Isaiah 55:1-9 Commentary

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“It’s not always going to be like this”

You know that feeling of early friendship or love? When that other person — the object of your affection — knows you perfectly? Laughs at all your jokes? Finds you endlessly fascinating or attractive? Or maybe it’s the first time you hold that baby — a grandchild, niece, nephew, son or daughter — in your arms and all is right with the world. Would you have ever dared to imagine that such perfection in miniature exists in the world? Or that first day of work in the career you’ve trained for and dreamed about? This is the perfect company or organization and they hired you! Your desk is pristine and fully stocked with office supplies. You haven’t really gotten to know your co-workers yet so they seem fine and normal? Can you imagine someone swooping in to say “it won’t always be like this?”  Incredibly rude!

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of being a (shall we say) more seasoned married couple at a wedding watching with dimming recollection that rosy glow of newness. Maybe you’re the veteran parents of teenagers watching young parents cooing over their infant. You’re nearing retirement, watching the new folks come in, fresh-faced and eager for all the changes they’re going to make to better humanity. It’s exhausting. But imagine someone meeting you in this reality, saying the very same thing: “it isn’t always going to be like this, either.” And that might well come as a relief.

Commentary:

The role of prophecy is two-fold. The prophets were sent in to afflict the comfortable, which — turns out — nobody likes very much. Turns out, comfortable people don’t like being afflicted. In fact, comfortable people set up systems and processes and whole worlds of shelter and protection from affliction. Recalling people to primary loyalties when they like the King in power, they like the privileges afforded to them is hard work.

This is the work of the first 40 chapters of Isaiah. 40 chapters worth of God’s people in the land, flourishing in property and power but atrophying in fidelity to the God who got them there, atrophying in faithfulness to one another, atrophying in creative, redemptive hopes that go beyond personal, selfish accumulations.

Isaiah’s first role is to afflict the comfortable. But after 40-odd chapters of cajoling, of recalling the people to God’s purpose and intention, the people of Judah are exiled in Babylon. This cues up the second role of a prophet, a far more amenable job.

Prophets afflict the comfortable by saying, “it’s not always going to be like this.” And prophets speak to comfort the afflicted, also by saying, “It’s not always going to be like this.”

I know that you are in exile. You’ve left behind your lands. Your families may be separated. You’re under the rule of a foreign power and surrounded by foreign culture, religion and society. It’s all really and truly afflicting. And it’s not always going to be like this. “‘Comfort, comfort my people,’ says your God” Isaiah offers these opening lines in chapter 40.

In this week’s Lectionary text, the last chapter of this exilic section of Isaiah, the comforting of the afflicted explodes into layered images. Each one intended as a potential hook for the peoples’ hope:

If you are thirsty, drink.
If you are a long way off, come.
If you have no money, it’s free!
If you are disheartened, “your soul will delight.”
If you are deflated, “come to me and your soul may live.”
If you are groping blind in the darkness, see! Behold!
If you are lost, seek.
If you are alone, call on God.

There are 12 imperative verbs (commands) in the first seven verses of Isaiah 55. For a people in exile, whose agency is minimized by oppression, whose abilities are curtailed by subjugation, there is good news in this: there is something you can do. God’s arms are open wide. Come, Come on, Come on in. You belong.

Remember Jesus’ story about the rich man who creates a banquet and invites his important guests? But they are all too busy being successful to attend? That’s Isaiah, chapters 1-40. And remember how, once he’s been turned down by every person on his original guest list, the host turns to his servant (in this case, Isaiah) and says, “Well then, search the alleys and the train stations and the bus depots. Go to the homeless shelters and the domestic violence crisis centers. Go to the soup kitchens and the psychiatric hospitals.”

And do you remember the host’s instruction to his servant? “Compel them to come in.” Compel them to come. This is the God of covenant, who holds the beginning and the end of the world together.  From beginning to end, it is God’s promise that holds it all together.  “It won’t always be like this.”

“It won’t always be like this.” This is good news for everyone, really, whether afflicting the comfortable or comforting the afflicted.

The truth behind the claim doesn’t lie in circumstance but in the heart of God. For all that is inconstant about us, about our wants, our lives, our circumstances, God’s character and God’s covenant never change. God is still holding the beginning and the end of the world together. This is the truth that we forget when all is well. The truth that we hardly dare to believe when all is in chaos. “It’s not always going to be like this” is true about everything single thing … except God.

Isaiah 55, verse 3 offers “I will make an everlasting covenant with you.” Verse 13 reminds us that God is making, in our midst, “an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.” The everlasting covenant envelops us — now and always. God’s everlasting covenant challenges our most self-satisfied comforts. God’s everlasting covenant comforts us in our most soul-deflating afflictions.

God’s covenant promise says, “I am not done telling the story of your life — your family, friendships, vocation. I’m not done telling the story of your church, your neighborhood, your city or your country. I will never be done inviting you to ways that are higher, thoughts that are wiser than your own.

[Note: In addition to these weekly sermon commentaries on the CEP website, we also have a resource page for Lent and Easter with more preaching and worship ideas as well as sample sermons on the Year C Lectionary texts.]