What a difference the day makes
Commentary
Available at most video stores is a movie called Places of the Heart. It is a powerful and vivid expression of the brokenness of our society. The story begins with the accidental shooting death of the local sheriff by an intoxicated African-American. No sooner is the deceased's body delivered to the home than a truck dragging the young boy announces to the widow that justice has been done. (The scene is all too reminiscent of what occurred in Texas not long ago.) In any case, the brokenness over race comes to the forefront. As the story develops, the young widow with two small children tries desperately to make the farm productive, struggling with powerful men, some at the bank and others in business, who want her property. Eventually another African-American man shows up at her door, a man who is an expert farmer. As he enables the widow to succeed at farming, he himself becomes the victim of a brutal beating by the Ku Klux Klan -- and these are only some of the divisions among people in the story.
The very end of the movie provides a vision of the kingdom to come. The people are singing in church as the camera enters the sanctuary. As the camera pans the congregation, we see the Klan members and the African-American they had beaten communing together. A husband and wife who were on the verge of divorce over an adulterous affair sit together lovingly. The deceased sheriff and the young man who shot him smile at their reunion with the community. The conclusion stirred hope for the world -- an end-time hope.
Yet what was missing in that jump from the present to the future was the meantime. The vision of Paradise carried no impact to the people whose warring lives occupied the story. Surely there must be a connection between the vision that God gives and the lives we live in the meantime. Our lessons for this Sunday offer some helpful guidance to bridge the gap.
Isaiah 65:17-25
Here and there in the prophetic writings we read about the coming kingdom of God. The passages are often introduced by some formula for the Day of the Lord. Those formulas include such expressions as "on that day," "in those days," "in the latter days," and "the days are coming." Often the Day that inaugurates the Reign of God is connected to some historical event like the return of the exiles from Babylon (Isaiah 52:7-10), the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple (Haggai 2), or the appearance of an ideal Davidic king (Isaiah 11:1-9).
The vision that is delivered in our pericope, however, contains none of the traditional terminology. It has nothing to do with a historical event. It fails to mention a Messianic king. It is simply too big for business as usual. This vision portrays nothing less than "new heavens and a new earth."
Yet, while the occasion for the prophetic vision eludes us, the content clearly indicates the time of its composition was far from rosy. What is portrayed here represents the opposite of the present experience. The device is common throughout the work of the material ascribed to Third Isaiah. Look, for example, at Isaiah 60:17-18, where the present experience of the people is violence and devastation, but God promises to change them into peace and righteousness and salvation. We would expect such promises of transformation from one who was called "to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted ..." (60:1-2).
The first transformation will be the gift of forgetting "the former things" (v. 17). In the preaching of Second Isaiah "the former things" sum up the judgment that the Lord has brought upon the people of Israel (see 41:22; 43:9, 18; 46:8-9; 48:3). Closely parallel to those things to be forgotten are the "shame of your youth ... and the disgrace of your widowhood" (54:4). The opposite of all the former thing to be forgotten is the "new thing" the Lord is about to accomplish for the people, namely the act of salvation (see Isaiah 43:19; 48:6). The vision of the new heavens and the new earth depicts a time when judgment is so far from experience that the past exile and the unexpected horror of the homecoming will simply disappear.
Verses 18-19 more than strongly hint that the present scene in Jerusalem is flooded with weeping and "the cry of distress." Actually the Hebrew word points us to a situation that is more specific than one of distress; it actually means a "cry for help" in the face of oppression, even an outcry for justice. The word is one we would expect to find in Second Isaiah, where the exiled Israelites served as forced labor for Nebuchadnezzar, just as the slaves in Egypt seven centuries earlier "cried out" under oppression of their taskmasters (Exodus 3:7). Yet, even after the exile, when the people returned home, they experienced a new oppression: poverty, unemployment and all its ramifications, including crimes of theft to feed families, injustice in the courts, to say nothing of the problem of reclaiming their ancestral properties. The announced hope in the face of that anguish is that God will make the city a rejoicing and its citizens a joy. What a contrast!
Verse 20 even promises the end to premature death. Notice the vision does not go so far as to promise an end to death (as do Isaiah 25:6-8 and Revelation 21:4). Over against the present experience of infant mortality and middle-aged deaths, the range of human years will expand to a hundred. The number exceeds the limit of "threescore years and ten, even fourscore" (Psalm 90:10), although it does not reach the higher limit of "one hundred twenty" (Genesis 6:3). The good news here is that at everyone's funeral, folks will say, "She lived a full life," or "We can't be sorry, because he was with us a long, long time." It will take a resurrection from the dead to be able to add, "Her life has only begun."
Verses 21-23 continue the portrayals of opposites. Apparently the present experience was one in which the people built houses and no sooner had they celebrated their open house than someone else replaced them, leaving them homeless. We can imagine that experience in the eighth century B.C. when the Assyrians deported all kinds of citizens and moved captured folks from other lands in. Again in the sixth century B.C. the Babylonians moved people out of their homes to cart them off as exiles to Mesopotamia. As a result of the deportations, citizens from Jerusalem and the surrounding territory moved into the homes left vacant by the exiles and were not willing to give them up after sixty years. What about squatters' rights? In the new heaven and new earth, however, the people will live in the homes they had built. What a difference!
