It was not what they expected…

Not what the Israelites to whom this morning’s lesson from the Hebrew scriptures expected. This passage comes from Second Isaiah. It was written around 540 B.C.E., approximately forty five-years after the Babylonians demolished Judah and Jerusalem. These are the people of the “negative exodus.” They’d tasted the Promised Land. Now, their homeland destroyed, many had to leave it as well. They’d come from slavery to freedom; now they’d gone from freedom back to slavery.

Wha hoppen? “Some chosenness this is. Is this what Yahweh God means by Covenant? Is this what the ‘real deal’ is supposed to be?” they may well have asked. And what answer do they get?

Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty;
though you have no money, come!
Buy corn without money, and eat,
and, at no cost, wine and milk….
Listen, listen to me, and you will have good things to eat
and rich food to enjoy.

With you I will make an everlasting covenant….
…you will summon a nation you never knew,
those unknown will come hurrying to you,
for the sake of Yahweh your God,
of the Holy One of Israel who will glorify you.

It was not what the Corinthians expected either, what history demonstrated they had gotten: They are reminded that even though our fathers were all guided by a cloud above them and…they all passed through the sea…in spite of this most of them failed to please God and their corpses littered the desert. And there are those who fell into sexual immorality and twenty three thousand met their downfall in one day. Then there are the ones who put the Lord to the test and were killed by snakes, and the complainers the Destoyer got! Some God this is, hunh? Here, definitely is a religion that can be hazardous to your health!

Then, finally, the Gospel gives us expectation whiplash: some people arrived and ratted out Pilate for killing some Galileans as they offered their sacrifices. Now I’m sure “some people” expected the Master’s sympathy, even His outrage. Any respectable Messiah would have such reactions, wouldn’t He?

But what do they get? Not what they expected! Instead they get a “Who do you think you are?” speech. Do you suppose these Galileans who suffered like that were greater sinners than any other Galileans? They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them? Do you suppose that they were more guilty than all the other people living in Jerusalem? They were not, I tell you. No; but (Here we go again!) unless you repent you will all perish as they did.

But, then WHOA! then we get the Parable of the Fig Tree which trashes the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately mentality of corporate America. Admittedly, the vineyard owner has a longer fuse than quarter to quarter return on investment/return on equity but the bottom line is still the same: “Fig tree’s not producing; cut it down!” The gardner=God says “Ahhh. Give it another year. Then you do what you want, with the emphasis on “you.” Not me. You.

These lessons are a great reminder of a simple fact about our God that’s stated in the Isaiah passage and clarified in the Epistle.

Seek Yahweh while he is still to be found
call to him while he is still near.
Let the wicked man abandon his way,
the evil man his thoughts.
Let him turn back to Yahweh who will take pity on him,
to our God who is rich in forgiving;

“Get your priorities straight,”

Why spend money on what is not bread,
your wages on what fails to satisfy?

But we do. And we don’t listen. We’re too busy running around and talking, telling and not hearing, slaves to our cell phones, our pagers, our schedules. We don’t know what a boundary is. I’m confident were the Savior to walk the streets of Hartford today we’d hear from His lips things like “The mobile phone was made for man, not man for the mobile phone…”

Hear Yahweh God speak to us through Isaiah

Listen, listen to me, and you will have good things to eat
and rich food to enjoy.
Pay attention, come to me;
listen, and your soul will live.

Why? What is the message we need to take away from all of this?

…for my thoughts are not your thoughts
my ways not your ways…
…the heavens are as high above the earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.

We get panicky, we despair, the Israelites question the Covenant because of what goes on between our ears, the meanings we assign to what happens. And these passages are telling us we assign the wrong meanings to what happens to us and its implications.

The bumper sticker is right: What it says, “happens.” The rain falls on the just and the unjust. Misfortune is not a punishment, and loose living is no guarantee we won’t get a comeuppance. What “gets us through” is the promise found in the Epistle…

The trials that you have had to bear are no more than people
normally have (and here’s the most important part). You can
trust God not to let you be tried beyond your strength, and with
any trial he will give you a way out of it and the strength to bear
it.

But we do have to look for the strength and trust. It will be there. In our Church family. In our friends. In strangers, if we will be open to them. Because, like all the other events we’ve taked about this morning, that strength is likely, because God’s ways are not our ways, to come from a place, and in a way, we’ve not expected!