Sunday Sermon on Isaiah

  To wilfully take God's prophecy given to Isaiah, which he was to deliver to people who were clearly in "the Right Place" (Judah had, after all, Jerusalem) and apply it to the modern day: 

What Was God's Problem with His People?

  God had huge problems with those people who worshipped at Jerusalem, with all the outer forms of their worship traditional and correct, and all the wordings orthodox and traditional.  They had the writings, they had the psalms.  Yet He called them "Sodom." He called them "Gomorrah." They weren't gang-raping tourists, so why did He call them these names? 

   Having Jerusalem and all, you'd think they'd worship "right." But instead, they were complacent and self-satisfied in their lives and spirituality, despite the fact that there was constant warring.  There is no war in the world, nor political or ecclesiastical in-fighting or revolution without there being blood and shameful things done in secret. 

  So there was blood on their hands. The oppression, control, manipulation and plundering of the young, the spiritually weak, the fatherless, the vulnerable. People with no one to keep them safe ended up as unprotected victims and targets. And the people of God were supposed to be on the side of the angels.  They were supposed to protect their widows, their fatherless, their poor, their handicapped and sick. But the powerful were exploiting the weak.  Attacking people who had no one to protect them. Ganging up on people who were alone.  That's where the blood came from.  And no one was allowed to talk about that.

  I know people whose fathers leave them fatherless when they are oppressed or exploited, crushed or pilloried. I know people whose fathers have joined in when it came time to throw rocks at them for daring to suggest God might be displeased with anything going on in "the Right Place."
   God sent this message to His people and told them he couldn't stand their feasts, their hymns, their incense, their holy meetings and assemblies, because there was this blood on their hands. "Your hands are full of blood," He said. 

  So He told them to stop bothering Him with religious activity until they made things right, "corrected" the oppression they'd been part of, and brought justice to the fatherless and pled the widow's cause.  He would not listen to any hymns or prayers, personal or collective, until they did this.  Until it was no longer "every man for himself" and an enforced practice of forbidding talking about what happened when someone weak fell under the power of the rich, the strong, the religiously or politically powerful. If someone was weak or vulnerable, or injured or poor, the proper response wasn't to be "So, did this man sin, or his parents? He's poor and messed up.  He must have done SOMEthing!"

  Now clearly, you won't wash blood off yourself until you acknowledge it's there, and maybe then you just might have to reflect on whose it was and how it got there.  I know circles where people get very uncomfortable and put a stop to any talk about people who've been (ecclesiastically speaking) gang-raped by their church group, Sodom and Gomorrah style.  I know circles where these people are called "bitter" as a way of not wanting to feel any humanity toward them afterward. "Did bad things happen?  Probably, but look how bitter she is...." I do not know of church apologies happening.

God Sends Isaiah To Them

   When God first singles out Isaiah, He has barely taken care of Isaiah's typical "I'm not worthy!" deal, before He tells Isaiah to take to His people news of what His first and root punishment upon them will be (military defeat and cultural collapse will come later and partly as a result of this root punishment):

ears that hear but do not understand, eyes that see but do not perceive, and dull hearts.

   So they will not be able to perceive anything, understand anything, or feel anything, nor will they get healing. But of course they'll keep worshipping and praying and singing and being decent religious folk who have to worry about their reputations.  Business as usual. Unaware. 

  This is God's curse on them, as stated by God Himself. To them. In advance.

The Way Back?

   And where is the way back for a group which doesn't see that it needs healing, doesn't hear anything on the subject, and can't feel the need of it, so never changes?  For a group that's trying to avoid change, when it needs some?  Repentance.  At the bidding of that single voice, sent to them, by God, to tell them He's displeased. Isaiah. Jeremiah. Elijah. Whoever's handy. And God doesn't choose many mighty people (or people with supportive fathers, or people with strong reputations or status, or people who are considered "spiritual") to do that. He chooses people with unclean lips, for instance.

  And the majority will not hear nor understand them, and people like Isaiah generally end up sawed in two to make them shut up, while a few listen and are awakened to what's what. And this makes the few all the more impressive to God, and the many, all the more condemned.