Disciple Bible Study, 11-13-19,Deutero-Isaiah

Well, here we are with second Isaiah.

A little different from first Isaiah, and I wanted to start with your reactions or thoughts or questions, if we could.

Well um it would be interesting to see the two perspectives, the Jewish perspective and the Christian perspective on the same thing.

And whether you like it or not.

Then you have the triad of the judgment and the theorem.

You have the Babylonians, which are bad social influence.

You have Judah, which is the community of faith.

And you can make the case that Babylon is saying for for our our our overuse of consumerism and the poor today.

And I wonder whether there was no way to deliver the Jewish people, and he was an outsider, and then he turned around and said 500 years later and picks to Jesus, and he's also an outsider, to say that the Jewish people.

It's a great question.

I would put to you, Jesus is definitely an insider.

Okay.

Right.

I mean, he's he's got um strong Jewish credentials.

Whereas Cyrus has zero Jewish credentials.

The outsider bit we should talk about here though, with the servant songs and the suffering servant idea, that for sure.

And I think what you raise is a really great idea, which is sometimes when Christians, when Christians read this, they say, Oh, it's all about Jesus.

And if we read it with a Jewish mentality, I actually think it would enrich our understanding of Jesus instead of pretending like this is predicting him, to read what this is saying at the time and and then see how Jesus resonates with it.

Does that make sense?

Instead of it being a one-to-one map, if it's analogical thinking, that's a really different relationship.

And then it it seems that um we're combining history.

I mean always being active in history a lot more than it has in the past.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anybody else?

I think it was interesting that whenever the Jews in the desert that gives them water.

And we use water for baptism.

And so the the thing with water seems to always be there.

And water is a funny theme.

Uh it's really worth exploring.

This is maybe I I can't resist myself jumping in here.

Um there's so many images here that are just so rich, and we often miss them, but this guy to me is probably the kind of artist I most appreciate.

I mean, Ezekiel is like I don't know, he's like um some kind of super counter-cultural performance artist.

And this guy to me has got these images uh that are in some ways they're counter-cultural, but they're not slams.

They're they're like they're like visions to pursue instead of like hammering your forehead against what we're doing.

That's that's so creative and life-giving.

It's so creative and yes, and there's nobody like this.

And and this is why scholars tell you this is a different author from chapters 1 through 39, because 1 through 39 doesn't have this stuff.

And then, you know, when we get to to chapter 56 through 65, that's a different one too.

It doesn't have this stuff.

So they say there's three Isaiahs, and this one we're gonna call Deutero Isaiah, which means second.

So good reminder, Deuteronomy means second law.

Because it is, it's Exodus repeated.

Um, but some of these images are really, really interesting, like the bit about water, and you know, there's some, like if you grew up in contemporary Christian culture or whatever, there's a like a praise song that says something like, When you pass through the water, I'll be with you, when you go through the fire, you won't be burned.

It's really interesting because um water in that in that isn't a wonderful comforting thing.

Not like this is not like splashing in a pool or going to six flags over Texas and having that spray come down and cool you off, right?

And and this is where we sometimes forget that water in the Bible almost always means chaos.

Um not evil necessarily, but but chaos.

And and if I can unpack it a little bit, particularly because we think about baptism, um, when you read Genesis chapter 1, when God goes to make the world, it's not creation out of nothing.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void, and the Spirit of God was over the waters.

There's this like primeval chaos.

The way I tell it to our kids is imagine that you took 124 crayons and colored all over each other.

It would just be a mess, right?

And then if you read Genesis, what happens is God separates light from dark.

God separates water from sky, God separates earth from water.

It's like God pulls out every color so it can be distinct instead of a gooey mess, right?

So when you ask rabbis, where does evil come from?

The answer is, well, look, God started with chaos and God pulled order out of it.

So what does God do?

God always pulls order out of chaos.

Well, where did the evil and chaos come from?

The Bible doesn't tell us the answer to that.

If God started with zero, nothing, then God made the chaos.

But that's not the implication of Genesis.

God starts with something already.

How did it get there?

No one knows.

But what God does is makes order out of it.

So now you get to baptism, right?

Which we usually think of as this really sweet thing, and water is life-giving and nourishing.

And honestly, when I tell kids about it, I always try to use the frame of what we do in church is take ordinary stuff and expect God to do something extraordinary with it, right?

So if regular wine and bread nourishes your body alone, then this wine and bread will not only do that, but nourish your spirit.

So then we think, okay, what does water do?

Right?

We use water to clean ourselves off, especially in Texas, we use water to cool ourselves down.

We need water to be hydrated, and water is the thing for growth.

So when we talk to kids, this is usually what I say about baptismal water, it's meant to wash off anything that's bothering you between you and God.

Whether that's sin or doubt or worry.

Um, it's meant to refresh you.

Uh, it's meant to uh be a reminder that all of this business is for growth.

But at the time of Jesus, when Jesus gets baptized in the Jordan, if you see the Jordan now, it's a muddy, dirty trickle.

Although when we went, the water was really high, so much so that you couldn't even get in it.

Right?

We went to Jordan after it had been raining, and you weren't allowed to get in the Jordan.

Um so it depends.

The Jordan was fickle, quite honestly.

If there'd been a lot of rain or snow melting up at Mount, because it does snow there at Mount Herman, and the water was gushing, it could have swept you away.

Unlike Texas and unlike modern times, where I mean to me, if your kids don't know how to swim, you you really should reconsider your parenting style here in Texas.

There's so much water, it's important for kids to be able to swim.

But see, they're landlocked people, they don't have cars.

Um swimming is a relatively new preoccupation of ours, right?

So if you can't swim and and there's this tumultuous water, it could sweep you away, it can wash away your crops.

