Infinite
Isaiah 49:1-7
Listen to me, O coastlands;
pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The Lord called me before I was born;
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword;
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow;
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the Lord
and my reward with my God.”And now the Lord says,
who formed me in the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
he says,
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”Thus says the Lord,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,
the slave of rulers,
“Kings shall see and stand up;
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves,
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
I still remember, almost 10 years ago (I can’t believe it was 10 years ago), when I was spiraling with anxiety over the election results that came as a shock to so many at the time, my dad texted me a quote from the theologian Reinhold Neibuhr, maybe most famous to the layperson for coming up with the serenity prayer that was adopted by AA. The quote was this:
The children of the light must be armed with the wisdom of the children of darkness but remain free from their malice. They must know the power of self-interest in human society without giving it moral justification. They must have this wisdom in order that they may beguile, deflect, harness and restrain self-interest, individual and collective, for the sake of the community.
I thought of this quote my dad texted me as motivation and hope at the time, when I was reading our passage for today. Because our passage is about harnessing our power and our faith, harnessing our power of the word of God, to confront and to overcome the evils of the world today, when it feels like things are insurmountable.
The book of Isaiah, you might recall, is sectioned into three parts, first, second, and third Isaiah. Our passage today is from second Isaiah, and this section was written during yet another time of exile—a time of despair and grief, but also a time of hope and promise that things would, indeed, get better. And our passage for today is a great representation of that, it’s kind of a roller coast of emotion. This is the second of what are considered Isaiah’s “servant songs;” in this song, we first get this language the knowledge that God has gifted us, his servants, with the gifts, values, and qualities we need to get by in this world—a sharp mouth, a polished arrow ready to enter the world and combat literal weapons with figurative ones—ones of cunning, but also of love and hope. How wonderful to know we come from a God who gifts us with such qualities!
But then it takes a turn— a turn I think we can all relate to. “I have labored in vain;” the servant laments, “I have spent my strength for nothing…”. Now, I know we’ve all been there. I know we’ve been there in our personal lives, in our relational lives with one another—when we feel like we’re giving and giving and giving and doing everything right, and yet everything is going wrong. I know many of us feel this way now, on a larger and more existential level in terms of the violence going on in our own country. It can feel like these gifts, these qualities we’ve been given by God aren’t enough, or we’re not using them correctly. It feels like we’re losing the battle. How can our figurative weapons of words and faith go up against both the figurative ones of hatred and bigotry, not to mention literal weapons of war?
Our servant here, in spite of his exile, in spite of this deeply human and relatable lamenting, keeps the faith: “yet surely my cause is with the Lord / and my reward with my God.” And the servant is honored to be in God’s sight, and God has become his strength. In fact, he is so honored, and God has made him so strong, that God gives him an even bigger task than simply getting back to their homeland…
The first task God gives to his servant is, “that Israel might be gathered to him.” A better translation of this might be, to “bring Israel back to itself.” I found this deeply compelling. This isn’t just about being in exile. This isn’t just about getting back home and everything going back to normal. This is about some deep soul-searching, this is about figuring out how the people have lost their way, how they’ve ended up in exile in the first place. Now, I don’t care where you are on the political or the moral spectrum, this is something we can all look at. How did we, as a people, get here? How did we get to a time in which American cities are being occupied and terrorized by its own military? How did we get to this point in which the tension and the violence and the hatred has gotten to such a fever pitch? This is about looking inward, and confronting not just who or what we think of as the enemy, but really looking inward at ourselves and at what led up to this point, to find ourselves again, as a people, as a community, as a country. That is the first task.
Upon my first reading of this (and maybe partially because I read it with a low-grade fever), I was very confused by the odd wording of verse 6: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant / to raise up the tribes of Jacob / and to restore the survivors of Israel…” It simply means—it is not enough that you simply guide your people back home. So God continues: “I will give you as a light to the nations, / that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” It is not enough that you just get back home. You have to be an example for all people; your light must extend outward. You have to think big. So this is the second task.
A couple weeks ago, stemming from a conversation I had with a church member, I wrote a (well-received, luckily!) longer-than-usual note to the church about quote-unquote politics in the pulpit—how it can feel overwhelming, hopeless even, to hear about the scary and violent goings on halfway across the country; and as I said in that note I don’t totally disagree. It’s rough out there! And truthfully there is little we can do from this tiny church in this tiny town in rural Vermont—that’s the reality of the situation. And I can understand how that could drive someone to despair, how that could make someone shut down during a sermon. Because where’s the hope in that? Well— keep listening.
