Dear Friends,
The prophetic writings that we call the book of Isaiah were written by a number of authors over a period of more than 200 years. Isaiah is a single book, but I invite you to join Biblical scholars who think of it as having three distinct parts, each of which centers on three periods of crisis for the Israelite nation: the Assyrian crisis (eighth century BCE), the Babylonian crisis (sixth century BCE), and the Persian restoration (ca. fifth century BCE).
The prophet Isaiah, whose prophetic witness is collected in chapters 1–39, which scholars call First Isaiah, lived during the Assyrian domination of the kingdom of Israel (approximately 745 to 640 BCE). Second Isaiah (chapters 40–55) was written not by Isaiah, but by an exiled prophet or prophets of his school of thought during the Babylonian exile (597–539 BCE). Third Isaiah (chapters 56–66) probably comes from multiple authors who also wrote in the style of the prophet Isaiah. It dates from the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE. The Persians allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem in the year following their conquest of Babylon.
Today’s reading from the first chapter of Third Isaiah focuses explicitly on the return to the Jewish homeland and the re-establishment of the nation. Before reading Isaiah 56:1, 6–8, pause, if you will, for a brief prayer for illumination:
Lord, by the power of your Spirit, give us your words of life that our faith may increase and our hearts be made whole. Amen.
Try to imagine the scene as our short reading begins. The long years of exile were over, and thousands upon thousands of Jews were returning to Jerusalem. One would think this reading would be a great celebration of restored freedom and return from exile, but it also reflects the many crises the returnees had to confront.
First, the exile had lasted sixty years, which meant that three generations of those who survived were returning home. After more than half a century, however, this was a home that existed only in the memories, stories, and faith of parents and grandparents. After so many years away with little reason to think they would ever return, essential connections and loyalties were either lost or buried so deep in the people’s memories and hearts that they were all but inaccessible.
Second, the exiles who returned to Jerusalem and the surrounding cities and towns found a far different reality than their distant memories painted. Others were living in their homes, the economy was disastrous, Jerusalem had become an unrecognizable (to them) mix of cultures and religions, and the social order was far different from the order they had developed as a means of survival in exile in Babylon. Even those without first-hand memories of their former homeland would likely have been stunned and deeply disappointed by what they found on their return.
Third, those Jews who had been left behind in heavily occupied Jerusalem were not the people the exiles remembered. They had not been considered important enough, wealthy enough, or powerful enough to have been exiled, and now, they were losing the humble lives they had managed to cobble together. In all likelihood, any welcome the returning exiles may have dreamed of was non-existent.
Fourth, the culture of the nation had changed radically. Many non-Jews and foreigners had settled in Jerusalem over the past sixty years, so the returnees came home to a politically unstable country and an unfamiliar population. The returning Jews were faced with rebuilding their own nation, and their powerlessness complicated that and their own futures as they tried to figure out how to reorganize their nation and society.
This was the layered, complex political/economic/religious situation into which this prophetic writer of Third Isaiah brought the word of God that we read today.
“Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come.” (56:1) Here, the writer is clearly saying, Welcome home! You are called, as always, to do justice and live in a way that is right. God’s salvation is coming soon, but God will handle that; you just stay focused on justice.
Surely these words would have been comforting to the returning exiles. They reflected the familiar words of faith that they knew and loved.
However, their sense of reassurance was to be short-lived, as the prophet made clear some very surprising changes to their traditional understanding of what is right and what is just. As we saw in the first verse, the dictates of the faith – maintain justice, do what is right – remain vital, foundational aspects of the faith, but the divine word will change to reflect who may fully participate in the worship life of the community. Verses 2–5 are not included in today’s reading, but they are important to our understanding of verses 6–8.
Verse 2 reinforces the first verse and reminds the people of their familiar part in the covenantal relationship with God. “Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing evil.” You can hear the ten commandments echoing behind this verse.
But then, the prophetic writer makes a distinct turn from the Abrahamic covenant with God. In verses 3–5, a new call is made clear, a call that welcomes outsiders, including foreigners and eunuchs “who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant.” (56:4) These are people who, in the past, have been expressly denied access to worship, to God’s house, the Temple, as we see in Deuteronomy 23:1–8. They are now be welcomed, and welcomed fully, so long as they adopt the covenantal rules previously required of and available to the Jews alone.
