“Prophets of Hope: First Isaiah”

Isaiah 2:2-5, 11:1-10

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

Advent II

December 8, 2002

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

Welcome to the second Sunday in Advent. We are looking for prophets of hope, clinging on for dear life so that we can find our way through this confusing world. Prophets are not always seen as hopeful people, especially when the hope they provide is that those in power will be overthrown.  But we need to hear their words, not so much because we may want present powers to be overthrown, but because we need to clue ourselves in to God’s priorities.  When we do that, then we have hope that is real and sustaining. 

Today’s prophet is First Isaiah.  Most scholars believe that the book of Isaiah was written at three different points in history with the earliest material being written almost 200 years before the latest material. The book is split into three sections: First Isaiah (Chapters 1-39), Second Isaiah (Chapters 40-55) and Third Isaiah (56-66).

First Isaiah was written before the fall of Jerusalem. Second Isaiah was written during the exile and third Isaiah was written after the Israelites' return from the exile. The lectionary gives us prophecies from all three portions of the book to read during the Advent Season. We'll look at Second Isaiah on December 22 and Third Isaiah on December 29.  Next week we’ll look at Mary and on Christmas Eve, we’ll look at Jesus.  We need to learn from these prophets of hope, mainly because they give us clues to see the world through new eyes.  They let us see through the disguises of those who proclaim themselves to be prophets of hope.

            Isaiah was a priest who worked in the temple in Jerusalem.  He was a man not unlike other men of his time, except that he was a priest and that made him a bit of a muckety muck in ancient Judah.  He campaigned for kings, lobbied and preached in such a way that the policies of the king would be followed.   It’s one of the temptations of the pulpit.

            Isaiah’s favorite king was Uzziah.  King Uzziah brought stability to a country that had been in civil war for fifty years.  As King of the southern land of Judah, which held Jerusalem as its capital, Uzziah was a calming and expanding force.  He made sure that the towers were fortified.  He built a sophisticated army.  He expanded the borders of Judah and made friends with its neighbors, even Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  During the 40-year reign of Uzziah of Judah, there were four kings in Israel’s Samaritan capital. His approval ratings were through the roof.  Many saw Uzziah as a true prophet of hope.

            But stability isn’t the same thing as justice.  And God is more interested in justice than stability.  The priorities of the kingdom became self-serving.  The people became arrogant in their prosperity and forgot the widow and the orphan.  They began blaming the poor for their lot in life.  They started to distrust outsiders and levied curses against those people. They trusted themselves and their own power more than they trusted God.  Does any of this sound familiar?

            Isaiah coined a word for this.  He called it idolatry.

           

 

Over and over again God told the people what was required of them, but they ignored it.  The first chapter of Isaiah puts it this way:  “Thus says YHWH, “when you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;  Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

            But the people kept on doing their own thing.  They were lulled into a frenzy of don’t ask, don’t tell: if you ignore the problem long enough, it will go away.   That’s easy to say if you’re not the one who is poor, or a minority, or an international, or without health insurance, or a decent education or without food, shelter or dignity.  But for the mainstream media of the time, it was acceptable, seemingly appropriate, and popular to fall in line with the status quo.  That’s when God tapped Isaiah.

Isaiah’s calling happened the year King Uzziah died.  It was when God made him realize that it is better to collide with the powers that be than to collude with injustice.    God took as burning coal and stuck it on his mouth and then told Isaiah to tell the truth.  God told him to repent of his practice of being a priestly yes-man.   God made Isaiah, the former establishment priest into God’s agent for change.

Isaiah railed against national pride that put more faith in the government than in God.  It was not only the government they put their faith in, they put their faith in the leaders of the government.  In this case it was the king.  Isaiah prophesied during the reign of King Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah.  All of them got it wrong when it came to doing God’s work.  And the result was that the people were sent into exile.  Hear some of the things First Isaiah said:

“How the faithful city has become a whore!  She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her—but now murderers!  Your silver has become dross, your wine is mixed with water.  Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves.  Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.  They do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.”(1:21-23)

“Ah, you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!  Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes, and shrewd in your own sight!  Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant at mixing drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!”(5:20-23)

“I know your rising up and your sitting down, your going out and coming in, and your raging against me.  Because you have raged against me and your arrogance has come to my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth; I will turn you back on the way by which you came.”(37:28,29)

On the other hand, hear God’s vision for the people from the same prophet:

“God shall judge between peoples and they shall beat their swords in to plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war anymore.”(2:4)

 

 

The cow and the bear shall feed side by side and their young shall lie down together.  The lion will become a vegetarian.  The wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the sheep.  Children young and old will have a place to call home.  No one shall hurt or destroy and just like the waters cover the sea, the whole earth will know about God's plan for all of creation. (11:6-9)

            In the time of paranoid King Ahaz, Isaiah said (chapter 7)

            “Behold a young woman shall conceive and bare a son and shall call his name Immanuel…For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.  You will have peace.  Free—as a gift.  I am offering you peace and continuation of your kingdom if you just get down off of your high horse.  God gives the sign of Immanuel in order to get Ahaz to get rid of his absurd plans to commit idolatry and consort with his enemies.  But Ahaz, like all the other kings, turns his back on God.