The same is true of the vineyards. How oppressive it must have been to clear the land of rocks in order to plant the vines, labor intensely to build terraces in order to hold back the soil from washing down the hill, watch the little vines creep across the ground, and then have some invading army devour all the fruit!
Building houses and planting vineyards for the benefit of someone else, most often the enemy, is nothing less than a sign of judgment. Such labor in vain is an expression of the curse upon Israel for failing to live under the law of the Lord (see Deuteronomy 28:30). That experience was part of the "former things." The new thing is that the people will not work in vain but "long enjoy the work of their hands."
Against the present experience of bearing "children for calamity," their offspring will be "blessed by the Lord," and their lives shall be "like the days of a tree." The Septuagint ensures that the expression guarantees long life by changing the flora to be a "tree of life." The imagery here returns to the experience of verse 20, where the people mourn the death of infants.
Now comes the intimacy between the people and the Lord. Verse 24 indicates that the Lord will be so close at hand that prayers will be answered even before the words roll off a supplicant's lips. That response time stands in sharp contrast to their experience throughout that century. Indeed, during the exile and immediately following it, the community lament was raised to the top of the charts. The laments were agonizing pleas for the Lord to respond to their prayers, even to fulfill the oft-repeated promise "I will be with you." The petitioners asked such haunting questions as "Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?" (Psalm 10:1) and "Why do you cast us off forever?" (Psalm 74:1). After God's lingering absence they wondered, "How long?" (74:9-10; 89:46), and they pleaded with God to remember the promises of old and the value of life itself (89:47-51). That divine absence was the experience of the former time. In the new time it will not be remembered because the Lord will hear and answer immediately. What a difference!
Verse 25 repeats the vision at Isaiah 11:6-9a that, in contrast to the present experience where animals devour each other, in the new cosmos they will become vegetarians and dine together. The imagery recalls the gift of food to the animals in the original creation (Genesis 1:30), although that story, too, is more vision than experience. The parallel passage in Isaiah 11 assigns this harmony to the messianic age, whereas here the Davidic connection is not mentioned.
As for "my holy mountain" where peace shall prevail, the reference is, of course, to Mount Zion. In such visions, however, the mountain is not identical to the one seen in the city of Jerusalem. Rather it is the mountain transformed (see Isaiah 2:2), the mountain on which the Lord will host a universal banquet (Isaiah 25:6-8). The truly eschatological nature of the mountain will become clear when the heavenly city of Jerusalem descends on the present one to provide the focal point of the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 21-22). From that mountain God will reign over a kingdom of peace.
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
The pericope might be put to a tune called "How are you gonna keep them down on the job after they've seen the vision?" Whether or not the epistle derives directly from Paul's hand, the problem addressed here is not unlike that of 1 Thessalonians. In that letter Paul urged the Thessalonians to "work with your own hands ... so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one" (4:11-12). That instruction precedes immediately the section about the coming of the Lord "with the sound of the Lord's trumpet" for the resurrection of those who have died. Again at 5:14 Paul urged the readers "to admonish the idlers." Apparently those who expected the Day of the Lord to come imminently saw no reason to continue their daily work. Perhaps escaping the world rather than participating in it was the way they prepared for the big day.
In our letter the problem still exists in Thessalonica. Perhaps, indeed, if some pupil of Paul wrote the letter some years after his death, then either those idlers never listened to their admonishing sisters and brothers, or perhaps some other event triggered apocalyptic thinking and a new group followed the example of their predecessors. In either case, we need to ask whether the idleness might not be the result of human response to talk about an imminent end.
In addition to some of the differences between apocalyptic and prophecy we discussed in connection with the lessons for All Saints' Sunday, another contrast is this: prophecy calls the people of God to responsible social action precisely because of the vision of the kingdom of God, whereas apocalyptic -- with its dualistic approach to heaven and earth, body and soul, this time and that time -- tends to lead people away from the nitty-gritty of human existence to a more esoteric and secretive way to approach life and death. That tendency might indeed be the central problem among the addressees of this letter.
The author's response to such idlers is to ostracize them (v. 6). At the same time, the author assumes that such people will be among the readers, for he writes "that some of you are living in idleness" (v. 11). The proper behavior, even in expectation of the day of the Lord, is to imitate the model that Paul and others demonstrated when they were among them: they paid for the food they ate and worked night and day.
At this point we need to see the connection with our first lesson. In that vision of the new heaven and new earth, work was still part of the game plan. One of the distinctions between the present time and the future time was not work versus idleness but fruitful work versus work in vain. Beyond that distinction, living in the "in between time" when the kingdom has dawned but has not fully arrived, Christians are called to pursue their earthly tasks with the realization they are contributing to God's creative role in the world, with the intention of doing God's work here and now, and with the goal of honoring and glorifying God by that daily work. That motivation turns a job into a vocation.
Luke 21:5-19
The teaching of Jesus here is, of course, derived from Mark 13, but the differences between Mark and Luke in reporting this teaching derive from the changed situation in Jerusalem. If Mark wrote his gospel, as many believe, in the mid-sixties of the first century, his version of the destruction of Jerusalem that occurred in A.D. 70 will obviously be different from Luke's, who wrote after the destruction. Above all, while Mark's Jesus connects the coming destruction and its prior persecutions and rebellions with signs of the end time, Luke disconnects precisely because those events have already occurred but life went on as usual. In that sense, our pericope is reminiscent of the first lesson from Isaiah 65, where the vision of the new heaven and new earth is not related to any historical occurrence.
