Further up! Further in!

Isaiah 55:1-13

            One week on the book of Isaiah; that’s not remotely fair, but then again if your only exposure to the Bible is what I preach on Sunday mornings it’s going to be hard to get the whole picture. So, anyway, one reading from Isaiah to capture all of Isaiah is silly.

Firstly, you may not know this, but the book of Isaiah is the work of at least three authors from three different time period. We know this because chapters 1-39 cover the prophet, Isaiah, who lived in the 8^th century BC; chapters 40-55 tell us that Jerusalem has already been destroyed and take place either during the exile or just after, meaning we are talking about the 6^th century BC, and finally chapters 56-66 are written after the exile. Rather than taking away from the book of Isaiah, this gives it some arc. The book shows a movement of history over the course of centuries, and it holds a common theme, moving inexorably toward Jesus. It is for that reason that Isaiah has been called the fifth Gospel. Isaiah couldn’t have known about Jesus, but they anticipated something they couldn’t quite put their fingers on—something that turned out to be a baby born in a manger.

So, with that context in mind, it’s important to note that our reading from Isaiah 55 is the end of 2^nd Isaiah. It’s the conclusion of Book II if you want to think about this like Lord of the Rings or The Last Jedi or something; it’s the finale of the exile. Israel is coming home. But, as many of you know, you can never really come home again; at least home isn’t what it was before. In Israel’s case, the temple has been destroyed; the people residing in the land worship strange gods; their faith has been tested in exile and they have come back to the “Holy Land” with an understanding that God is no longer housed in a particular place. Their God went with them into the wilderness, so what does it look like for God to return home?

It’s easy to get complacent at home. Familiarity breeds complacency. We’ve all had this experience: We face a new thing in life—it’s scary; it’s stressful—and we can’t wait until it comes to some resolution. It might be a new job, a new project, a new business, a new child, or simply a new normal. We spend so much time stressing over the unfamiliarity of the situation, and often we discover some strength we didn’t know we had in the process of overcoming those new obstacles. The problem often comes in the new normal, because, having faced the obstacles of the past, we lose our edge.

In his book, The Pastor, Eugene Peterson tells the story of building a new church from the ground up. There was a family absolutely instrumental in the process of building the new church. They were in on the design, part of every meeting, attended church every Sunday in the meantime. Then, when the church was finally built, after years of work, they stopped coming. At first this is shocking: Isn’t this what they worked for? Isn’t the product the goal? Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of all the work they had done?

But those of us who have been through big projects are hardly surprised. Some people are invested in the process; not the destination. The final product leaves them looking for a new project, often somewhere else. This is a challenge for all of us who are trying to find our purpose and direction in life. What do we do when the projects are over? What do we do when we come home again?

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters!” says Isaiah.

Come back, Isaiah suggests. You’re home now and there is a lot to be done, but, more than that, when it is rebuilt don’t forget: Come to the waters! For Christians, we should hear this as a baptismal calling. You’ve been baptized once and for all, but that means very little if your baptism doesn’t push you into new life. Come to the waters again! Be re-born. Die and rise.

See, when we come back home there is a tendency to get complacent because we think this is all there is. If it’s all there is then we had better enjoy it, get comfortable, relax. Isaiah points to something else: There’s more. “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”

You think this is all there is but wait. Just wait. That’s Isaiah in a nutshell; just wait on what is coming; not just the restoration of Israel but something better: Salvation. But not just the little salvation of a nation saved from exile, not just the temple rebuilt. No, something better than the temple. Isaiah speaks of Advent. It’s a realization that all of this anticipates something better.

Something is coming.

It’s easy for us to understand this about Israel. We know that Jesus is coming; we’ve heard the Christmas story. It’s much harder for us to trust that something better is coming for us as well; that one day the mountains and the hills shall burst into song and the trees of the field will clap their hands. We’ve oriented our focus on returning to what is comfortable when God is saying, “Look further ahead.” Like C.S. Lewis imagined at the conclusion of his Chronicles of Narnia series, salvation is “Further up and further in!”

Things are good now. Look further up! Further in! Things are comfortable now. Come further up! Come further in! Things are broken, sad, depressed; I’m in exile, emotionally spent, distraught. Wait and look further up; look further in. God goes before us, always in front of us, and in this Advent season we get the sense that we are closing in—that we are almost there—but Christmas is only the beginning. The truth is further up and further in. Salvation lies ahead. Keep looking: Further and further.

You see, it’s not that you aren’t already saved. It’s done—taken care of. Just like baptism—done, over. What you need now is to discover what it means to sing with the mountains and clap your hands with the trees. You need to dive further into the reality of salvation, even as you wait in this season for a baby born in a manger. It’s further ahead. Your exile is over, but what does the new normal look like? What will you do with this life you have been given to live between the death of baptism and the death of our bodies?

What does baby Jesus mean to you? Look further. Further up; further in.