On the one hand, water is what you need to live.

On the other hand, like in this climate when it rains a lot, water is really dangerous.

So here comes John the Baptist, and we don't know the water level when he's baptizing people.

It could have been raging and torrential, it could have been low, but John is sticking people under the water.

And a way to think about baptism is it's the symbol of chaos.

And we say this when we when we do this.

Paul says this, we'll read it in Romans chapter 6, that baptism is like dying and then coming up again.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

When you go under the water, you're going completely under the chaos and you're coming out to live a new life.

So this interesting symbol of water is that it's life-giving.

But another image that we get, even for our own baptism, right, is that God is not making everything easy.

We're coming out of chaos.

And we could spend our life trying not to resist it, but no, the Christian life is to go under it and come out different.

What you said made me think that the water is like a the moon.

And being born again, right?

And that's where you get that imagery.

Yeah, but you're in your hand of womb, you're not moving, you're surrounded by water.

And so maybe that's what they were trying to do with the urgent baptism.

Um, it's really interesting.

I I actually wrote a thesis on this when I was an undergrad student about baptism, and there was there's concern about uh river demons and water spirits as well, and going underwater is actually exposing yourself to unclean spirits with the idea.

So John is the first person we know of that came up with baptism.

Jewish brothers and sisters had been ritually immersing themselves in these things called mikvas for a long time, but that wasn't quite the same as what John does.

See, the mikveh is supposed to wash off any um sort of ritual uncleanliness.

Not sin, but like you you ate something that wasn't kosher, or you accidentally touched a dead body, or somebody with a birthmark touched you.

So this is to wash that off.

And some people were doing that four or five times a day, sometimes in these big jars, sometimes in baths under their house.

Now they didn't the water wasn't always running though.

So you you think these are dirty people, they get in the same water over and over and over again.

It's like getting in the Ganges and saying that it cleaned you.

John, you don't do this to yourself.

John is shoving people under the water and he says, I'm gonna do it once and you're done.

And that's new.

But I think in some ways, John what John does is takes Isaiah kind of very literally, which is you're going to pass through the waters and I'll make something new out of you.

So this is that dog.

This is where it's an interesting Christian symbol.

So this is what's gonna happen when we get to the New Testament times, is that instead of circumcision being your entrance rite, it's gonna be baptism.

And circumcision will end up becoming irrelevant.

But I but it's interesting to unpack what water means, and you see it here, and and you get to hear things like God is going to dry up the sea.

Well, that would be terrible, but of course it's not literal.

The sea is like where all the evil is, and and it's you they didn't think the world was round.

Sorry, they didn't.

They thought the world was flat and that there was water underneath it, chaos, and there was water above it.

So we're kind of sandwiched between chaos, we're this little bit of order.

And the mountains are holding up the dome of the sky, and whatever.

So um if we read this literally, we would not be taking it seriously.

We uh when we were in Peru, uh we met a child.

Yeah.

And her husband had passed away, he went into the water, and he comes from the visit, and when she passes away, she will go back to the turn to the water because that's where we return to the case.

That's interesting.

And she speaks of that stranger, you know, as if as if it were fact, and and and and for her it is fact.

Um she's just waiting to return.

If if you watch the Game of Thrones, there's this Isle nation called Pike, and the Pike people worship the drowned god, and part of their rite of passage is that you get drowned and resuscitated, and then they say what is dead can't can never die.

And that sounds funny, but I think that's similar here is what Paul's going to say is you go under the water and you your old identity has to die.

Not just change a little bit.

Our mentality is not supposed to get a tune up with the gospel, it's supposed to die so that God can give birth to a new brain in your head.

That's the interesting thing.

That's why I think prosperity gospel does not work, because it's tuning up what we already think instead of it dying.

I talked way too much about water, but I do want you to know why we use a shell, right?

The shell, there was you can go to the to the Jordan River and there's little shells, by the way.

But John the Baptist did not use a shell to baptize anybody.

He shoved people under the water.

What about babies?

He didn't baptize babies, nobody baptized babies until 400.

So where do we get the shell?

You know, the oldest pilgrimage site, Jerusalem, but next to it is Santiago de Compostelo in Spain.

Pilgrims went there for a long time, like even in the early 500s, and they thought Spain was on the edge of the world.

Like if you got in a boat and rowed, you might fall off the world.

So it was a journey literally to the end of the world, and there people were either baptized or they were sort of remembered their baptism, and they brought these shells back as souvenirs of having gone to the end of the world.

And so shells started getting used in their parishes by their priests as a symbol for the the figurative journey that when you get a baptism, you've gone off the world.

We've done compostella, and I did the entire thing.

The whole 400 something miles, yeah.

Um it's quite a moving experience.

Did you get a shell?

I had a shell, I love a shell.

I had a shell.

But this is where it's from.

You you journeyed to the end of the world and then you come back.

Yeah, and I frankly I didn't know a lot about the some of what you referred to.

Um it can become very intimate if you do that.

And you go through as you're at a time in your life when there's some big changes happening, and you don't have much control, and you just turn that over to God, and you just you just go.

Um for me, it was on a bike.

And if they if we couldn't get it on the bike because it was too rough, the the support van would take the bike.

And remember she and I hooked up with a woman that we did the entire thing.

We either walked it or biked it.

And yeah, it was and I think that actually really that whole thing is what Isaiah kind of has in mind, that richness, right?

When you pass through fire, you won't be burned.

I mean, you won't be burned up, but you will be refined.

And when you pass through water, it will affect you.

I'll when you pass through the water, I'll be with you.

So God travels with us through chaos, God doesn't end it.

I mean, I I think that's part of what we get the year.

That's where the prosperity gospel doesn't fit.

