The Scandalous Buffet--June 5, 2020

The Scandalous Buffet--June 5, 2020

"On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples 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 peoples,

    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.

 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]

This is where all the universe is headed.  This is how the-world-as-we-know-it ends: neither with a bang, nor a whimper (as T. S. Eliot guessed), but with a dinner party.  And everybody's there. 

What a vision, right?   Sometimes, it surprises me that a vision this scandalously joyful and universal made it into the Bible.  It sounds just so... all-encompassing, so unconditional, so recklessly, lavishly graceful.  And I'm sure there were folks in Isaiah's day who couldn't fathom that God would make such a widely-offered promise.  I'm sure there were folks who liked the idea of God throwing a big ol' celebration banquet one day, and who liked the day of "their group" getting to be the winners, but they could not dare to imagine that God was really going to invite--<gasp!>--"all peoples" to the party, too!

And that's just the thing: Isaiah underscores here that the guest list isn't just Jewish people, or citizens of Israel, or descendants of Abraham, or people who all spoke the same language or even came from the same culture or prayed the same way.  Isaiah dares to dream that there would be a day when God would gather "all peoples"--that is, every nation, every tribe, every language, every shade of skin color, every race, and every culture--to a party where the menu was fantastic, and where the entertainment for the evening was to see God swallow up death forever.  Who knew God had a hidden talent, like those sword-swallowing performers at magic shows and circuses?  The scene Isaiah describes here is utter celebration, utter joy, utter jubilation, and everybody's there.

It really is no wonder that prophets like Isaiah were regularly run out of town, pelted with rocks, or executed by the king for speaking against the government's policies.  This scene that the Spirit whispered to Isaiah smashed apart any notion of superiority that Isaiah's hearers might have held about their group.  And, wow, that's controversial stuff.  It seems like every human culture wrestles with some version of "we're better than they are," or "All that matters is us first, and who cares about anybody else?" or "We don't have to care about THOSE PEOPLE, because they aren't us."  Surely that was an issue in Isaiah's day and time.  Even though Israel was meant to understand itself as a light of hope to other nations, at its worst and sloppiest moments, it let that become a self-serving sense of supremacy--as though all other peoples or nations were less-than, not-good-enough, or inferior in God's eyes.  God had intended them to hear the message that they were "chosen" as a gift of grace--that they were chosen, not because they were "great" but exactly because they had been enslaved, oppressed, and were NOT in power.  But over enough time, under the influence of Respectable Religion, that sometimes came to sound like, "We must be better than everyone else, and God is on our side, because God is our possession!" rather than, "What a gift of mercy that God has been kind to us even in our smallness and weakness--I wonder what that says about the character of God!"

For Isaiah to hold up this vision where people from all corners of creation would find an equal welcome, where all would be freed from the power of death, and where all would find the very hand of God wiping away the tears from their faces, well, that kind of picture just about brings tears to my eyes right now thinking about it.

Dear ones, this is the sort of vision the Scriptures actually give us about where the world's story is headed.  This kind of vision, that is recklessly graceful, scandalously inclusive, and outrageously good, this is actually what prophets like Isaiah believed was in store for all the world--people from every nation, every culture, every race, gathered by God... because all are beloved.  Somewhere along the way we traded that compelling vision for cliche jokes about waiting at the pearly gates bargaining with St. Peter about being good enough to be let into the club, or the terrible (both in writing and in theology) notions of "rapture" from novels about being "left behind" (which, again, is not, not, NOT what the Scriptures actually teach--we can have that conversation another time).  But instead of all those low-quality counterfeits, the Spirit has breathed us this kind of a vision and has been holding it out for us to see and cling to for something like twenty-seven centuries now.  This is where the world's history is headed: a scandalously large banquet with room for everybody and with a universal welcome.  If it upsets us to hear such a wide and graceful vision, we should take it up with the God who makes such a sweeping and beautiful promise.  But here it is, and right on the printed page of your Bibles, too.

There is, I suppose, however, one catch to all of this.  It's not a line of fine-print with a list of good deeds you have to do in order to earn your invitation to this party. It's not an asterisk with a footnote buried at the end of the passage saying, "Just kidding, this is really only for ONE kind of people in the end." And it's not that the God who speaks is prone to exaggerate or write checks he can't cash.  No, sisters and brothers, this promise really is real... and it really is just that big and wide and free.

The catch is this: once you let your hopes be stretched wide like this, for a day when all peoples will be gathered at God's death-destroying, sorrow-stopping grand buffet, all of a sudden, you will become dissatisfied with any lesser or smaller vision that only includes "your group," or "your nation" or "your race" or "your kind of people."  Once we hear Isaiah's vision and can let it fill us with hope, we will never be able to be able to find hope any longer in the voices and systems and policies that only care about some... even if the "some" that benefit includes you.  Once we take Isaiah's vision of God's restaurant at the end of the universe (to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams) to heart, we will never be able to accept the mindset that says, "Me and My Group First," because we know... there is a day coming when all peoples will be gathered at God's table, by God's own invitation.

And from there, we will no longer be OK with situations that treat some as "less than" because they don't fit the cookie-cutter.  And we will no longer think it is acceptable to make fun of someone or belittle them because they are different, or because of their language, their appearance, or their clothing.  And we will no longer be able to turn away from the long-ingrained patterns and systems, maybe even ones we grew up with and were taught were "just how it is," that teach us to fear and to hate and to look down on others.  If we really believe what Isaiah says about God's scandalous buffet for all peoples, we will find ourselves speaking up against all the lesser visions, the cruel jokes, and the deep-seated prejudices we have all been taking in all our lives like it's in the atmosphere around us.  Believing Isaiah will mean we can't keep letting those things be thought of as "OK."  They are too small a vision, and they are too stingy a hope to give our lives to.

So today, just let Isaiah's provocative vision sit with you.  Let it percolate over you and through you, and let God's Word do its good, holy, transformative work on you... and I'll do the same from where I am.  Let this prophetic word make us permanently dissatisfied with anything less than a world where all are beloved, and where all find that there has been a place set for them at the table in the very house of God.

Lord God, keep speaking to us your expansive vision, and let it give us a hope so wide we will no longer be able to live with anything less than your abundant grace for all peoples.