On not loving a wall
Commentary
Robert Frost begins his poem called "Mending Wall" with the line "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."
We see far too many walls in our day. While the famed Berlin Wall has indeed been torn down, many walls remain to divide people from one another. Walls of ethnic bricks have been all too obvious these recent years in the former Yugoslavia. Walls of racial stones still separate our country from suffering people in Africa in ways that are not evident in the northern hemisphere. Walls of religion block understandings of one another and lead people to justify their harsh actions as holy wars. Walls of ideological positions keep people from even hearing what people from the other side of the wall are saying.
Yet there is something that doesn't love a wall. Better yet, there is Someone who doesn't love a wall!
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Our pericope from the prophet we call Third Isaiah introduces us to that Someone.
The prophet's preaching occurred shortly after the Edict of Cyrus (538 B.C.) that enabled the Israelites to return to Jerusalem and to take along with them the vessels stolen from the Temple by the Babylonian King Nebuchanezzar. Cyrus, the Persian, was willing to pay for the rebuilding of the Temple destroyed in 587 B.C.
In the opening words of our pericope the Lord commands that the people "maintain justice and do what is right" (literally "keep justice and righteousness"). These qualities are the means by which God rules the universe (see Psalm 97:2). They demonstrate that the Lord's will is for a positive order or existence for everyone and since the Lord wills so, he will act accordingly. The command to Israel here is to imitate the Lord, and the reason for doing so is the imminence of God's salvation. Like the preaching of Jesus about the nearness of the kingdom of God and the resultant repentance, the prophet here announces God's salvation act as the motive for the command to maintain justice and righteousness.
The effects of that coming salvation will include non-
Israelites -- the people from other nations that have become worshipers of the Lord -- those foreigners God will "bring to my holy mountain" just as the original Isaiah promised in his vision of the kingdom to come (Isaiah 2:2). This promise addressed to eunuchs in verse 4 and now to foreigners tears down the wall erected by the law of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 23:2-9). The expressions here indicate that belonging to the confessing community of Israel is a matter of observing the Sabbath (worship) and faithfulness, not a matter of birth or lack of deformity.
That the Lord promises the newly constructed Temple will be "a house of prayer for all peoples" (v. 7) proves that "Someone there is that doesn't love a wall."
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
The apostle Paul works toward the conclusion of his discussion starting in chapter 9 about the disbelief of the people of Israel, a rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ that pained Paul greatly. His opening words of chapter 11 ask rhetorically if God has rejected his people. On the basis of Paul's entire argument that faith not works is the means by which people are acquitted of sin, that is, justified, Paul could do no other than answer his own question with a resounding, "By no means!" How could God possibly reject the people he chose to be his own -- even if they have rejected God?
In the following paragraphs -- skipped in our pericope -- Paul moves back and forth among the readers of his epistle. The folks who made up the congregation at Rome consisted of both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. He needs to indicate when he is addressing one or the other. As he turns to address the Gentiles on this matter of the Jews, he reminds them that only because of the "stumbling" of Israel did he, Paul, become an apostle to the Gentiles. The Gentiles owe, therefore, a great deal of gratitude to the Jews for making such salvation possible.
When we pick up with our pericope in verses 29-32, Paul continues his argument that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." Indeed the divine promises made to the people of Israel were unconditional. God made such an oath to Abraham and Sarah, promising that he would always be their God and they would be his people. It was called an "everlasting covenant" because it depended only on God, not on any human cooperation. Through the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel the Lord promised an "everlasting covenant" so that the relationship begun with Abraham and Moses would continue forever.
Once again Paul demonstrates that the Gentile members of the congregation were once disobedient but have now received mercy. Now the Gentiles might become the source of God's blessing for the Jews.
The wall comes tumbling down when Paul announces that "God has imprisoned all in disobedience...." That was precisely the point Paul made in the first two chapters of this epistle. The Gentiles are sinful due to their worship of the creatures rather than the Creator. Jews are sinful because they had the law of God and chose to reject it. That means "all" have been disobedient. No one stands on the other side of the wall on the issue of guilt. "... all have sinned and keep falling short of the glory of God ... (3:23; my translation and my italics).
