More (and more) on the Prophets: God as passionate

 Sermon. 10 August 2025. St George’s, Saham Toney.

Trinity 8 (Year C. Continuous Reading for Old Testament)

 

Isaiah 1.1; 10-20

Luke 12.32-40

 

Let us reflect on today’s first reading, from the Old Testament. I’ll just remind you why there’s a strong case for doing this. We are now in the long Green season of Sundays after Trinity (also called Ordinary Time), a season which extends all the way to All Saints (to keep it simple). And this year one of the things we are doing in this long season is working our way through edited highlights of certain Old Testament books. Concretely, edited highlights of the Prophets. Today, we begin our look at Isaiah. This is an in-depth study of the longest book of prophecy in the Old Testament (by some distance), and this deep dive is going to take us all of… two weeks. (To be fair, we do pretty much rely on Isaiah in important seasons of the Church year.)

 

Isaiah helpfully tells us when he was active. We’ve just heard. It was from the reign of King Uzziah to the reign of King Hezekiah. These are kings of the Southern Kingdom, of Judah, and Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem, is Isaiah’s focus. Later Isaiah clarifies that he had his dramatic vision and commissioning in the year that Uzziah died (see chapter 6 for details). Uzziah came to the throne somewhere around 790-780 BCE and died about 750-740.  Hezekiah died in 687. That gives us a span of some 60 years or so when Isaiah prophesied. Is that possible?... I say it is. It’s true some historians say that average life expectancy in the ancient world was around 35. But that’s the average, the arithmetic mean. We get that figure because so many people died in childhood. A significant proportion did live to a ripe old age.

 

You may have noticed that all this means that Isaiah is a younger contemporary of our old friend… our old friend, Amos (and also of Hosea, who we have also been looking at in our cycle of readings). You may also have noticed that Isaiah’s message is remarkably similar to Amos’s. For all Amos was speaking to the Northern Kingdom (Israel), and Isaiah is speaking to the Southern Kingdom, Judah, the core message here is the same. It is and remains a challenging, a sharp message. So, brace yourselves all over again.

 

The message:

¹² When you come to appear before me,
    who asked this from your hand?
    Trample my courts no more!
¹³ Bringing offerings is futile;
    incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation—
    I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
¹⁴ Your new moons and your appointed festivals
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you stretch out your hands,
    I will hide my eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers,
    I will not listen…

… ^16b cease to do evil;
¹⁷     learn to do good;
seek justice;
    rescue the oppressed;
defend the orphan;
    plead for the widow.

 

In other words:

You, the people of the covenant, the people of my choosing, are good at coming to do what you think is worshipping me. You positively enjoy doing the very things I have set out for you to do, as worship of me. I have no complaints about your enthusiasm, your religious enthusiasm, your religious commitment. You love calling upon me. You love prayer. But, however much you relish it, and however much you think you are addressing me and pleasing me, I say you are frauds. The whole thing is a lie. And I haven’t hidden from you why it’s a lie. I will spell it out again: you have to care about justice. You have to live care-fully. You have to care about the people who you push out.

 

Do you remember Amos saying just this a few weeks ago? Also like Amos, Isaiah has God say both

·        on the one hand: I am judging you for this, and condemning you, and you have lost it, and

·        on the other hand: all you have to do is change your ways, and I will forgive you, and we will be reconciled.  

 

Remember also that the point is not that the people who come to worship come as sinners. We all do that. That’s something like the human condition, this side of Kingdom Come. The point is that the people had become blind to their own sins. They were so convinced they were pleasing God by being the people who did the religious things with fervour, that they’d stopped thinking about how they live their lives. They shut God out of all of that. That truly is a warning to all of us.

 

In general, I do not like to repeat myself. Well, maybe I do indulge in repetition too often, over the years. But not normally every four weeks. I’d understand if you feel there is little new in what I have said here, given what I said about Amos, four weeks ago. But in my defence, sometimes the texts over different weeks mesh so closely together, that it would be simply wrong to say they differ in their import. (But notice one difference, for all that: I am not – I am not - suggesting you sit down this afternoon and read the whole of Isaiah. That’s a rather different task from reading the whole of Amos.)

 

Throughout these weeks, these weeks of the Prophets, we have to come to know how prophetic rhetoric works. It tends to be:

judgment; condemnation; judgment; condemnation; judgment, condemnation; promise, mercy, restoration, feasting.

All together. No intervening stage. Rather, hand-break turns.

The Prophets were not what we might call “systematic”; they did not have a system of how God is. They did not even seek consistency, not even from God. They make us do the work of looking for the golden thread among all their messages. It is we who have to see how it might all cohere.

 

I am confident that the golden thread is that promise, that mercy, that restoration, and that feasting, which I have just mentioned. I see it this way. Even when the Prophets say God is angry, they are saying that, if it ever comes to it, God would rather be thought of as angry, than be thought of as cool, cold, indifferent, or uninterested.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I accept that this in itself is hard. Some of us here will have been hurt by people saying: “I only got so angry with you, because I care”, and that can be abuse (let’s name it). But here remember it is rhetorical anger, from God, at one remove, and addressed to the whole people. Nowhere does God say: “I am so angry with you, and I want you to be angry in the same way with those you care for.” The Prophetic word just does not have that sort of consequence. This doesn’t make anger safe or easy, and questions remain. But I say again that the emphasis is that, if it ever comes to it, God would rather be thought of as angry, than be thought of as cool, cold, indifferent or uninterested. God is always close to us, involved with us, tied up with us. God does not want to have it any other way. God feels deeply about God’s people. When it comes down to it, God desires God’s people. God desires us.

 

This is something we also see in today’s Gospel. I am referring to the very opening:

“Do not be afraid, little flock,

for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

This is a reassurance only Luke has Jesus give us.

Some details. The word for “flock” here (poímnion) is a diminutive of the normal word for flock. So some would say – though others would say it’s not as big a deal as this – some would say it means something like “flock-let” in English. In itself, it may mean “little flock”. But to this Luke has Jesus add the word for “small” (mikrón – as in mikro-skope or microscope). If I were to translate: “my dear little bunch of lambkins” I am doubtless exaggerating, to make the point. But it is undoubtedly a term of tenderness, of endearment.

 

Then we come to “good pleasure”. That’s a slightly staid expression in modern English. It is close to the original, especially if we think about etymology, about how the word is made up. The Greek (eudókesen) might mean something like “the Father has thought it proper, and seemly, and good, and right”. But I say in context it is closer to: “the Father desires you and delights” in giving you all good things.

 

Can we hear that? Can we hear this, as the message of the Prophets, if we seek out that golden thread from all the other threads?

 

Dear little lambkins, the Father desires you, delights in you, and longs to give you good things.

 

Amen.