An
old prayer, but still a very good prayer, to say at the start of every day is,
“Show me how to live in a manner worthy of your holy name.” Saying that puts the day in the perspective
of serving God, having humility, and recognizing that we are ambassadors for
God’s kingdom in this world. We want to
live in a way that honors it – both so that what people see us do is honoring
God, and also that our choices and decisions are in keeping with God’s will for
creation. We don’t want to contribute to
the abuse or exploitation of other people or the world.
Well,
doing the first part of that – living so that what people see us do is honoring
God – isn’t all that hard. (Even many a
scoundrel shows a wonderful side in public!)
However, the second part – choices and decisions in keeping with God’s
will for creation – is something where Isaiah’s words challenge us deeply.
The
book of Isaiah gives us the messages of the 8th century B.C.E.
prophet Isaiah. It is also a lot
more. Biblical scholars break it into
three parts. 1st Isaiah
includes the original Isaiah’s work and it is chapters 1-39. Second Isaiah is 40-55. It was created about 150 years later during the
Babylonian exile. Third Isaiah is 56-66
and was written after the return from exile.
There are also many signs of editing and compiling. Ferreting out all the sources and edits is complicated! We’ll leave that to the biblical
scholars. For today we look at the themes
of the original Isaiah.
Isaiah
was from Jerusalem and appears to have been well recognized as a prophet. He had the ear and the respect of many
powerful people. He may have even been
on the government payroll. His messages
are directed more at the leadership than at the everyday citizen. You’d expect Isaiah to tweak his messages to
suit the ears of his elite hearers. In
other words, tell them what they want to
hear. But that is not the case. His words are to them are harsh.
Our
first reading from Isaiah 6 says, “In the year that King Uzziah died…” That puts us at the year 738 B.C.E. Uzziah was a considered to be a relatively
good king of the southern kingdom of Judah.
He was a good military leader, had good domestic policies, and was
apparently relatively faithful. While
there was a peaceful transition of power to his son Jotham, the future was
uncertain. The Assyrian Empire was
growing in power and flexing its muscles.
Sixteen years after Isaiah’s vision the northern kingdom of Israel does
in fact fall to the Assyrians.
At
the best of times the kings of Judah, Israel, and the other small nations
around them, like: Philistia, Moab, Ammon, and Edom, had a tough time of
it. Even if they were to all join forces
they were no match for the Assyrians or Egyptians; and later the
Babylonians. From a strategic perspective,
being the leader of these little nation states meant doing a delicate dance
with the surrounding empires. Which were
you going to pay homage to? Which was
most likely to come to your aid against the others? Loyalties switched often. Prophets like Isaiah said the kings should
trust solely in God and not make political alliances for survival.
Isaiah’s
message is that God has promised to the Jewish people:
that
they are forever the chosen people,
Jerusalem
was God’s chosen city,
that
the temple was God’s chosen dwelling,
and
that the blood line of David would rule in Jerusalem forever.
They should therefore live in
absolute and unswerving trust in those promises. God would take care of them. Just be faithful.
At
the same time, however, Isaiah says these promises are not to be
exploited. Faithlessness and corruption
from the people (especially the religious/political leaders) could become so
foul and disgusting that God would leave; or allow punishment to happen, or
perhaps directly cause punishment. In
other words, God would not accept having his power and promises exploited even
by the “chosen people”.
Our first Bible reading today was Isaiah
6. That chapter begins with the call
story of Isaiah. It’s the scene with God
in the temple and there is noise and smoke and supernatural beings flying
around. Isaiah doesn’t feel worthy, but
God has him cleansed to carry his message.
Many
people are familiar with that vivid scene.
What many people are not familiar with is message, which is the second
half of the chapter. That message is
harsh and troubling. What could be meant
when God says, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not
comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ Make the mind of this people dull, and stop
their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and
listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be
healed.”
Why oh why would God say this? It almost seems that God is looking for an
excuse to bring about destruction and doesn’t want to have any guilt or complicating
factors.
I could keep us here for an hour
more and delve into it more completely but I won’t. (Indeed our ears will go deaf and our minds
will become full!) Let’s just cut
to the chase. What’s going on? Perhaps a bit of wisdom from Will Rogers is
in order. He was once asked what was
wrong with the world. “I don’t know,” he
said with his slow drawl, “I guess it’s people.” And that’s just it!
