Luther Seminary Chapel, October 23, 2008
Text: Isa 45:1-7 (Lectionary
29, Year A)
Preacher: Frederick J. Gaiser
I AM THE LORD, AND THERE IS NO OTHER
Halloween is
coming, and scary monsters will be roaming the streets. Gods can be scary, too,
and sometimes they seem to roam the Bible. The book of Isaiah has one of the
biggest and potentially scariest of all. In the prophet’s call vision—the
well-known “Here I am, send me” text—God was so huge that just the hem of his
robe filled the temple. No wonder, Isaiah cowered. Now, with this week’s
lesson, from the second part of the book, we seem to get the verbal equivalent
of that vision: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create
darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.” Big God!
And how
should we not cower? We could film this as a Halloween thriller, with the huge
God and fiery seraphim of the call vision:
I am God, I
make weal, and I create woe!
Or worse, if God prefers the KJV, as we are sometimes told:
I make
peace, and I create evil!
The gospel of the Lord?
We could
sell this movie, if we used modern names for Babylon and Persia: “Isaiah 2: The
Sequel”!
You quaked with terror in Isaiah 1 as
the Lord God of hosts closed the hearts and minds and eyes and ears of a whole
generation. You crawled under your seats at the image of the vintner with the
giant pruning shears, destroying your vineyard home.
And, now? Heeeeeee’s back, and he’s
bad! The creator of evil! Watch and pray, as the Iraqi armies fold in fear
before the invading Iranian storm troopers. Will you be next? Quiver when the
divine oracle booms that the grass withers and the flower fades, for that
short-lived upstart dandelion in God’s garden is none other than you.
“Isaiah 2:
The Sequel”—coming soon to theaters everywhere.
We actually
could make that movie, but would it get the message right ? To be sure, those “I
am” statements in Isaiah 2 describe a big God. They turn Descartes around: Not,
I think, therefore I am; but I am, therefore you think. But have we gotten the
tone right?
If some
Halloween monster says, “I make peace, and I create evil,” I am quite certain
that it would not be good news. But the speaker in our text is not an alien
monster. It is not even “God,” that is, some generic divine force, in which
case I would still not be completely certain that I wanted such power in its
hands. But Isaiah’s speaker is precisely not an unknown force; it is YHWH, the
Lord, the God of Israel. Isaiah’s audience could not hear, “I am the Lord, who
makes peace and creates evil,” without hearing in the background that earlier “I
am” statement: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of slavery....” Oh! That God! Our God. The God
who has a name and lets us know it. That God is the God of weal and woe? Maybe
then, at least a tentative “The gospel of the Lord” in response.
Tentative,
though, because we might still have questions. Especially if the text means
what some take it to mean: I am God. I do weal and I do woe—aha, merismus,
stating the extremes to include everything in between. So: I am God; I do weal,
I do woe; I do everything! God, you do everything? Well, then, we need to talk.
What about the unrelenting ugliness of the news and the sometime shreds of my
life? As my grandmother would have said, “Sit down, God, I have a bone to pick
with you.”
But,
happily, “I do everything” is not the message of Isaiah 2’s God. All kinds of
people and all kinds of creatures do all kinds of things in Second Isaiah: some
of them pleasing to God, others not so much.
No, God does
not say, “If anything happens, I did it.” Second Isaiah is pretty sure,
though, that if any God stuff happens, God did it. Had to. This is the
only God there is.
I am the
Lord, and there is no other, beside me there is no god. (45:5)
I am God,
and there is none like me. (46:9 NIV)
Everything? Don’t lay that on me!
God stuff? I’m all over that.
Creation?
Did that!
Stars? Did
that!
Earth? Did
that!
Abraham and
Sarah? Mine!
Exodus? Did
it!
Redemption?
All mine.
Forgiveness?
My work.
Cyrus? Sent
him.
Fine, God,
but then what’s that “woe” word in our text about? Or that “evil” word? You
make peace and create evil? Should I like that?
Probably
not, God might say, because that is the dark side of my work.
Cyrus, the
liberator? Yes, I sent him.
But Babylon,
the destroyer? Yes, she was mine too. To be sure, you summoned her by your own
disobedience, but, then, yes, I sent her. Yet even she had choices to make; and
she enjoyed her destructive work way too much, so now the darkness she spread
is catching up with her as well. I make weal and I create woe. Acts have
consequences: my law, my work.
So might
speak the God of Isaiah 2, and we might still be a little worried. We probably
should be, actually, since we are quite capable of summoning our own Babylons,
spreading our own darkness, and incurring the divine wrath. But it will be
important to note that weal and woe are not all one to this God. God does woe
for the sake of weal, never the other way around. Judgment is always in the
service of mercy for the prophets. Purge the evil, to make way for renewal—in
us, too.
God makes
woe and God makes peace, but in this book there is a crystal clear divine
preferential option for peace:
Comfort, O
comfort my people....Speak tenderly to Jerusalem (40:1-2)
You are
precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. (43:4)
I, I am He
who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your
sins. (43:25)
Turn to me
and be saved, all the ends of the earth! (45:23)
Big God in Second Isaiah, but precisely not a scary God. “Fear
not,” says God in these chapters—thirteen times.* A big God, but always
mercifully inclined; more, always striving for intimacy. We see that, for
example, in this God’s preference for names. God knows names in this book. And
so do we:
I am YHWH,
that is my name. (42:8)
I bring out
the starry host, one by one, and call them each by name. (40:26 NIV paraphrase)
Cyrus, I
call you by you name, though you do not know me. (45:4 paraphrase)
While I was
in my mother's womb [God] named me. (49:1)
Foreigners love my name,
and to eunuchs I give an everlasting name that will not be cut off. (56:5-6
paraphrase)
Do not fear,
for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. (43:1)
All those names! God’s names, people’s names, creation’s
names, our names. And there are more—my concordance runneth over! God may do
weal and woe in this book, many and mighty things, but no one is a pawn here.
God knows names.
And then,
for us, another name: My servant—says God, through Isaiah—my servant trusts in
the name of the Lord (50:10 paraphrase). And, like the servant, we, too, want
to trust in the name of the Lord. And to make that easier, fuller, richer,
closer, yet more wonderful, God eventually gives a new name to Isaiah’s
trusting servant: “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from
their sins” (Matt 1:21).
And,
amazingly, this human Jesus will be the one who can take Isaiah’s strong “I am”
statements into his own mouth:
“I am the
light of the world.” (John 8:12)
“I am the
way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6)
“I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev
22:13)
Big God again! Big Christ! Beginning and end! Good news? It
all depends on what lies between those extremes. So Revelation tells us:
“I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give
water as a gift from the water of life.” (Rev 21:6)
And to that
we can now say without fear, with Isaiah and all God’s children: “The gospel of
the Lord.” AMEN