Yet Paul continues to dismantle the wall that divides as he finishes his sentence: "God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all." The conclusion sounds also like the earlier reference to 3:23. Verse 24 reads "they (that is, 'all') are now justified by his grace as a gift." The assignment of all to sin leads to God's purpose of mercy for all.
Someone there is that doesn't love a wall.
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
After feeding the 5,000, Jesus walked on the sea to join the disciples in the boat. The waves calmed, they landed on the eastern shore of the Sea of Gennesaret (Galilee will do) where people from all over the region brought their sick to be healed by touching the fringe of Jesus' cloak.
As we begin chapter 15 we have no indication that the scene has changed. However, new characters enter the stage from the south, indeed from Jerusalem. They are Pharisees and scribes who come complaining that Jesus' disciples are breaking with the tradition of the elders -- to say nothing of orders from their mothers -- by not washing their hands before eating. This rule of ritual cleanliness only aggravates Jesus to accuse these religious folks of breaking the commands of God -- a far more important issue than the traditions of humans. Indeed, Jesus accuses them of rendering void the command of God for the sake of their tradition (v. 6).
All that conflict leads to our pericope in which Jesus, not a lover of walls, dismantles the traditional separations between clean and unclean.
In the first place, Jesus announces his displeasure at the dietary laws themselves. It is not what goes into the body but what comes out that defiles, he told them. Forced into explanation, Jesus traced the course of a meal from the plate to the sewer, something akin to Biology 101. That whole process is just the natural course of affairs. But when it comes to deflilement, Jesus talked about the words we speak as expressions of the heart. The heart is the seat of "evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander." Earlier Jesus had spoken of the commandment, "Honor your father and mother" (15:4), as a command of God. Here he finishes the so-called second table of the law without missing even one. The heart, in other words, breaks the commandments of God and proceeds out of the mouth. That, Jesus said, is the issue the Pharisees and scribes should be worried about in matters clean and unclean.
Second, Jesus removes the bricks from the wall of ethnic separation. He traveled some distance westward over toward the Mediterranean into the district of Tyre and Sidon, coastal cities. It was a region not favorable to Israel and regarded by the Jews of the day as particularly subject to the judgment of God. That attitude helps make the point. Having called the religious Jewish authorities "hypocrites" over the hand-washing caper, Jesus now in Gentile land encounters great faith.
That faith came from a Canaanite woman. The Canaanites were long-time enemies of the Israelites, going back to the days of Joshua. They believed in the fertility god Baal in those early days, a deity that had always posed a threat to the Yahweh-
worshiping Israelites. This Canaanite woman addressed Jesus as "Lord, Son of David" -- itself an astonishing title for her to use. She begged for his mercy because her daughter was demon-possessed.
True to his understanding of the mission on which God sent him and consistent with his commissioning of the disciples in 10:6, Jesus responded to the woman's pleas that he "was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Her persistence won the day, however, and Jesus, recognizing the greatness of her faith in contrast to the regulations of the Pharisees, ended the ordeal of her daughter by announcing, "Let it be done for you as you wish." Matthew reports that "her daughter was healed instantly," actually "from that hour." The same expression occurs at Matthew 9:22 and 17:18 -- both cases of immediate healing once Jesus had spoken. Therein is the issue: Jesus' word caused the healing, and it is a word that reaches out beyond the wall to include the people who were themselves considered to be unclean.
"And the wall came tumbling down!"
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 45:1-15
In Sunday schools and Bible studies, the Joseph stories are frequently used as moral lessons, and Joseph is often held up as a moral example. As Joseph learned humility, goes the teaching, so should we. As Joseph forgave his brothers, so should we forgive.
It is very doubtful that any character in the Bible, other than our Lord himself, should be pictured as a model of morality, for all have some flaw or commit some sin. In Joseph's case, certainly he develops into an admirable person. But to hold up Joseph as an example is actually to miss the major point of his story. As in all of the scriptures, the major actor and subject of the Joseph stories is God himself, and it is to God's working that our text finally points.
