Text: Isaiah 65:17-25

Last week we looked with wonder at the majesty and intimacy expressed in some of God’s many names. In today’s text, we see the same themes carried through. That is, we are given a God who speaks with power and authority of God’s capacity for transforming all creation. At the same time, we see God’s compassionate concern for that creation spelled out as well. Not only is this the One who can say, “For I am about to create new heavens and new earth;” it is also the One who says, “Before they call will I answer, while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” Not only is this the One who can say, “...you who forsake the Lord, who forget my holy mountain, who set a table for Fortune and fill cups of mixed wine for Destiny; I will destine you to the sword, and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter” (Isaiah 65:11-12a); it is also the One who says, “I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.”

At Tuesday’s Bible study, we tried to consider this great text of hope in its larger context. This next to the last chapter in the collection of writings called Isaiah is actually the work of a prophet or school of prophets that contemporary scholars refer to as Third or Trito-Isaiah. In a rough overview, the first 39 chapters of the book are attributed to a pre-exilic prophet named Isaiah who tried to warn the people of Judah of the calamity to come if they did not change their wicked ways. Deutero- or Second Isaiah consists of chapters 40 through 55. They were probably written by a writer or school of writers during the exile in Babylon, and contain many of the texts that Handel used in his great oratorio Messiah, beginning with the words, “Comfort, O comfort my people…” (Isaiah 40:1a). These are chapters of longing for rescue from exile and hope for a return to the homeland. The third book of Isaiah was most likely written after the return from exile, but before the rebuilding of the temple.

The great hope laid out in today’s text may be seen as the writer’s response to a people confronted with the overwhelming task of reconstructing their city, their culture, their lives, from the ashes of destruction. One might imagine this prophet standing amidst the ruins of the temple saying to those who would listen, “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us, and the great favor to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love” (Isaiah 63:7). Given the enormity of what lay ahead, this sounds a little like whistling in the dark, like prophetic hoping against hope. It is not unlike someone trying to describe an image that they desperately desire to come true when the evidence against that happening is mountainous.

A few short verses later the prophet is crying out, “Look down from your heaven and see, from your holy and glorious habitation. Where are your zeal and your might? The yearning of your heart and your compassion” (Isaiah 63: 15)? “Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider we are all your people. Your holy cities have become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins. After all this, will you restrain yourself, O Lord? Will you keep silent and punish us so severely” (Isaiah 64:9-12)?

In the Bible study group, as we considered this setting for our text, we tried to remember or imagine if we had ever been in such a destructive situation. Though none of us had ever been exiles, refugees or homeless, Charlie Clark shared a moving story of returning to his old family home in Fort Worth, the neighborhood in which he grew up, the street full of good childhood memories. He was quite shocked not only to find that the neighborhood was much poorer than it had been, his childhood home had been gutted by neglect and fire. There are powerful emotions that accompany such a shocking experience. This notion of the prophet that “former things shall not remembered” doesn’t really make sense at such a time. It is memory that most often floods us as we stand confronted by loss, and, though our memories will not save us, they may surely comfort us as we live into something new. Change may require letting go things we hold precious, but letting go and losing memory are not necessarily the same thing.

In thinking further about the setting for this text, the group was able to conjure images we had seen with our own eyes or on television or in print. For instance, some of us recalled the destruction of natural disasters like the Loma Prieta earthquake or the Oakland hills firestorm or hurricane Katrina or the recent flooding in Mexico and fires in southern California. We know something of the senseless civil war in the Sudan and the devastation of Darfur. We have seen images of the madness of war in the Middle East, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Israel or Lebanon, where weapons, whether “mass” or not, are sufficiently destructive to keep people on all sides in chaos and trauma, with nothing good ever to come from the process.

As most of you know, I have made three trips to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast since hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped through that region, leveling or flooding everything in their paths. I don’t have to tell you how those storms blew the roof off the extremes of poverty lurking in the shadows of that major playground for the well off of the world. You are aware that large numbers of the poorest who fled New Orleans have not returned and are not likely to. The efforts to clean up and rebuild the area are ongoing and will be for years yet to come.