You know, it closes itself, and we're just gonna let her stay out there.

Oh, I'm just just gonna do it.

She's so fickle and naughty.

Um she's great.

Very social.

Yes.

Okay, um, I don't know if you noticed, God will cut up Rahab into pieces.

That's not Rahab the prostitute, that's uh there's a sea monster called Rahab.

Think of Laval Ness monster, or think of like, I don't know, the Kraken.

Uh so God made the kraken for the sport of it, but the kraken's bothering people, so God's gonna chop up the I mean, really, that's it.

That's that's the images that we that we get.

Um, John the Baptist, we're gonna hear this in two weeks.

In the wilderness, a voice calling out, prepare the way of the Lord, right?

Every valley shall be exalted and every high place made low.

And and this is the opening for 2nd Isaiah, which is the people are in Babylon, they're gonna go back to Jerusalem, and that is a really uh like gravel road.

Think about roads in uh developing countries, and what God's gonna do is make it a super highway.

So the way you make a super highway, right, is you strip mine mountains and you take all that filled dirt and fill in valleys, and then you've got a wide highway.

And the gospels change it.

The gospels say the voice of one calling in the wilderness, quote, prepare the way of the Lord.

Isaiah says the voice of one calling, begin quotes, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.

So the quotes start at a different point.

John the Baptist goes to the wilderness and calls, prepare the way of the Lord.

Isaiah says, make the way of the Lord in the wilderness.

In some ways they're similar, right?

They resonate, but they're slightly different.

And of course, the whole goal here is to take the low places and build them up.

And what God has in mind is so that people who are away from home can get home.

What's interesting about that, right, is that's sort of like uh taking uh the world uh like like I don't know, the African national debt and forgiving it so that low places are made even.

Or that's like taking people who are built into uh are born into poverty and abuse and rehabilitating that so that the low places are made level.

Who pays for that?

The high places do.

That's how that works.

Um it's literal, it's literal, but it's also figurative so that people who find themselves away from home, from God's Can make their way back.

Come here, dog.

It's I mean, really, this is amazing social justice stuff here.

And it plays out on a terrain that's impossible because if you've been to Israel or Jordan, it's it's not like Houston where it's flat, it's dramatically hilly, right?

I mean, think about Petra and think about going to Amman and Capernaum and up looking at the Golan Heights.

I mean, there's snow in those mountains up there.

And when you go to Jerusalem, well, you can't quite tell from that map, but Jerusalem is extremely, extremely topographically varied.

I'm sorry, we're not laughing at you.

I'm not funny.

I'm not funny.

So I'm glad you're not laughing at me.

Oh, I know.

No, I know.

I know.

They keep people.

They just, yeah, they're sweet.

They're the comic relief.

What are those weird people doing in there?

We get another image of God the shepherd, right?

Where God carries the lambs.

Yes.

And uh again, that's just a wonderful image.

It's the oldest Christian image.

Like I've said before, ours is unique because the lamb wants to go into God's arms.

You get to see the scale of God.

You know, it's interesting is the the glass the flowers fade and the grass withers, but the word of the Lord is forever, and God's sort of breath is what gives life and takes it away.

And remember that that word breath is really the word spirit.

So this is the spirit of the Lord that gives and takes away life.

And boy, um, we get to hear things like God will not grow faint and will mount up on wings of eagles, and um boy, that's why we have the Eucharist.

Uh there's something here that's really different from the rest of the Jewish Bible.

This is probably the only true monotheistic book that we have.

And what you hear Judaism is the oldest monotheistic religion.

I'm not sure that's true.

Um, some people argue Zoroastrianism is.

It depends what kind of Zoroastrian scholar you think you are.

But I will tell you this: Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were not monotheist.

They were not.

But second Isaiah absolutely is a monotheist.

Think about how peppered throughout this.

There's ridicule of idols and other gods, and here we get to hear at the very beginning of this Isaiah that God was first, that there is no other god like God, the other gods aren't gods.

I mean, those are the claims.

We're used to the Bible saying there's no God like God.

But that allows there could be other gods.

Here we hear that there is no other God.

Period.

And we also hear that he's actively involved in the history of that.

Yeah.

But here he's would always seem to be saying things are gonna be bad, but I am going to bring you out.

You are my people.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting, right?

And we get to hear this image that God's gonna irrigate the desert.

But God's able to take dry places and make new life there.

When they talk about when the kitchen gods and the you know, those kinds of things, that was pretty standard for that time.

Even among the Jews who were monotheistic and believers, uh, they they still had those things.

I mean, let's let's be a little bit honest.

We don't believe in that, but we do, because sometimes our computers like all of a sudden don't work.

So what do we do?

We unplug them and restart them.

But we do have like a little bit of superstitious thinking regarding our appliances, you know, and and I know why, because they're not they're not linear.

Sometimes my appliance, like I was editing a Word document yesterday and it kept freezing.

And so I would do a little bit of work and quickly save it before it could freeze, and then would close it and open it again, and that's a non-linear, you know, I mean it it's bizarre.

There's almost like a spiritual entity to the thing.

Yeah, we try not to make our computer mad because it'll delete our files, right?

I mean like I think it's just thinking like that.

It's not like people are like, oh, hang down to my cup, but it's sort of like, hey, sometimes weird stuff happens with like cups in like traditions.

I think so.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

Do you notice we get to hear this the suffering servant, right?

And this is important.

The first time we meet the suffering servant, it is definitely the nation of Israel.

No question.

Who is supposed to be a light to the nations, who's supposed to be a blessing to the world.

So remember when Abraham gets blessed by God, God says, I'll bless you, and all the world will be blessed by you.

Like Abraham is the satellite dish of blessing.

