I
have to admit something today that may or may not make me a horrible sinner.
I’m leaning toward not, but I could be convinced otherwise. As many of you
know, we have been following a narrative lectionary put out by Working Preacher
throughout the fall, which means that instead of reading scripture that centers
on a theme for the day we have been following story-lines. I think so far it has
been a modest success—at least nobody has threatened to burn down the church
unless we return to the good ol’ Revised Common Lectionary. But partly because
I have been freed from the constraints of preaching on the same things as every
other mainline church in the world I have also felt a little freer to edit the
readings as I see fit, and today I am guilty of doing that. Here’s my
rationale: I think the tendency among people who create lectionaries—or reading
lists—is to skip over the parts that sound harsh, even though some of these are
really important parts of the story. I think, being the Scandinavian Lutherans
that most of you are, you can take a little verbal abuse from time to time, so I
decided today to put it back in—in the case, the prophetic message that Isaiah
receives in verses 9-13.
As
far as I can tell, the only reason that the powers on high didn’t include this
reading in the reading in the first place is that it is a little lacking in the
hope department. How long should Isaiah preach? Verse 11: “Until cities lie
waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly
desolate; until the Lord sends everyone far away,
and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.”
That’s not exactly
your classic Harvest Festival good news.
However,
I wonder if our attempts to censor the Bible don’t keep us from gaining a more
complete understanding of God. I think most of us are probably at least a
little scared of what the Bible actually says. But what this jaunt through the
narrative lectionary has taught me, even in only a couple of months, is that scripture
is so rich we only really ever dip our toes in the water; we never dive in. We
all pick and choose our focus. We do this with every biblical story or issue
that stems for it—contentious or not. Even though we might have a sense of the trajectory
of the whole Bible, it is so much easier to cite a verse or two than it is to
craft an argument using the whole Bible. One of challenges with honestly
talking about what scripture says is that it holds together multiple viewpoints.
Is God wrathful or loving? Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, or
quick to judge, mighty and powerful? Or is God somehow both?
The
God who comes to Isaiah in a vision is that classic, Old Testament model who
teaches us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This is not
a cuddly God. The message God gives to Isaiah is not something anybody wants to
preach. Tell the people: “‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking,
but do not understand.’ Make the mind of this people dull, stop their ears, and
shut their eyes.” Now, some of you might be thinking that’s what I do—make the mind of the people dull, stop their ears and shut their
eyes—but that’s another matter.[1]
It’s verses like
this that make faith in God seem unfair. We are given these senses—sight, hearing,
touch—and then we’re told that they are completely unhelpful in knowing God.
Seeing God will kill you. Listening won’t help. Touch is a sign of a lack of
faith—ask the disciple Thomas. Our senses enable sin. All of this makes us fear
a God who is not only unapproachable but who demands unreasonably from us.
You’re beginning to see, I can imagine, why we don’t read these verses.
This God—our God—commands
fear.
Our problem—and
the reason we cut off readings when they get harsh—is that we have come to think
that this is a bad thing. Fearing God is not high on our list of religious priorities.
But maybe it
should be.
I mean, if God is
the most fearful of all things… then what more do we have to fear? And if God
could be understood simply with our senses… then what more could we hope for? So,
even though we have this Bible with so many prophets, like Isaiah, to condemn
us and to induce fear, we also have these threads of tremendous promise woven
through these stories. The Bible is interested in showing us a God who is both
far away and near, a God who is frightful and loving, a God who puts to death and
a God who resurrects. When we focus only on one side of God we actually lose
the ability to cope with the darker side of life.
Isaiah’s call is
to preach judgment, and the fact that this call exists in the Bible means that
God cares enough to set us straight. These are not godless moments. God
realizes that, on our own, human beings will always believe that what we create
is a product of our own genius. We will forget God as quickly as Peter denies
Christ on his way to crucifixion. Without fear, we make ourselves into gods.
It’s the same story in 785 BC as it is today. God uses
Isaiah to remind us that nothing is so sacred that it is left standing before God. Our idols will be razed to the ground, because only when everything is
put in its place can it be resurrected.
*****
There is this thread of metaphors that
run from the beginning of Genesis, through the entirety of the law and the
prophets of the Old Testament, through Jesus and the Gospel witness, through
Paul’s writings and through Revelation to the end of our Bible—beginning to end.
It is the thread of agricultural metaphors that appears here in Isaiah.
Whenever agriculture turns up in the Bible it is to teach us something about
the nature of death and life. What happens when fields or forests burn? The
same thing that always happens: new life.
Isaiah is called
to tell the people that the land has been emptied and God has burned the last
remnants of the fields. Everything will die. This is God’s slash and burn
philosophy to farming. But then there’s this line about the holy seed and the
stump. It is a strange turn at the end of the reading—and the Hebrew is
incredibly difficult to translate—but for those of you who have lived in an
agricultural community for a long time you should know why that turn of phrase
is there at the very end. The fields are dead… but the seed is planted.
There are plenty
of times where the pastor is honestly less qualified to talk about the Bible
than the farmers.
Can you imagine if
farmers were as scared of facing harsh realities as we are when we read
scripture? Nobody would ever grow anything. In fact, farmers provide us the model for
how to read scripture. Good farmers are interested in every little aspect of
the farm, but they never lose the big picture. When we read the Bible we are
interested in every little aspect of the Word—not because we like it all, not
because it all makes sense, and certainly not because every part of it is as
important as every other part. No, we read the whole picture, because just as a
farmer is concerned with the whole farm so are we concerned with the whole
picture of God—the parts we like and the parts we don’t. At the same time, a
farmer could obsess over one beet—or one acre—but it would be to the detriment
of the whole. The winds will howl, the snow will blow,
and everything will turn to muck—frozen, dead muck. Winter has come. The
harvest is over. Isaiah brings us a message of death and despair. Green has
turned to yellow has turned to brown has turned to black.
Still, underneath
it all, buried under snow and our fears of what may come, something lies
dormant; a seed you cannot see. Holy, holy, holy, say the seraphim. Holy, holy,
holy, we sing—both merciful and mighty—worthy of fear, the God
who will lay waste and the God who will plant seeds. Winter has come. Harvest
is over. The promise is hidden.
…
…
But the seed is
planted.
[1] This reminds me of Jesus
in the Gospel of John saying to the Pharisees, “‘If you were blind, you would
not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see’, your sin remains’” (John 9:41).
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