God's Hidden Costs--October 19, 2023

God's Hidden Costs--October 19, 2023

"I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask,
     to be found by those who did not seek me. 

 I said, 'Here I am, here I am,'

    to a nation that did not call on my name.

 I held out my hands all day long

    to a rebellious people,

 who walk in a way that is not good,

    following their own devices...." [Isaiah 65:1-2]

So, here's a true confession from the pastor:  to this day, I can't read these words without wrinkling up my face to keep from tearing up and squinting my eyes to keep them from watering.  

It's hard for me to read these words, even now, even as an adult, and to let it sink in that they depict God as the brokenhearted one, standing alone with arms held open to welcome home angry and wayward runaways.  It is difficult--but utterly necessary--to come to see the One we often think of as Almighty and All-Powerful in such a vulnerable position, offering love to people who outright reject it or just walk on by.  And yet... here it is, right in the Scriptures (and in what Christians often call the Old Testament, which church folks tend to caricature as "the parts where God is mean and cranky, at that!).  Here is the Strong One willing to look weak. Here is the Eternal One left standing alone "all day long" because no one would receive the free gift being offered.  There are hidden costs to God for the willingness to go on loving us, even when God's love is unrequited.

So when Jesus comes on the scene centuries after these words from what we call Isaiah 65 were first spoken, and he tells a story about a man whose runaway son comes back from being lost in the far country, Jesus isn't inventing something out of whole cloth.  He is saying what the prophets before him dared the people to imagine: that God is the one hiking up the divine robes to run out to meet us, that God is the one with prodigal, reckless love to welcome back the lost ones, and that God has always been the one holding open hands all day long for us.  The prophets like Isaiah were telling us what Jesus reaffirmed: that God's enduring love comes at the price for God of growing weary with heartache and disappointment every day that we don't come back home, and every time we shrug off the gift of grace in search of some lesser god.  And these voices from the Scriptures remind us that God has always been willing to be that One with open arms, even at the pain of breaking God's own heart.

This passage from Isaiah hits even harder when you realize the ones to whom God is speaking here in this passage.  The people "who did not seek me" and who "did not call on my name" aren't some pagan Gentile people, like you might think at first blush.  This word from the prophet isn't aimed at "outsiders," but at the prophet's own people--the people of Israel and Judah.  The people who prided themselves on being descended from the line of Jacob and his sons, who knew all the right religious rules, and who kept the commandments and the covenant, these are the people who nevertheless weren't really seeking the God who was seeking after them.  

That's a stark reminder for us modern-day Respectable Religious Folks as well. It's all too easy to pat ourselves on the back for having the "right" religious answers and projecting the appropriately "pious" image, only to hear God say back, "But you have missed that I was actually holding my arms out to you, and you walked on by without realizing it."  It's all too easy to get so focused on the trappings of "playing church" that we miss the Love that has been waiting there all along for us, calling out to us, "Here I am!"  I'm reminded a little bit of that passage from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, where a storyteller imagines Jesus coming back to earth during the days of the Spanish Inquisition, only for the Grand Inquistor to tell Jesus that "the Church" can do a better job of being in charge and that Jesus' presence will only mess things up, and that therefore, he'll burn Jesus at the stake "for having dared to come and trouble us in our work."  It's a scathing bit of satire against Organized Religion at our worst, but in its own way, it's making the same point as Isaiah 65 here.  We can think we've got all the right religious answers and still miss the very presence of the living God standing with arms wide open to embrace us.  It's a testament, then, both to how dense and self-righteous we Respectable Religious Folks can be sometimes... and how far God's enduring love will go to reach us anyway.

Today may be a day, then, to pause and look honestly at ourselves to see if maybe we've let the trappings of our own religiosity keep us from seeing the presence of the living God right at our side, reaching out to us right now.  And even if we do realize that we, like the pious people of Isaiah's day, have missed out on recognizing God's love with open arms for us, there is a word of hope.  God's enduring love keeps those arms open, so that even now we can find ourselves embraced again no matter how many times we have walked right on past with a shrug of indifference.

Today is a day to look up from whatever has distracted us to see that God has been willing to risk being heartbroken and rejected for our sake, and maybe that will send us running back into those wide arms of mercy.

Lord God, help us to hear your voice that has been calling out to us even when we wouldn't listen.  Help us to step into the embrace you have risked offering to us all along.