So God's gonna send the beam to Abraham, who's going to disperse it to everybody else.

Again, this is totally against the prosperity gospel.

God blesses us so that we can be blessings to others.

Which means that if we're taking blessings and hoarding them, we're misusing them.

And notice that Israel is supposed to be a light to the nations, not quarantined in a monastic community.

So the world is not a bad, evil place that you're supposed to resist corruption from.

It's a place that you are meant to be in the middle of transforming so that it has the lie God intends.

And that implies there will be some suffering.

But that's the nation of Israel.

Now, what that means, right, if we take that literally, and I'm and I we can get really nasty here and I don't want to do that, we can say, okay, look, Israel is God's chosen people, so really the author's saying anybody who gets God at all is supposed to be doing this.

Now, we could say Christians are the new Israel, and I I that's really bad thinking.

I think what the author is trying to get us to think of is if you understand anything about God and larger life and righteousness and justice, then you're supposed to be a blessing to other people.

Whether you're Cyrus, or your Zadok the high priest, or your Christian or Buddhist or Muslim, I'm gonna be that widespread casting the net because that's how you're like to the nations.

There's no strict conversion here, right?

The images talk about these pieces of larger life being shown to people who don't have it.

The other thing we get is, hey, the things that happened in Jerusalem were not an accident.

That God was involved in that.

And so maybe that's just a reminder, hey, like God is not overcome by chaos.

It's not that God is too weak or is bad, but hey, um chaos still happens.

And sometimes we can say it's punishment, but other times maybe it's its natural cause of the world we live in.

Right?

I mean, when Hurricane Harvey came to Houston, I can't believe it was because anybody was being punished because they didn't pray enough or give enough money to church or something like that.

The truth is, when you build your homes in a flood zone, floods are going to come.

People thought that when um the hurricane hit and they would be being punished.

And that would be a lot easier to make that argument.

That's what they said about the yeah.

Yes.

Oh my gosh, I forgot about this.

Yeah, and then you had people like Arthur Ashe, and said people thought, well, he must have done something to deserve it.

He must have been a philander or gay, of which he was neither, right?

Yeah, it became really, really, really, really tough that way.

We get to hear Cyrus is an instrument.

Um an instrument of God.

That's really interesting.

Cyrus actually was a pretty uh probably uh pretty interesting guy, but uh interesting to think that people can be instruments uh of God.

And strictly speaking, maybe that's not so bad if we think of whether with the kind of music we choose to produce.

Was he the only person that uh was used in this way?

Well, uh, you know, other books are going to say Babylon is God's instrument, or that uh Assyria is a chastening rod, but when the chastening's over, God's gonna punish the rod for being haughty or arrogant or vain.

We I mean we get that stuff.

Here we have Cyrus named by name.

Yeah, and they and he didn't um Cyrus Empire.

I mean Cyrus would lasted until he sent the people back and paid them for them to go back.

Um I I assume that he was just a very good man.

He was an interesting monarch for sure, probably ahead of his time in terms of like human human rights um respect, and absolutely the way he handled people was supporting their local economies.

He thought that would make more money for the empire than dispersing them or doing a brain drain.

But yeah, he required them to pray for the emperor too.

I mean, that's the interesting thing.

So he was a strong patron kind of person.

Um I don't remember, I'm I'm just gonna double-check this out.

You know, there is this thing, uh maybe it's maybe you're interested in this, maybe not, but um, there's something called the Cyrus Cylinder, and it's in the British Museum, and it's basically a cylinder with engraving about it, and it includes how it is that Cyrus conquered Babylon.

And um Babylon was a city with gates that were something, you know, the the not the Ishtar gate that's in the Pergamon Museum, but the external walls of Babylon were so wide that a chariot could drive on them and pull a U-turn.

See what they did is they they made two walls and filled it in with trash and rubble, and then they paved them.

And the the gates, the city, uh, the Tigris River went through the city, which meant that during a you can't poison the Tigris River, right?

So the other thing is there was arable land in the city, which meant it should have been siege-proof.

The way that Cyrus took Babylon, you can read it in the book of Daniel, just in the middle of the night, the whole city falls, you know, um, is that Cyrus went out of view and dug a canal around the city, and in the middle of the night damned the Tigris, it flew through the canal, they walked right into the middle of the city where the river used to be and took it without a single casualty.

And that's in this on the Cyrus cylinder.

So that's like this superhuman.

I mean, it's a military and engineering marble, right?

That he diverted a major river.

Uh, but they walked through that water gate, and and so that's the kind of way that he earned this almost supernatural reputation, right?

Is that he took, I mean, what's an impregnable city?

It's sort of like the Germans going right over the Maginot line, right?

I mean, it was nobody ever thought of that.

Uh well, no, and and nobody thought of this either.

And so he walks through and takes this in he takes Constantinople without losing a single life.

Could you repeat how he did that again?

He diverted the Tigris River and then walked the Tigris, the the like ditches around the city.

Yeah, here I'll I can draw you a diagram of how it looks.

So imagine here's Babylon, this huge walled city, and the Tigris River flows through.

And there's like a, you know, there's like a port colus, imagine there, so you can't walk through that.

Right.

And here comes the water.

Well, Cyrus did one of those numbers and damned it.

Then this is really dry, and they just sort of walked in and there they were.

It was sort of like a Trojan horse, without the Trojan horse.

So Cyrus would where'd he come from?

He's a Persian.

He's a Persian.

Yeah, and if you're wondering, his loan word, the lurk the the the Persian word we all know the best, just the word paradise, which is a garden.

Well now, Zen and Zoroaster were Persian.

Not Zen.

Zen is the father of Zoroaster.

No, uh Zarathustra is.

Okay.

