"On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all people, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken." [Isaiah 25:6-8]
In the end, there will be a party.
And boy, oh boy, everybody will be there. At least to hear the prophet Isaiah tell it, all peoples will be gathered together in God's great party. That, by itself, really is saying something. In the end, all tribes and nations and cultures--people who look like you, and people who do not, people who have much more money than you, and people who have much less, people who cover their heads and people who do not, people who think and vote like you and people who believe quite differently--all these many peoples will be drawn to the light where God is for a never-ending celebration.
And then, as entertainment for this fantastic feast, God will destroy death forever, like a piñata being whacked open with a baseball bat once and for all. In the end, all peoples will find a place at the big, big table in the house of God forever.
And all of that is because the real enemy, the real opponent to be defeated, is death itself. It always has been. Not another nation, not another tribe, not another sect, not another culture. The prophet Isaiah sees that the real threat against whom God takes up arms... is death. Of course, those arms God "takes up" are the ones that got nailed to a cross.
It's interesting--throughout the winding story of Israel in the Old Testament, God's people regularly found themselves at odds with lots of other nations and groups, from Philistines and Canaanites to the Assyrians and Babylonians, and plenty of others in between. And in those moments, it was often the official position of the priests and kings at the time to say, "God is on our side, and God is against those other people." That is, after all, usually how we humans do things--we draw lines between "us" and "them," and then we declare that God must be with "us." And when our "side" succeeds, or gets their way, or has some kind of positive thing happen, we are quick to assign that to being "God's will." But when they over on "the other side" have the good turn of events on any given day, we are quick to ascribe it to evil powers scheming and tricking.
But even though our sinful tendency is to co-opt God for "our side," there is this strange, recurring minority voice from within the Scriptures themselves--the voice of the prophets. It was in voices like Isaiah's, who could see God's hand raising up foreign powers as divine instruments, rather than seeing them as "the enemy." It was the minority report of the prophets that said God's ultimate plan was not merely to love, save, and redeem one nation or people group, but to love all the world. It was that same prophetic voice here in what we call Isaiah 25, where God names the real enemy: death. Death is "the shroud cast over all nations." Death is the threat that makes all people afraid. Death is the power that thinks it runs the show because, well, because it is death. And the prophet here dares to say, not simply that God is going to rescue one group from the grip of death, but all peoples. We don't get to say that "those people" are the enemy, because God has redrawn all of the lines, and God has put "all people" together on God's side, and left death alone as the opponent.
When Christians talk about the cross as our victory, we need to be clear about what that does and does not mean. We are used to victories being won against... someone. The names of the bad guys change--before this present generation's conflict against terrorists, there was the Cold War's unending fight against communists, and before that it was against fascists. But whoever the enemy was, we were always picture our conflict being against "those guys," the bad guys. What makes this scene from Isaiah 25 so, so different is that God's victory is not a battlefield conflict against an enemy nation or even an ideology--it is a triumph over death itself. Death has always had the power to make us afraid, and from being afraid we become self-centered about our own preservation, and from there we find ourselves cowering to the powers of the day who threaten others with death. But God's design is to defeat death at its own game, and God rightly knows how to see who the real enemy has always been. Once you take away the fear death has always inspired in us, we are free from the power of those who try to use death, or the threat of pain or suffering, to get their way.
If Isaiah is right, and the real enemy all along has been death, then that will force us to see that we share a "side" with all people. Everyone in all creation, in all of history, who has ever feared or faced death (which is all of us), we are all together with God having gathered us to the party. So the victory Jesus has won is one that binds all humanity together in him, and exposes the real enemy has been death itself all along.
Today, let's be clear about who the "enemy" is, and how we can so easily be swept up in mislabeling someone else as the enemy, when in truth, the real adversary--death--has been taken on head on in Jesus' death and resurrection.
But even though our sinful tendency is to co-opt God for "our side," there is this strange, recurring minority voice from within the Scriptures themselves--the voice of the prophets. It was in voices like Isaiah's, who could see God's hand raising up foreign powers as divine instruments, rather than seeing them as "the enemy." It was the minority report of the prophets that said God's ultimate plan was not merely to love, save, and redeem one nation or people group, but to love all the world. It was that same prophetic voice here in what we call Isaiah 25, where God names the real enemy: death. Death is "the shroud cast over all nations." Death is the threat that makes all people afraid. Death is the power that thinks it runs the show because, well, because it is death. And the prophet here dares to say, not simply that God is going to rescue one group from the grip of death, but all peoples. We don't get to say that "those people" are the enemy, because God has redrawn all of the lines, and God has put "all people" together on God's side, and left death alone as the opponent.
When Christians talk about the cross as our victory, we need to be clear about what that does and does not mean. We are used to victories being won against... someone. The names of the bad guys change--before this present generation's conflict against terrorists, there was the Cold War's unending fight against communists, and before that it was against fascists. But whoever the enemy was, we were always picture our conflict being against "those guys," the bad guys. What makes this scene from Isaiah 25 so, so different is that God's victory is not a battlefield conflict against an enemy nation or even an ideology--it is a triumph over death itself. Death has always had the power to make us afraid, and from being afraid we become self-centered about our own preservation, and from there we find ourselves cowering to the powers of the day who threaten others with death. But God's design is to defeat death at its own game, and God rightly knows how to see who the real enemy has always been. Once you take away the fear death has always inspired in us, we are free from the power of those who try to use death, or the threat of pain or suffering, to get their way.
If Isaiah is right, and the real enemy all along has been death, then that will force us to see that we share a "side" with all people. Everyone in all creation, in all of history, who has ever feared or faced death (which is all of us), we are all together with God having gathered us to the party. So the victory Jesus has won is one that binds all humanity together in him, and exposes the real enemy has been death itself all along.
Today, let's be clear about who the "enemy" is, and how we can so easily be swept up in mislabeling someone else as the enemy, when in truth, the real adversary--death--has been taken on head on in Jesus' death and resurrection.
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