“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens begins his novel, A Tale of Two Cities. That might be an appropriate title for the 24th-27th chapters of Isaiah. These chapters are the tale of two cities that aren’t necessarily named, but that represent the people with whom God made covenant, Israel, centered in Jerusalem, and their neighbors who have been more like enemies in recent years. Isreal has been in what Dickens would have called their “winter of despair.”
God’s people, in the first part of Isaiah, are facing an uncertain future. They have been (and still are) being pushed on and overtaken taken by surrounding nations. They made some alliances with neighbors that upset God because it meant compromising their values. They forgot the commandments to care for the poor and needy, the neighbor and stranger. They were going their own way, rather than looking to God follow the most righteous way. God responded to this by letting the stronger nations overtake them, by allowing them to experience the consequences of their action (and inaction) through exile first in Assyria and then eventually in Babylon. They don’t know what will happen to them next.
Seasons of uncertainty, as we well know, even if they don’t go all the way to despair, are difficult seasons to be in. We Change as a whole, whether we experience it as positive or negative, can usher in a season of the unknown. We know that individually when we experience births or deaths, job loss or transition, new school years or graduations, tragedies and devastation as well as unexpected blessings. We can even feel like we are on shaky ground when it is our own understanding or outlook or perspective that is changing. We also know the difficulty of uncertain seasons when we have experienced them as a congregation – when we have been in periods of hurt then healing, peacemaking and restoration, even the current season of discernment about our physical property that we are in now, when we don’t know the way forward just yet. Anxiety can be high, worry can be prevalent, and a fear of what we don’t know is real.
But, hear me out, these uncertain season can also be rich in spiritual growth because they force us to rely not on our own knowledge, our own strength, our own wisdom, and instead rely on God’s. They allow us to look at our lives and our life together as a congregation and recognize that everything we consider a blessing comes because of God who does wonderful things. God’s plans formed in the past are faithful and sure. God’s promises never to let go of us and instead carry us through the murkiness of unknowing to the clarity of new beginnings.
The 25th chapter of Isaiah sings of this aspect of Israel’s uncertain season. It paints their situation as a spring time of hope as it talks about how God redeems Israel, despite their disobedience, by overcoming the forces that overpowered Israel.
This portion of Isaiah’s prophecy offers reassurance that even in their own struggles, God is still for Israel, God’s covenantal people. Even when they have not been faithful perfectly, God is still working things out for them. The oppressors who devastated their home and their land and their community, have been laid low. Those who turned their back on the needy and left the homeless out in the rain have been ruined. The tide will turn for God’s people and they will see a new day. Their worries and their uncertainties – our worries and our uncertainties about the future – they are not where the story ends.
There is a meal that is being prepared. It’s a feast that doesn’t just nourish God’s people, but delights them. This is not just “food as fuel”; this is a feast of celebration, with the richest foods and the finest drinks. It will be the sign and manifestation of God’s faithfulness and grace, that those who refused to share are lavished with abundance, those who excluded are included. And the ultimate sign of this salvation, this redemption, the great twist in this good news, is that what God really wants is NOT just blessing and comfort, feasting and celebration, peace and wholeness for Israel. God wants all these things for all people.
It isn’t just Israel that gets to feast on the mountain of the Lord of hosts. On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make a feast for all peoples. God who loves us, God who redeems us, God who shows up for us and is faithful to us and who feeds us with rich blessings, this great big God who does all this, yet even still wipes away our individual tears, doesn’t just do that for us. God does that for all peoples. God includes all peoples, all of creation really, in the salvation and renewal that is worked out on earth and in heaven. God destroys that shrouds that divide. God swallows up that which separates us from one another and from abundant life. God saves us from despair and confusion and chaos, all of us.
This is what we celebrate; this is the God we praise, not just on World Communion Sunday, but certainly and poignantly on World Communion Sunday in a worship service with a beautiful diversity of voices and languages and styles. This is what we celebrate; this is the God we worship and serve and follow, every day in all that we do and all that we are, in all the decisions we make. If we are to be a people of the God who includes, we are meant to be a people who include – in our worship, in our learning, in our praying, in our serving, in our building, in our fellowship, in our community. If we are loved by God who loves by welcoming and affirming the humanity of all, we are called to love by welcoming and affirming all people – the poor and the rich (and everyone in the middle), the powerful and the disenfranchised, all genders, all sexualities, all nationalities and all ethnicities, the new to faith and those who have been disciples longer than they can remember, the disabled and non-disabled. Because of Christ’s overwhelmingly inclusive love that draws us to the mountain of God’s lavish feast, in all our diversity, even us, with all of our imperfections, we, too, must make our invitation wide and our welcome generous.
This is what we practice at the table of our Lord. Worship is wonderful that way, isn’t it? In this hour (or let’s be honest about today, a little more) we have the opportunity, we have the blessing to practice the life God calls us to live the other 23 (or 22 ½ hours) of the day, the other 6 days of the week. In this worship and especially at this table, we are physically involved in living the life God calls us to live. We gather in joyful praise and thanksgiving. We are honest about our shortcomings and practice turning away from and turning toward God. We hear and receive and are revived for new life by the grace and forgiveness of God. We hear God’s Word and seek understanding for our living. We proclaim whose we are and what we hold fast to. We respond with gratitude and generosity, releasing our attachment to riches as we trust in God who gives us everything we need. We care for the community and for the world. We are fed – every single one of us, without regard for age or status or ability or faithfulness or imperfection or anything – we are fed and included among those who receive at taste of God’s love at the crowded table in the joyous banquet God will one day throw for all the world. We rejoice in God’s new creation, God’s unfailing love, God’s inclusion without exception. Every week, every time we gather, in every worship service, in every celebration of communion.
Because of Christ love for us all, we include all, this day and every day. Amen.