January 22, 2022
Thus says the Lord: In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you; I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, “Come out,” to those who are in darkness, “Show yourselves.” They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them. And I will turn all my mountains into a road, and my highways shall be raised up. Lo, these shall come from far away, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene. Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
This is the second of three Sundays on the same poem. Last week, we heard the hand of God was on the shoulder of his Servant. The Lord doesn’t tell us who this Servant is. It could be the prophet Isaiah, or it could be the whole Jewish nation, or it could be somebody else. We don’t know.
But what we know are two things: God has called the Servant by name, just as we are called by name in a baptism. There is a claim on our lives by the One who gave us life. It precedes every other allegiance, dispels every other distraction, and seals our soul in the grace of heaven. Whether we know or not, we belong to God. That identity comes before everything else.
And second, the Servant works with words. They are the tools of service. Remember the image of a sharp-edged sword. I asked somebody what they remember about last week’s sermon, and he said, “A sharp sword coming out of somebody’s mouth.” And who, I said, was that somebody? Umm… well, according to the scripture, it’s Jesus – the Risen Christ speaks and divides truth and error, light and darkness.
Today we hear the prophet say even more. Some of it offers the same promises we’ve heard before: the flock shall be fed, the mountains shall be lowered and the valleys lifted up (That’s a reprise of chapter forty). There will be springs of water (That’s chapter forty-one and chapter forty-three). They shall not thirst (That’s chapter forty-one and chapter forty-four).
It reminds me of the complaint somebody offered to her preacher. She said, “Every time I come to worship, you preach the same sermon.” And the preacher said, “Have you understood it yet?” She wasn’t happy about it. She went home with her complaint, complained to her husband. He said, “I agree completely. Every time I go to church, the preacher says, ‘Happy Easter!’”
Repetition is a
foundation of all learning. We believe something because we’ve heard it over
and over. So the Bible repeats itself, if only to get the message into our
souls. And that’s true of a poet like the prophet Isaiah. He sings the same
lyrics, especially in this section of this very long book, where the recurring
theme is “We’re going home.”
And today we hear something more. Isaiah declares, “Say to the prisoners: come out!” Now, this has been spoken before. Two weeks ago, we heard it in chapter forty-two. The Servant of God is called upon “to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” (42:7) We’ve heard this before.
For this is the
condition of his audience: “This is a people robbed and plundered, all of them
trapped in holes and hidden in prisons.” (42:22)
To them, the prophet says, “Come out!” Say to the prisoners: come out!
I don’t know if Isaiah wants us to take that literally or not. What would happen if we opened the doors of a prison? Sounds like the plot of a really bad movie.
Have you ever been in a prison? It’s OK if you don’t raise your hand. I’ve been in the Lackawanna County Prison two times. The first was a visit, many years ago, long before an overdue renovation. A group of church leaders raised the money to send me to Chamber of Commerce program called Leadership Lackawanna. Every month, a group of us learned something more about the county. One month, it was crime month – so we had a tour of the prison. That was grim, like stepping back into a Charles Dickens novel.
The second time was to visit one of our church members. He had gotten into some trouble with the law and earned himself an extended stay behind bars. I went to see him, got patted down by an unfriendly guard, walked through a metal detector, was buzzed through some heavy doors. I took my seat on a folding chair and waited for the prisoner to appear. I asked, “How are you doing?” He said one thing, “I can’t wait to get out of here.” I said, “Is it rough?” And he said, “I can’t wait to get out of here.” So I said, “Is there anything I can do for you?” He replied, “Can you get me out of here?” And no, that wasn’t something that I could do.
So I wonder which prisoners the prophet Isaiah was addressing when he said, “Come out!”
No doubt, he spoke to fellow Jews, to those like himself were beloved by God. After a series of international calamities, Jerusalem was invaded by the Babylonians in 587 BC. It was one of the defining moments of Jewish identity. The Temple was torn down, prompting the question, “Isn’t that God’s house? Did God abandon his home on earth? Were we so dreadfully bad that God had to punish this way?” It was an emotional scar, a lingering trauma, reinforced by the relocation of all the smart, affluent, and respectable leaders of the nation. They were held as captives in Babylon. So that’s one answer – the prisoners in Babylon. To them, the prophet said, “Come out.”
And time went on, so another kind of captivity began. Ten years, twenty years, forty years, seventy years. The Jews in Babylon couldn’t remember Jerusalem. They remembered the stories, the songs, the tales of heroes and heroines – and some of them fell in love with Babylon. Or they fell literally in love with the women and men of Babylon. And they slipped away from their own culture, began to pick up the new dialects, began to compromise their old values – perhaps not even perceiving the long slide.
They hardly realize they had made one small decision after another to give in to ways of thinking and living that had always been foreign to them. They cashed in their heritage to blend in – so that’s another answer – they were prisoners, not just in Babylon, but to Babylon. To them, the prophet said, “Come out.”