Recently, LeDayne Polaski, the program director for the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, made a trip to New Orleans as part of the Peace Fellowship’s “Churches Supporting Churches” program, in which churches around the country are partnering with churches in New Orleans whose buildings were damaged or destroyed by the storm. Many of these largely African American churches serve as vital community centers in the neighborhoods in which they are located; rebuilding these churches is vital to the restoration of these neighborhoods. On this particular trip, LeDayne was shocked and outraged to find an article in the Northwest Airlines onboard travel magazine, trumpeting that New Orleans “was back.” Having just spent time in some of the still devastated areas of the city, she decided to challenge this bit of dishonesty. In a letter to the editor, she says, “I was utterly shocked by the article in the October 2007 issue of your magazine…The front cover…and the first sentence…boldly claim, ‘New Orleans is back.’ I travel to New Orleans monthly as part of the on-going recovery effort and can say that this assertion is heart-breakingly false. I will name just a few of the many reasons that it is highly irresponsible to proclaim the city to be ‘back’. As of August 2007, two full years after Hurricane Katrina, only 40% of the students have returned to New Orleans’ schools, a full one-third of the pre-storm residents have not yet been able to return home, 45,000 Louisiana families still live in FEMA trailers which have now been demonstrated to be harmful to their health, and a recent study conducted by the New Orleans Health Department revealed that death rates of current and former New Orleans residents are 47% higher than they were before the storm. Rental prices have skyrocketed. Crime has surged. Schools are struggling. Many residents are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These continued hardships were lightly dismissed by the author of the article…To stand in the midst of the Lower Ninth Ward is to witness an incomprehensible level of destruction that has only just begun to be addressed…The remaining work, the remaining suffering, is immense…It is indeed true that travelers can and should visit New Orleans. They will find a lovely city with a warm welcome and much to enjoy. The city is perfectly ready to receive and entertain guests...[still] for many…life remains an overwhelming struggle and while many are facing that struggle with great courage and hope and determination, many others live in complete despair. You could honor all the survivors by being honest even while proclaiming that the city is open to visitors, you could also make it clear that the wounds of the city and all those who call her home are still very much in need of care.”

I offer this as a description of something like what the writer of Isaiah was facing. It may help us imagine something of what it must have been like for those folk, recently returned from exile, standing amid the ruins of their homeland. In such a setting, we, like them, or the citizens of New Orleans, might find ourselves crying out to God, “Why us? What have we done to deserve this? How can we rebuild from this rubble? How can we possibly move ahead? Where are you God?”

And perhaps, if we listen intently, we may hear, like the ancient prophet, the words of God echoing faintly in our ears, “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that did not call on my name. I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices…” (Isaiah 65:1-2). “Right here,” says God. “I am right here in the middle of your pain and suffering, your anxiety and despair. I am here with you and I am here for you. Look, I’m making all things new. For those who will turn to me, will take my outstretched hand and walk with me, there is so much good ahead.”

This is the word of One who takes delight in her creation, including her wayward children, who promises good and abundant life to those who will receive it and live it, in communion with her. It is God’s intention and desire, the prophet says, that all of creation be richly fulfilled as God made it to be. Walter Brueggemann says that “Human hope that awaits God’s generosity and extravagance is an act of expectation that flies in the face of every ideology of scarcity. Much human conflict is rooted in the conviction, born of greed and enacted in acquisitiveness, that there is not enough and one must seize what one can. Israel’s sense of human hope is grounded in Yahweh’s faithful intention of abundance, which liberates humans from the driving grip of scarcity in order that they begin to act, in hope, out of a conviction of abundance” (Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, pp. 482-3).

So, here we are once more in the season of thanksgiving and stewardship. Two weeks ago on Thursday, we heard missionary Daniel Chetti tell us about people who are trying to share good news and hope amidst the tensions and conflicts of the Middle East. Last Thursday night we heard Nevida Butler and Anne O’Leary from Ecumenical Hunger Program tell us about people living on the fringe of hope just across the freeway from us. We flip on our televisions or pick up our magazines to see people hungry for hope the whole world over. Will we turn our attention and our allegiance to the One who makes all things new? Will we take up the challenge to help build that world in which infants and old persons alike experience life as rich and fulfilling, in which good food and adequate shelter are universally available, in which there is satisfying work, fairly compensated for all, in which wolves and lambs and Israelis and Palestinians and the people of Iraq and Iran and the USA can cohabitate, in which the diets for lions and oxes and humans are all sustainably friendly to the earth, in which no one will hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain? Is it too much to hope for, to give our lives and our world back to the One who delights in our being and, indeed, makes all things new?