Good News, Losers

Propers: The Second Sunday after Epiphany, AD 2023 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Isaiah is having a rough time. Not that his was ever going to be an easy job. He’s a prophet, called by God to speak truth to power, to hold up timeless and transcendent ideals before a people who, quite frankly, couldn’t care less.

Nor is he one of those pampered court prophets, government functionaries whose proclamations kept them in mutton and wine. No, Isaiah is a prophet in Exile, spokesperson for a God whose Temple has been destroyed, whose Holy Land has been conquered, and whose people are now scattered to the winds. It’s hard to imagine a more thorough defeat.

And so Isaiah, it seems, is the prophet of a dead religion, dead and dying; called to proclaim to a people who are being digested, assimilated, and forgotten, right before his very eyes. “I have labored in vain,” Isaiah laments. “I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” What might God say to such a man? Might He stay silent and inscrutable? Might He offer words of comfort or lament? Or might He simply pronounce it His judgment, the justice such people deserve?

God in fact does none of these. Indeed, a very different sort of Word alights upon the prophet’s ear. It is too small a thing, sayeth the Lord: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that My salvation may reach to the ends of the earth!”

What madness is this? What topsy-turvy divinity reveals Himself herein? God speaks as though His chosen people, His Israel, His Judah, have defeated the empires of the world rather than the other way around. He speaks as though they were triumphant in the midst of their defeat. It reminds me of nothing so much as that Chesty Puller quote from the Korean War, when he told his men: “The enemy has us surrounded. They can’t get away from us now!”

“You are My secret weapon,” sayeth the Lord: you, the prophet; you, Israel. I have made your mouth a sharp sword. I have covered you in the shadow of My hand. I have hidden you away as a polished arrow in My quiver. Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

It is the madness of the gods, to say to a defeated man, “My champion!” or to a fallen corpse, “Arise and conquer!” Yet this is the prophet’s message. This is the Word of the Lord. And by God, it comes to pass. The Tribes of Judah do arise, and return, and rebuild, impossibly back from the dead. The conquerors are conquered and the conquered rise back up.

And what’s more: by this Exile, by this defeat, the people of Judah are scattered to the winds, throughout Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt. The worship of the One God spreads, like a good infection, like a virus that brings life instead of death. And it’s always this way, you understand. It’s always this way with the Bible, with our God. He is constantly choosing the lost, the last, the little, and the least; the younger brother over the elder, the homeless over the hero, slaves over Pharaoh.

All the victories of God throughout the length and breadth of Scripture all look like defeats in the moment. It’s only in the fulness of time that His plans come to fruition, His promises come to light. Isaiah was a failure. David was a shepherd. Abraham was so bloody old that St Paul calls him “as good as dead,” and that was at the beginning of his story! The Gospel is for losers. It’s for the dead and the dying. It brings us to new life.

Israel was never a great nation in the eyes of the world. Even at its height it was only about the size of New Jersey. God didn’t choose the proud and the strong. He purposely chose the weak, the defeated, the enslaved, the unlovable and the unloved. And this all comes to culmination in the person of the Christ.

The paradox of Jesus Christ is enough to blow your mind, even if you’ve been raised with it, even if you’ve heard His story a thousand-thousand times. Here’s this Messiah, this Anointed, this Chosen One, prophesied for centuries by pagans and Jews alike. Here comes the cosmic Christ, the Savior of the world. Everyone’s expecting heavenly armies and celestial fire and the nuking of the nations. And what do we end up with?

A babe in a manger. The son of a carpenter. Some raggedy radical rabbi in off the desert talking about “blessed are the poor” and hanging out with fishermen and tax collectors and other assorted yokels. Hey, is that a prostitute? And just when we’re convinced, in spite of all His riddles, all His evasions, that this might just really be the Savior whom we’ve sought—He up and dies.

No, more than that, He dies in the most humiliating and agonizing way possible, naked, alone, and tortured on a Cross. Well, nuts. So much for that. But because of that—because of that defeat, that surrender, that death—He becomes so much more. No longer a figure of conquest and worldly might, Christ becomes the Man who overcomes the grave, who fills up hell the bursting with the life and light of God.

And more than that: He is God. Somehow, impossibly, He is God upon this earth. Not in spite of His pains and obscurities and peculiar social proclivities but even because of them, because He turns the world upside-down, and brings us home in Him. He is not the Savior we wanted, not the Savior we expected, but infinitely more. And we couldn’t even see Him for who He was, even as we stuck Him on that Cross.

You know, the things in this world that seem almighty and eternal and unshakable—they aren’t. At all. In fact, the stronger something is, the more brittle it tends to be. I remember the fall of the Soviet Union, without a shot fired or a bomb dropped. Impossible, but true! The strong fall, the weak rise, and the world’s remade anew.

Now, I’ve got to say, I feel for Isaiah. Man, I grew up in a strong church, vital and living and open, full of fine liturgies, charitable activities, educational opportunities. And my home congregation is still going strong, thanks be to God. But my entire professional life has consisted in watching the long, slow decline of American religion. I know it’s not just us; I know it isn’t only the churches and the synagogues. It’s all of civil society, anything involving commitment.

Yet it’s hard to dedicate your life to something that you love so deeply—something so beautiful, good, and true, something of inestimable importance—only to find that the best you can do is to maybe slow down the decay. There are historical and sociological tides here at play that one cannot hold back with a bucket. And so much of it is our own fault, how we divided the church from the home, the clergy from the laity; how we made deals with the devil for political power. American Christianity has always been far more American than Christian.

Sometimes I just feel defeated. Sometimes I lament that “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” I haven’t anything left to give.

That’s when God says to me: “Are you done yet? Have I at any point been unclear? This is the job. This is Christianity. You pick up the Cross, you proclaim the Good News, you scatter the seed, and you know not where it takes root. And yeah, the world may ignore you, or mock you, or burn you alive, and all of history might seem like one long, slow defeat. But take heart: I have overcome the world. I’ve already triumphed. You have seen it yourself, in your Baptism, at My Table.

“You have no idea the plans I have for you, how the smallest kindness may reverberate a thousand years from now, the smallest truth save someone’s life and someone’s soul. You will know defeat, humility, betrayal, despair—because you are Me! And you will love them anyway, because you are Me! One in My Spirit, One in My Name, One in My Body and Blood, One in the Resurrection of the dead and the salvation of this world.

“The frailest old pastor in the smallest, most rural church, holds up the chalice to proclaim the New Covenant in My Blood, and there the world is conquered. There has hell been harrowed. There is the Kingdom of our God upon this earth. It is too light a thing that you would save all your people. I will save the entirety of Creation, and I will do it through each and every one of you.”

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.