Life... For All

Life... For All--June 2, 2017

"On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
   a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
   of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
⁷ And he will destroy on this mountain
   the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
   the sheet that is spread over all nations;
⁸ he will swallow up death for ever.
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.
⁹ It will be said on that day,
   Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
   This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
   let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation."

[Isaiah 25:6-9]

One day, you and I will find ourselves gathered at a party--a big, fancy, boisterous dinner party--and, as we look around the table and all the faces gathered there, you and I will say to each other with a satisfied smile shared between us as we have the same thought at the same time these words: "At last... this is what we were waiting for."

This is what we have been waiting for all along, and we didn't even know it. 

This is what our hearts have been aching for, even when we didn't realize how wide the empty place inside us was that was missing it.

This is what will finally feel "right" in a world that so often feels so terribly wrong: the day when we are gathered at God's grand party for all peoples, and we will see none other than the Lord of all the universe stooping down to wipe the tears from the face of someone, perhaps someone from halfway around the world, and saying, "You are beloved."

One day you and I will find ourselves seated at a party at which the power of death will be cracked open and broken like a piñata, and we will realize in that moment as you and I catch one another's eye, that God's good news was always bigger and more beautiful than we ever even realized.

I can't help but think that God's good news was bigger than the first hearers of Isaiah 25 could have ever imagined.  There was something scandalous about the breadth of the vision the prophet dreamed.  Do you see it there?  Do you see it?  He dreams of a dinner party, a big ol' divine backyard cookout, and "all peoples" are there!  All peoples!  The religious consensus of the day for good loyal Jerusalem-dwelling citizens of Judah like Isaiah was to say, "God loves us...us who belong to this nation."  The official policy of both the king's government and the temple's religious spokesmen was: "We are the chosen people of God... and only us.  We matter most, and we matter first... because we are chosen."  By definition, then, in the official policy of the day, everybody else just must not matter as much to God, because they were all outside the boundaries, outside the right religious structures, outside the right society.  All of that is to say, back in Isaiah's day, it would have been easy to get a job as an officially government-sanctioned prophet if your message was "Judah first--God is throwing a special party just for us." 

But... that's not what Isaiah saw, is it?  Isaiah dreams this amazing banquet, and the drying of tears, and the end of fear, and the destruction of death... and as God breathed the vision over Isaiah, the old prophet saw it was for "all peoples."  The plural there is important.  In fact, it is earth-shaking.  It is earth-encompassing, as a matter of fact.  If Isaiah had just said, "God is making a feast for all people," you could make the case that he MUST have meant "all people... within his country of Judah" or even "all people from the family tree of Israel" perhaps.  You could make a case for saying Isaiah must have been in lock-step with the official party that said, "God cares only about us chosen people within the boundaries of Judah."  Except that Isaiah does not allow that reading, does he?  He doesn't say "a feast for all people" but "a feast for all PEOPLES"!  Peoples--as in many, varied, different GROUPS of people.  Not just one nation but all nations.  Not just one ethnicity or language, but all.  Isaiah had a vision of a God who crossed all those lines that the religious so-and-sos had put up, and who went ahead and invited ALL PEOPLES to the resurrection party.

Why would God do such a think, in the face of all the official proclamations of "Judah first" coming out of Jerusalem?  Well, in all honesty, because death is a problem plaguing ALL humanity, indeed, all of creation!  Death is not limited to "just the chosen people" or "just the people who believe correct facts about the God of Israel" or "just the people who worship God correctly in the temple," but every mother's son, and every father's daughter.  All means all.  All peoples live under the threat of destruction from death... and therefore, God's concern is for ALL peoples.  Every nation.  Every group.  Every language. 

That had to have gotten Isaiah at best laughed out of the room and at worst accused of blasphemy or treason.  Isaiah deliberately runs against the prevailing notion of his day that God put one group of people first, or that God's provision and saving was for one nation first.  And by offering this vision, Isaiah was deliberately pushing those who heard him to think bigger than just "Judah first" or "me and my group first."  Isaiah tells them, in effect, "One day, we'll all be at the party... and we won't realize until we're there that the party wouldn't have been complete unless everybody is there." And in holding out that vision, Isaiah dares us to see the world and our lives NOW in the same terms--to know that God's love reaches out to ALL peoples, and that breaks open the old "me and my group first" thinking that we keep falling for, time and time again.

Look, here's the long and the short of it: if we believe, as we say we do, that we care about what God has spoken in the pages of Scripture and the visions of those ancient prophets like Isaiah... then we are going to actually have to listen to what they say and how they say it.  And if we care, as we say we do, about the news of God's defeat of death, as we have been shown that victory in Jesus' empty tomb, then we are going to have to listen to the way the Scriptures actually want us to see that victory: as a gift for all peoples, not just me and my group.

So, on this day, we live in hope.  We live leaning into the promise that one day you and I will find ourselves seated across from one another at the table, and at long last we will get to see the end of death, the completion of our resurrection longing, and the nail-marked hands of Jesus wiping away whatever tears remain.  And as we picture that table, look around at the faces who are gathered there--notice that, as Isaiah dares to dream it, everybody is there.  People you have known in this life, people you and I will meet for the first time there on that day. People who speak your language, and people who speak languages you have never heard of.  People like you, and people who are very different.  And they will all have been invited there by none other than the living God, who says, "All peoples are invited to my party.  All peoples will be freed from the grip of death."

When you and I catch each other on that day, out of the corner of our eyes, would you do me a favor?  Would you point my attention to that big, innumerable crowd there, both the faces we have known and loved and the ones gathered from all around the world whom we meet on that day? And there at that table, say to me, just like prophet dreamed of it, "See--this is what we were waiting for."

Lord Jesus, give us the immense vision you gave to your prophets, the deep longing for your resurrection promise to be made real, and the length of commitment to live for your vision and love for all people all our lives long.