Mornings on the Porch... God--sanctuary or stumbling block or both?

 

Mornings on the porch

 

“He will be a sanctuary,
a stumbling block...
a snare and a trap...
over which many will stumble
and be broken...”

--Isaiah 8:14-15

 

This is a fascinating image from early in Isaiah, and it seems oddly discordant. In context, it is part of the prophet’s marching orders—his message for Israel and the people of Jerusalem. But what does it mean? How can the same God be both a sanctuary and a stumbling block? A place of safety and a snare –a trap? And why?

 I’m wondering if this message has something to say to us of God’s love and our free will. Perhaps even something about how we might experience a blessing as a stumbling block...  For instance, this morning I woke early—before the sun—and after feeding the cats and setting out my leftover coffee from the night before, I went out to meet the sunrise. I had a wonderful breezy walk around the park, greeted a few neighbors, petted a couple of dogs, but the drifting clouds and the gray sky kept the sunrise hidden. Oh well... At home, I warmed up my coffee and went out on the porch with my record player and put on Ernest Tubb’s Greatest Hits. Listening to his plaintive voice promising to “get along somehow...” I thought about writing a poem or maybe I should be reading my morning Bible chapters or... and then I noticed all the leaves under my chair and around my feet and remembered my promise to my wife the night before that I would sweep the porch in the morning.

 But what about my coffee? I just warmed it up... And what about that poem... If I don't write it, who will? Or all that reading I was wanting to do?  I could always sweep the porch afterwards; after I write or read or drink or make a fresh pot of coffee and a batch of muffins and turn the record over and listen to the other side and... And besides that, there will always be more leaves; didn’t the weather man say it’s supposed to be windy all weekend?  So many “good” reasons to put off that sweeping--at least for a while-- to wait until later...  But... I promised.

And so, instead, I found the broom and got to work—going at it with as much care and skill as a 65 year old poet/librarian can muster. As I worked I found two reactions tussling inside of me.  One was a faint sense of embitterment –fear really—that I was wasting valuable time. I should be doing something important, like writing! Or meditating! Or reading the Bible. Anything but sullenly sweeping up leaves that would only be blown back before lunch!

 But another voice inside me said: You promised. Keep your word. Sweep the porch and listen to the sound of the broom on the concrete and the cries of the birds and the singing of the Texas Troubadours. Let that be your meditation. Let that be your comfort and let it become your poem and your prayer...  Rest in it; in the work and in the peace that comes from doing it. Of being true to yourself and to the one you love. Rest in the grace that flows from serving another, the grace of God’s self-giving love. The love that flows through even the simplest work when done for the sake of another, flows not just out of us, but through us and flows from the original source (and sanctuary) of all Love...

When love calls us, it can be a sanctuary and a comfort, but it can also feel like a snare or a trap. The call of love to die to self, to give up your own plans for the sake of another doesn't change, but how we encounter it... That is up to us.  It’s a choice we all must make. 

To paraphrase Joshua 24... As for me and my porch, I know which one we will choose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isaiah and the Lord's crushing pleasure

“It was the Lord’s good pleasure

to crush him with pain;

If he gives his life as a sin offering,

he will see his offspring

and prolong his life,

and through him

the Lord’s good pleasure will be done.”
–Isaiah 53:10

“It was the Lord’s good pleasure to crush him…” What a hard thing to read.  And yet, do many of us not feel a kind of crushing weight upon us even in our comfortable houses and relatively safe lives.  The weight of waiting and of not knowing. Perhaps even the weight of all that new-found quiet.  It is strange and sometimes must feel hard to be so “isolated,” and uncertain.

As Christians, we read this passage and immediately hear an allusion to Jesus and His cross, the suffering servant who gives His life as a sing offering for the sake of others.  But, reading it the other morning I wondered: what did Isaiah’s audience make of it? What did it mean to them? This image is from what is often referred to as “Second-Isaiah.” Scholars believe chapters 40-55, were written by a later prophet (perhaps a follower of the first) and were possibly written 150 years after chapters 1-39.  Second-Isaiah is believed to have been written during the Babylonian exile, so the audience for this book was themselves in exile, dragged off into slavery. They must have felt the true sting of these words. Were they struck by their God with this affliction? Certainly they were helpless, despised, crushed, a people of constant sorrow led to the slaughter. Did they believe that this truly was God’s pleasure? Or did they begin to suspect something even worse… that it was a sign, proof that there was no God, no Yahweh who loved and delighted in His chosen people. 

Had their whole history been nothing but a fantasy?  Were they just some minor tribe who had been lucky for a while, found a nice piece of fertile land, settled it and enjoyed a little success under a couple of minor kings, but of no real importance to the world or history? Easily knocked over by other larger and more powerful tribes or nations when the time was ripe…

Truly, how could a loving God take pleasure in crushing anyone? What on earth could these words have meant to 5^th century Israelites living in exile?  And what does it mean to us today, living in our own strange “self-isolated” exile?  I know that when I read these words I am struck by the brutal sound of them, the spiritual weight of such an image.  And I want to quickly find some nicer way to understand it. I want to find some way to tame it, make it sound not so frightful, but gentle and sweet. I want to find a way to fit it on a Hallmark card.

But you can’t. Not if you face it. Face the actual words themselves. Don’t hide behind theological interpretations, but ask yourself this:  What is God saying here? What is the truth God is revealing to us through this fearful image? Even today?

It seems to me, that –in fact-- this bleak vision is one of assurance and encouragement.  It assures us the same way I think it was intended to assure the enslaved in Babylon. It speaks not just of abuse and punishment, but of the real pleasure of God: self-giving.  To the 5^th century Israelites it may have said, their disfiguring abuse under the Babylonians, their seeming destruction, was in fact an unexpected kind of proof, a proof of God’s love. His true pleasure. And, thereby it speaks also of His presence right there with them, even in their hour of exile and destruction.

What a hard teaching this is.  Even for us today, in the shadow of the cross and the echo of the empty tomb, this is still a hard teaching. To find God’s pleasure, God’s love, God’s presence in our time of anxiety and suffering is very hard.  When things get rough, we tend to go into defense mode, and our shields go up—a kind of psychological and emotional self-isolating. No one wants to be mistreated, wants to be seen as a failure, wants to be disfigured by life and loss. Those moments make us feel completely abandoned, as if God has forgotten us. 

And yet this passage seems to say: Don’t be afraid. This is what you were made for.  Give your life to God and witness the pleasure of God’s will being done, in you and through you.

Even if it means becoming God’s suffering servant, we are being called to give our lives to Him, each and every day.  This isn’t just a memo for the time of pandemics and coronas, it is a call we need to listen for every single day.   

In Colossians, Paul writes of “making up” in his own suffering what is “lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (1:24).  Is that the opportunity that Isaiah is speaking of here?  

When the world feels like it is crushing us, when the sacrifices (even if it is just staying home and self-isolating) seem beyond our ability, perhaps that is the time for us not to turn away and hide.  But a time to surrender to the will of God.

A time to pray: 

Help me Lord, surrender to Your will, Your pleasure;
Help me surrender to the fullness of Your presence, Your tender love.

Like Your son, I pray: Not my will, but Yours be done.
My God, I give my life to you.