Our lesson continues the report of Jesus' teaching in the temple that began in 20:1. During this long tutorial day Jesus dealt with the challenge about his authority which led to the parable of the wicked tenants; he fielded the questions about paying taxes, about the resurrection, and about David's Son; then he publicly denounced the scribes. Now immediately prior to our pericope Jesus commended the poor widow for contributing to the temple treasury out of her poverty.
While her act impressed Jesus, the eyes of those who were with him became glazed with the splendor of the temple building and its trimmings. The temple built in Haggai's time would not have dazzled them, but the remodeling done by Herod the Great shortly before the time of Jesus was nothing short of spectacular. The size of the stones and the Herodian touch of embossing the edges, the amount of marble and the exquisite wood trim -- every piece of the temple was a photographer's dream. Jesus must have shaken his head at the way they were acting like tourists before shaking them out of their architectural awe. He predicted the destruction of the temple, even the turning over of stones as gigantic as these were.
His shocking prophecy led to the excited questions, "When will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" Jesus' first response was to warn them against any who would lead them astray with false messages. Jesus knew it would be easy for others to come along in his name announcing, "I am!" The words would make quite a claim for such self-professing characters, because those words came from the mouth of the Lord as self-introduction to Moses (Exodus 3:14) and as assurance of salvation to the people in exile through the words of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 43:10-11; 48:12; 52:6). Jesus himself used those words to speak of himself at Mark 6:50; 14:62; and, of course, in the "I am" sayings throughout John's Gospel. The assertion "I am!" is a claim to divinity. Moreover, these would-be messiahs would try to steal Jesus' sermon, announcing, "The time (kairos) is at hand" (See Mark 1:14-15; cf. Matthew 4:17). The words in prophecy from both testaments announce the nearness of the day of the Lord and the ensuing kingdom of God.
Luke's Jesus is concerned that those words about imminence not be connected to forthcoming events such as wars and rumors and insurrection. All those signs of the end were common in Jewish apocalyptic, as we can see in such scattered passages as Isaiah 19:2 (civil wars, nation against nation); Jeremiah 4:20 (disaster upon disaster); Ezekiel 38:19-22 (violent earthquakes, fratricide, raging storms); Daniel 7:22 (persecution of the saints); Joel 3:9-14 (wars, the darkening of sun and moon and stars). Yet here Jesus announces the signs themselves might be misleading, because "the end will not follow immediately" (v. 9). From Luke's side of A.D. 70 the position can be proved.
Luke's Jesus was more concerned about the ensuing life of the church than the predictability of the end, even through the typical signs. "Before all this occurs," Jesus said, persecutions of Christians will provide a favorite pastime for those in authority. After all, Luke still had the Book of Acts to write! He needed to record the imprisonment of Peter and others in Acts 4 and the many incarcerations of Paul and colleagues in such varied places as Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, and Rome. As Jesus indicates here, they would be dragged before kings and Gentile governors or prefects like Felix (Acts 23:24--24:27) and Porcius Festus (Acts 24:27--26:32). Even as Luke wrote about what had transpired prior to his time, he must have known that the persecutions would continue, as indeed they did under Emperor Domitian in A.D. 95, the context for writing the Book of Revelation by John the Seer on the island of Patmos.
That was the bad news. The good news is that these forced appearances before the secular and religious authorities would give the persecuted Christians "an opportunity to testify" (v. 13). Such opportunities were taken by Peter at Acts 4:8-12, by Peter and other apostles at Acts 5:29-32, and by Paul in numerous places, especially those before Felix and Porcius Festus cited above.
Before any of those listening to Jesus could ask, "But what shall we say?" Jesus told them not to worry. In fact, "Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you words (literally, mouth) and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict" (vv. 14-15). Having heard those words, the disciples steeped in their Bibles must have recalled other instances in which God promised exactly the same kind of assistance for the difficult task of speaking the divine word. All the way back in the days of Egyptian bondage when God commissioned Moses to be the agent of deliverance, God provided him with a mouth in the form of his brother Aaron: "You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do" (Exodus 4:15). Years later when God was commissioning an equally reluctant youngster named Jeremiah, the boy pleaded on the basis of his age that he did "not know how to speak." The Lord responded to that concern by assuring him: "Now I have put my words in your mouth" (Jeremiah 1:6, 9). In the period following the Day of Pentecost that gift of mouth and wisdom is assured those who stand on trial for the faith. Before the rulers, elders, and scribes -- along with the VIPs Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, Peter was "filled with the Holy Spirit" when he began his speech of testimony (Acts 4:8). Here we can see the connection between the saying of Jesus in our pericope and the earlier teaching that the Holy Spirit will teach what needs to be said in front of synagogues, rulers, and authorities (Luke 12:11-12).
Finally, Jesus mixes once more the bad news with the good. He teaches that the disciples will be betrayed by family members and friends, the culmination of the familial conflict he described at 12:52-53. Clearly Jesus is not taking the blame for every dysfunctional family in the world. He is indicating that following him as a disciple might indeed result in irresolvable strife within the circles of family and friends. Such must have been the experience of many in the period between Jesus' ministry and the writing of Luke's Gospel.
