Let us pray.
May the words of my lips and the meditation of ours hearts be pleasing to you, O Lord, our God. And may I speak in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Let’s get real. Do you ever have those moments while reading Scripture when you’re like, “Well, damn. God is throwing down the gauntlet here?” Because, if I’m to be honest, this passage from Isaiah made me pause with this exact reaction. Particularly, when God directly asks the Israelites “Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands?” As I was reading this, I felt as if these words were directed at me. Through word and action, I question God and issue commands to my Creator. Through word and action, we question God and issue commands to our Creator. It can be easy for us to read these verses from Isaiah and pretend that God’s divine challenge applies to a people far away through time and space. However, it doesn’t take much for us to see how God could be asking us this rhetorical question today in 2019. All it takes is a simple change of the subject. Our Scripture begins by positioning the LORD as the subject. Verse 5 opens with “I am the LORD…besides me there is no god.” The section continues in the first person with God as the speaker, explaining all the acts of the Creator. God takes time to remind the Israelites of the one, True God. But – and go on a journey with me here – what if we ignored verse 5 and all verses that mention God as the source, and, rather, we input humankind as the subject – humankind speaking in the first person? I’m going to make this very personal for a minute… The text then reads as follows: “I, Anna, am the LORD…from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people will know there is no one besides…[NAME]. I, [NAME], form the light and create darkness. I, [NAME], bring prosperity; I [NAME] do all these things…” You all get the point. If we forget about God and place ourselves as idols, much like the Israelites did, all of a sudden, we become the persons who “arm” others so the world will know that there is no one besides the victors of war from the east to the west; it is we who “form light and create darkness,” we who “make weal and create woe,” and we who make the earth and command the heavens… We become the cause and fin of all that is and will be. We, essentially, become God. And what happens in a world in which humans idolize ourselves? We treat the rest of the world as if it is lesser – we fail to see the inherent value, dignity, and worth of the created world. This manifests in manifold ways. Ways such as turning a blind eye to the degradation of our national parks during the government shutdown; cries to build a wall and separate families across an arbitrary border; women walking in fear at night with car keys interwoven between our fingers; violent attacks on people of color and queer folk simply because they are not white or straight; and the list goes on and on… I’m sure that within this room we could dream up endless examples. When we humans become God, we abuse our power and manipulate the kingdom. Now, I acknowledge that this is a crude manipulation of Scripture. Yet, in this crude manipulation, we hear an accurate portrayal of our world – a world that places humans, particularly those who wield the power, as the be all end all. Humans create; humans destroy. Thus, in word and action, we question God about God’s children and command God concerning the work of the Creator’s hand because we feel entitled. We too easily forget that God is the first person “I” who is speaking – the True be all end all. The God who inspires the hearts of humans such as the Persian king Cyrus to whom we are introduced in verse 1 of our chapter. We learn that God made Cyrus walk in righteousness in order to liberate all who are in exile. What if, now, we no longer see ourselves as God, but instead as Cyrus? What would our world look like if we allowed God to mold us in a righteous way? Cyrus was a king of the great Persian Empire. He was not a man likely to be used by God; yet, he is exactly the man God chose. If we know anything of the diversity within scripture, it is that God chooses to encounter us in the most unexpected ways… In Isaiah 45, through a king of a non-Jewish empire; in the Gospel through a lowly Jewish baby born on a migration route… If we can adopt a “Cyrus” mindset, then we will be able to read God as the protagonist of our stories as the Maker who made light and well-being, and, yes, who made darkness and woe; but in making all that is, the Creator is with us in all that is, because God is the protagonist, the “I am” to the existence of all of Creation. The admonishing of idol worship that we read in Isaiah, therefore, isn’t just about some people in a far-off land who lived centuries ago. No, the admonition is for us in 2019, too. We can read ourselves as God, Cyrus, and Israel because Israel’s story is our story – both in condemnation and salvation. This means that though the Godly accusations that we question and command God relate to us; so too do the promises of salvation…which are exactly how our section ends. By worshipping God as the protagonist of Creation, God promises the Israelites that they will be set free, that nations will follow them, and that they will be saved with everlasting salvation. And since Israel’s story is our story, we can expect these promises to be fulfilled for us, too, if we focus our narratives on God – and we know the promises were, and are, fulfilled when we look to the Cross. What Isaiah 45 does, then, is simultaneously check our egos and remind us of the awe-inspiring power of our Creator God; a Creator who never gives up on us, even when we try to rewrite the world’s narrative with humanity as the first-person protagonist; a Creator who not just meets us in our broken world, but continues to redeem that broken world because our God created with the hands of a loving mother and a loving father – stretched out in a wide embrace. Isaiah 45 reminds us that it is God who creates, and God who destroys. The cause and end of all. Thus, we must believe that God is still active, because without the Creator’s hands, nothing would be. So, when we find ourselves as the protagonists of our life narratives, when we question and challenge God, may we be reminded that God is the only “I am,” and the source of our liberation. We need not look further than the rising of the sun to witness this promise of everlasting salvation. Amen. |