He's the prophet, or he's also called Zoroaster.

They end up being Persian.

He probably was, that person was probably originally a Hindu priest.

Um 900 BCE, maybe.

So Cyrus would have been Zoroastrian, no doubt.

Yeah, no doubt.

Interesting.

Most of that religion we don't understand because the Zara the the Zarathustra, the the holy book, we don't have all of it, we just have parts.

When Alexander took over, he kind of destroyed most of Persian religion as we know it.

There are Zoroastrians in the world, right?

Freddie Mercury was one of them.

Um but there's not many.

There's just not.

Again, this was like the most popular religion in the world at one point, but when the Greeks came through, they they they really wiped a lot of it out.

It is in India.

I'm trying to recall the other religion in Persia.

It's Islam, I but others in that Islam is uh one that they get persecuted for being that side of the in Persia?

Well, if you think of it, let me know.

Please.

So Cyrus could have had a monotheistic uh it's possible.

It's possible.

I will tell you, most people mistakenly believe that uh Zoroastrianism is dualistic, that it's good versus evil, and they're locked in this fight, and who knows who will win.

Um my understanding is that that is an illusion, but Uhuramaz does gotta pull it out.

And um, to be honest, most contemporary Christians actually kind of think that way.

It's God versus the devil, and they're locked, God'll win eventually, but for now it's this sort of struggle.

And um I would argue that's actually like a terrible way of understanding life and the Bible.

When we studied Revelation last year, it's just really clear that's not the case at all.

Um it's it's an illusion we live into, but it's an I mean the John says clearly it's an illusion.

Uh there's there's nothing like that.

Um do you notice that God has tattoos?

Because everybody's name is written on God's hand.

God's like a nursing mother who can never ever leave God's people behind.

Even though he still keeps pounding them on the head sometimes.

He's going to redeem them.

Contextual change for sure, right?

So consider that the first Isaiah is writing during the Assyrian invasion, which didn't prevail over Judah, right?

It's the Babylonians that did.

And this guy clearly writing to people in Babylon who find themselves away from home saying God's not done with you, God's gonna bring you back and restore you.

But what's restoration is all about?

Restoration is not just about you doing your old thing, it's about being alike to the nations.

So I think you know, when you think about raising children or being an educator, if you only have one way of being, you're probably missing the robustness that is human existence.

So warning, comfort, purpose, all of those are different things that encompass human experience.

The theme, the the themes of the prophets up until this time seems to be very negative.

Very warning-based.

Yes.

And I think part of it is trying to I think Yeah, and and I and I think it's interesting to think about.

Um you can read all this stuff about gambling and about risk tolerance and things, but in order for us to pursue a risk, the reward has to be pretty high.

In general, people, our brains have evolved to be pretty risk averse, unless the reward is tenfold.

Right.

You know, in general, if people could invest five dollars and make one, they won't do it.

But if they can make five, well then they'll start to maybe do it, right?

There has to be a high enough profit margin, which I think says something to us that our reptilian brain is much more motivated by the stick than the carrot.

So that may be it.

And I don't know that you're hearing a reward here.

I think you're hearing a promise to live into.

Yes.

But it's not like, hey, be good and then I'll take you back.

It's I'm taking you back, and here's how you ought to go.

So that you'll enjoy it or do what I have in mind.

But it's not a contingency, that's the interesting thing.

And that's the problem, I think, with prosperity gospel and fundamentalist Christianity, is that you get what you pay for.

But God makes the rain fall, and the just and the unjust, and even disobedient children are God's children like a nursing mother, and God's not going to leave them stranded.

And when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, not I'll be with you if you pray.

So it's interesting theology.

Right?

It's it's it's much bigger than we usually settle for.

It changes, it put it pushes it into a different direction.

I think so.

I think so.

Hopefully.

And that's where it's very, very hopeful.

It's like God is so much, again, God is so much bigger than like our frame of mind.

This is an imagination stretcher saying, okay, everybody here is don't put God in the box.

Whatever.

But this this this book is saying don't even put God in the three dimensional world because God's a multidimensional world.

Entity.

So start to grow your imagination.

This book's almost saying, like, if you can't see it, it's not because God isn't doing it, it's because you can't see it.

So you might have to use your mind's eye or grow your mind's eye or put context lenses on your mind's eye.

And that's where we get to hear this great image again.

And Darlene's brought in the John August Swanson version of what's called the peaceable kingdom.

It doesn't name all the pairs that we got back in Isaiah 11, right?

But again, if you can't imagine the wolf lying down with the lamb, that's your problem.

Because God's going to do that.

Put a different way, right?

The the Tutsi will lay down with the Hutu.

And the National Democratic Socialist will lay down with the person wearing the Jewish star.

That's hard.

The others I can imagine.

That's just hard.

It's really hard.

It's hard.

Right?

That's like George Wallace will lay down with Harriet Tubman.

I think is the point, right?

Jerry Falwell will lie down with Osama bin Laden.

Well, they're about the same person.

I mean, so you know.

But you you you you you pick what you what you what you want, or you pick who's hard for you, right?

You'll lay down with your mother-in-law.

There you go, right?

We all have our own.

And it and and not choke her in her sleep.

I mean, right?

Like you'll actually be able to rest together.

Like you're you'll be able to rest in the presence, like the intimate presence of somebody who winds up your adrenaline and cortisol.

Again, we don't do stuff like that because that can't happen.

But that's what this book is saying.

Not just that it can happen, the wolf will lie down with the lamb.

This is an image of reconciliation that's just beyond us.

Because we can't imagine how a how could Dietrich Bonhoeffer lie down with Adolf Eichmann.

And since we can't imagine that, we almost we just put it out of God's capability when the book is saying that's gonna happen.

