The Rule-Breaking God

The Rule-Breaking God--February 13, 2019

"Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, 

     'The LORD will surely separate me from his people';

 and do not let the eunuch say, 

     'I am just a dry tree.'

 For 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, in my house and within my walls,

     a monument and a name

     better than sons and daughters;

 I will give them an everlasting name

     that shall not be cut off.

And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD

     to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,

     and to be his servants,

all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,

    and hold fast my covenant--

 these I will bring to my holy mountain,

     and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

 their burnt offerings and their sacrifices 

     will be accepted on my altar;

 for my house shall be called a house of prayer

     for all peoples.

 Thus says the Lord GOD,

     who gathers the outcasts of Israel,

 I will gather others to them, 

     besides those already gathered." [Isaiah 56:3-8]

The rules were clear... until God started messing with them.

I mean it--there were very clear, like painfully clear, rules and commandments and laws within Israel's Scriptures, about who was allowed to belong... and who was not.  And the rules went something like this:  foreigners were dangerous troublemakers who would surely lead the people astray to worship idols, and anybody whose reproductive system and organs had any deviations from the standard models were not allowed to belong among the assembly of God's people.  There are commandments about staying away from foreigners and eunuchs right there in the Scriptures, and there are stories about when some of the Israelites tried to enforce those rules, even times when certain religious leaders making people leave their foreign-born spouses in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah when the people had come back from exile.  

Are we clear on this? There were commandments in the Law that said, very clearly, "Foreigners don't really belong, and anyone whose body doesn't fit our expectations for gender and the possibility of reproducing, you are definitely out of the club."  And those rules were a part of Israel's Holy Scriptures--words that were treated with the authority and weight of God.

And then along comes this passage from the prophet Isaiah, who says (on behalf of the same God), "God says they are in.  Foreigners, eunuchs, "those people," outsiders, people on the margins, people who are "other"... they can belong, too, and just as genuinely, just as truly, as anybody else who calls on the name of the living God.

In other words, the rules were clear that these people were unacceptable... until no less than God comes along to say, "I am now letting them in. I declare them acceptable.  And I have the power and authority to make that call.  They are in now."

What other conclusion can we draw but that God loves people--even people we regard as "other"--more than God loves rules... even if the rules were declared to be coming from God in the first place?  What other conclusion can we draw but that the living God always reserves the right to expand the family, so to speak, to widen the circle, and to take down the barriers and boundaries that had previously been set up in the name of religion and piety?  In other words, what other conclusion can we draw but that God reserves the right to change what we had assumed were fixed rules, solid and unchanging like steel beams and hardened concrete?

I know--this can be a scary thought.  It can feel like the pulling of a thread.  I know the worry--that if we start suggesting that God's rules can change, then everything will be up for grabs! I know the fear--that if someone suggests that foreigners and eunuchs used to be forbidden, but now are welcomed in as foreigners and eunuchs, then all of a sudden anything goes and chaos and wickedness will run amok. I know the anxiety--I have heard and spoken it myself over the years--that once you start suggesting that the rules can change, you are heading down a slippery slope or setting yourself up for a slow boil until you are cooked without knowing it.  

But here's the thing we can't ignore--at least I can't ignore it anymore: here in Isaiah 56 (as one example among many), it is apparently the same voice of God who is declaring the change, who is widening the circle, who is reaching out beyond the boundaries.  That's the thing about this passage from the book of Isaiah--it doesn't say, "God made all these strict rules about who is and is not allowed in, but I don't like them, so I'm going to change them whether God likes it or not!" No, just the opposite: it is God who is speaking and declaring the change, even when the first listeners of these words surely would have squirmed and scowled and gotten upset when they heard them.  They had a solid, unchanging system, for crying out loud!  They had immovable, fixed answers and boundaries and lines, gosh-darn-it!  They had the peace of mind of having God and God's ways all figured out--and now the real living voice of God comes along through some upstart prophet and starts saying that God is doing a new thing?  That had to be at best a shock to their system, and at worst a crisis of faith.  No wonder the prophets had a habit of getting run out of town or killed--they keep on insisting that God reserves the right to do new things that defy our old categories!

So maybe here's the question for the day... and for every day: could we dare to allow the rules to change, if God is the one doing the changing?  Could we allow the possibility that God can do what God very well sure seems to be doing here in Isaiah 56?  Could we dare to see that the Respectable Religious Crowd of Isaiah's day would have argued, "But we have commandments that say THOSE people do not belong! Are you saying you are overturning GOD's commandments?" And could we dare to see, too, that the prophet's answer back was basically, "Hey, this isn't MY idea--GOD is the One who has declared the boundaries are opening!"  Even if God has to drag us kicking and screaming sometimes, God will carry us beyond the fixed points we thought were uncrossable.  If it were just our decision to try and overrule God, we would surely fail and be headed in the wrong direction.  But if God were the one saying, "I know the old rule--the rule ascribed to me--said that foreigners and eunuchs couldn't belong, and now I'm saying a new thing!" would we let God speak... or would we insist that God is not allowed to do something we cannot understand?

"Well, how could God ever contradict himself?" comes the nagging question in our heads--I know, because that has been my question before, too.  "How could God say the sky is blue today and then just up and change it to red tomorrow?"  And I know that kind of question can be very upsetting, especially because we expect our faith to be a source of security--which we often assume means never changing--and it sounds like Isaiah 56 here is pulling at a thread that could make all of our theological systems unravel.  But maybe--just maybe--God loves people who have been left at the margins move than God loves our carefully calibrated religious systems and theological propositions.  No, more than maybe: definitely.  And maybe it's not so scary to pose the question, "Could God just say the sky is blue today and change it to red tomorrow?" when we actually look up and see that the sky itself is clear, but that it indeed does change from blue to red to orange to yellow to purple (and to gray and black and white, too, mind you) on a daily basis.  Our perspective changes, and the light that hits our eyes changes, to be sure, but the sky was never actually permanently blue, even though that's what we were all taught in kindergarten.

So maybe this is less about the anxious fear that God might contradict something else God said, and maybe more about seeing a constant through-line in all the Scriptures, of an ever-widening love, an ever-increasing family, an ever-growing understanding of how the Source of all Life gathers in people from the center, and the middle, and the margins.  And maybe this is about daring to believe in a God who is bigger than our conceptions, even if that means from time to time it looks, from our perspective, like God is changing the rules we thought were carved in stone.

And the God we meet in the Scriptures, Old Testament and New alike, sure seems to have a way of pulling rank for the sake of including the people we had written off as lost causes, undesirables, and unacceptable.  The living God sure seems to choose to love the very people we label as "other," even when we have labeled them that way for seemingly religious reasons.

We can either get fussy and nervous about such a God and such a love, or we can let the beauty of that grace move us to joyful tears.

I am not always very good at letting God be as big and gracious as God insists on being, but today, I will choose to try it.  I will choose the love that surprises me to tears.  I can, to borrow a phrase, do no other.

Lord God, do as you will--include those we had written off, turned away, or kept out--and stretch us beyond the boundaries we had set up when you do.