We begin with a moving scene. To test his brothers' characters and familial love, Joseph has hidden a silver cup -- a sacred object used for divining -- in the baggage of Benjamin, who is departing Egypt with his ten brothers. The penalty for stealing a sacred object is death, but when Joseph accuses the brothers of stealing the cup, he makes them agree that whoever is found with the cup will become Joseph's slave. Of course the cup is found with Benjamin. But Judah pleads with Joseph to let him become Joseph's slave instead of Benjamin. For if their father Jacob loses his youngest surviving child, he will die from grief (ch. 44).
As our text opens, Joseph is overcome with emotion at Judah's sacrificial offer and must finally reveal his identity to his dismayed brothers (vv. 1-3). The speech that Joseph then delivers to his brothers, in verses 4-8, marks the central theological point of these stories in Genesis 37-50. Through all of the vicissitudes of Joseph's life, it is God who has been working to fulfill his promise.
God promised Jacob and his father and grandfather before him that they would have many descendants and a land to call their own. But in this period of the fourteenth century B.C., Canaan and Egypt are subjected to seven years of drought and famine. The twelve forbears of Israel and their families are threatened with death from starvation. But if that happens, God cannot keep his promise to the patriarchs. Israel must be saved. And so the Lord sends Joseph ahead into Egypt to learn from Pharaoh's dreams of the coming famine and to instruct the Pharaoh to save up food for the whole region during the seven years of plenty preceding the famine. By that method, God sustains his chosen people (and the Egyptians) alive, in order that he may fulfill his Word.
The manner in which God works out this scheme of salvation is simply amazing. First, he uses the hatred of the brothers to prompt them to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Sold into the house of Potiphar, Joseph rises in favor in Potiphar's household. But falsely accused of trying to seduce Potiphar's wife, Joseph is thrown into prison. There, however, he interprets the Pharaoh's dream about the seven fat cows and the seven lean cows, which wins his release from jail and his rise to power as Pharaoh's right-hand man. Thus, from that position, Joseph is able to store up the grain that will keep Israel alive. What a convoluted, totally human story it seems, full of suspense and good and evil! But it shows clearly how God is able to use human emotions and activities in order to further his good purpose.
God does not cause human evil, but he uses even it, because his plan for his world moves steadily forward -- hidden, unseen, but pressing toward his loving goal. When we think God is absent from our world, therefore; when we believe that all is lost and cruel circumstances have overwhelmed us; then is when we perhaps should most remember the story of Joseph.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
In 538 B.C., Cyrus of Persia issued a decree that allowed the exiles in the former region of Babylonia to return to their homeland and to rebuild the Temple, even furnishing the financial means for the reconstruction (cf. Ezra 1). Some of the exiles returned, under the leadership of the Zadokite priests, but some who had settled down in Babylonia, who had married, built houses, and established businesses (cf. Jeremiah 29:1-7), remained in that foreign country.
Those who returned to Jerusalem faced a very difficult situation. Their city and temple were in ruins, poverty and inflation were rampant, and the agriculture of the peasants who had remained behind in Jerusalem was meager at best. Living was hard-scrabble.
In the midst of that difficult situation, Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66) picks up the former message of his predecessor, Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), and announces that God's salvation is near (v. 1). God is returning to his people, to restore their lives. Third Isaiah's call, therefore, is for the people to respond by establishing justice, that is, God's order, in their community, and by doing righteousness, that is, by fulfilling their covenant obligations of love and trust and obedience to their Lord. The prophet calls for such a response, not in order that God might return to them, but because God was in fact returning to be with his chosen people. Obedience and love toward God do not win God's favor, but are responses to the love that God has previously poured out upon us.