I want to believe that.

You know, I want to truly believe that.

I mean I do intellectually, but there's a part of me that just goes.

I mean, I sometimes don't even want to believe it because that's such a challenge to my worldview that you get what you pay for and you earn and you deserve things.

I and I I almost think it's a for me, there's this interesting place because for me what's compelling about this diagram is not even about Hutu and Tutsi people, it's about family relationships that are just broken as hell.

There's there's that that uh song, Heal My Unbelief.

So I, you know, I've heard a couple attacks that I think are interesting as for us to practice that is God doesn't require us to be willing all the time, but if we're not willing to be made willing, then then there's there's there's something then God is gonna have our time working with us.

So I think what's interesting to think about is maybe we can say, listen, there are people in my life who have hurt me so much or who have affected my mentality or my life so much, I can never be reconciled with them.

I can't even imagine it.

Okay, well, God's gonna do that after you die then.

And maybe our spiritual journey is to make peace with the later, even if we can't now.

There's people I don't want to be reconciled with after I die.

The hurt is just too much, and there's nothing they could do to take that away from me.

So, forgiveness, right, is this thing where we say, I am who I am, and in some ways I've made peace with that.

It doesn't even have to be grateful, but I've made peace with who I am, whether I was abused or whatever it is.

I've made peace with that.

But reconciliation means I'm gonna have a future with an abuser.

And that's really interesting when he said in the video, I've never heard it quite like this before.

That's what it means to suffer because in order to be reconciled with somebody, you have to absorb the hurt they gave you, and you can't give it back to them.

That's very, very different from the way Christians read this book, which is Jesus was our whipping boy and took our spanking.

God has to punish somebody and Jesus took your punishment.

That's not the read he offered.

The read he offered is in order to be reconciled in any relationship, the hurt person absorbs the hurt.

Which I think is very, I hate it, but it's very sensible.

I mean, it's true.

Uh that's the only way we can go forward together, is if one person chooses.

And and I'm positive the author is still talking about God's chosen people, not exclusively Jewish people, but the people who choose to hear God and follow.

That's what it means to be reconciled with the world, is that there's times where we cannot, where we can be maybe righteously indignant, but we can't be vengeful if we want a future, right?

So I think what we often do is we hear he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and his appearance was so marred, and we say, oh, that's about Jesus getting beat up, and really that's what happens anytime there's reconciliation.

And to put yourself out there with somebody who's hurt you before is like being a lamb led to the slaughter.

No, look, I think we get it.

There's if your husband beats you and you keep going back there for the Lord, you probably just shouldn't keep going back there.

You know, however, I would be talking out of both sides of my mouth if I said you should never ever try to be reconciled with someone who's abused you.

I actually had a lady who worked for me, and I think her dad had abused her mother, and she went back and they were reconciled, and I don't know all the steps, but they were reconciled and like it worked out.

My thinking is you don't have to do that.

You don't.

And I think that's right.

I think if you do it, you ought to choose to do it, not have the church pushing you into it.

So I almost think the church should say, don't do it unless God calls you to do it.

But as a church, we're here to support you being separate and taking care of yourself.

So it's, I mean, it's really messy that way.

Well then how will we be reconciled when we get to heaven or wherever we're going?

I don't know how.

I I just I sort of think Isaiah is saying, if we can't do it on our own, God'll help you take care of that.

You may not want it, and that doesn't matter.

God's gonna do what's best for us.

That's comforting, didn't we?

That's very comforting.

It's sometimes a little upsetting, but yeah, I mean that's that's if we choose to believe that reconciliation with our enemies is ultimately best for us.

I'm still 50-50 on how I feel about that, even though in my head I know that's right.

Um I think the goal is then can we live into that now instead of later?

And how we live into it is really, really tough, right?

Because sometimes to be reconciled to somebody, I want an apology.

And I can tell you there are people who I want that from who can never give it to me.

And I am really mad about that.

But they can't.

And what do we do with that?

Well, the truth is, it doesn't matter what you do, whether you're mad or you retaliate or you're vengeful, you absorb that abuse.

I mean, it is in your bones one way or another.

So you can try to act like it's not and be an angry, cruel person, and then it just gets deeper down in your bones.

Now that's where this is really interesting, prophetic text, isn't it?

In some ways it's religious, and in other ways it just describes human experience better than I ever could.

What's interesting is that there's, if you if you look backward, right, there's people we've given second, third, fourth, fifth chances to, and there's people we've given one chance to, and it's not always linear why we did one here and seven here.

We just did.

I used to teach, and they were kids, that I had an attraction to, I don't mean like physically, but I just was attracted to certain students and I couldn't even make sense of it.

Sometimes they were the best and brightest and most thoughtful students, or the ones who thought like I did.

Sometimes they were just hot messes, and I I could spend a lot of time trying to figure out attraction, but I don't think it makes sense.

It just is.

So the question is maybe can we live into that more when we don't feel like it?

How does um Babylon fit into all this?

Well, I think you said something really interesting.

Uh, hey, their ways are not God's ways, and things like militarism and consumer culture are like not great.

Right.

Wow, we could just apply that straight to our world, including ourselves, which is really tough.

Um, I mean, I would tell you Cyrus is God's instrument, but boy, they just gobble Babylon right up.

You know, I I'm not sure that there's a substantive change.

So part of it I think we have to consider is like what does it mean to be like to the nations and how do we do that?

Uh and hopefully that's a social critique that we're able to bear.

I mean, you know, my last parish, I'll tell you, um was a great parish.

It was in uh Coronada, California, and probably two-thirds of it were former Navy families because they bought houses there in the 70s when they were affordable, and now they'd gone there and retired.