One of the things I love about the Old Testament is how human it is. There’s hope and motivation to keep doing the work we’re called to by God, but there’s also lament. There’s questioning, there’s frustration. But more of than not, it’s sandwiched between reminders of hope. Our passage today begins with the reminder that God gives us everything we need, from the very moment we are brought into this world, to fight the good fight and do righteous work in this world—we have our words by way of the word of God; we have faith, we have cunning, we are ready right from the start, to be the people Niebuhr describes as the children of the light: we are armed with wisdom, but free of malice; God allows us to understand the evils of the world without falling prey to them. And yes, at times, it can feel like our efforts are in vain. But then, our servant doesn’t let himself get bogged down by this lament, this truth of what it is to be human. Because God reminds him—look inward, come back to yourself, and come back to me; and when that happens, our servant says, “God has become my strength.” And then our servant is given an even bigger task—with God has his strength, he is tasked with looking beyond his own community, beyond his own homeland. He is tasked with being a child of the light for all, an example for all.
And finally— “…to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, / the slave of rulers, / ‘Kings shall see and stand up; / princes…shall prostrate themselves, / because of the Lord, who is faithful…has chosen you” This is the result of taking the tasks we’re given seriously— the world that Jesus talked about. Next week, we’re going to pivot to the Gospel of Matthew, and in a couple weeks we’re going to read Matthew’s Beatitudes; the mourning will be comforted, the meek inheriting the earth, the peacemakers called children of God… this is what the servant into day’s passage is talking about. A world in which those who are despised by the powerful—the meek, the oppressed—are the chosen ones, are the ones who will change everything—the children of the light, leading, guiding.
And church—we are all chosen by God. We are all servants of God. We are all gifted with the faith, the words, the grace to change the world, to turn unjust power structures on their heads. When we hear of violence and horrors halfway across the country, we can’t despair. We can’t shrug our shoulders and say ‘well, nothing we can do here,’ and therefore not confront these evils that are so present in our world. Because God’s gifts, God’s love, is too big, too infinite to confine ourselves to simply was serves us in the short term, to confine ourselves at all.
This country is so vast and so diverse and so divided, it is all too overwhelming to even begin to think about what we can do to help a midwestern city under an oppressive military occupation; all too overwhelming to think about what we can do when a hurricane hits the Carolinas, all too overwhelming trying to figure out how we can help those who are displaced when the next round of wildfires hits Southern California. But God’s love is infinite. God’s gifts to us are infinite. We start small. We look inward, we really stop and think about how we got here. We organize amongst ourselves, we figure out how we, from our small, small corner of this country, this miniscule corner of this planet, how we can be children of the light, for the sake of community— for the sake of our own community, and communities across the country. It is not enough, according to God, stop at the borders of our own town, our own state. We have to act as a light outward, extended to all people. What that looks like yet, at this tumultuous point in time, I don’t know for sure—but I do know it means we can’t bury our heads in the sand. I do know it means we can’t despair and believe we’re powerless to enact change. And I do know, that on this Martin Luther King Jr. Sunday, when we are called to remember the great work of this modern-day prophet, that he was one of those “deeply despised” that God chooses: I always feel the need to remind people that at the time of his assassination, he had a 75% disapproval rating— at the time he was vocally and vehemently against the war in Vietnam, and he was in the midst of calling attention to economic disparities across all races, and calling for “a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.” King, being the true prophet that he was, knew better than anyone, God’s call is too infinite not to bring attention to the great injustices of the modern today on a broader scale; and he knew better than anyone that God’s power, and that God’s love is so big, so infinite, that righting these great injustices is, that bringing about an earth as it is in heaven is, indeed, possible.
So yes, it is all too easy to be discouraged and overwhelmed with the aggression, the imperialism, and the violence rampant right now. There is no denying that. The servant of our passage today voices these moments of dismay all too well. But God gifts us with the words and the faith and the love that we need to combat hatred in these turbulent times. God gifts us with all we need to be children of the light. And in the end, God’s power and God’s love is too big, too infinite to confine ourselves to despair, even to confine ourselves to a peaceful world for only a small subset of people; God’s power and God’s love calls us to look inward so we can then work outward, so we can be a beacon of light for all people.
We are gifted with all we need to bring about a world in which kings and princes will fall to their knees, in which the despised and the meek and the faithful will rise and be shone as the guiding light, as children of the light. We are gifted with all that we need to create heaven on earth. And we have to remember that God’s power and God’s love is so infinite that we can strive for nothing less. Amen.
