Isaiah 55:1-7 (NRSV)
Everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Today we leave Luke’s gospel behind for the moment and turn to the prophet Isaiah for our reading. Next week we will return to Luke but this week Isaiah has something for us. We don’t often hear from Isaiah in Lent. The Old Testament prophet is more often heard from during Advent season.
There were at least three Isaiahs whose prophecies make up the book of Isaiah and there are three discrete sections even though they all are lumped together within just the one book called Isaiah. First Isaiah covers a period of political and social turmoil as the people, as they so often do in the Old Testament, lose their focus on God’s will for them as a people – a time when, because things have been going well, they begin to forget that all they have and all they are comes from their deep relationship with God.
This was a time of warnings. First Isaiah spoke to tell the people to turn back from their selfish, slipshod ways – repent and turn back or evil things were going to happen to them.....And of course, those evil things did happen. They were overrun by the empire centered in Babylon and more than half of them were dragged off into exile in that far country.
Second Isaiah consist of the Promises of Comfort – the prophet speaking to a despairing people and reminding them that God has not abandoned them entirely. These beautiful promises are the ones we usually hear during Advent – promises of a savior to come who will restore the people to home and safety.
The writings of Third Isaiah come after the restoration, when the people return home and find that reintegrating into their homeland was not as easy or as welcoming as they had dreamed. Once again the prophet spoke and assured them that full restoration was theirs and that God was rebuilding them to their former state of honor and power.
Today’s reading comes from the Second Isaiah, promises of comfort for a people lost in exile 600 years before the life of Jesus ... and for all of us today who occasionally feel lost right here in our own lives – separated from our families or unhappy in our work or trapped in bad health or defeated by the politics of our once proud country – or simply lost and feeling separated from God and God’s will for us.
I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon but I know it can be very hot and dry. I’m told that there are signs posted around that say something to the effect of “Stop. Whether you know it or not, you are thirsty. Drink some water!”
In the same way that people at the Grand Canyon, or any other desert area can lose touch with their bodies and not realize how dangerously dehydrated they have become, we can become so lost in our day-to-day world that we forget how out of touch we are with God. We are hungry for something, but we’ve lived with the hunger for so long that we may not even notice the lack anymore.
Our souls can become shriveled up because we forget to open them up to God’s life-giving waters.
What is it we hunger for? And what is it the teachings of scripture tell us we should be hungering for? And are they the same things?
At the time of the restoration, when the Hebrews who had been taken into exile were freed and sent home, there were those who did not return with the others. The people were there for more than a generation and many were born there. For these Jerusalem was only a word, a place they had never known. They had married in exile and raised families there. They had made a form of personal peace with their captors and accepted their captivity and when the restoration happened, these people stayed behind. Some returned to Jerusalem at first, but finding nothing familiar there, they returned once more to Babylon and the things with which they felt at home. They didn’t have that deep longing for Jerusalem as the center of their spiritual lives that drove the older exiles.
How many of us have done something similar with our lifestyles? How many people work soul-killing jobs in exchange for financial security?
The extreme examples might be people who work in the tobacco industry, producing a product that kills people. Or those in pharmaceutical companies who willingly sell life-saving drugs at a 500 to 2000% cost mark-up. Or lobbyists who buy and sell politicians in order to change laws to allow companies to poison whole populations by dumping pollutants into waterways. All in exchange for money. These are souls that have lost their connection to God’s will for them. They have lost God and lost themselves – but God has never lost them.
Less extreme and more common would be the ordinary people who work long hours at mind-numbing, soul-draining jobs in exchange for a paycheck – not allowing themselves to think that God may have meant them for something live-giving instead.
We may have settled so comfortably into a routine and a worldview that keep us busy and distracted that we've lost touch with our deepest selves, made in the image of God, and our spirits may be thirsty, starving, and homesick, even if we can't name those feelings on our own.
We may not remotely realize how thirsty we are. We may not realize how weary and lifeless we have become. And, worst of all, we may have lost a sense of just how precious we are in God's eyes.
Spending time with God. Listening for the deep longings in our hearts. This is what Lent calls us to do – reminding us to make time and space for the deeper needs of our souls and not just the immediate needs of our bodies.
