Hilton Head Island, SC – October 23, 2016
The Chapel Without Walls
Isaiah 1:1-9; Isaiah 1:18-28
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” – Isaiah 1:18 (RSV)
The prophet Isaiah has had the greatest influence on Christianity of all the Old Testament prophets. His influence on Judaism and the biblical Israelites is debatable, but there can be little debate about how powerfully his words have shaped the Christian concept of the Messiah.
However, the biblical scholars have long insisted there was not just a single author named Isaiah, but two Isaiah writers, and possibly even three or four. They tell us that Chapters 1 through 39 of Isaiah were written by the man who identifies himself in the first chapter. The first Isaiah lived in the middle of the 8th century BCE, that is, about 750 years before the birth of Jesus. Scholars tell us that Chapters 40 through 66 were written by another man or men who lived two centuries later. We have now noted their academic hypothesis, but we shall not dwell on it.
There is, however, another notion upon which most Hebrew Bible experts also agree, and that is that the original Isaiah was a man born in Jerusalem into a wealthy family. Presumably he would have been on the Social Register, if they had had one back then. As such, Isaiah probably hobnobbed with the rich and well-born, they tell us.
We get a faint hint of that in the opening verse of the opening chapter of Isaiah. The prophet writes, “The voice of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.” Isaiah is the only one of the all the prophets to say that he was active during the reign of four different kings. But why would he record that historical fact? It may be because he personally knew those kings. His social position may have granted him entry to the king’s palace on many occasions. In any event, the biblical commentaries suggest that Isaiah was the most wealthy of all the prophets of the Bible.
Did that matter in Isaiah’s time? Does it matter to us in our time? I think it does, because it may propose to us that Isaiah had a unique personal access to the power structure of Judah at the time of its greatest political and financial influence in the ancient Near East (or Middle East as we now prefer to say). In the middle of the eighth century before the Common Era, Judah was a regional power to reckon with. But by the end of that century, the northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered by the Assyrians, or as we would now describe them, the Iraqis, and Judah itself was fearful of being swallowed up by the Assyrians.
We may deduce from all this that Isaiah lived in a period of rapid social, political, economic, and religious change. Dean Acheson called his autobiography as Secretary of State during the Truman Administration, Present at the Creation. Isaiah was blessed to be present at the creation when many major events were occurring in Jerusalem and the land of Judah that brought affluence and influence to Judah. But he also felt called by God to speak on behalf of God to Israelites who seemed to have lost their way in the wealthy existence in which they found themselves.
And that brings us to the last word in the title of this sermon, A Divinely Appointed Nudzh. You may be unfamiliar with the Yiddish word nudzh. Yiddish is a language which was originally spoken in central and eastern Europe by Jews living in Russia, Poland, Byelorussia (now Belarus), Ukraine, and Germany. Yiddish incorporates words from the languages of all those countries, but it is primarily derived from Hebrew. In other words, it is a conglomerate language, a Mulligan stew of a language, a polyglot language.
As such, Yiddish is one of the most colorful of tongues in linguistic history. It has a plethora of nouns which may deftly be utilized to designate meshugges, for example, folks who seem a little daft in the head, or schlemiels, those who are widely recognized to be lacking in gray matter, or schlimazels, people who are perpetually unlucky. The word nudzh actually comes from Russian, according to Leo Rosten in his classic lexicon, The Joys of Yiddish. The verb nudzheh means to pester, to complain continuously, to nag. Andy Rooney was a loveable nudzh, as was Ralph Nader, although his loveability factor is probably lower.
My guess is that many of the people of Israel found virtually all of the biblical prophets to be nudzhes, at least some of the time. The prophets made it their business to nag the people about their sins and bad behavior, but especially about their lukewarm fidelity toward God. Isaiah and Jeremiah are the longest of the biblical prophetic books. And while both men wrote some comforting and optimistic words, usually their writings were pointed, piercing, and painful.
The purpose of prophecy was to speak what was believed to be the will and word of God to the social, political, economic, and religious situations in which the prophets found themselves. Their words were almost always “present-centered,” not “future-centered.” And whenever the prophets made predictions about what would happen in the future, it was always based upon what was happening (or not happening) in the present. Prophecy is not fundamentally prediction; rather it is the proclamation of whatever is perceived to be the will of God regarding whatever is going on at any given period of human history.
There have always been secular as well as sacred prophets. For instance, in the time leading up to the American Revolution, people such as Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, John Adams, and Samuel Adams pointed out the injustices the American colonists were suffering at the hands of the British monarchy. They warned that unless the British changed their policies toward the thirteen colonies, they would soon have a revolution on their hands. Their task was not to threaten a rebellion. Instead it was to try to convince King George III and his advisors of the folly of their ways. But the king did not seriously alter his policies, and the revolution came.
In like manner, the Hebrew prophets addressed the moral and religious conditions in which they found themselves. If they thought the people were faithful to God, they extolled them; if the Israelites were inattentive and unfaithful, they excoriated them. But their purpose was never merely to condemn behavior. They always wanted to do what they could to improve behavior and deepen commitment to the God of Israel. If Israelite devotion to God seemed hopelessly anemic, the prophets inevitably declared that disaster would inevitably fall on them. Great sins result in great calamities, said the prophets; it follows as the night the day.
Isaiah opens his prophecy by saying, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken.” And then the prophet speaks on behalf of God and in the voice of God, as all the prophets did: “’Sons have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me…Israel does not know, my people does not understand’” (1:2,4). And God continues speaking via His prophet Isaiah: “’Why will you still be smitten, that you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint’” (1:5). Isaiah is stricken to the core because of the infidelity of Judah, and he insists that God also feels that inner heartache.
