Sermons at St. John's Presbyterian Church

Swallowing Up Death

Transcribed from the sermon preached October 31, 2010

The Reverend Max Lynn, Pastor

St. John’s Presbyterian Church
2727 College Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94705
Telephone 510-845-6830    Fax 510-845-6837
http://www.stjohnsberkeley.org

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 25:1-10, Philippians 4:4-7, Mark 10:13-16

One of the things I remember adults saying to me when I was young was, “You will understand when you grow up.”  Now that I have a family to provide and protect, and have seen and known loss, and my body has begun to teach me I am not immortal, and I have had the privilege and curse of being a boss, and have had to make compromises previously unimaginable, I can no longer pretend I am young.  So now I get to tell youngsters, “You will understand when you grow up.”  There is wisdom with age, but there is also cynicism and the gift of self- justification; too many good reasons not to learn something new.  The compromised consciousness of age and privilege is a death of sorts, a death that will not die. 

At the end of the 8^th century BCE Sennacherib, king of Assyria had sacked Babylon, and moved down through Palestine sacking one kingdom after another. In order to combat the Assyrian army the northern Kingdom of Israel had formed a coalition with. Despite the coalition, Israel fell, along with forty-five other walled cities, including Moab who is mentioned at the end of our passage today.  However, Judah under King Hezekiah refused to join that coalition having the benefit of some distance from the direct challenge of Assyria, a back door friend in Egypt and Yahweh as their God. 

This is the broad historical context for this morning’s passage from Isaiah 25. I am not sure what city is referred to in 25:2, “²For you have made the city a heap, the fortified city a ruin; the palace of aliens is a city no more, it will never be rebuilt.”  Perhaps it was a garrison city somewhere in the territory, or a citadel within Jerusalem, and it was sacked by the rebellious Jews, who were sick of compromise with a repressive regime.

But the blast of the ruthless like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry land sounds like a siege of Jerusalem.

So in Jerusalem, they are feeling pretty good about themselves, at least for the time being.  If the battle they won was local, then it nevertheless brings up images of the fall of the capital of the oppressive empire and universal victory for Jerusalem, and all the peoples who were being run over by Assyria. And even if the army of Judah is not the actual combatants that destroy the massive Assyrian army, Judah’s God is. 

So there is a vision of great celebration, because God has a plan and the current victory is a sign that it is coming to pass.

³Therefore strong peoples will glorify you; cities of ruthless nations will fear you. ⁴For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.

God is throwing Jerusalem a party: a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. ⁷And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. ⁸Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.

So Jerusalem, by remaining exclusively faithful to Yahweh, becomes in Isaiah the centerpiece for universal peace.  Death is swallowed up forever, tears are wiped away from all faces, and disgrace is taken away. 

There is a tension for the reader, because we hear the proclamation of victory before the actual departure and destruction of Assyria in ch. 37.  The elation of victory is only partial and temporary. And Jerusalem kings, even the good ones are not so good and powerful, and God, from any temporal perspective, has yet to come through fully.  But the claims are universal and eternal: all people, forever.

 The poor and the needy are to find shelter and shade from evil and violence of the oppressive empire. The smothering shroud over all people and all nations will be destroyed. Death will be swallowed up forever.

There is tension too, between prophetic speech written from the perspective of the oppressed that is now claimed by the wealthy and powerful. There is a tension between means and end.  Our religion, our people, our nation thinks of itself as the people of God, destined to bring in the reign of God’s universal kingdom, but the Moabites will be destroyed. There is tendency to justify whatever means we deem necessary to preserve our purity and victory.  And so we become impure and violent to preserve our pure vision. It is one thing to be a nation besieged and oppressed, and another when that same nation, or the leaders of the nation, gain and exercise power against the poor and weaker nations. 

Reihold Niehbur touches on the subject of a nations sense of self righteousness.  “It is just those moments when the nation is engaged in aggression or defense (and it is always able to interpret the former in terms of the latter) that the reality of the nation’s existence becomes so sharply outlined as to arouse the citizen to the most passionate and uncritical devotion to it.  But at such a time the nation’s claim to uniqueness also comes in sharpest conflict with the generally accepted impression that the nation is the incarnation of universal values…The nation is always endowed with an aura of the sacred, which is one reason why religions, which claim universality, are so easily captured and tamed by national sentiment, religion and patriotism merging in the process. (Niebuhr, Reinhold.  Moral Man and Immoral Society. p97)

The politician uses this paradoxical claim to uniqueness and universality with ease, while, says Niebuhr, men of culture have to come up with more complicated justifications since their own inner necessities demand the deceptions, even more than the simple citizen. “…They cannot give themselves to national aspirations, unless they clothe them in the attributes of universality.  A few of them recognize the impossibility of such a procedure.  Amongst most, (think Colonel Powell before the UN) the force of reason operates only to give the hysterias of war and the imbecilities of national politics more plausible excuses than an average man is capable of inventing.  So they become the worst liars of wartime. (ibid)

To bring it home, to preserve the United States as the nation of God and universal brotherhood, freedom and prosperity, we have to wall out poor immigrants, bully gays until they commit suicide, permit secret surveillance of citizens, and torture and imprisonment without trial, and call children of the poor to go nation to nation fighting other poor children.  The terrorist is a ghost, Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden the apocalyptic, ubiquitous embodiment of death that won’t die, George Orwell’s Eurasia.

We have learned from Bob Coote these last couple of weeks, that at the time that the Gospel of Mark was written, Jerusalem was under siege again; this time they are at war against Rome.  And Christians, who were Jews, were caught up in the fervor of the war. Apparently, many leaders began to view Jesus, and by association, his followers, as the one who, like David, would return again to wage victorious war.  And even though this war against Rome may not succeed, eventually Jesus and his New Israel would.  The elite in the church are coming up with complicated scriptural justifications for painting Jesus as the patriot, the one who would rally others around what made Jews unique, and the protectors of universal values.  This then justified the fight, and all the fights to. 

But Mark feels this misses who Jesus was, and in fact twists what he stood for.  Mark paints a picture of the disciples, and by implication many Christian leaders in Marks time, of being blind and dumb, of missing the point. On the way the disciples argue over who will be his right hand guy, but instead they abandon and betray Jesus, and unlike Isaac, Jesus is actually sacrificed.  With complicated and twisted theology, they push away the common people who, like children, come with simple joy and faith.

[13] And they were bringing children to him, that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked them.
[14] But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God.
[15] Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it."

So Mark, with complicated and ironic theology, paints a picture of a Jesus who is not afraid of death, a Jesus who will live a life, which is not anxious and twisted by running from death by any means necessary.  The means and end is to love, non-violently, unconditionally and forever, and that means puts an end to death.  Death is swallowed up in the eternal present life, where children are welcomed and poor protected, and the blind are given sight.  And the question remains, do we have eyes to see?  Will we come?  Can we joyfully love and celebrate with all?