Third Isaiah is aware, however, of the plans for the rebuilt community that the Zadokite priestly leaders have already formulated while they are still in Babylonia. The Zadokite priests, and the priestly editors of the Old Testament, were concerned to prevent Israel ever again from falling into sin and deserving the calamity of an exile. The future plans that the priests therefore made for the rebuilt Israelite community were exclusivistic. They wanted all foreign wives excluded from that community (cf. Ezra 9-10). They planned careful attention to ritual and cultic duties. They limited the priesthood to Zadokites, descendants of Aaron. And they banned all foreigners from even worshiping in the rebuilt temple (cf. Ezekiel 44:6-9).
In the Isaianic tradition that is set forth for us in the whole of the Isaiah corpus, however, such exclusivism is not to be found. First and Second Isaiah both had announced a universalism that had included foreigners among the saved in Israel (cf. Isaiah 2:2-4; 19:19-25; 42:1-4; 44:5; 45:22-23; 49:6). And indeed, preexilic Israel had never excluded the worshiping foreigner from the temple (cf. Exodus 12:48-49; Numbers 15:14-16). From the beginning, Israel's faith looked forward to the blessing of all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3), and in the figure of the Suffering Servant in Second Isaiah, Israel was called to give its life for the sake of foreign nations (Isaiah 52:13--53:12).
Our text from Third Isaiah therefore continues this universal announcement (vv. 6-8). All faithful people who love the Lord, who keep the sabbath (one of the distinguishing marks of Jewish faithfulness in the exile), and who cling to God in covenant trust will be welcome in the rebuilt Temple. They may, in a priesthood of all believers, offer their sacrifices upon the altar, for the temple will be a house of prayer for all peoples (cf. Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46). God is gathering not only his scattered Jewish people to himself, but many others outside of Israel -- a fact that came true in the ministry of Jesus and of Paul, who became Christ's apostle to the Gentiles.
Because of the wideness of God's mercy, you and I -- we Gentiles -- now have become, through faith in Jesus Christ, members of his covenant people begun with Israel. And we are bidden by our Lord to take his good news of eternal salvation to all nations, baptizing them in God's triune name, and teaching them all that Jesus has commanded (Matthew 28:20). There are no barriers to the worship of the God and Father of Jesus Christ, except that of love and trust in him, and faithful response to his saving Word.
We see far too many walls in our day. While the famed Berlin Wall has indeed been torn down, many walls remain to divide people from one another. Walls of ethnic bricks have been all too obvious these recent years in the former Yugoslavia. Walls of racial stones still separate our country from suffering people in Africa in ways that are not evident in the northern hemisphere. Walls of religion block understandings of one another and lead people to justify their harsh actions as holy wars. Walls of ideological positions keep people from even hearing what people from the other side of the wall are saying.
Yet there is something that doesn't love a wall. Better yet, there is Someone who doesn't love a wall!
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Our pericope from the prophet we call Third Isaiah introduces us to that Someone.
The prophet's preaching occurred shortly after the Edict of Cyrus (538 B.C.) that enabled the Israelites to return to Jerusalem and to take along with them the vessels stolen from the Temple by the Babylonian King Nebuchanezzar. Cyrus, the Persian, was willing to pay for the rebuilding of the Temple destroyed in 587 B.C.
In the opening words of our pericope the Lord commands that the people "maintain justice and do what is right" (literally "keep justice and righteousness"). These qualities are the means by which God rules the universe (see Psalm 97:2). They demonstrate that the Lord's will is for a positive order or existence for everyone and since the Lord wills so, he will act accordingly. The command to Israel here is to imitate the Lord, and the reason for doing so is the imminence of God's salvation. Like the preaching of Jesus about the nearness of the kingdom of God and the resultant repentance, the prophet here announces God's salvation act as the motive for the command to maintain justice and righteousness.
The effects of that coming salvation will include non-
Israelites -- the people from other nations that have become worshipers of the Lord -- those foreigners God will "bring to my holy mountain" just as the original Isaiah promised in his vision of the kingdom to come (Isaiah 2:2). This promise addressed to eunuchs in verse 4 and now to foreigners tears down the wall erected by the law of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 23:2-9). The expressions here indicate that belonging to the confessing community of Israel is a matter of observing the Sabbath (worship) and faithfulness, not a matter of birth or lack of deformity.