It is even yet the experience of many throughout the world, especially in cultures where conversions to Christianity have been dramatic and threats to family and the prevailing society are all too evident. More than twenty years ago I spent some time in southeast Asia writing a course for teenagers in the schools of the church there. In the process of fulfilling that assignment I met with teenagers who had recently become Christians. Many told me how they were cast out of their homes for bringing in a Bible or for talking about Jesus, primarily because parents counted on their children to honor them after death through ancestor worship. The parents knew that Christians would not fulfill that obligation, thanks to their exclusive devotion to Jesus Christ.
The good news in our pericope, however, is that even though such betrayals might lead to death, "not a head of your hair will perish" (v. 18). The expression indicates elsewhere in the Bible that death will not occur. Jonathan's life will be spared (1 Samuel 14:45). So also will the widow's son (2 Samuel 14:11). Adonijah's fate depends on his innocence (1 Kings 1:52). Paul uses the same expression to assure the safety of the sailors who had not eaten (Acts 27:34). Yet in our pericope the promise follows the announcement of betrayal and subsequent execution. Here the expression appears to point beyond death to eternal life, especially because of the punch line that concludes our pericope: "By your endurance you will gain your souls."
The vision of the kingdom to come -- no matter when it comes -- informs us here and now how we are to live our lives. If that vision instructed the people of Thessalonica to work within the world until the Day comes, this gospel lesson encourages us to bear witness whatever might cross our paths in the meantime. It is, in fact, in the meantime that we participate in God's mission to a broken world, and an essential role in that work is telling the truth of the gospel as the Spirit empowers us. That is the difference the vision of the Day makes in our lives.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 65:17-25
This text forms the last portion of the long judgment-
salvation oracle that is contained in Isaiah 65. It comes from Israel's post-exilic period, when for the first time in the Old Testament the Lord divides his covenant people into two groups, those who will be judged and those who will be saved. The difference between them is that one group has depended on the Lord for its life, while the other has not and has deliberately turned away from its Lord (cf. 65:1, 11-12). Trust, faith, marks the way by which God's saving acts will be received.
Because of the way verse 17 is used in the New Testament, in Revelation 21:1 and 2 Peter 3:11-13, it has often been held that it characterizes the beginning of apocalypticism in the Old Testament, in which our present evil history is abandoned and God creates an entirely new heaven and earth. However, there is no abandonment of this world in our text. Verse 17 reads in the Hebrew, "For behold, I am creating ..." that is, God's act of re-
creation has already begun, as God works gradually in human history, and the salvation that is promised is spelled out in the concrete circumstances of Jerusalem's everyday life.
In contrast to the New Testament, there is no mention of eternal life here. The Old Testament has no statement of resurrection or life after death until the time of the second century B.C. Book of Daniel (Daniel 12:2-3). There are earlier hints that even death cannot separate the faithful from God (Job 19:25-27; Psalm 73:23-26; Isaiah 25:6-8). But after all, the incarnation and resurrection have not yet taken place. Therefore our text deals concretely only with the saving work of God in this world.
The transformations that God here proclaims that he will work in the life of the faithful are marvelous in their promise. To the suffering faithful (cf. chapters 58 and 59), the Lord promises that he will replace their distress and weeping with joy and gladness (65:19). And that gladness will come from many things. For example, no longer will there be premature death, either of infants or of elderly (v. 20). To the Hebrew mind, long life was a gift of God, who is the Source of all life (cf. Deuteronomy 4:40; Job 5:26). Death was seen as a natural part of life and was accepted rather peacefully (cf. Genesis 25:8), unless it was premature or violent. Then it was understood as a judgment or curse from God. The implication is, therefore, that all of the faithful will live in the favor of the Lord.
The Lord also promises that his people (note "my people" in v. 19) will never again suffer the loss of their houses and vineyards and property, either through the ravages of war, or, more importantly, because of the greed and injustice of the proud and powerful. Many of the prophets condemned the injustices perpetrated upon the poor by corrupt courts of law that seized the property of the helpless in payment of debts, while throwing them into prison or selling them into slavery. Such injustices and violence will never again take place, the Lord promises.
Further, our text proclaims that those faithful to the Lord "shall not labor in vain" (v. 23). Rather, they will reap the rewards of their labor. One of the curses on Adam in the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 is that he will no longer experience reward from his work commensurate with the effort he puts into it. His sweat, his toil, his drudgery will be meaningless and without due reward.
Perhaps that promise of meaningful work furnishes the most relevant entrance into this text for the preacher, for there are a lot of people in our times who see no point in the way they earn their daily bread or in the way they have to struggle. As has been said, they lead lives of "quiet desperation," in which all that they do has no meaning or satisfactory recompense. They experience the same old routine, day after day, with no purpose to it all.
Indeed, even parents can feel that way when they spend hours of anxiety and toil raising their children, only to have them turn out badly. As one mother put it, "We raise our kids, and someone else tears them down." Nothing seems to bear good fruit. And of course, all the labor, all the anxiety, all the struggle to make something of life ends in death, and we are gone, forgotten in just a few short years.
But the promise of God in our text is that there will be a permanence to human life -- "like the days of a tree," says verse 22, which is often a symbol of permanence in the Old Testament (cf. Psalm 92:12-14; Job 14:7-9). Honest work will render meaningful and lasting results, and labor will not be spent in vain.