Next, God (or Isaiah) makes this doleful observation: “’Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence, aliens devour your land’” (v.7). That did not occur in Jerusalem or Judah during Isaiah’s lifetime, but it did happen in 722 BCE to the northern kingdom of Israel. Was it that to which Isaiah referred? Or was he concerned that unless the people of Judah returned to a greater allegiance to God that they too would be conquered by a more powerful foreign nation? It is impossible to know for certain what Isaiah was thinking. But it is evident from the opening chapter of this sixty-six-chapter prophecy that Isaiah, or the Isaiahs, believed that Judah could not continue in its sinful ways without experiencing an inner collapse. Isaiah insisted that defective national policies are bound to catch up with any nation sooner or later.
Even the youngest among us is old enough personally to remember the President most often identified simply by his initials --- “LBJ,” Lyndon Baines Johnson. No one who ever lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was a more masterful political wheeler-dealer than Lyndon Johnson. Recently PBS repeated its documentary about him. It showed him to be a man who often literally got “in the face” of members of Congress he was trying to wheedle or cajole into making a political deal he felt was essential to the good of the republic. If LBJ got as close to our faces as he got to the hapless politicos in that film, it would give us the personal-space heebie-jeebies.
LBJ’s favorite biblical verse was Isaiah 1:18. I shall repeat it, plus the two verses which follow. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (1:18-20).
Did the nation need a Civil Rights bill? It would get it. Did it need a Voting Rights bill? It would get it. When Lyndon Baines Johnson set his mind to accomplish something, it was very difficult to deter him. When he bid someone or a recalcitrant group of people to do something, imploring them, “Come now, let us reason together,” they knew it was going to be very hard to reason through the issue any way other than the way LBJ saw it.
It is probably easier for any nation to be moderately affluent than to be exceedingly affluent or exceedingly poor. If you are the Philippines or Laos or South Sudan or Congo or Haiti or Nicaragua, it is very difficult to rise to a level of national or international greatness. And if you are Hong Kong or Singapore or Dubai or Germany or Switzerland --- or the United States of America ---, it is difficult to maintain national or international greatness without succumbing to the temptations and almost inevitable over-reaching to which extraordinary affluence lures its possessors. Wealthy nations too often take political, military, or economic positions which are ultimately inimical to their own self-interest.
The biblical Israelites were never more powerful and affluent than they were when the prophet Isaiah was living in Jerusalem in the middle years of the eighth-century BCE. Isaiah lived in the plushest section of Jerusalem, and he regularly rubbed elbows with the 1%. He knew how those people thought and what they wanted to do and what they did. He was one of them - - - except that he wasn’t. He was a prophet of Adonoy Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, and the God of all the nations.
All of God’s prophets are nudzhes. They have always been nudzhes. They push people where they don’t want to go, they tell them what they don’t want to hear, they condemn them when they do wrong. But they also applaud them when they do right. The trouble is that prophets are internally and psychologically far more prone to notice the wrong than the right.
The National Geographic has always been one of my favorite magazines. My parents subscribed to it when I was too young to know of its existence, and for years after I was first married, they sent us a subscription. It turned me into a lifelong “geographile.”
The last issue of National Geographic had three stories which should stir the juices of modern prophets. The first was a story about how the rapidly warming Pacific Ocean is killing off certain species of sea creatures, and causing other species to move far to the north or south of where they are normally found. It suggested that climate change is threatening the existence of the planet. Then there was an article about the Grand Canyon, and how various commercial enterprises are attempting to turn it into a gigantic profit venture. One of the most awe-inspiring sights in the world is being threatened by mere capitalistic impulses. Finally there was an article about the Mayans of Central America. No one knows for certain why the Mayan civilization collapsed, but it may be because climate change robbed them of their primary means of feeding themselves. An immense drought afflicted the area from southern Mexico to Costa Rica centuries ago, and an amazing culture disappeared in an astonishingly short time.
What causes prophets to prophesy? And what is prophecy? It is an attempt to discern what God is saying to all of His people all of the time in whatever issues are confronting them. God wants the best for us, but “the best” is possible only if we seek to follow the laws of God. Love one another. Be kind to one another. Seek the Big Picture. Avoid clinging to the Small Picture, the Personal Picture, too much of the time. The earth cannot sustain the number of people living on it, and yet our planetary population keeps on steadily increasing. We have over-developed many of the nations of the world. What happened in this community two weeks ago yesterday when Matthew made his unwelcome visit on us may be an instance of what nature does when over-development occurs. Some of the strong nations of the world are running rough-shod over weaker nations. They need to be made aware of that, and to feel accountable for it.
Secular and religious prophets have always tried to speak up for the good of the whole world or for what they perceive to be the will of God for His world. No one can be a prophet and not be a nudzh. In the Bible, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jesus, Peter, Paul: they all tried as best they could to speak the word of God to the people of their own time who desperately needed to hear that word, but who often resisted listening to it with every fiber of their being.
As you likely are aware, in the last year Germany has allowed almost a million refugees, mainly from the Middle East and northern Africa, to come into the country. Chancellor Angela Merkel has been the prime mover behind this massive wave of immigration. She has encouraged it, she said, because the post-war German Constitution clearly stated that political refugees must be welcomed. And their Constitution guarantees that because the German people were acutely aware that not only did they not keep twelve million refugees safe during World War II but they actively sent them to their deaths in the extermination camps.
Angela Merkel has declared to her people over and over again, “Wir schaffen das!”: We can do this! Prophets try to inspire people to do what they resist doing and to refrain from doing what they frequently choose to do. To many Christians, and also to many Jews, Isaiah was the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets. God of the prophets, bless the prophets’ daughters and sons!