That the Lord promises the newly constructed Temple will be "a house of prayer for all peoples" (v. 7) proves that "Someone there is that doesn't love a wall."
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
The apostle Paul works toward the conclusion of his discussion starting in chapter 9 about the disbelief of the people of Israel, a rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ that pained Paul greatly. His opening words of chapter 11 ask rhetorically if God has rejected his people. On the basis of Paul's entire argument that faith not works is the means by which people are acquitted of sin, that is, justified, Paul could do no other than answer his own question with a resounding, "By no means!" How could God possibly reject the people he chose to be his own -- even if they have rejected God?
In the following paragraphs -- skipped in our pericope -- Paul moves back and forth among the readers of his epistle. The folks who made up the congregation at Rome consisted of both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. He needs to indicate when he is addressing one or the other. As he turns to address the Gentiles on this matter of the Jews, he reminds them that only because of the "stumbling" of Israel did he, Paul, become an apostle to the Gentiles. The Gentiles owe, therefore, a great deal of gratitude to the Jews for making such salvation possible.
When we pick up with our pericope in verses 29-32, Paul continues his argument that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." Indeed the divine promises made to the people of Israel were unconditional. God made such an oath to Abraham and Sarah, promising that he would always be their God and they would be his people. It was called an "everlasting covenant" because it depended only on God, not on any human cooperation. Through the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel the Lord promised an "everlasting covenant" so that the relationship begun with Abraham and Moses would continue forever.
Once again Paul demonstrates that the Gentile members of the congregation were once disobedient but have now received mercy. Now the Gentiles might become the source of God's blessing for the Jews.
The wall comes tumbling down when Paul announces that "God has imprisoned all in disobedience...." That was precisely the point Paul made in the first two chapters of this epistle. The Gentiles are sinful due to their worship of the creatures rather than the Creator. Jews are sinful because they had the law of God and chose to reject it. That means "all" have been disobedient. No one stands on the other side of the wall on the issue of guilt. "... all have sinned and keep falling short of the glory of God ... (3:23; my translation and my italics).
Yet Paul continues to dismantle the wall that divides as he finishes his sentence: "God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all." The conclusion sounds also like the earlier reference to 3:23. Verse 24 reads "they (that is, 'all') are now justified by his grace as a gift." The assignment of all to sin leads to God's purpose of mercy for all.
Someone there is that doesn't love a wall.
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
After feeding the 5,000, Jesus walked on the sea to join the disciples in the boat. The waves calmed, they landed on the eastern shore of the Sea of Gennesaret (Galilee will do) where people from all over the region brought their sick to be healed by touching the fringe of Jesus' cloak.
As we begin chapter 15 we have no indication that the scene has changed. However, new characters enter the stage from the south, indeed from Jerusalem. They are Pharisees and scribes who come complaining that Jesus' disciples are breaking with the tradition of the elders -- to say nothing of orders from their mothers -- by not washing their hands before eating. This rule of ritual cleanliness only aggravates Jesus to accuse these religious folks of breaking the commands of God -- a far more important issue than the traditions of humans. Indeed, Jesus accuses them of rendering void the command of God for the sake of their tradition (v. 6).
All that conflict leads to our pericope in which Jesus, not a lover of walls, dismantles the traditional separations between clean and unclean.
In the first place, Jesus announces his displeasure at the dietary laws themselves. It is not what goes into the body but what comes out that defiles, he told them. Forced into explanation, Jesus traced the course of a meal from the plate to the sewer, something akin to Biology 101. That whole process is just the natural course of affairs. But when it comes to deflilement, Jesus talked about the words we speak as expressions of the heart. The heart is the seat of "evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander." Earlier Jesus had spoken of the commandment, "Honor your father and mother" (15:4), as a command of God. Here he finishes the so-called second table of the law without missing even one. The heart, in other words, breaks the commandments of God and proceeds out of the mouth. That, Jesus said, is the issue the Pharisees and scribes should be worried about in matters clean and unclean.