Above all, verse 24 emphasizes that God will be near his faithful folk. Even before they pray, he will hear them, and even before they finish speaking, he will answer them. In contrast to those mentioned at the beginning of chapter 65, to whom God called but who never answered, those who trust in the Lord will find themselves in an intimate communion with their God, who will be sufficient for all their needs.
The New Testament did not err in the way it used the words of this chapter from Third Isaiah. For finally, the fulfillment of all of these promises from the Lord will come only when Christ does return to set up the Kingdom of God on earth, with its total transformation of our lives. We do in fact still suffer the violence and heartbreak of premature death of beloved infants and elderly. Our earth still knows the greed and injustice of the powerful and proud, and the rape and pillage of war. We still do know the impermance of life in an era of dizzying change. Many still suffer the meaninglessness of the work they are doing.
But God has promised to transform it all. He made that promise to Israel -- a promise that is now extended to all his faithful covenant folk through his Son Jesus Christ. And ours is a God who always keeps his promises. In the New Testament message, there rings out the assurance of triumph over death, over suffering, over evil, over all, and yes, the reward for labor in the Lord. "Therefore, my beloved," writes Paul, "be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58). If we trust God in Jesus Christ, we can know that is true.
The very end of the movie provides a vision of the kingdom to come. The people are singing in church as the camera enters the sanctuary. As the camera pans the congregation, we see the Klan members and the African-American they had beaten communing together. A husband and wife who were on the verge of divorce over an adulterous affair sit together lovingly. The deceased sheriff and the young man who shot him smile at their reunion with the community. The conclusion stirred hope for the world -- an end-time hope.
Yet what was missing in that jump from the present to the future was the meantime. The vision of Paradise carried no impact to the people whose warring lives occupied the story. Surely there must be a connection between the vision that God gives and the lives we live in the meantime. Our lessons for this Sunday offer some helpful guidance to bridge the gap.
Isaiah 65:17-25
Here and there in the prophetic writings we read about the coming kingdom of God. The passages are often introduced by some formula for the Day of the Lord. Those formulas include such expressions as "on that day," "in those days," "in the latter days," and "the days are coming." Often the Day that inaugurates the Reign of God is connected to some historical event like the return of the exiles from Babylon (Isaiah 52:7-10), the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple (Haggai 2), or the appearance of an ideal Davidic king (Isaiah 11:1-9).
The vision that is delivered in our pericope, however, contains none of the traditional terminology. It has nothing to do with a historical event. It fails to mention a Messianic king. It is simply too big for business as usual. This vision portrays nothing less than "new heavens and a new earth."
Yet, while the occasion for the prophetic vision eludes us, the content clearly indicates the time of its composition was far from rosy. What is portrayed here represents the opposite of the present experience. The device is common throughout the work of the material ascribed to Third Isaiah. Look, for example, at Isaiah 60:17-18, where the present experience of the people is violence and devastation, but God promises to change them into peace and righteousness and salvation. We would expect such promises of transformation from one who was called "to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted ..." (60:1-2).
The first transformation will be the gift of forgetting "the former things" (v. 17). In the preaching of Second Isaiah "the former things" sum up the judgment that the Lord has brought upon the people of Israel (see 41:22; 43:9, 18; 46:8-9; 48:3). Closely parallel to those things to be forgotten are the "shame of your youth ... and the disgrace of your widowhood" (54:4). The opposite of all the former thing to be forgotten is the "new thing" the Lord is about to accomplish for the people, namely the act of salvation (see Isaiah 43:19; 48:6). The vision of the new heavens and the new earth depicts a time when judgment is so far from experience that the past exile and the unexpected horror of the homecoming will simply disappear.
Verses 18-19 more than strongly hint that the present scene in Jerusalem is flooded with weeping and "the cry of distress." Actually the Hebrew word points us to a situation that is more specific than one of distress; it actually means a "cry for help" in the face of oppression, even an outcry for justice. The word is one we would expect to find in Second Isaiah, where the exiled Israelites served as forced labor for Nebuchadnezzar, just as the slaves in Egypt seven centuries earlier "cried out" under oppression of their taskmasters (Exodus 3:7). Yet, even after the exile, when the people returned home, they experienced a new oppression: poverty, unemployment and all its ramifications, including crimes of theft to feed families, injustice in the courts, to say nothing of the problem of reclaiming their ancestral properties. The announced hope in the face of that anguish is that God will make the city a rejoicing and its citizens a joy. What a contrast!
Verse 20 even promises the end to premature death. Notice the vision does not go so far as to promise an end to death (as do Isaiah 25:6-8 and Revelation 21:4). Over against the present experience of infant mortality and middle-aged deaths, the range of human years will expand to a hundred. The number exceeds the limit of "threescore years and ten, even fourscore" (Psalm 90:10), although it does not reach the higher limit of "one hundred twenty" (Genesis 6:3). The good news here is that at everyone's funeral, folks will say, "She lived a full life," or "We can't be sorry, because he was with us a long, long time." It will take a resurrection from the dead to be able to add, "Her life has only begun."