People are hopelessly stubborn about
some things!
God
created humans to be in community with each other and in partnership with God
in the creation. Everyone was to be
equal and all were to look out for the good of each other. That is God’s design.
But Adam and Eve weren’t satisfied,
were they? We’re back to their story
again! They don’t trust God’s
designs. They take matters into their
own hands.
The people of Isaiah’s day, and we
too, are very willing to embrace the idea that we are not all even. We decide that some are smarter and some are
more talented and some are prettier and on and on goes the list. We elevate some and reduce others. We care about some and not others. And, we easily live for ourselves and look to
our own interests.
An often overlooked part of the Old
Testament is the economy God gives the people.
It guaranteed evenness. It guaranteed
that there would never be a permanently poor class. At the same time there was no welfare
system! It was impossible for dynamics
to form where some got richer at the expense of others. We’ve talked about this before. The economy was rooted in the idea that farm
and pastureland could never be permanently sold out of a family. And every family was allotted land. Every family was guaranteed the ability to
provide for itself in perpetuity. But
that economy was never implemented.
What happened instead? We had Isaiah 1:12-20 as our scripture poetry
today. There God is condemning the
wealthy and powerful. He is saying he
does not want their offerings and sacrifices.
God does not want their so-called piety.
Why? Because their offerings are
coming at the expense of the vulnerable.
God does not want offerings that come by oppressing people! God finds that disgusting!
What does God really want? It is verse 17, “…learn to do good; seek
justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”
Those are all wonderful ideas. They sound sweet. But did they do that? Do we?
I suspect only when it’s convenient!
Their minds -and ours- easily get caught elsewhere; in other things that
sound good but are really self-focused – things like: social image and
acceptance, investing for retirement, insuring possessions, protecting
wealth. These aren’t necessarily bad
things in and of themselves, but they easily become our central priority. They become the driving thought in our lives.
What was that prayer we started
with? “Show me how to live in a manner
worthy of your holy name.”
God
says to the Jews through Isaiah that their focus should be on making sure all
have opportunities. They are to seek true
justice, not pervert justice. Their
focus should be on the whole of society, not their own individual needs and
wants and desires.
The complex global economy of which
we are a part has many winners and losers.
In its complexity the true costs of things are often hidden from those
who are the winners – which keeps them from feeling bad about themselves.
We’ve
talked about this in the past and I’m not going to go into the whole thing, but
it’s the old idea of, “out of sight, out of mind.”
For
most of us our lives are made possible by buying pre-packaged pretty things
from retail shelves. That goes for food
or clothing or electronic goods and just about everything else. Clean hot and cold water shows up almost
magically from the faucet. Our houses
are heated, air conditioned, and made comfortable otherwise; yet none of the
infrastructure of the factories, water and sewage treatment plants, landfills,
or anything else are anywhere in sight.
“Out of sight. Out of mind.” What did God tell Isaiah? Make their minds dull, their ears deaf and
their eyes blind. The truth is right
there but our ears are deaf and our eyes are blind.
It
is very easy to be guilty of the sins that Isaiah points out. We all sin.
We just sin in socially acceptable ways.
You cannot go into Eastview Mall, or
Target, or Walmart, or Tops, or Wegmans, or Aldi, or you name it, and not find
yourself surrounded by items made by the global exploitation of people and
resources.
“Show
me how to live in a manner worthy of your holy name.” That’s tough.
The message from God that Isaiah
brings stings and stings badly. I don’t
want to sound like I’m taking any political side or point of view. Isaiah’s message stings Republicans and
Democrats and independents alike. If you
do not feel guilty then I am not conveying his message properly. Isaiah just makes us feel bad.
Fortunately God is deeply
forgiving. But let us not become
complacent. And let us not pat ourselves
on the back for righteousness we think we have but really don’t. The almighty and all powerful God Isaiah
describes can be trusted to hold us secure.
That is the trust Isaiah is calling on people of that day to have. And it is the same radical trust Isaiah calls
us to have. For when that trust is there
at the core everything else will fall into place. Then we can truly pray: “Show me how to live
in a manner worthy of your holy name.”
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