Second, Jesus removes the bricks from the wall of ethnic separation. He traveled some distance westward over toward the Mediterranean into the district of Tyre and Sidon, coastal cities. It was a region not favorable to Israel and regarded by the Jews of the day as particularly subject to the judgment of God. That attitude helps make the point. Having called the religious Jewish authorities "hypocrites" over the hand-washing caper, Jesus now in Gentile land encounters great faith.
That faith came from a Canaanite woman. The Canaanites were long-time enemies of the Israelites, going back to the days of Joshua. They believed in the fertility god Baal in those early days, a deity that had always posed a threat to the Yahweh-
worshiping Israelites. This Canaanite woman addressed Jesus as "Lord, Son of David" -- itself an astonishing title for her to use. She begged for his mercy because her daughter was demon-possessed.
True to his understanding of the mission on which God sent him and consistent with his commissioning of the disciples in 10:6, Jesus responded to the woman's pleas that he "was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Her persistence won the day, however, and Jesus, recognizing the greatness of her faith in contrast to the regulations of the Pharisees, ended the ordeal of her daughter by announcing, "Let it be done for you as you wish." Matthew reports that "her daughter was healed instantly," actually "from that hour." The same expression occurs at Matthew 9:22 and 17:18 -- both cases of immediate healing once Jesus had spoken. Therein is the issue: Jesus' word caused the healing, and it is a word that reaches out beyond the wall to include the people who were themselves considered to be unclean.
"And the wall came tumbling down!"
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 45:1-15
In Sunday schools and Bible studies, the Joseph stories are frequently used as moral lessons, and Joseph is often held up as a moral example. As Joseph learned humility, goes the teaching, so should we. As Joseph forgave his brothers, so should we forgive.
It is very doubtful that any character in the Bible, other than our Lord himself, should be pictured as a model of morality, for all have some flaw or commit some sin. In Joseph's case, certainly he develops into an admirable person. But to hold up Joseph as an example is actually to miss the major point of his story. As in all of the scriptures, the major actor and subject of the Joseph stories is God himself, and it is to God's working that our text finally points.
We begin with a moving scene. To test his brothers' characters and familial love, Joseph has hidden a silver cup -- a sacred object used for divining -- in the baggage of Benjamin, who is departing Egypt with his ten brothers. The penalty for stealing a sacred object is death, but when Joseph accuses the brothers of stealing the cup, he makes them agree that whoever is found with the cup will become Joseph's slave. Of course the cup is found with Benjamin. But Judah pleads with Joseph to let him become Joseph's slave instead of Benjamin. For if their father Jacob loses his youngest surviving child, he will die from grief (ch. 44).
As our text opens, Joseph is overcome with emotion at Judah's sacrificial offer and must finally reveal his identity to his dismayed brothers (vv. 1-3). The speech that Joseph then delivers to his brothers, in verses 4-8, marks the central theological point of these stories in Genesis 37-50. Through all of the vicissitudes of Joseph's life, it is God who has been working to fulfill his promise.
God promised Jacob and his father and grandfather before him that they would have many descendants and a land to call their own. But in this period of the fourteenth century B.C., Canaan and Egypt are subjected to seven years of drought and famine. The twelve forbears of Israel and their families are threatened with death from starvation. But if that happens, God cannot keep his promise to the patriarchs. Israel must be saved. And so the Lord sends Joseph ahead into Egypt to learn from Pharaoh's dreams of the coming famine and to instruct the Pharaoh to save up food for the whole region during the seven years of plenty preceding the famine. By that method, God sustains his chosen people (and the Egyptians) alive, in order that he may fulfill his Word.
The manner in which God works out this scheme of salvation is simply amazing. First, he uses the hatred of the brothers to prompt them to sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Sold into the house of Potiphar, Joseph rises in favor in Potiphar's household. But falsely accused of trying to seduce Potiphar's wife, Joseph is thrown into prison. There, however, he interprets the Pharaoh's dream about the seven fat cows and the seven lean cows, which wins his release from jail and his rise to power as Pharaoh's right-hand man. Thus, from that position, Joseph is able to store up the grain that will keep Israel alive. What a convoluted, totally human story it seems, full of suspense and good and evil! But it shows clearly how God is able to use human emotions and activities in order to further his good purpose.