Verses 21-23 continue the portrayals of opposites. Apparently the present experience was one in which the people built houses and no sooner had they celebrated their open house than someone else replaced them, leaving them homeless. We can imagine that experience in the eighth century B.C. when the Assyrians deported all kinds of citizens and moved captured folks from other lands in. Again in the sixth century B.C. the Babylonians moved people out of their homes to cart them off as exiles to Mesopotamia. As a result of the deportations, citizens from Jerusalem and the surrounding territory moved into the homes left vacant by the exiles and were not willing to give them up after sixty years. What about squatters' rights? In the new heaven and new earth, however, the people will live in the homes they had built. What a difference!
The same is true of the vineyards. How oppressive it must have been to clear the land of rocks in order to plant the vines, labor intensely to build terraces in order to hold back the soil from washing down the hill, watch the little vines creep across the ground, and then have some invading army devour all the fruit!
Building houses and planting vineyards for the benefit of someone else, most often the enemy, is nothing less than a sign of judgment. Such labor in vain is an expression of the curse upon Israel for failing to live under the law of the Lord (see Deuteronomy 28:30). That experience was part of the "former things." The new thing is that the people will not work in vain but "long enjoy the work of their hands."
Against the present experience of bearing "children for calamity," their offspring will be "blessed by the Lord," and their lives shall be "like the days of a tree." The Septuagint ensures that the expression guarantees long life by changing the flora to be a "tree of life." The imagery here returns to the experience of verse 20, where the people mourn the death of infants.
Now comes the intimacy between the people and the Lord. Verse 24 indicates that the Lord will be so close at hand that prayers will be answered even before the words roll off a supplicant's lips. That response time stands in sharp contrast to their experience throughout that century. Indeed, during the exile and immediately following it, the community lament was raised to the top of the charts. The laments were agonizing pleas for the Lord to respond to their prayers, even to fulfill the oft-repeated promise "I will be with you." The petitioners asked such haunting questions as "Why do you hide yourself in time of trouble?" (Psalm 10:1) and "Why do you cast us off forever?" (Psalm 74:1). After God's lingering absence they wondered, "How long?" (74:9-10; 89:46), and they pleaded with God to remember the promises of old and the value of life itself (89:47-51). That divine absence was the experience of the former time. In the new time it will not be remembered because the Lord will hear and answer immediately. What a difference!
Verse 25 repeats the vision at Isaiah 11:6-9a that, in contrast to the present experience where animals devour each other, in the new cosmos they will become vegetarians and dine together. The imagery recalls the gift of food to the animals in the original creation (Genesis 1:30), although that story, too, is more vision than experience. The parallel passage in Isaiah 11 assigns this harmony to the messianic age, whereas here the Davidic connection is not mentioned.
As for "my holy mountain" where peace shall prevail, the reference is, of course, to Mount Zion. In such visions, however, the mountain is not identical to the one seen in the city of Jerusalem. Rather it is the mountain transformed (see Isaiah 2:2), the mountain on which the Lord will host a universal banquet (Isaiah 25:6-8). The truly eschatological nature of the mountain will become clear when the heavenly city of Jerusalem descends on the present one to provide the focal point of the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 21-22). From that mountain God will reign over a kingdom of peace.
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
The pericope might be put to a tune called "How are you gonna keep them down on the job after they've seen the vision?" Whether or not the epistle derives directly from Paul's hand, the problem addressed here is not unlike that of 1 Thessalonians. In that letter Paul urged the Thessalonians to "work with your own hands ... so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one" (4:11-12). That instruction precedes immediately the section about the coming of the Lord "with the sound of the Lord's trumpet" for the resurrection of those who have died. Again at 5:14 Paul urged the readers "to admonish the idlers." Apparently those who expected the Day of the Lord to come imminently saw no reason to continue their daily work. Perhaps escaping the world rather than participating in it was the way they prepared for the big day.
In our letter the problem still exists in Thessalonica. Perhaps, indeed, if some pupil of Paul wrote the letter some years after his death, then either those idlers never listened to their admonishing sisters and brothers, or perhaps some other event triggered apocalyptic thinking and a new group followed the example of their predecessors. In either case, we need to ask whether the idleness might not be the result of human response to talk about an imminent end.
In addition to some of the differences between apocalyptic and prophecy we discussed in connection with the lessons for All Saints' Sunday, another contrast is this: prophecy calls the people of God to responsible social action precisely because of the vision of the kingdom of God, whereas apocalyptic -- with its dualistic approach to heaven and earth, body and soul, this time and that time -- tends to lead people away from the nitty-gritty of human existence to a more esoteric and secretive way to approach life and death. That tendency might indeed be the central problem among the addressees of this letter.
The author's response to such idlers is to ostracize them (v. 6). At the same time, the author assumes that such people will be among the readers, for he writes "that some of you are living in idleness" (v. 11). The proper behavior, even in expectation of the day of the Lord, is to imitate the model that Paul and others demonstrated when they were among them: they paid for the food they ate and worked night and day.
At this point we need to see the connection with our first lesson. In that vision of the new heaven and new earth, work was still part of the game plan. One of the distinctions between the present time and the future time was not work versus idleness but fruitful work versus work in vain. Beyond that distinction, living in the "in between time" when the kingdom has dawned but has not fully arrived, Christians are called to pursue their earthly tasks with the realization they are contributing to God's creative role in the world, with the intention of doing God's work here and now, and with the goal of honoring and glorifying God by that daily work. That motivation turns a job into a vocation.
