What can we say August 7? 9th after Pentecost

    Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 functions as an overture to Isaiah’s overall message, an intro anthology of his central themes. Not cheerful in tone, not a snazzy attraction for visitors, Isaiah’s mission is the disclosure of Israel’s sin (and ours), the certainty of judgment, and how dire the need is for repentance. Fascinating: our lectionary scoots right past verses 2-9, which expose the extent of Israel’s sin (not a little booboo now and then, but an all-encompassing fallenness!) and the severity of God’s judgment.

   Maybe this is important for visitors and old-timers too; we dare not skip the revealing of sin and summons to repentance. Preaching this is risky, as an appeal to repent can turn out to be a thinly-veiled expression of my frustration and anger at my people, or else a weirdly popular kind of grandstanding where our summons to repentance is nothing but an opaque critique of what we (and the people!) don’t like out there. Can chatter about repentance get shimmied down to what we think somebody else out there ought to be doing? Alternatively, if we internalize, theologically robust and hopeful repentance morphs into a mood of guilt and remorse, with much of the shuv, meaning to make a 180° turn, or even the Greek metanoia, meaning a change of mind.

   Isaiah (whose name means “The Lord saves”) sees a vision. Fascinating: like the author of Revelation, he is vouchsafed a glimpse into heavenly realities, into God’s very presence. Down on earth, the year must be 701 B.C.E.  After the stranglehold of the Assyrian juggernaut, Zion alone is left, and barely. The people foolishly saw its survival as a great blessing, as if God were pleased with them and not others. Always beware any theology that says I made it, they didn’t, God has sure been good to me.

   Isaiah shares with us God’s exasperated assessment of worship. At a recent United Methodist General Conference, I penned a blog on this that went viral – as it wasn’t hard to imagine, after our lovely, moving worship, overhearing God saying “Remove from me the noise of your worship,” as we fought like cats and dogs once worship had ended. Isaiah’s God chides them for the futility of their sacrifices – making me shudder, as we don’t even bother with the sacrifices before we cause God to shudder.

   How gory: their “hands are full of blood” (v. 15). In Israel, worshippers’ hands were not just metaphorically stained with blood. The animal sacrifices would have left bloody traces on their hands, a graphic image indeed. The preacher can play with this: Pilate tried to wash his hands of Jesus but could not. Lady Macbeth could not rid her house of its guilt. Jesus, the bearer of all guilt, died with his own blood all over his own hands. I wonder if this is a Sunday to revive a couple of those old, gory but theological pointed hymns about the blood of Jesus.

   With the numbing horror of so many mass shootings and wars civil and international around the world, this “hands full of blood” image makes you shiver. We need to speak in wise ways on this. I tried to in last Sunday's sermon - echoing some of what I blogged about a while back about the futility of “Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims.”

   Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 begins a long, eloquent text, a roll call of heroes of the faith, as if the author was thumbing through Scripture in his mind. I wonder if the preacher might do just that: hold a Bible, start in Genesis, thumb through, mentioning Abel, Abraham, Moses, David. I’d add a few from the New Testament, and church history (“By faith, St. Francis…” “By faith, my grandmother…”).

   People think faith is believing spiritual things, or having religious feelings, or trusting God will do stuff I ask for. Hebrews, with simplicity and yet near-philosophical sophistication, defines faith as the substance (hypostasis, what stands under or supports, a foundation, and thus the real nature of things, with the added nuance of serving then as a pledge, a down payment) of things hoped for (elpizomenon). Hope is always worth repackaging for our people. Late in his life, Martin Luther King, Jr., said “I am no longer optimistic, but I remain hopeful.” Christopher Lasch distinguished these well: optimism believes things will get better tomorrow; hope is ready if things don’t get better. Optimism is up to us doing better; hope depends on God.

   Faith is “the conviction of things not seen.” What isn’t seen? Invisible, spiritual realities? Not in the Bible’s understanding. The unseen things are in the future. Our future is secure with God, so faith can live in the uncertainty and even agony of now. Luke Timothy Johnson: “Faith makes actual, or makes ‘real,’ for believers the things that are hoped for, as though they were present… They are understood to be as real, or even more real, than things that can be ‘seen,’ that is, verified by the senses.” Here I love a thought David Steinmetz used to emphasize about Martin Luther – for whom “the organ of faith” was the ear, not the eye. The eye can deceive; we are fooled by what we see (or don’t see). The ear hears – and hears God’s Word, which can be trusted no matter how things look.

   Hebrews jogs back in time to the call of Abraham: “He went, not knowing where he was to go.” God told him to go – where? “A place I will show you.” Jesus called his disciples to go… where? They had no clue. In my Will of God book, I explore this at some length: we want a map, or to know “God’s plan for my life,” when in reality we simply follow, taking the next step. “Thy word is a lamp to my feet” – not a brilliant Coleman lantern, but a Bible-times little pottery lamp that might light up the road for about 4 or 5 feet. You go, you take the next step, then the next.

   Faith is going, moving - as Father Greg Boyle reminds us, “Faith isn't about saluting a set of beliefs. It's about walking with Jesus and being a companion, particularly standing in the lowly place with the easily despised and readily left out.” Is his model of how to be in ministry with gang members a window into how to transform our violent society?

   How poignant is it that Abraham (just like Moses) died not seeing the fulfillment of the promise, not participating in what all of life had been a pursuit of. No, he “greeted it from afar.” Moses did this from Mt. Nebo: Hello, promised land… The preacher would be wise to point to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final sermon (“I’ve seen the promised land… I may not get there with you”) – or Reinhold Niebuhr’s great wisdom (“Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime; therefore we are saved by hope”).

   Luke 12:32-40 grab-bag of some of Jesus’ short, memorable sayings. A modern parallel would be Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto” (“Every day do something that won’t compute. Work for nothing. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Give your approval to what you cannot understand. Praise ignorance. Ask questions that have no answers. Plant sequoias. Practice resurrection”). No conventional wisdom with Jesus – or Berry!

   For Jesus, not being beaten is being blessed! The thief image is quirky. Jesus doesn’t really burgle, as in ripping you off of your things – although he might aid your shedding of things!

   How tender, Jesus calling them his “little flock.” Humbling for them, too. “Let your loins be girded” means, as Levine and Witherington put it, “Let your long, ankle-length robe be adjusted by the waist-belt to ensure readiness for action or departure.” The “breaking into” of the thief literally means “dug through” – as in the mud-brick walls houses had in Jesus’ day. Such digging requires time and patience; think Andy’s escape from prison in The Shawshank Redemption!

   Jesus forever reminds us to travel light, own little, give with abandon. Laying up treasure in heaven is accomplished not by being pious but by outlandish, generous giving to those in need (as Augustine, Ambrose and Chrysostom understood so well). Wonder why we don’t experience much Jesus or resurrection? Look no further. Can we, we Christian preachers, make even incremental progress on such things – and then maybe invite our listeners to do the same? 

 Levine and Witherington again: “By supporting the poor, disciples obtain wallets that are never empty and that can never be robbed; that is, they heave treasures in heaven. In turn, if they have these heavenly treasures, their heart is directed toward heaven and they no longer will have the cares of the world.”