But there’s a third group of prisoners, equally captive. For the times would change, and the Babylonian empire changed, and God decided it was time for change – time for Israel to go home to Israel. But they were immobilized. They couldn’t decide if they should stay or if they should go. Just frozen in place, perhaps imprisoned, not by walls, but imprisoned by their own fear. To them, the prophet said, “Come out.”
The other day, I was telling some of you about the cat that I brought to town when I moved here. She was a strange little kitty, all black except for white boots and a white mustache. For whatever reason, she lived beneath the living room couch. She hardly never came out, only to eat or drink or do her business. Then she’d climb back under the couch. Weird cat!
One day, she got out. The back door was ajar, I think, so she decided to escape and explore. Her whole life had been lived indoors. This was a new experience for her. And it shocked her. She stepped off the porch onto the lawn and froze in terror. She had nothing about her head but open sky. There were no ways to keep her comfortably hemmed in. There was complete freedom – and she was afraid. It was too new, too open, too frightening – so she refused to move.
That made it easy to pick her up, easy to take her back inside – where she scurried immediately beneath the couch. And once in a while, I meet a human like that – afraid of the open sky, fearful of the freedom, terrified by all the possibilities. That’s when I hear Isaiah speak up for God to say, “Come out, come out, wherever you are. It’s OK. Come out.”
Life is full of confinements. Don’t we know it? There are walls that hem us in. Doesn’t matter if are constructed of steel bars, sheet rock, or open air. Every wall is real, especially if we are cautious or afraid.
· Some are confined to a zip code because it’s the only town they know.
·
Others
feel they are held captive to jobs that they hate – jobs that pay them well; it’s
what one of you called “the golden handcuffs of corporate life.”
· Some are kept in painful marriages. Some have lost wonderful marriages.
·
Others
are teenagers, just bucking to be free, but maybe without the skills yet to
make it on your own.
·
Some
are victims of a cruel, heartless religion, but it’s the only religion they
know.
·
Others
are held in place by economic dependence on somebody who holds them there.
·
Some
are afraid to be who they really are, so they confine themselves to a closet to
keep from getting hurt once again.
·
Others
are prisoners of a disease; they’ve been robbed of memory or muscle or emotion.
And a lot of us, maybe all of us, have experienced a trauma, some soul-shaking disruption that can freeze us in place. Maybe it was an unexpected death. Or a betrayal. Or an act of brutality. Or the child who never came home. Or the parent who was hard to take. Or maybe, just maybe, the trauma was a worldwide virus that snatched away loved ones, tore apart our families, and scared the bejeezus out of those with otherwise strong hearts.
Yes, the life we share has its share of confinements. The big question, the life question, is whether we are going to live by fear and captivity. Do we want to remain in the shadows or move into the light? To which God speaks through the poet/prophet to say, “Come out. You’re going to get through this. In fact, you’re already moving ahead.” This is a gracious, gentle invitation. And it is the invitation God offers to anyone who is afraid, anyone who feels imprisoned or immobilized.
One of the ways that we need one another is to tell stories of those we know who have found the courage to claim their freedom. I have a story like that.
It’s the story of a young man I know, someone I’ve loved as much as I love anybody. He got married ten years ago this summer. The marriage was full of promise. He worked for a college, which opened the way to earning a master’s degree. She had a federal job that paid very well. By all appearance, they looked happy. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Out of sight, the relationship got bumpy.
Then he started having strange physical symptoms. Loss of feeling in a leg, foggy thinking, uneven balance. He went for tests, they said, “Nothing wrong.” The symptoms continued, more tests. Still nothing. After a year, he tried a different kind of practitioner, who determined that he had been bitten by a tick that he didn’t realize. His deteriorating state came from Lyme disease and two other tick-born diseases.
His wife hung in there for a while, then she left him for somebody else. That affected his emotional state. Then one day on crutches, he fell and broke three bones in his spine. That sent him to months of physical rehabilitation. During that time, the alternative treatments for the tick diseases stopped any further neurological impairment. He called one day to announce, with some excitement, that he could drink beer again. But we worried about him. We worried a lot.
And then, one day, he announced he was beginning a second master’s degree. He thought it could help him with his job. And two nights a week, after work, he’s been driving fifty miles each way to take classes and work on his degree. His legs didn’t work, so he had his car refitted with hand controls. He pulls into the university parking lot, puts the disabled sticker on the rearview mirror, twirls around, pulls the wheelchair out of the back seat, and rolls off to his night classes.
And people started to hear about this guy. They invited him to high schools and said, “Could you talk to the kids? Tell them your story?” He’s still doing this, as he works his job and continues the night classes.
Do you know what he tells the kids? He says, “Life took a terrible turn for me. It got very dark. But it got better when I decided that I was done with being afraid. I can’t move my legs, but I said that isn’t going to stop me. I may be in a wheelchair, but I’m not going to be a prisoner.” He was going to be free.
It’s a story that inspires me, which is why I give it to you. Life is hard. At some point, it’s hard for all of us. But God offers a recurring invitation to freedom, to move from shadows into light, from exile to homecoming, from suffering to consolation. This is the invitation that always remains before us – until we claim it for ourselves.
And when we do, we join the poet in saying, “Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.” May it be so.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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