Luke 21:5-19
The teaching of Jesus here is, of course, derived from Mark 13, but the differences between Mark and Luke in reporting this teaching derive from the changed situation in Jerusalem. If Mark wrote his gospel, as many believe, in the mid-sixties of the first century, his version of the destruction of Jerusalem that occurred in A.D. 70 will obviously be different from Luke's, who wrote after the destruction. Above all, while Mark's Jesus connects the coming destruction and its prior persecutions and rebellions with signs of the end time, Luke disconnects precisely because those events have already occurred but life went on as usual. In that sense, our pericope is reminiscent of the first lesson from Isaiah 65, where the vision of the new heaven and new earth is not related to any historical occurrence.
Our lesson continues the report of Jesus' teaching in the temple that began in 20:1. During this long tutorial day Jesus dealt with the challenge about his authority which led to the parable of the wicked tenants; he fielded the questions about paying taxes, about the resurrection, and about David's Son; then he publicly denounced the scribes. Now immediately prior to our pericope Jesus commended the poor widow for contributing to the temple treasury out of her poverty.
While her act impressed Jesus, the eyes of those who were with him became glazed with the splendor of the temple building and its trimmings. The temple built in Haggai's time would not have dazzled them, but the remodeling done by Herod the Great shortly before the time of Jesus was nothing short of spectacular. The size of the stones and the Herodian touch of embossing the edges, the amount of marble and the exquisite wood trim -- every piece of the temple was a photographer's dream. Jesus must have shaken his head at the way they were acting like tourists before shaking them out of their architectural awe. He predicted the destruction of the temple, even the turning over of stones as gigantic as these were.
His shocking prophecy led to the excited questions, "When will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?" Jesus' first response was to warn them against any who would lead them astray with false messages. Jesus knew it would be easy for others to come along in his name announcing, "I am!" The words would make quite a claim for such self-professing characters, because those words came from the mouth of the Lord as self-introduction to Moses (Exodus 3:14) and as assurance of salvation to the people in exile through the words of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 43:10-11; 48:12; 52:6). Jesus himself used those words to speak of himself at Mark 6:50; 14:62; and, of course, in the "I am" sayings throughout John's Gospel. The assertion "I am!" is a claim to divinity. Moreover, these would-be messiahs would try to steal Jesus' sermon, announcing, "The time (kairos) is at hand" (See Mark 1:14-15; cf. Matthew 4:17). The words in prophecy from both testaments announce the nearness of the day of the Lord and the ensuing kingdom of God.
Luke's Jesus is concerned that those words about imminence not be connected to forthcoming events such as wars and rumors and insurrection. All those signs of the end were common in Jewish apocalyptic, as we can see in such scattered passages as Isaiah 19:2 (civil wars, nation against nation); Jeremiah 4:20 (disaster upon disaster); Ezekiel 38:19-22 (violent earthquakes, fratricide, raging storms); Daniel 7:22 (persecution of the saints); Joel 3:9-14 (wars, the darkening of sun and moon and stars). Yet here Jesus announces the signs themselves might be misleading, because "the end will not follow immediately" (v. 9). From Luke's side of A.D. 70 the position can be proved.
Luke's Jesus was more concerned about the ensuing life of the church than the predictability of the end, even through the typical signs. "Before all this occurs," Jesus said, persecutions of Christians will provide a favorite pastime for those in authority. After all, Luke still had the Book of Acts to write! He needed to record the imprisonment of Peter and others in Acts 4 and the many incarcerations of Paul and colleagues in such varied places as Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, and Rome. As Jesus indicates here, they would be dragged before kings and Gentile governors or prefects like Felix (Acts 23:24--24:27) and Porcius Festus (Acts 24:27--26:32). Even as Luke wrote about what had transpired prior to his time, he must have known that the persecutions would continue, as indeed they did under Emperor Domitian in A.D. 95, the context for writing the Book of Revelation by John the Seer on the island of Patmos.
That was the bad news. The good news is that these forced appearances before the secular and religious authorities would give the persecuted Christians "an opportunity to testify" (v. 13). Such opportunities were taken by Peter at Acts 4:8-12, by Peter and other apostles at Acts 5:29-32, and by Paul in numerous places, especially those before Felix and Porcius Festus cited above.
Before any of those listening to Jesus could ask, "But what shall we say?" Jesus told them not to worry. In fact, "Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance, for I will give you words (literally, mouth) and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict" (vv. 14-15). Having heard those words, the disciples steeped in their Bibles must have recalled other instances in which God promised exactly the same kind of assistance for the difficult task of speaking the divine word. All the way back in the days of Egyptian bondage when God commissioned Moses to be the agent of deliverance, God provided him with a mouth in the form of his brother Aaron: "You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do" (Exodus 4:15). Years later when God was commissioning an equally reluctant youngster named Jeremiah, the boy pleaded on the basis of his age that he did "not know how to speak." The Lord responded to that concern by assuring him: "Now I have put my words in your mouth" (Jeremiah 1:6, 9). In the period following the Day of Pentecost that gift of mouth and wisdom is assured those who stand on trial for the faith. Before the rulers, elders, and scribes -- along with the VIPs Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, Peter was "filled with the Holy Spirit" when he began his speech of testimony (Acts 4:8). Here we can see the connection between the saying of Jesus in our pericope and the earlier teaching that the Holy Spirit will teach what needs to be said in front of synagogues, rulers, and authorities (Luke 12:11-12).