And I remember they were very happy with my preaching, except when I talked about the isms, like racism, sexism, and ageism, and I would always say prophetically, patriotism, and that would send two or three of them up the wall.

Like they just could not hear that because patriotism was always good.

But I contend to you that any word that ends in ism is always bad.

Idealism is not great.

Pessimism is not great, optimism, not great.

Realism, not even great.

Hinduism, Judaism, these are words we judge as Christianity.

See here we don't have ism at the end.

I mean, the isms are not good words.

And patriotism, right, is service, can't maybe I should call it jingoism, you know, that's because no one uses that word, it's safer.

But they thought we're supposed to be patriots, and and okay, but if patriotism is a is a worship thing, it's misguided.

But but folk, I had a guy almost physically threaten me because I said this now I was younger, you know, and I was gonna be prophetic preacher, and I knew this was the thing we had to contend with.

But they had this event every 4th of July called On Forces Sunday, and I guarantee you, if I'd worn an American flag chasable, and put one on the Lord's table, they'd have been super happy, and we all could have had sparklers, and it would have been great.

And it would have been a day that we worshiped ourselves, which is wrong.

So I think we have to contend with that.

You know, the the the the the truth is we have the both hand, and it's really hard when you're a military career person and you're a captain to accept that.

It's a lot easier when you're an admiral.

And I'll tell you the difference between admirals and captains is that admirals are self-critical and captains can't be.

That's why they didn't make it to Admiral, because they couldn't see the warts.

The admirals were able to say, I love the military warts and all, but here are the dang warts.

The captains said, I love the military, period.

It's perfect.

And we can't criticize because that hurts or it makes us sort of look bad, you know.

And in those couple of times when I got in trouble, fortunately, my mentoring rector, who was a Navy Reserve chaplain and had been drafted to Vietnam, said, Hey, the reason I went to Vietnam is so he could talk like he feels his conscience is guiding him to.

And that was an interesting thought.

Beyond that credential.

He was able as a military person to say, Hey, I get your military concern, but we fought for free speech.

Like that's one of our things.

And I will tell you, I've toned it down a little bit since I've come here, not because I'm less irrelevant, because I think it's helpful actually to be less polarizing so many people can draw hopefully more helpful conclusions.

Now, there's times when I am polarizing.

I mean, I remember I nobody said anything to me after it, but I've said things about Muslims being real human beings, and hey, prostitutes, really you should be prosecuting the Johns, not the prostitutes.

And nobody said anything to me.

Well, one person said to me, two people have said they didn't appreciate me considering Muslims to be human beings, but that's really it.

You know, I've never had somebody come after me here after a sermon, um, different context, you know.

But I haven't criticized how much money we spent on the lunar mission either.

It was a junk ton of money.

I don't know if you know that.

Enough to make a Harvard University in every one of the 50 states.

Oh, you know, uh, coming back to Vietnam, I you know, I and I don't um I've got a kind of a different view than the military because we came back and we weren't and we did we didn't get any rage or anything else.

Yeah.

And I saw so much corruption because I happened to be in a place where the corrup the cor the corruption would be happening.

And so I know I just everybody whose eyes were open saw it.

And to be honest, the the wider your eyes opened, the higher the chance you were gonna get killed in duty.

Um there was uh there was some black um parking going on, and I and I saw the army jeeps come and pick up the stuff and take it to the warehouses, and I and I made a mistake.

I reported it to the MPs.

And that evening I had to stay on the MPs because we had some things going on.

My apartment where I was standing at got shut up.

Yeah, he's been there.

See, this is interesting because I had my dad and my uncle both got drafted out of their family of ten.

And uh my dad had these interesting thoughts, right?

Like that a communist is a man trying to feed his children.

If you think that it's really hard to shoot them.

And if you don't, then they might shoot you first.

I mean, this is sort of the deal.

And my uncle, who was also on the front, talked about how he should have brought back a bunch of silk and things like that.

I mean, looted these people.

And the reason I think he said that was because there was no reason to be there.

If he'd been personally enriched, at least there would have been something.

I mean, these are the kinds of things that are really interesting to hear about, you know.

Um, how do people make meaning when they're doing things that their conscience naturally objects to?

Killing other people we're socialized is wrong.

Like it's not okay to do it.

And uh, it was interesting.

One of the guys in Coronado, who was a Navy aviator that was shooting Vietnamese people left and right out of his F-14, um, he said, Boy, I didn't ever pray for forgiveness because I knew I was gonna go do it again tomorrow.

I just prayed for the strength it took to follow my orders.

I mean, that's really interesting to think about.

And and in some ways, then what do we do with this?

I I just think it's so dang murky, right?

I mean, getting orders in the military is about passing through the waters.

You know, and my dad, who is really struggling with his Alzheimer's now and basically living in Vietnam every day of his life, he he just constantly talks about this all the time, every three minutes.

It's a recurring thing.

How if his job was to protect Americans, and that's what he did.

And um, you know, uh when you're in that position, what are your choices?

This is complicated stuff.

Really complicated.

You can't really be a conscientious objector and survive.

And when you know your orders are to your people, that's essentially where your duty is.

So, so how do we come back to this?

I mean, it's really interesting.

And again, I'm not I'm a non-combat veteran.

I've never been in active duty, I've never sought it out.

My brother's in the military, he's an active duty combat veteran.

Um they sing the national anthem before Thanksgiving dinner.

That's like what they do.

Me, I'm sort of like that's weird.

I mean, again, I and and and I do happen to love this country and believe it's the best place to live in the world, but I'm also very critical of it.

And so it's to see the wars.

I can, and and in some ways I get I've never been in combat, so I've got a limited perspective.

I see.

I I I don't think just because you haven't been there, that doesn't mean you can't understand.

