Living Into God’s Reality

Isaiah 35: 4-7 & James 2: 14-17

Roger Lynn

September 9, 2018

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We live in a world that is filled with images of violence and hatred. It can be frightening to live here sometimes. This week is the seventeenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and while the specific attention to that day has diminished over the years, there is still lots of fearful talk floating around about the dangers we face in the world. There is frequently lots of talk about justice, but when we listen closely it often sounds a lot like vengeance and retribution. It sounded a lot like making sure that someone gets punished in response to our pain.

The people in Isaiah’s day who were living in Babylonian exile also knew about pain. They had been ripped from family and home and faith, and subjected to domination by a foreign power. They wanted justice, and the justice they wanted looked a lot like vengeance. They wanted someone else to suffer for their pain. And so Isaiah writes to this exile community and he speaks about God’s vengeance. “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. God will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. God will come and save you.’ ” (Isaiah 35:4) I can almost hear the exiles’ response to these words. “It’s about time! I can hardly wait for God to let these awful, godless Babylonians have it! Let the punishing begin.” And then comes the very next verse. The writer of Isaiah is brilliant. He has sucked us in by using words like vengeance and “terrible recompense.” And then he delivers the death blow to that entire way of thinking by turning everything completely upside down. You want vengeance, says Isaiah. Well, here’s what God’s vengeance looks like. “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.” (Isaiah 35:5-7) That is the world of God’s reality. That is what it looks like when God has God’s way in the world!

We don’t always want to hear such words. They force us to reconsider pretty much everything we’ve ever been taught about how the world works. We’ve been told, in so many countless and various ways, that there are winners and losers, good people and evil people. And we’ve been told, in so many countless and various ways, that God chooses sides – rewarding the winners and punishing the losers. And then along comes Isaiah, joining the ranks of various other people of faith both inside and outside the Bible, before him and after him, reminding us that life as God intends it, life as it was created to be lived, life as it really, truly is deep down in the core of things, is life where the barriers fall away. It is life where the things which seem impossible to overcome can be transformed. It is life where the things which seem to be simply a part of the givenness of the world – blindness, deafness, barren wastelands – do not have to remain as they are. Of course Isaiah is using metaphorical language, but look where that language is pointing us! Life can be different than it is. We need not despair. The impossible is possible. We can begin living into God’s reality.

So, how does that happen? Where do we begin? Well, several hundred years after Isaiah, several decades after Jesus, a letter began circulating through the early Church. It came to be known as The Letter of James. Down through the years it has received mixed reviews. Martin Luther is said to have described it as a book of straw. Others have found more value in it. One of the central messages contained in this relatively brief epistle is that faith – deeply rooted, genuine faith – is about more than just talk. It is more than just an intellectual exercise. For faith to be real, James says, it’s got to be backed up with action. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:14-17) How does God’s reality become manifest in the world? How do the words of Isaiah 35 break loose from the page and become a description of what is instead of just what might be? James would tell us that it happens when we accept our God-given place in the world as God’s hands and feet and voice. James would tell us that it happens when our faith becomes incarnate in us. 

The famous Jewish Rabbi, Hillel, put it this way – “If I am not for myself, who am I? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” It is time to take stock. It is time for those of us who make the bold claim of being people of faith to look at the world through our eyes of faith and ask what needs to be done. Not with the expectation that someone else somewhere else will do it. Not with the expectation that God will somehow magically get it done. But with the expectation that we who have been called the Body of Christ will be empowered and emboldened by nothing less than God’s own Spirit to step up and do what needs to be done. Anne Frank put it this way – “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

So what does that look like? I don’t know for sure, but I’m beginning to get some ideas. I do know that it won’t be abstract. It won’t be general. It won’t be obscure. It will be something we can get our hands on and sink our teeth into. It will be something we can see and touch and do something about. It will be about us, in this place in the world in this moment in history. Where is the blindness, and deafness, and paralysis in our world right now? Where are the barren wastelands crying out to be refreshed and renewed? What are the needs you see? What is it that calls out to you and excites your deep passion? Let us ask the questions together. Let us seek the path together. Let us truly live into God’s reality, for ourselves and for the world. And let us begin right here and right now. Amen.