Not only has the promise of the covenant expanded to become something more than was granted to Abraham and Sarah, but the requirements of the covenant now specify that it is the responsibility of the faithful to ensure that those previously excluded from the community of faith feel welcome. The return from exile has now become a far greater glimpse into the grace of God than the people of faith had ever previously known.
God declares that “these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. . .for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” (56:7) And our passage concludes, “Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, [those Babylonian exiles returning home] I will gather others [those historically barred from worship, the eunuchs and Gentiles] to them besides those already gathered.” (56:8)
Through the voice of the unnamed prophet of Third Isaiah, God now makes it clear that God welcomes foreigners and outcasts; they are as much God’s servants in a shared covenant as the people of Israel are. By so doing, the scope of God’s deliverance and salvation is radically enlarged.
The people of Israel felt dislocated, ironically enough, on returning their homeland and had to adjust to new, unexpected realities. In the midst of all this, they were called to a new way of honoring their ancient covenant with God by welcoming the “foreigners who join themselves to the Lord.” (56:6).
This new covenant is not simply a matter of welcoming those who had been ignored or worse, rejected. God called on the returning Babylonian exiles to change how they looked at themselves as well as the world. They were charged to move from an “us/them” view of the world to one that recognizes all as faithful fellow travelers, including both those who are familiar to us and those who are new to us. Seeing all as part of God’s ingathering of beloved worshipers forces the returning exiles to adjust their vision of the world to more closely match God’s vision.
This is the call still heard in our communities of faith today. In 1964, in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Martin Luther King, Jr. called this broader communal vision of God “the world house.” King’s lecture is published as the final chapter in his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community. He writes that the world house is the human community that transcends ethnic, national, class, and religious divides. It embodies a wholly integrated world. This, indeed, is the world envisioned by the prophetic writings in these verses of Third Isaiah. That Dr. King had to repeat this prophetic vision so many centuries later reflects how difficult such a vision is to achieve, no matter how respected the prophet or the prophesies might be.
Even today, the struggle to achieve a welcoming, expanding community continues. As I write these words, it is the third anniversary of the August 12, 2017 events in Charlottesville. I am contemplating how little progress we seem to have made in the three years since then, and also how far we have begun to come. As a society, as a nation, today we are once again at a tipping point, seeking concrete, honest ways to address how we can open the benefits and privileges of God’s love and justice to all people. As I have written before, and as we see from these ancient writings, this is not a short-term task. It clearly cannot be achieved within some carefully delineated, precisely prescribed time-frame. It requires hard, sustained, and likely painful work, work which we are only just beginning, yet once again, in our nation.
We are called today to look beyond ourselves. We are called to look even beyond the serious needs that grow from our own sense of dislocation in these times of pandemic and economic loss. We are called to foster and nurture an entirely new society with new characteristics. That is the same hard work we are called to do if we are serious about fighting explicit, implicit, conscious, or unconscious racism. We must look at ourselves if we are truly to accept those who have been strangers to us, and those whom we’ve estranged from ourselves.
It is surely not we who determine who is part of the abundant grace of God’s covenant, but it is our covenantal obligation that requires us to embrace every member of the family of God. May we work faithfully as we struggle to meet God’s vision of a “house of prayer for all peoples.” (56:7) It is the sublime beauty of that notion that compels us to our task.
Let us pray together:
Almighty and Gracious God, whose compassion embraces everyone, gather the outcast and the lost; heal the wounds of fear and distrust; and make us a community of reconciliation that we may embody your merciful love and rejoice in your astounding grace.
Bless us, we pray, and clear our blindness, that we may see your will for our lives and know the power of your salvation.
May we help your presence be known by the outcasts of our society and our world: the refugee in need of food, shelter, and a safe place to live and work and raise a family; those students ridiculed by the “in-crowd” who feel isolated and alone; the victims of crimes who are told verbally and in so many other ways that it was they who caused the injustice they suffered; all who feel alone and apart from the world house that you would have us build.
Awaken us to the subtle and not so subtle ways that people are excluded from community, and empower us by your grace to be Christ’s ambassadors, fully embracing and welcoming the unwelcomed.
In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.