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| Russian icon of Isaiah, 18th Cent. |
“Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those
already gathered.” (Isaiah
56:8)
It was a rather
emotionally-charged Sunday last week at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia. Our
bold and hardy Church Council had the somewhat unpleasant duty of rendering
unto our congregation this very unfortunate bit of news: it looks like we’re
going broke.
Yup. Just like a lot of
mainline Protestant congregations (and not a few Roman Catholics and members of
the Orthodox communions), our cozy little spiritual haven is falling prey to
the rapacious maws of old age, the effects of the recent COVID pandemic, rising
prices, competition from mega-churches, a vastly more secularized culture, and
a whole lot of other stuff I probably haven’t thought about. This means we’re
going to have to make some draconian cuts to our budget. To do this we’ll have
to find another congregation in more or less the same predicament—but without a
called pastor—and ask if they’d be willing to share the services of your Old
Religious Guy and split the cost of keeping his body and soul on speaking
terms. This suggestion was met with a small amount of weeping and gnashing of
teeth.
Now, it’s not that the
good folks of Faith aren’t willing to
share, but this arrangement would involve a change. Lutherans aren’t big on
change.[i] Change means loss and loss
means grief and grief sucks.
Fortunately for your Old
Religious Guy, I get to preach on Isaiah 56 this week, a passage which speaks
to the situation in which we find ourselves. How so, you ask? Let me explain.
Our First Lesson for
Pentecost 12 (Isaiah 56:1, 6-8) is from what smart Bible scholar folks call
“Third Isaiah.” Actually, we don’t know how many writers there were who
composed the part of the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Book of Isaiah. It was
at least three but probably many more. What we do think, however, is that one
guy couldn’t have written all this stuff by himself unless he lived to be 250
years old—which seems rather unlikely. This collection of prophetic writings
spans too long a time period.
Here’s the wonky stuff:
“First Isaiah” (Chapters 1- 39) deals with stuff that happened in Israel and
Judah before the Babylonians went to war and whooped the tar out of them. It’s
mostly warnings about corruption, apostasy, idolatry, lack of compassion, and
has a healthy dose of condemnation about foreign affairs and foreign countries.
After all, what good’s a prophecy without a little condemnation?
“Second Isaiah” (Chapters
40-55) speaks to the people of God who are in exile in Babylon and offers
glimmers of hope.
Finally, “Third Isaiah”
(Chapters 56-66) speaks to the post-exilic people of God. These folks have
returned to their ancestral land to find that things just aren’t the same as
they were back in the good ol’ days.
The story of the people’s
exile in Babylon and the prophecies which surround it takes up a pretty good
chunk of your Bible. As Christians, we naturally want to focus on Jesus. It’s
easy to forget that huge part of Scripture which deals with failure, defeat,
disgrace, disappointment, frustrated nostalgia, and heartache which is the
Exile story. It might be a good idea for us to remember that this distasteful
chapter of Israel’s history played the second lead role next to the story of the
Exodus in their group consciousness. It was their own version of the Great
Depression, and it was still smarting a few hundred years later by the time
Jesus came along.
One of my favorite smart
Bible scholar guys, Marcus Borg, has this to say about the Exile:
As
an image about God and us, as an epiphany of the human condition and the
solution, what is (the Exile story) saying? What is life in exile like? We live
in a century in which millions of exiles and refugees know the experience
firsthand. For the rest of us, it is fruitful to imagine what life in exile is
like. It is an experience of separation from all that is familiar and dear. It usually
involves powerlessness and marginality, often oppression and victimization.[ii]
Even though, as Borg
explained, the experience of this devastating failure was deep fried into the
psyche of God’s people, the prophet called “Third Isaiah” tried to draw attention away from the
disappointed sense of nostalgia and offered a vision of what God can do with
God’s people provided they’re willing to use a little imagination. God isn’t
interested in recreating the old Jerusalem. God’s been there and done that.
What God is asking for is an expanded and inclusive community which invites,
unites, and shares. It might’ve been necessary for an older model of religion
to die so a newer one could be born. In this sense, change isn’t such a bad
thing.
I think we can identify
with the exiles who returned from Babylon to find a ruined Jerusalem and
wondered how their faith was to survive. We’ve returned from COVID to find fewer
butts in our pews and fewer bucks in our offering plate. Our young people don’t
share our spirituality, but that’s not to say they’re not finding a contextual
spirituality of their own—a spirituality which welcomes people formerly
estranged and emphasizes acts of mercy over church doctrine and tradition.
The history of God’s
people is always one of disaster and deliverance. The children of Abraham
became the slaves of Pharaoh, but God rescued them. David’s mighty kingdom
became the vassal of Babylon, but God rescued them. Our Savior was crucified,
but he rose. Even the nation of Israel was obliterated, but it was reborn centuries
later. Change may mean loss for us, but not for God.
God’s sneaky like that.
Keep the faith, my
friend. Thanks for reading.
[i]
Ever hear the old joke: How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb?
None. We DON’T change. OR: It takes seven. One to climb the ladder and replace
the bulb, and six to stand around and talk about how much better the OLD bulb
was.
[ii]
Borg, Marcus, Meeting Jesus Again for the
First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (San
Francisco: Harper, 1994) Page 125.
Thank you needed this
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