Isaiah 56: 1-8

This section, chapters 56-66, is sometimes called Third Isaiah. It is a collection of oracles dating from about 535-520 BCE (before the common era), which was shortly after the return of the Israelites from exile in Babylon.

In this particular chapter begins by God calling upon the people “to maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come and my deliverance be revealed.” This verse looks to God for redemption, but it also suggests that this deliverance, this restoration, is predicated upon the people’s acting righteously and seeking justice. God will act when he sees us acting, God will move towards justice when we move towards justice. Now, we could well ask what justice looks like? The Hebrew scriptures are clear that justice is about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, protecting the widows and orphans, visiting the sick and those in prison, freeing the oppressed, tending to the afflicted, and seeking fairness for all. We sign on to be agents for justice every time we recite the Baptismal Covenant, which asks us, among other questions, if we “Will… strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” (BCP, p. 305)

This piece of scripture goes on to say that “Happy is the mortal who does this [who works for justice], the one who holds it fast, who keeps Sabbath, not profaning it…” Keeping Sabbath—I can remember in the late 1950s and early 1960s when people did keep the Sabbath, when they didn’t shop, when going out for a drive in the country was the event of the day, when gathering with family was expected. What have we lost by not thinking about the Sabbath? What have we lost as a culture and society? What have we lost as individuals? When every day resembles every other day, when our Sundays are just as busy and frenetic as Monday through Saturday, what happens to our souls and hearts? The practice of the Sabbath comes, of course, from God taking a day to rest after God had finished the whole created order (see Genesis 2:3). The practice also comes from the 10 Commandments that God gave to Moses to give to the people on Mount Sinai (see Exodus 20). Jesus himself practiced the Sabbath. You can see where I am going with this. If we are made in God’s image, and if our savior himself honored the Sabbath, then it must somehow be good for us, good for our relationship with God, good for our faith, to practice it ourselves. What would it mean, what would it look like, for us to do so? I always cringe and am saddened when people tell me that they are too busy to come to church, to worship, to join with their friends at Palmer. When we don’t worship, when we don’t pause and give thanks and confess and sing God’s praises, we are all prone to forget who we are, whose we are, what we need to be about, and how we are to live. The Old Man, the Old Woman, in us is very strong, and without worship and Sabbath we can begin to think and act like we are a little more central to running the universe than we really are.

The scripture goes on to say, “For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants… these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer… for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (vss. 4f)

Once upon a time in Israel eunuchs were rejected. Once upon a time foreigners were, too. It was thought that one had to be perfect to be in God’s presence and that one had to be born into the clan to be one of God’s people. But now no more. Now, you can be someone who is scarred, marred, wounded, less-than-perfect. And that is good news because we all are. All of us. And foreigners can come too, and that is also good news for us because few of us were born into the House of Israel. Room for us because we are all God’s children. It is not where you were born that matters, but that you live and acknowledge your need for God. It is not blood, not our blood anyway, but faith that matters, not our clan, but our commitment.

There have been two competing forces in religion for a long time now, maybe always. There are those who think that religion needs to isolate us and those who think that it needs to connect us; those who think that religion is about making distinctions and those who think it is about leveling them; those who want to use religion to separate and those who want to unite. Are we chosen from or are we chosen for? There is huge difference between these two visions.

I once believed the former vision. I don’t any more. Jesus almost always choose the second path, the path towards inclusion, the path towards erasing all lines and divisions and boundaries in order to draw circles around all of God’s children. From lines to circles—this was one of the things that got him killed. This is the path he calls upon us to follow. This is the path that this last part of Isaiah proclaims. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be born into the family, all you have to do is show up and want God and desire to worship and honor and adore and serve Him. That is enough. It was enough when these words were first written in 530 BCE, and it is enough for today.