Absolutely, but I think in my preaching to veterans, I have to leave space for something I don't know.

And and to be honest, if I'd been, it's not like I would have completely understood veteran experience anyway.

And and that's you know, one of those interesting sorts of things.

I think what we get here though is is to be honest with you, the the last thing we get here is one of the hardest things for me.

It's hopeful and hardest, right?

It sort of says, you know, my ways are not your ways.

As water goes up and comes down and does this, my word won't return to me void, right?

And so it's really interesting to think the analogy is that we may not see immediate results, but essentially God is building up the water table for growth, and that our ways are fixed on immediate outcomes, and that God's will ultimately won't be thwarted, and and that's really, really tough because when I think about this diagram, I think about relationships in which people reject me or they reject care and roots, and what does that mean?

And I'll just tell you very obliquely that everybody I know who has adopted somebody on foster care, I won't talk about infants, but I'll talk about foster care, has had a oh my god, what have I done moment that could have lasted for years, that moment, because they don't see growth in the wilderness and they have irrigated their life's blood into that desert and we get this sort of promise that somehow it mattered.

It's just sort of tough beyond our imagination because when we can't see the water, the aquifer being built up, or we can't see shoots.

I mean, I I read this quote two weeks ago that says the poet or the prophet or the saint is the person who waters the asphalt expecting plants to grow.

And that's that seems like that's what God does.

God waters asphalt, and eventually God's gonna break through it.

And you see asphalt, you know.

With weeds growing between it, with actual plants, where little flowers, little tiny little wildflowers coming through.

You see it after that's already happened.

Yes, yes.

And what's interesting is the the poet can see that in the places where they're pouring water on non-broken asphalt.

And God can see that.

That I think is the interesting image here, and it's vexing as hell, and it's hopeful and wonderful.

I mean it's uh you know I I worked in inner cities for the whole 30 years of my career, and one time I was in the allergy's office, and uh they called my name, and I went back, and a gentleman came out, an older man, and he took my community, he took my hand, and he said, basically the story was he had a son who boy, I I cannot remember who he is, I don't know who he was.

He said, You made a difference in his life.

He dropped out of gangs, he stopped using drugs.

And I never saw it.

I I never saw it.

I would have just died and got to heaven because I was struggling so hard to keep that community straight and going.

Um, but I'll never forget that man saying that to me.

He said, Is he working now?

He has a full-time job, he's married, he has a child.

Yeah.

But I never You're gonna hear this a little bit.

I I can't help but bleed this through.

Obviously, if you're here on Sundays, you you gotta hear a preview of what I'm thinking about.

Um I I think we're gonna do this for Epiphany.

There's this great book called Um Everyday Liturgy or something, and how it is that you find a liturgy or you reflect a liturgy in your everyday practice.

And um there's this really interesting thing where we I think part of the reason adults are so taken with these phones is the same way children are.

There's something happening all the time, and our brains really want action.

And I'll tell you, I got to the point within the last year where I'm like, I'm so tired of cooking because I have to do it every day, and it's not always exciting.

And I will tell you, laundry, oh my gosh, is not my thing.

And after a while, unloading and doing the dishes is not my thing because you're just gonna have to do them again, you know.

And and this book sort of says what's this interesting thing, right, is that that's what life is made of, is doing the same thing over and over and over again, and it's about how we do it.

And one way we could do it is pretend like that's not the case by being constantly distracted and looking for news.

And another way we could do it is by saying, Okay, I am gonna make this dinner for the 15th time, and I'm gonna be here while I do it.

Being present in these things.

So, one of these things that this lady talks about is it used to be her first thing she would get up and do is look at her phone, and for Lent one year she made her bed instead.

Um, and she was a previous non-bed maker, and she did it knowing she was gonna unmake the bed every day, uh, with this sense of purpose and being invested in normal, normal things.

And so I think one way we could read this is watering the cement is looking for impossible places and putting all of our life energy into it and being frustrated.

Another way is watering the cement is really just about not having extreme faith or life-changing retreats, but just being extremely faithful in those places, whether we see the outcomes or not, God is actually building up the aquifer.

There's this fundamental trust that being an extremely faithful person is God's way and makes a difference.

Sometimes in life, that's the only thing that's gonna keep you moving forward if you if you maintain that thinking.

When you fall there.

When I was in China, um I worked for that.

And when I first got there, there was an English guy who was uh who I was working with, and he had been all over the world on construction jobs.

He told me, he said, the first lesson you need to learn is establish a routine.

You must have a routine.

Yeah.

And I mean, he would eat the same thing every day and come in at the same time.

You must have a routine or you would not survive in this place.

Yeah, and Admiral Admiral McRaven says that he was this Navy SEAL that became Admiral, right?

And his speech was make your bed.

You've accomplished the important task, you're ready to accomplish others.

Whatever it is, right?

What she's suggesting is not just that we live by routine, but that we're present in the routine.

And that hopefully the routine guides us to just sort of being present in the world.

And that's where, again, I think we could hear this and say, like, let's look for extreme, let's smuggle Bibles into communist Russia, or let's go to Saudi Arabia and preach the gospel.

Let's look for energy and adrenaline and cortisol and make a huge difference in the world and get our heads chopped off.

Or let's be faithful people and do the daily grind and feed our families and find God there.

And in everything we do, be grateful.

Give thanks and all things.

I think so.

Thank you for this food that I have to fix.

And thank you for letting me have a dishwasher.

And that's what is an interesting thing.

I almost think this is the best thing.

This is in the morning prayer, right?

My ways are not your ways.

And so, how do we make our ways like God's?

It's by being extremely faithful.

Next week we'll be third at Isaiah, and we'll get to hear how that's a little bit different.

Thank you guys.