Spend Money
Isaiah 55:1-9

March 14, 2004

It is time to talk prophecy. Not the fakes and frauds who adorn the covers of the tabloids at the check-out counters, but those enigmatic, largely anonymous people who were possessed by God.

The Old Testament preserves the writings and passions of the greatest of these people, and there are some clear lines drawn about who is legitimately speaking for God. The Old Testament historical books frequently refer to guilds of professional prophets who protected their privileges aggressively. The point has been made that these professional prophets, often in the back pocket of the powers-that-be, were the rough equivalent of modern clergy.

Becoming a prophet was never a career choice. If one wanted to be a prophet, you weren’t the real deal. Most prophets were, by nature, difficult people to get along with. They were eccentric and crude in their way of relating to people; they were not nice guys as a rule. The sign is that the “word of the Lord” came to them when they did not expect it. Most resisted the word of the Lord. “Dabar Yahweh” also can mean a “thing or matter of the Lord” and that was a heavy thing to have to carry out. Few people wanted to hear the Word of the Lord, for it usually indicated that the religious establishment had abandoned its mission and was subverting God’s way in the world.

Nevertheless, if there is a prophet I would have liked to have known, and probably would have liked, it would be the fellow called Second Isaiah, the author of Isaiah 35, 40-55. A lot of prophets were kind of negative and critical; they railed against social and religious injustice with fire and brimstone. But Second Isaiah’s poems and oracles are not grim; they soar and carry us along to heights unimagined. Moreover, his sentences embody a number of our prayers and liturgies. We pray in Isaiah’s words a lot more often than we expect.

It was not that Isaiah wrote in a quiet time and in a gentle place. He lived in Babylonia during the Exile, but near its very end when one of God’s greatest paradoxes was about to unfold upon Israelite and world history with all its redemptive wonder. Cyrus the Great of Persia was coming.

Ironic that a lot of the churches that place so much weight on deciphering prophecies insist so much as well on associating only with fellow Christians. They forgot to read the most important parts of the Bible: Cyrus the Great was not a Jew or had any apparent knowledge of Judaism. He was a pagan, but Isaiah and others believed that it wasn’t just contemporary geo-military politics that sent Cyrus to defeat and overthrow the government of Babylonia and release the captives free. Cyrus was God’s messenger. And being a messenger, Cyrus was an angel. God chooses odd angels.

Isaiah lived among a beaten people. Torn from their homeland, deprived of their proper religious services, not allowed to speak their own language, their spirits were almost dead. Historically, the Jews were not alone to be in that situation, but they found a voice. The churches are emptying, except for the churches that promise salvation for those who assent and don’t think. The governments are inching back towards a conservative estimate of anyone different and foreign. The bombs are increasing in their unpredictability in Madrid, Jerusalem, Baghdad, London, and maybe Regina next. It is not possible to say that the Biblical world is archaic and irrelevant. It still lives.

The Jews weeping by the river of Babylon had forgotten the words. Isaiah remembered the words and knew it was time to speak them again.

God was going to do the Exodus once again. “Comfort, o comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, and that her penalty is paid, that she has received from her Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries: In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Deliverance from slavery and oppression to a people who had forgotten who they were is promised in hope once more. The message was not a one-timer to be thrown out as used up by historical circumstances. With John the Baptist in the wilderness of the Jordan, these words of Second Isaiah were used again to signal the beginning of the Gospel. The Word of the Lord is never outdated.

You that have no money, come, by and eat. Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price. Doesn’t buying imply having money? What kind of new economics is this? An idea of the NDP?

Why do you spend your money for that which does not satisfy? We recite these words at every communion service. This is not that distorted sense of prophecy as prediction of future events; here is insight into who we are today. We waste our souls on things we cannot control. We yearn to buy stuff that fill us up for an hour and leave us hungry for the rest of the day: clothes with the correct labels, travel to warm and exotic places, entertainment to make us think we are happy, security to keep out the strangers who may terrorize us.

Listen carefully to me, incline your ear to me, and you will enjoy the best food of all. What better food is there than the turkey that feeds the really destitute and hungry who surround us on the streets? What clothes look better than the coats that keep warm someone who has little? What delights us better than seeing joy and freedom in a captive finally let free? We are most secure when we honour all people and all faiths and all languages and become part of them.

I will make with you an everlasting covenant. The voices on every media want to convince you and me that the world has changed so much that there is no hope for peace, that the agenda irrevocably is power and money and violence, that the Biblical covenant with God has expired long ago. Our covenant is still alive, though it needs to be spoken and lived out with different words.

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. The Word of the Lord never sounds right at first whisper. God has a knack of insisting upon things the world has ignored or rejected. God does not speak in the politically correct language of the corporation, or in the bureaucratese of government, or in the hip hop tongue of fashion and Hollywood. When these institutions are at their best, they might mimic our language, they might hint at buying the food that really satisfies them. We should encourage them then to keep talking. Never think that you and I have said too much. Keep talking with those thoughts that are not our thoughts.

This is prophecy in the real sense: not predicting which nation is going to be the Anti-Christ, but awakening again, being born again to the realization of who you and I are meant to be sitting around the Lord’s table.

For you shall go out in joy, shouts Second Isaiah in one of our most familiar benedictions, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Why spend your money on what does not satisfy?

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan