Seeing the Overlooked--January 19, 2023

Seeing the Overlooked--January 19, 2023

"There will be no gloom for those who were in anguish. In the former time [the Lord] brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he will make glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest..." [Isaiah 9:1-3a]

When people get overlooked in life, it's not that they're actually invisible--it's usually that others are too busy, too comfortable, too distracted, or too self-absorbed to see them.  And it takes a special skill to walk through life deliberately enough to truly see the ones who are left to fall through the cracks.  That is at the heart of God's kindness, and the same kindness we are led to practice.

These words from the prophet Isaiah are beautiful, to be sure, but beyond that they are compelling because they reveal a God who stops to see others who have been forgotten, overlooked, or pushed aside.  They reveal a God who remembers, and who takes the time to attend to people on the margins.  We might not always recognize that, because we often hear these words on Christmas Eve and we are so quick to jump ahead to the next few lines about the "child born for us" and the "son given to us" in the verses that follow.  We want to get to the part we connect with the child in the manger, but we miss the word of deep divine kindness that sets the table for the arrival of the Messiah.

The promises here in what we call Isaiah 9 are spoken first as a word of hope to people on the margins of Israel--the tribes on the borders of Israel and the realms of outside empires who were constantly threatening.  The regions by the "the way of the sea" [the coasts near the Mediterranean], the land across the Jordan River, and the region called Galilee "of the nations" were all set with one foot in Israel and one foot in the territory of Gentiles. They were often the target of attacks from would-be invaders, and that made them vulnerable, fearful, and discouraged.  Not only that, but if you lived in those outside borderlands, it was easy to feel like the folks in the capital didn't really care about you.  The palace, the Temple, and all the powerful people were off in places like Jerusalem. Everybody knew that kings came from David's family line and tribal lands down in Judah--it was easy to dismiss the lands of Naphtali and Zebulun as unimportant, or negligible.  Surely there were voices in Isaiah's day who talked about Jerusalem and Judah as "real Israel" and dismissed all the other outlying lands as lesser--not as authentic, not as devout, not as genuinely a part of the people of God.  The people in these overlookable places were getting it from all sides--the threats of surrounding nations looking to conquer or plunder them, and the indifference from their own nation's "important" places.  It was easy to believe that you didn't really belong, and that you weren't really worth protecting, if you lived there.  It was easy to believe the pundits and the powerful that "real Israel" didn't include you.

But God has never accepted the lines we humans draw to designate folks on the outside of the center as unimportant or unworthy. To the contrary, God makes a point of seeing the ones who have been overlooked and pushed aside.  And that's the promise here.  Specifically speaking to the ones who constantly hear they don't matter or are just targets waiting to be conquered, God says, "I haven't forgotten you, not for a second, and you will be glorious."  God says to these people who have been discouraged by being overlooked and undervalued repeatedly, "I'm going to shine a brilliant light on you, and I will bring joy to you."  The ones who feel like they are invisible in the darkness are seen after all--God has never lost sight of them, and God will shine a light on them so that nobody else will forget or dismiss them, either.  That's how God's kindness works--always seeking the ones who have been dismissed, disregarded, and disrespected, to lift them up and let them be seen in a new and glorious light.

And then, when we do hear the following verses speaking of a "son given to us" and a "child born for us," whom we recognize in Jesus, it becomes clear that Jesus' mission in the world is, just like Isaiah spoke of, the work of seeing the overlooked and raising up the lowly.  Jesus' mission, just as God's mission all along, is rooted in kindness that takes the extra time and makes the extra effort to see those treated as invisible.  And so for us, too, if we are going to follow in the way of Jesus, our work has much to do with seeing the people we have found it too easy to overlook, or those whom we have been too distracted to recognize.  It is, in other words, the work of kindness, and such work isn't just an emotional feeling about people, but the willingness to slow down the breakneck pace of our lives enough to look around.  It will also mean being willing to abandon our own present-day habits of dismissing some people as less important, or pushing their needs or voices out to the margins just because they're different.  It will mean choosing to see people as neighbors to be cared for and fellow children of God who are beloved, rather than as enemies, threats, or stepping stones we can walk on in order to get what we want.  And it will mean we make a practice of looking at people in the eye, face to face, rather than overlooking them even when it's easy.

Today, may God's own kindness that stops to see us as we are give us the capacity to see others with kind eyes as well.

Good Lord, help us to see others the way you do--with kindness.