Spend some time this Lent looking at your life and listening for the cry that tells you God created you for more than this. You may find that you are thirsty, and didn’t even know it. Now is the time. Come.
There were at least three Isaiahs whose prophecies make up the book of Isaiah and there are three discrete sections even though they all are lumped together within just the one book called Isaiah. First Isaiah covers a period of political and social turmoil as the people, as they so often do in the Old Testament, lose their focus on God’s will for them as a people – a time when, because things have been going well, they begin to forget that all they have and all they are comes from their deep relationship with God.
This was a time of warnings. First Isaiah spoke to tell the people to turn back from their selfish, slipshod ways – repent and turn back or evil things were going to happen to them.....And of course, those evil things did happen. They were overrun by the empire centered in Babylon and more than half of them were dragged off into exile in that far country.
Second Isaiah consist of the Promises of Comfort – the prophet speaking to a despairing people and reminding them that God has not abandoned them entirely. These beautiful promises are the ones we usually hear during Advent – promises of a savior to come who will restore the people to home and safety.
The writings of Third Isaiah come after the restoration, when the people return home and find that reintegrating into their homeland was not as easy or as welcoming as they had dreamed. Once again the prophet spoke and assured them that full restoration was theirs and that God was rebuilding them to their former state of honor and power.
Today’s reading comes from the Second Isaiah, promises of comfort for a people lost in exile 600 years before the life of Jesus ... and for all of us today who occasionally feel lost right here in our own lives – separated from our families or unhappy in our work or trapped in bad health or defeated by the politics of our once proud country – or simply lost and feeling separated from God and God’s will for us.
I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon but I know it can be very hot and dry. I’m told that there are signs posted around that say something to the effect of “Stop. Whether you know it or not, you are thirsty. Drink some water!”
In the same way that people at the Grand Canyon, or any other desert area can lose touch with their bodies and not realize how dangerously dehydrated they have become, we can become so lost in our day-to-day world that we forget how out of touch we are with God. We are hungry for something, but we’ve lived with the hunger for so long that we may not even notice the lack anymore.
Our souls can become shriveled up because we forget to open them up to God’s life-giving waters.
What is it we hunger for? And what is it the teachings of scripture tell us we should be hungering for? And are they the same things?
At the time of the restoration, when the Hebrews who had been taken into exile were freed and sent home, there were those who did not return with the others. The people were there for more than a generation and many were born there. For these Jerusalem was only a word, a place they had never known. They had married in exile and raised families there. They had made a form of personal peace with their captors and accepted their captivity and when the restoration happened, these people stayed behind. Some returned to Jerusalem at first, but finding nothing familiar there, they returned once more to Babylon and the things with which they felt at home. They didn’t have that deep longing for Jerusalem as the center of their spiritual lives that drove the older exiles.
How many of us have done something similar with our lifestyles? How many people work soul-killing jobs in exchange for financial security?
The extreme examples might be people who work in the tobacco industry, producing a product that kills people. Or those in pharmaceutical companies who willingly sell life-saving drugs at a 500 to 2000% cost mark-up. Or lobbyists who buy and sell politicians in order to change laws to allow companies to poison whole populations by dumping pollutants into waterways. All in exchange for money. These are souls that have lost their connection to God’s will for them. They have lost God and lost themselves – but God has never lost them.
Less extreme and more common would be the ordinary people who work long hours at mind-numbing, soul-draining jobs in exchange for a paycheck – not allowing themselves to think that God may have meant them for something live-giving instead.
We may have settled so comfortably into a routine and a worldview that keep us busy and distracted that we've lost touch with our deepest selves, made in the image of God, and our spirits may be thirsty, starving, and homesick, even if we can't name those feelings on our own.
We may not remotely realize how thirsty we are. We may not realize how weary and lifeless we have become. And, worst of all, we may have lost a sense of just how precious we are in God's eyes.
Spending time with God. Listening for the deep longings in our hearts. This is what Lent calls us to do – reminding us to make time and space for the deeper needs of our souls and not just the immediate needs of our bodies.
- Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; .....
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Spend some time this Lent looking at your life and listening for the cry that tells you God created you for more than this. You may find that you are thirsty, and didn’t even know it. Now is the time. Come.
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