For a collection of writings written amidst decades of turmoil, there are times that the book of Isaiah paints a picture as stunning and evocative as the most beautiful of the Psalms. Today’s reading from Isaiah 65 speaks not only of our dream but God’s dream, with words that evoke a solemn engagement of the now, and holy hope for a better horizon. They speak profoundly of hopes for humanity, but even for renewal of earth itself.
Today’s sermon begins, then,
with a second reading of a segment of today’s scripture lesson. I invite you to sit comfortably in your pew, release
your shoulders, quiet your mind and focus on your breathing: breathing in God’s
love, breathing out anything in the way of embracing or believing that
love. As you enter into that rhythm,
hear these words once more:
17 For I am about to create
new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am
creating….
20 No more shall there be…an infant who lives but a few
days
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime,
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered
accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat,
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain or bear children for
calamity,
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well.
24 Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.
What a beautiful presentation of God’s ways of shalom, unfettered
by “former things”. As a Christian, as the
season of Advent approaches, these words align well with our hopes for the new
realm, the Kin-dom of God, a new heaven and new earth of joyous abundance for all
creation. Depending on where that fits within your personal belief framework, each
of us lives, to an extent, aware of that invisible and barely imaginable
horizon line – a divine reality unfolding now and culminating in the future,
all of which is beyond our perception. And
in Isaiah’s glorious portrait of a promised new heaven and new earth, nobody
dies young, nobody’s life is lived solely for the prosperity of someone else, and
even the natural enmity between species is no more.
While this reading from Isaiah bears remarkable similarity to
New Testament writings of Christ’s return at a date yet to be determined, this
was not the original intent of Isaiah.
The book of Isaiah was written over many decades, by a series
of authors. It is thought that chapters
56-66 are mainly addressed to people who had returned to Jerusalem following decades
of Babylonian exile. They had been threatened, and conquered, and hauled away
to exile; seventy years later set free from exile, and then when they returned
to their homeland they found it desolate and decimated. They needed help, and
hope, in the present tense. So these words from Isaiah 65, then, in their
original setting were not intended as prose about what God has in mind for some
undated future; they were words of imminent hope, declared to people who had
already been to hell and back. Note the
way it begins, “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth,” then it is
referred to as something God “is creating.” These are words describing something
about to start, soon.
This was the canvas, then, on which Isaiah paints God’s
masterpiece of unfolding hope, and perceiving this hope as something in process
right now remains a helpful way for us to receive the words in our deeply
messed up world in 2025. Can we hear
these words, not as far-away, not-in-our-lifetime events, but as expressions of
God’s loving intention even now?
When living in comfort, there is a tendency to tame
scripture, to make it pleasant and general.
But for those living hard lives right now, there is an urgency to
Isaiah’s words, for they are an indicator that God actually notices them and
understands their plight. So I’m going to
briefly revisit these words a third time, one chunk at a time, and invite you
to wonder with me who in the world right now, would hear these words as a
lifeline of hope, aligning with their deepest needs. And as you hear these words, I also invite
you to notice if anything here really catches you, for I’ve got an interpretive
framework to share a bit later that speaks to that.
We begin with verse 20,
20 No more shall there be…an infant who lives
but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime, for one who
dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth.
The
world we live in has huge differences in infant mortality rates, based on the
prosperity and political stability of the nation in which the child is born. So right now, the rate of infant mortality in
Afghanistan, Somalia or the Central African Republic is twenty times higher
than the rate in Canada, and more than fifty times higher than the rate in
Slovenia, Singapore or Iceland. That is
not God’s dream; longevity for all, is God’s dream, along with education for
all, opportunity for all, fresh air for all, healthcare for all, and every bit
of it unhindered by income or nationality or ethnicity or gender or sexual
orientation. We lift to God all the solvable factors that lead to such high
rates of infant mortality in too much of the world, including the baffling rise
in suspicion of vaccinations in parts of Canada, as we long with the God of
universal love for a day when children live long and happy lives, everywhere.
