Is 65:17-25
4 April 2010
Easter
“And on the Eighth Day…”
Last month, when I preached about the parable of the prodigal son, I mentioned how the word “prodigal” is often misused. Well, today, I have another one!
There are a number of commercials that I think we’ve all seen. They go along these lines: “But wait! Your culinary experience isn’t complete until you’ve savored our luscious dessert. Layer after mouth-watering layer of deep, rich chocolate! It has a taste that is absolutely decadent!”
I realize, of course, that the intent is to describe a delight that is a guilty pleasure. However, unless one has a particular preference for the flavor of rotten rations, that dish might be one to avoid. After all, “decadent” does refer to something in a state of decay—something in the process of decomposing!
Still,
at some level, descriptions of
decadent dessert are true. Nothing lasts forever. As the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, “the present form of this world is passing away”
(v. 31, NRSV). The Revised English Bible
says that “the world as we know it is passing away.”
Plenty of scientists (cosmologists) say the same
thing. At some point in time, all of the
current creation—everything we now see—will be reduced to its constituent
elements. And even they won’t hold together. Of
course, we have in the neighborhood of 20 billion years before every atom,
every subatomic particle, in our present universe gets ripped apart! (At least, that’s one school of thought.)
In our Old Testament
reading from the book of Isaiah, the prophet has a vision that truly looks
beyond our present reality. In the first
verse of our passage, he relays the message that God has given him, saying that
“I am about to
create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind” (v. 17). Today we
recall and celebrate an event that in the timeless, eternal mind of God, shows
a door opening to that new dimension:
the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Our
scripture reading ends on a note that recalls the Garden of
Eden—and the reversal of what went wrong.
“The wolf
and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the
serpent—its food shall be dust! They
shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord” (v. 25).
The
resurrection is often thought of as the eighth day of creation. “And on the eighth day…there was a new
creation.” On the eighth day, Jesus rose
from the dead.
It shouldn’t be too hard to
figure out why our text in Isaiah 65 is one of the Old Testament lessons that
is read at Easter. All of that stuff
about a new creation, a new vision, a new Jerusalem—all of that lends itself
very well to reflections on resurrection.
Still, as is too often the case, forcing the Hebrew scriptures into a
“life of Christ” format means ignoring the message to the original audience.
First, some quick
background. Over the past few centuries,
more and more have come to agree that the book of Isaiah was done by two, or
maybe three, authors. The prophet
Isaiah, who lived in the late 8th century and early 7th century B.C., is
responsible for the first 39 chapters.
The rest of the book was done in the late 6th century, just before and
after the return from exile in Babylon.
That being said, in chapter
65, we have the work of a prophet who’s writing a few years
after the first exiles have returned.
The temple, which was destroyed by the Babylonians, still hasn’t been
rebuilt. But that’s not at the top of
the prophet’s agenda. He leaves that for
Haggai and Zechariah, who come on the scene later.
The problem is that the people are acting as if worship
itself makes up for the rotten way they’re treating each other. (One might say, the decadent way they’re
treating each other!) The chapter begins
with the Lord saying, “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be
found by those who did not seek me. I
said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name” (v. 1).
That
seems to be a continual struggle down through the ages. Verse 5 criticizes those who take this
approach: “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.” That last part, in the King James Version,
has become somewhat notorious, where it says “I am holier than thou.”
I like the way Klaus Koch
puts it. “It seems to be an [indelible] delusion
of the human mind,” he philosophizes, “that it is possible to acquire a
positive relationship to the [deities] through devotional practices and
sacrifices, even if this piety finds no correspondence in a parallel concern
for other people and the general good.”[1] It is a delusion of the human mind.
He continues, “Mere
religious asceticism [self-denial], a renunciation of food and pleasant
clothing, in order to ‘make an impression’ on God, is a waste of time. Renunciation of one’s own
well-being—certainly! But it must be for
the sake of one’s neighbor in need.”[2]
Our good friend Klaus and the prophet agree that
the life of worship isn’t a matter of spiritual acrobatics. It isn’t competition. If what we do doesn’t result in faithfulness
to the community, then what we do is worse
than a waste of time. It is
deception: deception of others, and
above all, of ourselves.
At this point, you may be
wondering, “What does all of this have to do with Easter?” Trust me, I am getting to that!
Earlier I said how our
passage begins with God’s promise of a new creation—how the former things won’t
be remembered. Hear verses 18 and
19: “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in
my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of
distress.”
There
will be no more crying. The infant
mortality rate will drop to zero; everyone will live long lives. “They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit” (v. 21). There are also the images I mentioned earlier
that recall the Garden of Eden.
This poetic language of a
seemingly unreal, dreamlike, future appears throughout the Bible. It’s in some of the prophets, some of Jesus’
words in the gospels, and the book of Revelation is filled with it. It’s called apocalyptic language. “Apocalyptic” literally means a “revelation” or an “uncovering.” It tends to emerge when the community of
faith is under great persecution. It states,
in often very colorful terms, that the
high and mighty will be brought down and the lowly will be lifted up.
The prophet is telling the people that, besides the
need to get their act together, that they need not worry about the past, the
former age. As was said earlier in the
book, God is “about to do a new thing” (43:19).
What they’ve been doing
hasn’t worked. It has led them to a dead
end. That’s true in more ways than one.
They’re no longer ruled by the Babylonians, but
they’re still subject to the Persians.
And the prophet is trying to expand their vision, to help them see how
they are slaves to their own corruption, to their own decadence. They are slaves to the powers of death.
And so, as Luke reports on that Easter morning, the
angelic visitors pose the question: “Why do you look for the
living among the dead?” (Lk 24:5).
What does that mean for us
this morning? In what ways do we look
for the living among the dead? In what
ways are we trapped by the past, trapped by the former age? In what ways do we reject God’s new creation? And on the flip side, in what ways do we
yearn for that eighth day to dawn?
There are plenty of ways to
approach this. Let me suggest something
that takes us back to our scripture reading.
Remember verse 18, where the prophet, speaking for God, says to “be glad
and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem
as a joy, and its people as a delight.”
We are called to joy.
Is there room in our hearts
for joy? I’m not talking about painting saccharine
smiles on our faces. I’m talking about
something deeper than emotion; something that’s present, even in times of
sorrow. Is there room in our hearts for
the joy of resurrection—for the hope of life, where once there was only death?
I think it’s a good
question; it’s one that I pose to myself.
There is so much sniping, so much hatefulness, so much of trying to
figure out ways to be offended about stuff.
Friends, that is the old order, the old mode of being. It’s the dead, cynical way of being. It’s the opposite of joy. And it really isn’t worthy of those who identify
with the one who has risen from the grave! (Or you might say: the one who has escaped decadence and is filled
with life.)
Our final hymn today is
“Christ is Alive!” It was written by Brian
Wren in April 1968 after the murder of Martin Luther King.[3] I want to especially mention verse 4: “In every insult, rift, and war, / Where
color, scorn, or wealth divide, / Christ suffers still, yet loves the more, /
And lives, where even hope has died.” If
that isn’t a cause for joy, I can’t imagine what would be!