For the past ten weeks we have been
making our way through what is called the “Narrative Lectionary”. It is a scheme
that has been designed to take us through the whole broad sweep of God’s
revelation in Scripture over a four-year period. And so far it has been quite
literally a whirlwind tour. Just as a whirlwinds sweep across the countryside,
touching down at this point and that, so we have touched down on the story of
Noah and the flood; the call of Abraham; the roller coaster fortunes of Joseph;
the escape of the Hebrew people from their slavery in Egypt; the giving of the
Ten Commandments; the renewal of Israel’s covenant with God under Joshua; the
long reign of King Solomon; the prophet Elisha’s cleansing of the leprous
Syrian general Naaman; and then last week the prophet Micah’s call “to act
justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”. Today we come to
Isaiah.
Micah and Isaiah were both what we call
prophets. Their words are recorded in the last one-third of the books of the
Old Testament. They wrote in different places under a variety of circumstances.
And their writings comprise a wide diversity of styles—from lofty poetry to
heartbreaking lament, from strange visions to biting satire.
Here is what Eugene Peterson had to say
about the prophets:
These men and women woke people up to the
sovereign presence of God… They used words with power and imagination… The
prophets purge our imaginations of this world’s assumptions… Over and over
again God the Holy Spirit uses these prophets … to put [his people] back on the
path of simple faith and obedience and worship in defiance of all that the
world admires and rewards. Prophets train us in … keeping present to the
presence of God… They contend that everything, absolutely everything, takes
place on sacred ground… Nothing escapes the purposes of God.[1]
There are seventeen books in the Old
Testament that are ascribed to the prophets. But the one that seems to rise
above them all is Isaiah. It is from Isaiah that we will soon read at
Christmastime: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given…” (9:6). It was from Isaiah that Jesus quoted
at the outset of his mission: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, to bind up
the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, to proclaim the year
of the Lord’s favour” (61:1-2). It is
to Isaiah that we look when we want to make sense of Jesus’ crucifixion: “He
was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; by his wounds
we are healed” (53:5). And thirteen
out of the thirty-four biblical texts in Handel’s Messiah are taken from
Isaiah.
Again Eugene Peterson has written,
Isaiah is a large presence in the lives of
people who … are on the lookout for the holy… Isaiah is the supreme
poet-prophet to come out of the Hebrew people… Isaiah does not merely convey
information. He creates visions, delivers revelation, arouses belief. He is a
poet in the most fundamental sense—a maker,
making God present and that presence urgent.[2]
A Vision
In our passage this morning Isaiah opens
with the words, “This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw…” This is the second of four times that Isaiah will say this
about himself. The first is in the opening verse of the book and it more or
less summarizes all that he is going to put into writing in the chapters that
follow.
The third comes in chapter 6 as Isaiah
stood worshipping in the Temple. I suspect that for everybody else who was present
that day there was nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual psalms and
prayers and sacrifices. But to Isaiah there was revealed the ineffable mystery
that stood behind it all: the presence of the Lord of heaven and earth. Even
the vastness of Solomon’s Temple could contain no more than the train of his
robe, as six-winged seraphs sang aloud, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory” (6:1-3).
I can imagine the other worshippers glibly
walking away from the Temple that day. Had there been a fellowship hall they
might have gone for a cup of coffee and a few minutes of chitchat—and then back
to their usual routines. But for Isaiah things could never be the same. His
eyes had been opened to hidden realities. He had seen the Lord.
If we had read further on from the story of
Naaman a few weeks ago, we would have come to another incident in the story of
Elisha. It was dawn and his servant had gotten up to prepare for the day, when
he saw a sight that terrified him to the bone. As he looked around, he could
see that all the hills surrounding the city were filled with the chariots and
horses of an enemy army. All he could think to do was to run to his master and
shake him. “What are we going to do now?” he asked in fear and desperation. I
can’t imagine it helped when Elisha responded, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are
with us are more than those who are with them.” With that he stood up and
prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” And this time when the
servant looked around he could see an even greater army arrayed in protection
around the city, with horses and chariots of fire (2 Kings 6:15-17).
Much the same was true of those two
followers of Jesus as they were making their way back to their home in Emmaus a
couple of days after the crucifixion. Why didn’t they recognize the stranger
who so convincingly opened the Scriptures to them? Luke tells us that it was
only as he broke the bread at the table with them that their eyes were opened
and they recognized that they were in the presence of Jesus.
Now I am not suggesting that we should all
be dreaming dreams and seeing visions. That is the privilege of the few. But
what I do want to say is that a large part of following Jesus is learning to
see the world, to see our lives, from a radically different perspective. “Do
not be conformed to this world,” wrote the apostle Paul to the Romans, “but be
transformed by the renewing of your minds. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God’s will is” (Romans 12:2).