We
move on to verses 21 and 22, with their easily pictured yearnings:
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall
plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22 They shall not build
and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat,
Living
in a place of vineyard, orchards and ground crops, we can picture this! These
words strike home for many of our children and grandchildren, who struggle to
find pathways to affordable housing, and they reach out to many in the global south,
where nutritious food crops were ploughed under decades ago to make room for
cash crops. We saw this firsthand in
1988 when we had the privilege of doing a United Church overseas summer
internship in the Philippines: lands where fruits, vegetables and rice once
grew were converted to the production of rubber, sugar cane, pineapple and
other export-only crops. As we see so many people living rough in our towns and
cities, as we bring to mind many First Nations across Canada that deal with
substandard housing and decades-old boil water advisories, we are reminded that
God’s vision is quite different, and we are allowed to long for the day when
all, peasants and tenants and sharecroppers, shall build sturdy houses and
inhabit them, plant gardens and orchards for their own use, enjoyment and
benefit.
And
finally we move to verse 23,
23 They shall not labour in vain or bear
children for calamity, for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and
their descendants as well.
That
is one very stark phrase, “children born for calamity”. We think of children whose childhood is
truncated by war and violence, and as we recall that these words of Isaiah were
initially focused on people returning to Judah from a time of exile, we hold in
our hearts the children of Gaza who are cornered by their life’s circumstances. We think of child soldiers in Colombia,
Mozambique, and Syria, and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo who
mine cobalt so that our laptops, cell phones and cars can be easily recharged. We
think of the 50 million people in the world today who are enslaved, either in
forced labour or forced marriage. We
think of intergenerational trauma endured by descendants of Residential School
survivors. And as we think of all these who
seem to be born for calamity we hear God say NO: this is not my intent, you all of you, are
beloved and blessed, no matter how strong the powers of empire may say
otherwise. And so, in an act of
defiance, we, with God, yearn for a world where the cries for a world made new
will upend the status quo.
In spite of all of the
hopefulness that Isaiah brought from God to the returned exiles, I realize that
the net impact of hearing all of this might sound helpless or hopeless. But I have something to share that might
help. Many years
ago, I heard a talk by Bishop Thomas Garrott Benjamin, Jr, a
legendary African American Pastor in Indianapolis. Over a 42 year pastorate he oversaw huge
changes in the shape, focus and physical location of the congregation and its
ministry. A few years before he spoke to
us, the congregation decided to go all-in to be a place of safety, learning and
empowerment for children in their reach.
When asked what advice he would have for other congregations wanting to
find what God had in mind for them, he said this: find your passion. More specifically: find your passion by
“following the tracks of your tears.” If
it moves you to tears, then that may well be the calling God has for you.
As you have experienced these
words from Isaiah this morning, or in your prayers from day to day, is there
something in particular that moves you to tears, a deep yearning for you or perhaps
even a calling you perceive for the next season of this congregation’s life? Is there something calling our name, to
continue something we are doing or initiate something new? If you sense this, please share: be in touch:
with me, with Shannon, with the people of the Transition Team/Joint Exploration
Team. For even as we acknowledge God’s
role in the great and glorious unfolding of a new heaven and new earth, we also
know that our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ is to bring love and hope in
tangible, human, right-now ways. We are
called to be co-creators of the new realm, not yet here, but already in motion,
to dream God’s dream with actions large and small.
For
millennia, the prophets of our Jewish forebears, and religious reformers and
activists within our Christian story, have strived to bring God’s hopes into
the lives of those most needing to know they are not alone in their struggles. So I end with Isaiah’s closing words of hope: 24 “Before they call I will answer, while they
are yet speaking I will hear. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy
mountain, says the Lord”. May it be
so, Amen.
References consulted:
https://disciples.org/people/dedicated-disciple-bishop-t-garrott-benjamin-jr/
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/12/1158661
“What about the children?” a
1998 VHS resource of Light of the World Christian Church, Indianapolis, Indiana.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/infant-mortality-rate-by-country
© 2025 Rev Greg Wooley, Osoyoos-Oliver
United Church Pastoral Charge.
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