Is 55:1-9

18 March 2001

3rd Sunday in Lent

 

“Two Kinds of Thoughts”

 

This scripture passage is one of the first ones that I ever really paid attention to, especially the last two verses.  There was an incident almost 16 years ago that forever set them as a milestone in my life.

Late one August evening in 1985—actually early in the morning, it being after 2:00—I’d been reading this very chapter in Isaiah.  But before I get into that, I should back up a bit.  Throughout that summer, for the first time in my life, I really began to have an interest in the Bible.  It seemed to come alive for me.  It wasn’t just a dead book; more and more, I started to see meaning in it.

So anyway, this night in early August arrives, and something happens.  I’m reading this passage and, as I said, thinking about the last two verses in particular.  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (vv. 8-9).

That really struck me.  No matter how high we reach, no matter to what we aspire, we never are able to reach God.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so God’s thoughts and God’s ways are higher than ours.  And it became very personal for me.  No matter how high my imagination, my thoughts, may go, it occurred to me, they can never reach God’s level.

And in the same instant, I realized that that’s okay.  I understood that God is love.  I felt that God is love.  In fact, it seemed that I was suddenly plunged into an ocean of love.  It was a very intense experience, one I haven’t had since.  What has remained with me from that evening is a sense of inner peace.  For all these reasons, I’ve tended to look upon that night as a conversion experience for me.  I wonder if it didn’t take something that drastic to get my attention!

I share this with you to let you have a sense of how I approach today's Old Testament text.  I don't want to limit my reading of it to some experience I had, but it's there nonetheless.  I don't think it's any great revelation that all of us are shaped by our experiences, whether good or bad.  Still, we don't have to allow the past to control the present or the future.

That's a message the people in our scripture passage need to hear.  You see, Isaiah 55 is the final chapter of what's commonly called the Book of the Consolation of Israel, which begins with chapter 40.  This section is dated a century and a half after the time of Isaiah the prophet himself.  Sometimes called Second Isaiah, it comes from the mid-sixth century B. C., after the Babylonians have sent the Jews into exile.  (I'll be happy to discuss later the reasons for dividing the book into different time periods with anyone who's interested!)

Anyway, the point of all this is that these words are addressed to people who have suffered exile from their homes, with all that entails.  They need to know that that isn't the final word.  They need to know that their God hasn't forgotten them and is capable of great reversals of fortune.

Still, the very first word of the chapter might send mixed signals.  Translated as "Ho" in the NRSV, the Hebrew word ywOh (hoy) doesn't have an English counterpart.  It appears twenty times in Isaiah before this, and it's always used to introduce a note of judgment.  Translators use words like "ah" and "woe" to indicate that.  One quick example in 1:4:  “Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity…”  (It's my suspicion that some Hebrew words are designed to make you look like an idiot when you pronounce their English translations!)

Anyway, it quickly becomes apparent that what we have here is an invitation, not a word of judgment.  The exiles are invited to a feast, and the guest list reads:  "everyone who thirsts…and you that have no money."  This sounds like a good deal:  "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (v. 1).

This is advice the people need to take to heart, because verse 2 indicates that they've got it all wrong.  "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread," the people are asked.  And why "labor for that which does not satisfy?"  Actually, these are perennial questions.  Today, as much as ever, we need to ask ourselves, "Why do we do what we do?"

The French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus began one of his books by saying, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.  Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."^[1]  Not the most cheerful thought I've ever encountered, but in his own way, Camus was asking that same question, "Why do we do what we do?  Is there any point?"

The last part of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3 suggest that the answer is found in listening.  Listening.  God says, "Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good."  Not the junk you've been scratching and clawing for all your life.  You need not wear yourself out for nothing.  You need not settle for a life of absurdity.

I've been participating in the Lenten retreats that Banu's been leading on Saturday mornings at 10:00.  (The invitation remains open!)  We've been using Henri Nouwen's reflections on the parable of the prodigal son entitled From Fear to Love.  In his meditation for Tuesday of this past week, he reflects on the prodigal son's decision to return to his father.  It's symbolic of our decision to return to God, to repent.  Nouwen says that it takes discipline to put ourselves in the place in which we can hear God.  Keeping with the theme of listening that Isaiah introduces, we get some helpful instruction in Nouwen's thought for the day; plus, he gives us a vocabulary lesson in Latin!

"The word listening in Latin is audire.  And if you listen with great attention the words are ob audire.  That is the word for 'obedience.'  The word obedience means listening.  If you are not listening, you are deaf.  The Latin word for deaf is surdus, and if you're actually deaf, you're ab surdus.  The 'absurd' life is a life in which you're not listening.  An obedient life is a life in which you are listening."^[2]

Learning to listen, especially listening to God, requires discipline.  We can’t listen if we aren’t silent.  And becoming silent requires effort.  We have to set aside the time.  We have to turn off the television, the radio, and whatever else is a distraction.  It requires a commitment, even setting aside five minutes.  (Five minutes of being completely still and silent can seem like a very long time!)  And if you’re tempted to say, “I can’t set aside five minutes for that,” I would respond, “You can’t afford not to.”

Many people wouldn't think of finding meaning in life by way of listening and repenting.  And obedience seems an even less likely way to go.  Henri Nouwen’s advice might seem to be a way of narrowing our vision, of closing us off to all the possibilities out there.  But that brings us back to the two kinds of thoughts I mentioned at the beginning.  God's thoughts are not only higher than our thoughts, but they're of a totally different kind.

In our gospel reading, Jesus approaches repentance from a different angle, and we get a little different spin on these two kinds of thoughts.  Luke 13 begins with some people informing Jesus about "the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices" (v. 1).  It's possible that the victims were militants, or even criminals, who were hiding from the Romans in the temple; we just don't know.  Jesus contributes his own bit of current events.  He mentions those who were killed when a tower collapsed in the Siloam section of Jerusalem.  Jesus wants to know if the people who suffered these disasters were any worse than anyone else.

It's necessary to ask that, because a commonly-held view, then and now, is that we bring the terrible things that happen to us on ourselves.  Jesus indicates that that isn't necessarily so.  Remember his statement in Matthew 5:45:  God "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."  There's a bumper sticker that I haven't seen for a few years which expresses this theological truth in rather crude language.  I'll change one word:  "Stuff happens."  (And if you’re not familiar with the bumper sticker, that’s something else to see me about later!)

Anyway, as he so often does, Jesus shifts the tone of the whole discussion.  There are the people's thoughts, concerned about some cosmic scale in which good and bad deeds are weighed in the balance.  Then there are Jesus' thoughts, which cast a new light on the matter and let the people know that they're all in the same boat, so to speak.  "[U]nless you repent, you will all perish just as they did" (vv. 3, 5).

This fits in with the theme of listening in Isaiah 55.  "Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live" (v. 3).  This is the feast to which the exiles—and we—are invited.  This is the feast at which all things become possible.  As in verses 3 to 5, this is the feast at which exiles are guaranteed the covenant made with a king.  This is the feast at which the Lord may be found.  The wicked and unrighteous may find pardon.  All this is possible because of God's thoughts and ways.