Holy calls up the greatest contrast we have ever known, for between us and Him there is a great gulf fixed; and as fallen creatures we find ourselves squarely on the wrong end of it.

This is because just being part of the family of God is not enough to confer holiness.  I have lost count of the covenant warnings given in Scripture to people God claimed as his own who had no interest in looking like him.  Illegitimacy is not too strong a word to use in this context (if that seems overly sexual in nature, read Ezekiel sometime) and its implications are horrendous.  If being able to count yourself as part of the household of faith brings with it all the benefits of salvation, eternal life, community, purpose, meaning and triumph, it does not take a trained theologian to figure out what the other side of that coin is.  And holiness is the deciding factor.

Being holy means more than just doing what is right.  It means more than something set apart, and it means more than something that is special.  Over 25 years of thinking about it and hearing preachers/teachers try to explain it, the best way I have found to approach holiness is to think of it as what is real.

Do you remember the boy or girl you always admired when you were a kid, noticing her in a room full of people as though everyone else were a softer texture but she stood out in a sharp bas-relief that you could not help being aware of, picking up on every word he said whether you were part of the conversation or not, wishing she would acknowledge you but terrified of the possibility, basking in every chance moment you spent together?  It was because there was something about that person that was larger than life, something you could not ignore and that flavored everything they said and did.  The words they chose always seemed like the exact ones that really needed to be said, the things they laughed at desperately deserved it, what made them angry always did so justly.  Everything about her rose above the tottering mounds of wreckage that was your life and proclaimed, “This is a real girl,” and with every word and motion his superiority was established with the same eternal censure, “This is a real guy.”

It is a testament to our sinful natures that we are not able to look on the beauty of another without that unconscious comparison, that green-eyed monster that indwells our purest moment of appreciation and cannot but set that beauty up against the standard of our own selves.  This is one of the reasons why modesty is a Christian virtue, and why even in the new heavens and the new earth we will still be clothed.  Nakedness is either for that degree of innocence (we may even rightly say naiveté) which has never known wrongdoing, or it is for that degree of intimacy which knows nothing between; it cannot exist alongside the tension in which we walk as brothers and sisters in the Church of Christ.  That veil will be changed along with our bodies into something more beautiful than we can now know, but it will never be drawn away.

Holiness is like that.  It is a beauty so terrible that we are not even tempted to lust after it.  It is music so exquisite that our hearts are pierced through with our own mortality at its very sound.  It is a tale so thrilling that at its onset we cry out with Isaiah, “Look away from me” and “Let me weep bitter tears” because we know that it could not possibly be our own.  It is a friendship so unlikely, a love story so incredible, that our hearts and minds cannot accept that anyone in such a position could possibly care for us that much.  And unlike the foolish infatuations of our youth (they usually continue in a different form beyond our youth), He who is alone holy has been presented to us in the Incarnation as greater and truer and higher – in short, more real – than we are able to comprehend even in those most overwhelming moments of realization.  And when it dawns on us that the way we know that is because he has initiated with us a relationship closer and more intimate than any other we have known in this life, the defeat of our subtle pride is accomplished, and grace reigns supreme in our hearts.

But our initial reaction to the reality of God was not wholly inaccurate.  We are mortal creatures and we stand condemned.  It is death for such a one to come into the presence of a holy God, and the reality of that doom is as great as He is.  It was necessary, then, for a death equal in magnitude to be the offering for our salvation.  This death stands as our surety before the court of Heaven and proclaims its boon of atonement with a voice that condemns all our vanishing attempts at recreation and renewal.  It declares that might-have-been which is more true than truth itself: that Jesus loved me and gave himself for me.  This is the dream to which we are called to awake, and against which there is no indictment, for it is the realm of the holy; and waking to it we shall never sleep again.

Brothers and sisters who lift up the cross with me, come this Sunday to the sea of glass mingled with fire; come and sing with me the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb:

Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!  Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name?  For you alone are holy.

JV

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV