"JOY AND DELIGHT"
Isaiah 65:17-25
Rev. Gary Paterson
November 14, 2010
Jesus came marching into his ministry proclaiming the Kingdom of God. It’s the very first thing he said publicly, according to the Gospel of Mark: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news.” Parable after parable attempts to surprise us into a deeper understanding of this Kingdom… it’s like yeast that leavens the bread; or like a mustard seed that grows into a bush where all the birds of the air come and make nests. The Kingdom is like a glorious banquet, where the rich and poor sit side by side, where the lost are found, where the blind, the halt, the disabled are all welcome; where all have food and freedom. Food and freedom.
Jesus was crucified for this vision of Shalom, this Peaceable Kingdom; he believed it was a dream worth dying for. Almost an inevitable death, in truth, for the power people did not like what he was saying, thank you very much; they did not like his vision. And it looked like they were going to win the day, until resurrection proclaimed that the Kingdom was God’s vision, and God will not let it die.
Jesus didn’t come up with this vision out of thin air. He was a good Jew, and he was immersed in the story of his people; he was rooted in the Scriptures, in the Bible. He knew the Torah, the struggle of a liberated people trying to figure out how to organize their life together so as to embody a society of justice, righteousness and faithfulness. He must have known the words of the prophet Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.” Or the proclamation of Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”
And surely he knew of the visions of Isaiah, where the prophet speaks forth God’s promise to transform the world: “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth…” .. and isn’t that exactly what God is always up to, creating the new, flowing out of all that has been before, but always changing. From the first moments of the Big Bang, on through fifteen billion years, God has been part of the vast and almost endless process, Holy Energy at the heart of it all. Creation is ongoing, continuing, unfolding. God cries out, “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.” Joy and delight is what God desires… then; and in the time of Jesus; … and now. God will not stop participating, the process will not end, until God’s holy dream comes into full being, until the Kingdom of God breaks forth, is realized in time, at the end of time. And what a vision it is:
Just sit with that a moment… and imagine how it was heard by those first listeners; people arriving back to Israel after having been in exile, dragged off to Babylon some seventy years ago, and only now returning, to find the city still in ruins, their land taken by squatters, who after so many decades considered it their own. Future bleak; violence creeping around the edges; hungry; homeless…. Where was God? Is there a God? Then comes this vision; this almost-impossible-to-believe vision; a promise from God. No wonder this reading from Isaiah is considered to be an Easter reading, and is listed in the Lectionary as an alternate Scripture for Easter Sunday itself; this holy vision that comes through Isaiah is a resurrection vision.…no more shall the sound of weeping be heard.. or the cry of distress.No more shall there be … an infant that lives but a few days,Or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;…They shall build houses and inhabit them;They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.They shall not build and another inhabit;They shall not plant and another eat;For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people beAnd my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.They shall not labour in vain, or bear children for calamity….
Now, a dream functions in two ways. First, it stands against the present moment, almost as a judgment, comparing “what is” with what might be, what should be, what could be. It leads to prophetic critique, pointing out what is lacking in our present social, economic and political organization, what prevents us from embodying a vision where there is no more weeping and distress, when children are cared for, and have opportunity to live well and productively; where the old are cared for, and honoured and included; where no one is hungry or homeless; when there will be justice for all, where work is meaningful. Interesting aside: I discovered that some denominations in the States mark a particular Sunday in February as a time to focus on economic justice; I mean, it’s actually called “Economic Justice Sunday”! And I mention this, because the Scripture readings for the day include Isaiah 65:17-24. Of course… right?
Which makes me think of how this Isaiah dream, this resurrection vision, might challenge us to take a look at ourselves, pointing out discrepancies between “what is” and “what could be”. Because of our faith in God, maybe we need to cringe when we remember that BC has the lowest minimum wage in the country, and it hasn’t been increased for years. Can you imagine trying to live in Vancouver on 1280 dollars a month? With a family? And what does Isaiah’s holy vision have to say about the fact that BC has one of the lowest welfare rates in the country? And that we have the highest rate of child poverty… remember that line about “children for calamity”? Maybe we need to demand some changes, in the name of all that’s holy? Just saying….
And maybe this dream asks us to examine the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, the increasing inequality of income and wealth. Did you know that in the United States, 1% of the population control 24% of the wealth; I wonder if we are sliding in the same direction, here in Canada… where the top 25 earners in this country each cleared at least 13 million. What do you have to do to earn that kind of money? Who is worth thirteen million a year? Who makes that decision? Maybe I should have a little chit-chat with our Ministry and Personel Committee… what do you think, Carol? I see you laughing.