These words ought to carry more weight than simply nostalgic sentimentality.  These words are revolutionary.  When we take them seriously, then we see what God’s action at Christmas is all about.

With the death of Uzziah, Judah sought another King.  Isaiah states that when King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the real king, the real ruler, the real leader of the people of Israel.  That monarch was YHWH.  The voice “asks, who shall go for us?”  Isaiah responded, “Here I am, send me.”   The implication is that we are to replace the king not with another king, but with prophetic words and deeds.

We need to be careful that we don’t confuse ruler-language in scripture with present-day rulers.  The psalm which we chanted a few moments ago talks of a ruler being someone we should honor.  Realize that this is not an earthly ruler.  It is a messianic ruler.  The prophets give us conditions under which rulers are to be blessed.  They are to be blessed only if they are following God’s laws, otherwise they are not of God.  That’s the offense of the prophets to those in power.  Prophets liberate those who have no power.   They do it with the power of God.  That’s real power.

Hear these words of first Isaiah in the ninth chapter referring to the Messiah: “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…for God has broken the rod of the oppressor, for every boot of the tramping warrior and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, the mighty God the everlasting father the prince of peace.”  You can almost hear the strings of Handel’s Messiah. 

But hear these next words Handel omits:  “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.”  That’s the hope of Christmas. 

Christmas means change.  It means God not being satisfied with the status quo and bringing someone into the world to do something about it.  That’s our goal.  That’s our job.  The lectionary gives us these passages from First Isaiah to again rehearse the coming of God made human, Emmanuel in the person of Jesus on Christmas.

Isaiah is told to preach the destruction of the disobedient people of Judah.  But God ends the divine words of Chapter six with the words, “the holy seed is its stump.”  The remnant will remain and out of the ashes there will rise a new day for the people.  That’s the background context of chapter 11, today’s scripture.  Isaiah prophesies that a shoot shall grow out of the stump of Jesse.  Jesse, we remember was King David’s father.  Jesus Christ is called the son of David.

This stump is the hope of the world.

We hear Isaiahs out there telling us to repent, telling our nation to repent—to turn our eyes onto God.  And if we don’t, then God will send us out, exile us.  Isaiah says the hope is not so much in the prophet, but in the Messiah who will make the peoples repent, who will turn the rulers eyes to God and all those who have been drunk by the wine of that beast will see with clear eyes.  Until the Messiah comes, there is the remnant.  The faithful witnesses—the ones who see the truth and are set free.  They are the ones who see through the propaganda and commit to God’s ways.  We are called to be that very remnant.

We can’t wait for the kings or the government to get it right.  The government doesn’t save us.  Isaiah’s words are given to us so that we might have the strength to be the remnant.  It is the job of the empire to discredit and laugh at the remnant.  But we have an ace in the hole.  We know God’s true nature.  We know the difference between a prophet of hope and a fraud who has sold out to the highest bidder.  So in Advent, we remember the prophets of hope.  We remind ourselves of our calling.  We celebrate God’s pending arrival, showing us once again the way to be free.

There is a prophet of hope speaking here at UBC tomorrow night at our Peace And Pizza event.  His name is Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer.  A number of us heard him speak last Spring at St. Joan of Arc.  He was the keynote speaker of the Every Church a Peace Church Conference.  He wrote a profound book called Jesus Against Christianity which says that the Jesus of the Gospels would be appalled by the institution that Christianity has become.  He argues that Christianity has become an institution that has set itself up against the prophetic words of Jesus and the prophets of old.  We have embraced the empire in defiance of the Gospel. 

He will speak of his recent work at the School of the Americas where he stood alongside many prophets of hope, including the late Phillip Berrigan.  I am looking forward to hearing of his perspective, so that I might be a better part of that remnant.

            This Advent season, why not take the words of First Isaiah seriously? 

Embrace how you might be the remnant. 

Explore how you might be able to be a prophet of hope.

When we do that, we may just experience Immanuel, God-with-us.

That’s what it’s really all about.

Amen.