Isaiah 1: 10-20 (links validated 7/13/22)

That’s why I have always liked these lines from C.S. Lewis: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. God shatters it. God is the great iconoclast. Could we not say that this shattering is one of the marks of God’s presence? Most are offended by iconoclasm. Blessed are they who are not.” Of course, Lewis did not mean to convey that there is no fixed reality to God. Instead, Lewis wanted to say that God will always burst our abilities fully to conceive of him. The God of the Bible resists neat formulations or easy packaging. Really to hold in creative tension the full display of God which the Bible gives us requires a balancing act–sometimes it even requires a dumping of any one-sided pictures of God we perhaps once carried with us. The Bible reveals a multi-faceted, always surprising God; a God who is at once the Lion of Judah and the slain Lamb. He’s both. He is the fierce judge whose holy word is like a two-edged sword and he is the God of all grace who inflicted that sword on himself as a means to our being saved. He is at once the God who truly is “above it all” dwelling in light inaccessible and he’s the God who is close enough to his beloved creation that something of his glory can be seen in your flower garden...

It was John Calvin, I think, who called faith “the open mouth of your soul.” God is willing and eager to fill us with the salvation earned by Christ, but if our head is turned away from God and our mouth is closed, we can’t drink it in. We must turn back to God (repentance) and open our soul (faith) in order to receive the free grace and wide mercy offered to us in Christ. I can still see my children in early toddlerhood, refusing to eat, turning their heads away from the oncoming spoon filled with yummy food. Here God speaks to us as to a stubborn child. Come then, let us reason together. Let us talk about this. Use your head. Be reasonable. I have something wonderful for you. But as long as your head is turned away and your mouth is sealed tight, you can’t eat it. Makes sense, doesn’t it?...

In verse 10, Isaiah equates Israel with the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah. In Ezekiel 16:49 the prophet says: “‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” While we tend to think of the sin of Sodom being sexual, the Old Testament prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel, equate the sin of Sodom as being neglect of the poor. In this vein, Isaiah opens up with the comparison of Israel and Sodom and Gomorrah. In verse 11, he continues by discrediting their numerous sacrifices. Zebach is the Hebrew term used here means sacrifices or offering. It is worth noting that sacrifices are always offered up to God.[3] V. 13 uses a different Hebrew noun, minchah, which also means offering, but goes further into the idea of giving–it is from a root meaning to apportion.[4] It would appear the prophet is foreshadowing again the need to apportion, to sacrifice, to give up to the poor and needy before giving up worship to God...

There once was a wise communications professor who had her students engage in an observation exercise. She handed out a picture of an elderly man sitting on some front steps. A young woman stood to his right, looking down toward him, and a child stood in front, facing both of them. The professor asked the students to tell her what they thought was happening in the picture. “The child and woman are caring for the old man,” one person suggested. Another said, “The child is listening to a story while the mother watches.” “Maybe they are just passing the time waiting for someone to come out of the building,” was another guess. All sorts of stories came up until the professor finally pointed out what was really going on.

("This week is the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. . At the time of the Nagasaki bombing, Dr. Takashi Nagai was the dean of the University of Nagasaki medical school. Dr. Nagai survived the bombing and one year later published The Bells of Nagasaki, an extraordinary account of both the grotesque destruction caused by the bomb and the amazing response of doctors, nurses and others as they selflessly attended to other victims...")

We have a little cabin in the great northwoods of Wisconsin, and our Sunday routine is to get up, go out for breakfast, and then head to the laundromat to wash our clothes for the week. On that particular Sunday, just as we started loading our laundry, the door opened and a scarily clean-shaven gentleman walked in and said, "A blessed morning to you, brothers and sisters"--a warning sign, if ever there was one. I could see he had a number of brochures in his hand, but I tried my best not to make eye contact. Sure enough, he came to me first. "Sister," he asked in the most earnest of tones, "have you met Jesus?" "I'm sorry; I haven't seen Jesus at the laundromat this morning." The Jesus-man looked at me with an expression akin to what your elementary school teacher might have offered when you spelled "January" with a "G." He then handed me a tract with a picture of Jesus on the front holding a tiny lamb, looking a bit queasy, and said, "You know, Jesus can wash your sins away better than any of these machines." Deciding I had been snarky enough, I nodded, took the tract, and said, "I don't doubt it, brother." And with that, he went to the sinner next to me at the industrial-sized dryer and started his pitch again. Toby, being an ex-prosecutor and knowing when to speak and when not to, stayed silent during my exchange. However, as the Jesus-man moved to the next person, Toby turned to me and mumbled under his breath, "Sinners at the Laundromat--sounds like a sermon to me." And so this sermon was born.

("This year, I returned to the old classic by the author Ray Bradbury, his novel Dandelion Wine, a book I read in seminary years ago. It's a story of two boys who spend each summer together in a fictional town in Illinois, called Green Town. Bradbury describes it as the StrangeWorld of Green Town, Illinois. Here is a conversation between Doug and Tom, two twelve year olds, ona summer afternoon...")

("One of the more prominent, albeit loopier, promoters of a made-up religion has been actress Shirley MacLaine. She has located the divine within her own self, within past lives she ostensibly has led, and most recently within her dog. It's all very Californian finally. Some of you remember the book Habits of the Heart....")