Or maybe this dream slams against our oh-so-human willingness to engage in violence, using war and mayhem as a way of relating to each other. We just marked this in our Remembrance Day services; but did you know that at this moment in time there are twenty-four countries caught up in war, with millions of victims – the dead, the displaced; the maimed, the raped; the homeless, the hungry; the frightened, the angry. Last year human beings spent one and a half trillion dollars on armaments and the military; that’s about twenty times what was spent on humanitarian efforts. I find myself close to tears when I contrast this with God’s vision for our world…
Maybe, though, such a dream can give us the power to say “No!” To say it loudly, persistently, constructively. To be critics, to be prophets.no more shall the sound of weeping be heard.. or the cry of distress.No more shall there be … an infant that lives but a few days,Or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;…They shall build houses and inhabit them;They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.They shall not build and another inhabit;They shall not plant and another eat;For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people beAnd my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.They shall not labour in vain, or bear children for calamity….
But then, the second thing a dream does, is to inspire; to fill us with possibility, with hope. A vision of the future empowers the present moment, giving us energy to move forward, almost drawing us like a magnet into a different future; like a great basin of sparkling, golden water, tipped backward, poured out from the future into the present, filling us with new life. It can be as common place as a Broadway musical: “You gotta have dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true.” It can be as profound as praying the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Because of the vision, because of God’s promise to keep creating until it comes to pass, we find the wherewithal to go forward, working for change. We are inspired into action, political, economic, and individual, personal. Maybe that’s what it means to follow Jesus Christ -- the one who knew Isaiah in his bones; the one who dreamed the Kingdom of God and announced its coming, who invited us to pray for it, and work for it.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe in the vision, though, as events all around contradict the promise; as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; two steps forward, four back. Burn out. Sometimes all we can do is hold onto the promise; we choose to live with hope. In part we are able to do that, because we have had a taste of what it might be like, moments when it seems the Kingdom has actually broken in. In the life of Jesus, just for instance; in the resurrection; and in all the other resurrections that have happened; small scale moments of forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, justice-making. Mandela moments; Mother Teresa moments; Martin Luther King moments; Gandhi moments; Chinese dissident, Nobel prize winner, Liu Xiaobo moments; even, dare I say it, Tommy Douglas moments. And so, maybe like him, we add our stubborn ounces on the side of the vision.
It can happen. Listen to this poem by Sheenagh Pugh:
And, says Isaiah, says Jesus, it will happen. Because this is God’s dream. And so we do our best to live into this vision everyday. Which means we must live by faith and hope. But that can make all the difference. A wonderful song by the Strathdees… called “Waiting for the Kingdom of God”, and the chorus goes,Sometimes things don’t go, after allfrom bad to worse. Some years, muscadel [grape]faces down frost; green thrives, the crops don’t fail.Sometimes a [person] aims high, and all goes well.A people sometimes will step back from war;elect an honest [person]; decide they careenough, that they won’t leave some stranger poor.Some people become what they were born for.Sometimes our best efforts do not goamiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrowthat seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
So embrace the dream; be filled with hope; roll up your sleeves and get to it; and be filled with joy and delight. And if at times it seems difficult, almost impossible, I commend to you some guidelines offered by an ancient activist, the Jesuit priest Dan Berrigan, still involved, I gather, at the rich age of eighty-eight. Years ago he wrote a book called Ten Commandments for the Long Haul. Listen to a few of his suggestions: [these were paraphrased by an unknown source… my apologies]We’re waiting for the Kingdom of God,We’re waiting for the Kingdom of God,What you do while you waitDepends on what you’re waiting for –We’re waiting for the Kingdom of God.
- Don’t be afraid to be afraid; or appalled to be appalled. How do you think the trees feel these days; or the whales; or, for that matter, most humans?
- Start with the impossible. Proceed calmly to the improbable. No worry, there are at least five exits.
- About practically everything in the world there’s nothing you can do. This is Socratic wisdom. However, about a few things you can do something. Do it, with a good heart.
- On a long drive, there’s bound to be a dull stretch or two. Don’t go anywhere with someone who expects you to be interesting all the time. And don’t be hard on your fellow travelers. Try to smile after a coffee stop.
- Know that sometimes the only writing material you have is your own blood.
- Call on Jesus when all else fails. Call on Him when all else succeeds (except that it never happens.)
So friends, let the vision of the Kingdom of God, Shalom, the Peaceable Kingdom, the hope of peace and justice, joy and delight… let this fill our hearts; what we do while we wait depends on what we’re waiting for; sometimes it happens. Let us be hope-dancers, challenged and inspired by holy dreams of a new earth.