Nobody's Off the Hook

Nobody's Off the Hook--July 8, 2016

“Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have posted sentinels; all day and all night they shall never be silent. You who remind the LORD, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned throughout the earth.” [Isaiah 62:6-7]

This is God--yes, the Almighty Maker of the universe, of all that is and was and ever will be--this is God, daring us to hold God accountable.... for all that is wrong in the universe.

This is God--who is the very Ground of Being, who is "the Truth"--summoning us to tell the truth back at God, at God's very own self, when things are not the way they are supposed to be.

This is God--it almost makes our feeble attempts to talk about the divine fall apart into meaninglessness here, doesn't it?--actually inviting human beings to pester and cajole and bang on the door until things are set right.

In the setting of what we call Isaiah 62, the context was the smoldering ruins of the city of Jerusalem and the slow beginnings to rebuild what had been lost after the exile.  And while the people set to work putting things back together, at the same time, God takes responsibility and says, "Don't let me off the hook until things are put right.  I will do it--but don't let me off the hook.   And if you have to keep bringing it in my face, then keep bringing it in my face."

You have to imagine some pious first-time hearers of these words wondering to themselves, "This is a joke, right?  Or a test?  I'm not supposed to accuse God of dropping the ball or being behind on the divine to-do list!" It feels almost arrogant, or entitled, doesn't it, to take these verses seriously. Really?  We are supposed to demand that God do something? We are supposed to give God no rest?  That doesn't seem very polite or religious.

And it's not.  But God never wanted "polite."  And by most popular definitions of the word, God is not really terribly interested in "religion," either.  God is after "real," and we are all too often a bunch of phonies who want to sweep unpleasant or uncomfortable things under the nearest rug.  If yesterday, our conversation was about when God speaks up and speaks the truth to us when we need to hear it, then today is about God's open invitation to us to speak the truth back to God, even when it means angry prayers back to God that begin, "Why did you let...?" or "Why aren't things the way they are supposed to be?" or "Why did you let him die?"

So in our day, in our times, the ongoing invitation of these words from the book of Isaiah is for us never to give up on truth-telling even with God.  Even though, of course, God knows.  Even though, of course, nothing we say is "news" to God.  But sometimes the right, most real, most honest, thing we can do when we see the world around us is so terribly broken, is to bring that anger, that rage, that teetering on the edge of despair, right into God's face. 

When it seems like injustice has won the day, rather than giving into violence or fear ourselves, the living God invites us to direct our cries for justice back to God.

When we realize we are getting comfortably numb to the recurring news stories we have seen play out in city after city after city and need to be awakened back up ourselves, the living God says, "Don't you give up while you are holding ME accountable to putting things right." 

When I tremble with fear to think that my son, my son, whose four-year-old brown hands are two of the most beautiful things God ever made, is growing up in a world in which I cannot keep him safe, and in which not even keeping those hands raised and on his head will guarantee his safety, either, and all I have to bring to God is anger and sadness and a lack of words, the living God says to me, "Don't you let up--bring all the anger and sadness and dumbfoundedness to me, and don't let me off the hook. This is my world, my creation, and I will not abdicate responsibility for putting things right and making all things new."

When we do not want to acknowledge that we--yes, you and I--are complicit in the way things are, but at some level still ache for things to be set right, where no more innocents are murdered, no bellies go hungry, nobody gets beaten up for being different, and nobody has to sleep under a bridge in the winter.... God pushes us to bring our prayers right back in God's face and insist, "Lord, have mercy." 

Maybe part of why God insists on not being let off the hook is so that we will no longer be numb to the injustices of the world that ought to break our hearts and fill us with anger.  Maybe it's like that wise, challenging prayer of Robert Pierce's (the founder of World Vision), which goes, "Lord, let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God."  Maybe God pushes us into that by saying, "The things that are yet wrong in the world--keep bringing those needs and situations in my face... so that you will not be able to ignore them anymore or change the channel on them when they become uncomfortable for you to see."

We woke up into another day of a broken world.  People you know are dying with terminal diagnoses today.  People you don't know were shot yesterday without provocation.  People you may meet tomorrow, or the next day, or next year, may have just lost their homes in floods and only escaped with their lives because of dedicated first-responders.  It is so, so, so easy--so damned easy, and I mean that in the most literal sense that is an easiness that warrants utter condemnation--to ignore all that brokenness because it is too difficult to admit it is there, and yet more difficult to confess that we are a part of the problem, because we are all heart-deep in sin.  It is so damnably easy instead to assume that "they" are the problem, and just spend our anger and outrage lobbing angry posts at "them" on Facebook, or to moan and complain about whatever tiny inconveniences I have had to deal with today. 

These powerful words from Isaiah's book do not allow us to go down that easy road.  "Don't let me off the hook," says the Almighty, "but you don't get to be off the hook, either, then, in facing all that is broken when you would rather look the other away." Bringing the truth in God's face forces us to see the truth, too, rather than ignoring it behind a screen.

None of us is off the hook.  Amazingly, by God's own word, not even God.

Lord have mercy.  We have no other words.  Lord have mercy.