Isaiah 56 (The 4th Sunday in Creationtide)
1.
In the fragile community this prophet loves, in an environment of political extremism he abhors, in a cultural ecosystem where finger-wagging passes for spiritual insight and wisdom; there are moralists out and about who would blame every social ill on immigrants in the streets, or so-called sexual ‘deviants’ among them. (That would be their phrase, not mine.) Even in the name of religion, in the name of God, they invoke a thousand curses on bleeding hearts and open doors.
And the prophet hears all of this, around town, and in the temple precincts, around the edges of religious life, ripping through civic debate. Spreading like a plague. And it just breaks his heart. The immigrants are doing this to us. The foreigners have corrupted our way of life. The eunuchs pervert our purity and our faith.
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| Olive Harvest, Palestine |
And by the way, let’s not be fooled. This reference to ‘eunuchs’ in Isaiah 56 is a stand-in for any gender identity or sexual orientation that doesn’t conform to the moralizing fundamentalism (or political opportunism) of the day. This prophet is fully aware that there are priests, pastors and pundits insisting that God would banish foreigners, immigrants, so-called ‘illegals’ from the community of faith, once and for all. And he’s equally aware that those same priests, pastors and pundits would permanently exclude queer folk from economies of care, networks of support, the body politic itself.
But this prophet—the third voice in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah—he’s onto them. And he stands in Israel’s tradition of radical freedom and human liberation and Godly interdependence. A covenantal commitment to shared prosperity in a land of plenty. An ethic of hospitality. The moralizers may be peddling deportation and humiliation as social policy, but he’ll have none if it!
“Thus says the Lord.” The four words that signal the most urgent messages, the most pressing poetry in the Hebrew prophetic tradition. “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 a monument better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off… This is one of these most radical, and one of these most beautiful, and (let’s be honest) one of the most often ignored biblical imperatives in all of scripture. What matters to God isn’t a particular sexual orientation or a particular gender identity—because there are many, and they’re all godly; what matters to God is keeping the sabbath, holding fast to the covenant of compassion, choosing the things that honor God and honor life. Queer, straight, nonbinary, transgender, nonconforming in gender, any gender at all: the point is keeping the sabbath, loving God and treating one another right.
And the immigrants who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to the Holy One, to love the name of the Lord, all who keep my sabbath, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer… “Thus says the Lord.” Not only are immigrants welcome in God’s beloved community, not only included: immigrants are essential to God’s vision of a holy mountain, an economy of grace, a joyful house of prayer.
But I don’t have to tell you all that. There is no beloved community with immigrants and eunuchs. There is no beloved community without an open and affirming spirit.
2.
And here’s the thing. The key instruction here is this defining injunction, this defining biblical commandment to keep the sabbath. To keep God’s sabbath. It sounds old, antique even, and maybe even woefully impractical in our 21st century environment. But ask your observant Jewish friends. It is central, critical, indispensable to the Godly practice of God’s people. Always has been and always will be. And here’s why.
(And, yes, I know that the old Genesis story is a myth; but it’s a myth with a purpose. And we dismiss that purpose, I believe, at our own peril.) As God is satisfied with creation, and delighted in it; as God calls us simply to tend it, bless it, share it; so shall we keep the sabbath in remembrance of all that’s provided in grace. So shall we practice gratitude and restraint. As with Israel, so with the church. The heart and soul of biblical faith, you see, is the fertility of creation, the abundance of it all, and our grateful response. Which is economic justice. Which is generous sharing. Which is mutual aid. Which is the calling, the vocation of every beloved community.
Keeping the sabbath, you see, is not just a quaint way to rest a little so that we can gear up for another frenzied work week. In fact, it is exactly not that. Keeping the sabbath is instead about radical trust, grateful faith and a life deeply planted in the rhythms of creation and provisions of God. In a creation abundant and resplendent and designed for tending and sharing. “All will be well,” said the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich, “and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Keeping the sabbath is a practice of economic restraint, disciplined by valleys and watersheds that provide more than we need, but require our care and devotion; it’s a practice of endless gratitude for the Creator whose loving hand is always reaching for ours in stewardship and partnership. “All will be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Keeping the sabbath—and not some sort of twisted purity code—is the essential practice of biblical faith and ethics.
The prophet, then, insists that all God’s people—the whole, wild, wonderful, weird mix of us—all God’s people are joined not by some orthodox religious belief (or purity code), but by a shared praxis of sabbath keeping. The fundamental urgency of our time is not the exclusion of immigrants or eunuchs, but the inclusion of one and all in a Great Economy of mutual aid, cooperative well-being and creation care. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God. Sometimes we call it the Commonwealth of Peace and Justice. Wendell Berry and some of his friends are now calling it the Great Economy. God’s Great Economy. A world of enough, lands of plenty, seasons of fertility: a creation shimmering with grace, aching only to be shared, offering itself to those who would learn to share it generously, bless it gladly and extend its joys and promises to all earth’s inhabitants.
My teacher Ched Myers says that the “divine command to keep Sabbath lies at the root of every principle of social and economic justice in Torah.” These include returning arable lands to families who’ve lost livelihood and sovereignty to crushing systems of debt and oppression. And collaborative repair when economic policy privileges the powerful at the expense of widows, orphans and migrants. The divine command to keep Sabbath lies at the root of every principle of social and economic justice in Torah. We, then, are God’s Great Economy. On earth as in heaven.
3.
So this is how we bring this four-week season of Creationtide full circle. We cannot and we will not leave creation behind. When we commit to keeping the Sabbath (symbolically and theologically, at least), we invite God’s light, God’s grace, God’s promise to shine upon the very pattern and substance of our days. When we commit to “creating hope together” (and collective responsibility through stewardship), we celebrate the abundance which is our birthright, but not just ours—the sweet and loving promise God makes to all human communities, all lands and watersheds, and all generations. God’s Great Economy. On earth as it is in heaven.
If God’s eye is on the sparrow, and on the flitting hummingbird, and on the soaring pelican; if all good gifts around us come from heaven above; if Love is the key signature of every song the universe sings; if Jesus came to be among us that all might have abundant life—if this is our faith, my friends, we can only celebrate such grace in receiving it all with wonder and sharing it all with gratitude. And this is our calling and our pleasure in this place. Choirs of stirring poetry and music. Galleries of homegrown art and inspiration. Ministries of care and hospitality. Children learning to love one another and make change in the world. Wonder and gratitude. Creating hope together.
And this will be our testimony to the One whose mystery makes the sun to rise, and the tectonic plates to shift, and the seedlings to grow, and the forests to breathe, and the caterpillars to shed their casings and fly into the great beyond like a thousand resurrections. You and I, keeping the sabbath. You and I, giving thanks. You and I, embracing God’s Great Economy.
Amen and Ashe.
