God Is Doing Something New
Written and given by Codi Norred, MDiv, at Ahavath Achim Synagogue, Atlanta, on April 22, 2023
The world is not right, but God promises to set it right with us; We must participate in setting it right with God, by seeking the original call as the Prophet Isaiah did. —Isaiah 66:1-24 (and 65)
Good morning and Happy Earth Day! The Haftara this morning comes from the book of Isaiah, chapter 66. This passage is the final one offered in Isaiah. It seeks to remind us who God is, what God requires of us, and the ideal form of Creation.
For context, the last two chapters of Isaiah, 65 and 66, which we read today, are to be considered in tandem. Chapter 65 sets out that God is fed up with being forgotten, and tired of false worship. Out of this abandonment, the Lord promises to punish those who have rebelled against the ways of God and to lift up the loyal servants of God to be rewarded in the restored or new Creation, which God promises to bring about in response to the sinfulness of the world.
So, by the time we make our way to chapter 66, the writer of Isaiah has already outlined that the people of God have rebelled, that the few loyal servants of God will be lifted up, and that a new Creation of peace and flourishing is coming.
The text begins by reminding us that God is the God of Creation. The beginning of chapter 66:
“Thus says the Lord: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine…”
It goes on to rebuke everyone who is living in rebellion to the kind of Creation God desires, and the kind of Creation God desires to create again. Who would desecrate God’s footstool? Who would ruin the Earth? In this new world, there will be peace and a flourishing environment, and here, in Isaiah, whoever lives against that vision, will be punished.
In the midst of a horrible period of unrest, post-exile, a time when social structures are shifting, political allegiances and kingdoms are shifting, at a time when people begin to forget themselves, where they come from, and what they believe in; the writer of Isaiah reminds everyone that God is who God said God was, Creator. That all who are in rebellion will perish. And that God is Creating again. Something more just, something more bountiful, something very much alive, something new… but something rooted in the very first words spoken by a God hovering over the waters in Genesis.
Now, something important for our work here this morning is that scholars refer to these final words from Isaiah as Trito-Isaiah, or Third Isaiah. It is the part of the book that concerns a post-exilic world and tries to give clarity on who in this post-exilic world is actually God-loving, dedicated to the God’s teachings and call, and those who are in full rebellion.
These final words from Isaiah are apocalyptic in nature. As in, that is this is its literary categorization. So what’s the point? Why does a person write chapters like those closing Isaiah; why does a person write an apocalypse?
Apocalyptic literature is a genre of literature developed in Jewish writing after the Exile. It’s generally a work that details the “unveiling or unfolding” of things not previously known or foretells a series of events that are to come. They have themes of divine judgment, ecological collapse, revolt, rebellion, etc.
Broadly speaking, apocalyptic writings are an extreme judgment and an imaginative exercise, that people historically embark on when the world is falling down all around them. These texts are a judgment of the world around them.
After not one, but two periods of exile, Isaiah is struggling with the fact that people of faith have lost their way, they have forgotten God, their original call to care for both Creation and for neighbor. So the prophet does what a prophet is to do, tell the truth.
The world is not right. The world is not right. The world is not right.
The earth is on fire…. Everywhere I look the world is on fire, injustice reigns, and there is less compassion today than there was yesterday.
Today, as people of faith, we sit at a critical historical moment. Our societal structures and faith values are being strained, to put it very mildly.
We live under similar strains today as the writer of Isaiah. We are in a liminal state, both in moving on from Passover, holding the memory of the days that must pass before respite, and as we bide our time under the weight of a changing climate, a war against our own environment, and a growing failure to take care of those around us that are most in need.
Our world is tumultuous. Wildfire season is almost here, war wages across the globe, and there is a prosed mine in the heart of the Okefenokee Swamp, a display of the raw wildness of God that is set to be permanently erased for a chemical to make toothpaste and paint whiter. The sea level continues to rise, flooding our neighbors to the East. Temperatures in India have reached over 105 for several days in a row already. It’s April. Hurricane season will soon remind us that neither our lives, nor our property, nor our crops are safe. There is microplastic in our blood and in the breast milk of mothers. There are PFAS, forever chemicals, in almost all of our freshwater resources and the fish within them.
It is a hard time to be alive. It is a hard time to know how exactly to be faithful. It is a good time for to hear the words of the apocalyptic writing of Isaiah.
It doesn’t always feel like there is hope. And it didn’t for the writer of Isaiah either, and in the face of that, what do we do?
We look back to look forward. We remind ourselves of what was and what can be. We remind ourselves who we are and who God is.
The world is not right. But God promises to set it right. Over and over. God promises to set it right, and that the vision of “right” is one in which there is a wild and thriving Creation and where every person and living thing has dignity, abundance, tenants of joy and peace. In the face of trying times, we are reminded that the work is not done, and that it has just begun.
Hopelessness is not our call. The prophet Isaiah speaks truth in the face of betrayal, uncertainty, and injustice. God is set about to make something new. And we are called to be a part of it, and we must act now if we are to be faithful.
The text of Isaiah in self-referential in its teachings. Chapter 66 is a reprise of the lessons lifted up in Chapter 1. And in total, the majority of Isaiah imagery is lifted from the Creation story in Genesis. The promise that Isaiah lifts up in his final offering is the promise of a new Creation, the functions very much like the Creation originally made manifest in our origin story.
The world is not right. And when the world is not right, the people of God must to get to work demonstrating how the world could be different.
If then the promise that God makes to his people when they are suffering, is that God is excited about a thriving Creation that is just and fully alive, then the most faithful thing the people of God can do is to partner with God to create the kind of world that God longs for, and promises to us.
The world is not right. And when the world is the most broken, God reminds us that we are different. And that we must get to work cultivating a resorted Creation, a different world, in tandem with God. We cannot just stand aside. In fact, Isaiah makes a point to say that those who use their religion to hide behind as a way to evade action, or as a way to keep the status quo, or as a way of going against this original calling, will be judged the harshest.
In the throws of exile, upon deliverance from exile, in seeing the destruction and abandonment of Creation, neighbor, and faith, and now in the midst of a modern world that is obsessed with productivity and depleting the natural world of all its integrity –
We must vision. We must get to work. For what the Lord promises to us and all living things is a world that looks like plenty, and peace, of flourishing, of genuine love and community, one where bigotry and betrayal is stamped out by God.
There is another way to be, but it will take us fully re-imagining the way we do life. God is doing something new in this passage, and calling people to do something new as well. So when we think about being good stewards of the earth, it is very likely that the old systems must be thrown out and we must do something new.
We need a world with congregations covered in solar, generating clean and renewable energy. We need people planting trees and forests instead of tending grass yards. We need new systems ensure that people will be feed, can have quality public transportation, so that our water is protected and clean. We must rid the world of waste and wastefulness. We must plant the seeds of stewardship.
Hear these words this morning as encouragement that God is with us as we do the work of tending the Garden here. And that for generations, God’s people have held society to account in order to protect Creation.
We must remember who we are. But precious co-laborers, crated out of the ground from dust to keep the Garden, and to care for each other, as the supreme act of worship.
The world is not right, but God promises it will be made right, and that we must all participate in setting the world right in covenant with God and each other. So let us get to work together bringing this restored Creation into fulfillment.
Hear the last words from the prophet Isaiah:
“For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your descendants and your name remain. From new moon to new moon and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all living shall come to worship me.
Let us hear these words of the Prophet. God is doing something New. Amen.