I recall a member of my church years ago
sharing with me how important it was for her to be there Sunday by Sunday. Because
it was in that weekly encounter with God and his word that she was renewed in a
vision and an approach to the world that was often diametrically opposite from
what she was being told through the rest of the week. As we follow Jesus we
will inevitably begin to see ourselves and our world from a new perspective. So
what was it that Isaiah saw in our passage this morning?
A Mountain
I have never been to Jerusalem or to the
Holy Land, but I understand that Mount Zion, the hill on which Jerusalem
stands, is not especially impressive. There were much more imposing sites in
the mountains to the north and to the south. Mount Lebanon, Mount Hermon, Mount
Gerizim and Mount Ebal all have higher elevations, to name only a few peaks in
the region. And even the Mount of Olives, just a short distance away, stands
taller than Jerusalem itself. Yet in Isaiah’s vision Mount Zion towers above
all other mountains. And as we look more closely, what do we find but people
from every land and nation streaming towards it.
Now under normal circumstances, that would
be something not to be welcomed but to be feared. The tiny kingdom of Israel
(or Judah as it was known in Isaiah’s time) was precariously situated on a
crossroads between powerful empires—Assyria to the north, the Medes and the
Persians to the east, and Egypt to the south. As a result, except for brief
historical intervals, Jerusalem was under almost constant threat of assault
from one direction or another.
Later on, in chapters 36 and 37, Isaiah
gives his own eyewitness account of exactly this kind of scenario. Sennacherib,
the king of the vast Assyrian empire, after sweeping through the little kingdom
of Judah and conquering all its fortified cities, sent his field commander to
Jerusalem to negotiate terms of surrender. Isaiah tells how in desperation King
Hezekiah tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and sent a delegation to seek his
advice. Isaiah’s words to the king were the same as those of Elisha’s to his
servant a century before: “Do not be afraid.” So Hezekiah went into the Temple
and prayed for deliverance for his people. And that was exactly what happened.
We aren’t given the details, but Isaiah tells us that the angel of the Lord put
to death 185,000 of Sennacherib’s men.
The scene that Isaiah puts before us this
morning, however, is entirely different. This vast, numberless horde of people,
streaming in from every corner of the globe, is coming not to invade or to
conquer but to learn and to be reconciled. The promise made to Abraham
centuries before is at last coming to fruition: “I will make you into a great
nation … and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3).
All of this stands in marked contrast to
another scene in the Bible: the tower of Babel. Babel was the product of human arrogance
and pride. It was founded on the assumption that there is no height that we
cannot scale, nothing that ought to lie outside the reach of our grasp. On the
other hand, what lies at the core of the passage before us is a deep and
genuine humility in the presence of God, a willingness to learn from him—to put
down the weapons of human conflict and striving and to surrender to his pure
and peaceable rule.
An Invitation
As we look at this amazing scene we are
offered an invitation: “Come …, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Now my natural inclination is to interpret
those words as saying, “Let us learn to live according to God’s truth.” (I have
no doubt I’ve been influenced at this point by that old gospel hymn that
begins, “When we walk with the Lord in the light of his word…”) But Old
Testament scholar John Goldingay points us to Psalm 44:3. There we find what I
think is a better interpretation. Here is what it says: “It was not by their
sword that [our ancestors] won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory;
it was by your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.”[3]
We find the same idea embedded in the
blessing that we so often hear at the conclusion of our worship: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face
shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give
you peace” (Numbers 6:24-26). So the
invitation that we are being given here is to live in the recognition that behind
everything in the universe there is a God who looks upon us and loves us. And
it would be on Isaiah’s mountain that that love was most clearly and powerfully
demonstrated.
Jesus said, “When I am lifted up from
the earth, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Years later the apostle Paul would write, “For God was pleased to
have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all
things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through
his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians
3:19-20).
The first believers
were privileged to see the beginning of the fulfilment of that promise, as men
and women and children from all over the known world responded to Peter’s
message at Pentecost. And I suspect that they would be amazed to see how far
the good news of God’s love in Christ has spread today, reaching out to peoples
and nations they could never have dreamed of.
Yet we still await the day when Isaiah’s vision comes
in its fullness: when people from every nation will gather around the throne of
God, their swords beaten into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks,
with the Lord as their everlasting light. In the meantime, it is so fitting
that this church should choose to call itself “All Nations”. May that name
impel us to live out the vision that God gave to Isaiah. And may we be
unceasing in sharing the light of his love with people of every background and
colour, tribe, language and nation.