God does not cause human evil, but he uses even it, because his plan for his world moves steadily forward -- hidden, unseen, but pressing toward his loving goal. When we think God is absent from our world, therefore; when we believe that all is lost and cruel circumstances have overwhelmed us; then is when we perhaps should most remember the story of Joseph.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
In 538 B.C., Cyrus of Persia issued a decree that allowed the exiles in the former region of Babylonia to return to their homeland and to rebuild the Temple, even furnishing the financial means for the reconstruction (cf. Ezra 1). Some of the exiles returned, under the leadership of the Zadokite priests, but some who had settled down in Babylonia, who had married, built houses, and established businesses (cf. Jeremiah 29:1-7), remained in that foreign country.
Those who returned to Jerusalem faced a very difficult situation. Their city and temple were in ruins, poverty and inflation were rampant, and the agriculture of the peasants who had remained behind in Jerusalem was meager at best. Living was hard-scrabble.
In the midst of that difficult situation, Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66) picks up the former message of his predecessor, Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), and announces that God's salvation is near (v. 1). God is returning to his people, to restore their lives. Third Isaiah's call, therefore, is for the people to respond by establishing justice, that is, God's order, in their community, and by doing righteousness, that is, by fulfilling their covenant obligations of love and trust and obedience to their Lord. The prophet calls for such a response, not in order that God might return to them, but because God was in fact returning to be with his chosen people. Obedience and love toward God do not win God's favor, but are responses to the love that God has previously poured out upon us.
Third Isaiah is aware, however, of the plans for the rebuilt community that the Zadokite priestly leaders have already formulated while they are still in Babylonia. The Zadokite priests, and the priestly editors of the Old Testament, were concerned to prevent Israel ever again from falling into sin and deserving the calamity of an exile. The future plans that the priests therefore made for the rebuilt Israelite community were exclusivistic. They wanted all foreign wives excluded from that community (cf. Ezra 9-10). They planned careful attention to ritual and cultic duties. They limited the priesthood to Zadokites, descendants of Aaron. And they banned all foreigners from even worshiping in the rebuilt temple (cf. Ezekiel 44:6-9).
In the Isaianic tradition that is set forth for us in the whole of the Isaiah corpus, however, such exclusivism is not to be found. First and Second Isaiah both had announced a universalism that had included foreigners among the saved in Israel (cf. Isaiah 2:2-4; 19:19-25; 42:1-4; 44:5; 45:22-23; 49:6). And indeed, preexilic Israel had never excluded the worshiping foreigner from the temple (cf. Exodus 12:48-49; Numbers 15:14-16). From the beginning, Israel's faith looked forward to the blessing of all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3), and in the figure of the Suffering Servant in Second Isaiah, Israel was called to give its life for the sake of foreign nations (Isaiah 52:13--53:12).
Our text from Third Isaiah therefore continues this universal announcement (vv. 6-8). All faithful people who love the Lord, who keep the sabbath (one of the distinguishing marks of Jewish faithfulness in the exile), and who cling to God in covenant trust will be welcome in the rebuilt Temple. They may, in a priesthood of all believers, offer their sacrifices upon the altar, for the temple will be a house of prayer for all peoples (cf. Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46). God is gathering not only his scattered Jewish people to himself, but many others outside of Israel -- a fact that came true in the ministry of Jesus and of Paul, who became Christ's apostle to the Gentiles.
Because of the wideness of God's mercy, you and I -- we Gentiles -- now have become, through faith in Jesus Christ, members of his covenant people begun with Israel. And we are bidden by our Lord to take his good news of eternal salvation to all nations, baptizing them in God's triune name, and teaching them all that Jesus has commanded (Matthew 28:20). There are no barriers to the worship of the God and Father of Jesus Christ, except that of love and trust in him, and faithful response to his saving Word.