Finally, Jesus mixes once more the bad news with the good. He teaches that the disciples will be betrayed by family members and friends, the culmination of the familial conflict he described at 12:52-53. Clearly Jesus is not taking the blame for every dysfunctional family in the world. He is indicating that following him as a disciple might indeed result in irresolvable strife within the circles of family and friends. Such must have been the experience of many in the period between Jesus' ministry and the writing of Luke's Gospel.
It is even yet the experience of many throughout the world, especially in cultures where conversions to Christianity have been dramatic and threats to family and the prevailing society are all too evident. More than twenty years ago I spent some time in southeast Asia writing a course for teenagers in the schools of the church there. In the process of fulfilling that assignment I met with teenagers who had recently become Christians. Many told me how they were cast out of their homes for bringing in a Bible or for talking about Jesus, primarily because parents counted on their children to honor them after death through ancestor worship. The parents knew that Christians would not fulfill that obligation, thanks to their exclusive devotion to Jesus Christ.
The good news in our pericope, however, is that even though such betrayals might lead to death, "not a head of your hair will perish" (v. 18). The expression indicates elsewhere in the Bible that death will not occur. Jonathan's life will be spared (1 Samuel 14:45). So also will the widow's son (2 Samuel 14:11). Adonijah's fate depends on his innocence (1 Kings 1:52). Paul uses the same expression to assure the safety of the sailors who had not eaten (Acts 27:34). Yet in our pericope the promise follows the announcement of betrayal and subsequent execution. Here the expression appears to point beyond death to eternal life, especially because of the punch line that concludes our pericope: "By your endurance you will gain your souls."
The vision of the kingdom to come -- no matter when it comes -- informs us here and now how we are to live our lives. If that vision instructed the people of Thessalonica to work within the world until the Day comes, this gospel lesson encourages us to bear witness whatever might cross our paths in the meantime. It is, in fact, in the meantime that we participate in God's mission to a broken world, and an essential role in that work is telling the truth of the gospel as the Spirit empowers us. That is the difference the vision of the Day makes in our lives.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Isaiah 65:17-25
This text forms the last portion of the long judgment-
salvation oracle that is contained in Isaiah 65. It comes from Israel's post-exilic period, when for the first time in the Old Testament the Lord divides his covenant people into two groups, those who will be judged and those who will be saved. The difference between them is that one group has depended on the Lord for its life, while the other has not and has deliberately turned away from its Lord (cf. 65:1, 11-12). Trust, faith, marks the way by which God's saving acts will be received.
Because of the way verse 17 is used in the New Testament, in Revelation 21:1 and 2 Peter 3:11-13, it has often been held that it characterizes the beginning of apocalypticism in the Old Testament, in which our present evil history is abandoned and God creates an entirely new heaven and earth. However, there is no abandonment of this world in our text. Verse 17 reads in the Hebrew, "For behold, I am creating ..." that is, God's act of re-
creation has already begun, as God works gradually in human history, and the salvation that is promised is spelled out in the concrete circumstances of Jerusalem's everyday life.
In contrast to the New Testament, there is no mention of eternal life here. The Old Testament has no statement of resurrection or life after death until the time of the second century B.C. Book of Daniel (Daniel 12:2-3). There are earlier hints that even death cannot separate the faithful from God (Job 19:25-27; Psalm 73:23-26; Isaiah 25:6-8). But after all, the incarnation and resurrection have not yet taken place. Therefore our text deals concretely only with the saving work of God in this world.
The transformations that God here proclaims that he will work in the life of the faithful are marvelous in their promise. To the suffering faithful (cf. chapters 58 and 59), the Lord promises that he will replace their distress and weeping with joy and gladness (65:19). And that gladness will come from many things. For example, no longer will there be premature death, either of infants or of elderly (v. 20). To the Hebrew mind, long life was a gift of God, who is the Source of all life (cf. Deuteronomy 4:40; Job 5:26). Death was seen as a natural part of life and was accepted rather peacefully (cf. Genesis 25:8), unless it was premature or violent. Then it was understood as a judgment or curse from God. The implication is, therefore, that all of the faithful will live in the favor of the Lord.
The Lord also promises that his people (note "my people" in v. 19) will never again suffer the loss of their houses and vineyards and property, either through the ravages of war, or, more importantly, because of the greed and injustice of the proud and powerful. Many of the prophets condemned the injustices perpetrated upon the poor by corrupt courts of law that seized the property of the helpless in payment of debts, while throwing them into prison or selling them into slavery. Such injustices and violence will never again take place, the Lord promises.
Further, our text proclaims that those faithful to the Lord "shall not labor in vain" (v. 23). Rather, they will reap the rewards of their labor. One of the curses on Adam in the story of the Fall in Genesis 3 is that he will no longer experience reward from his work commensurate with the effort he puts into it. His sweat, his toil, his drudgery will be meaningless and without due reward.
Perhaps that promise of meaningful work furnishes the most relevant entrance into this text for the preacher, for there are a lot of people in our times who see no point in the way they earn their daily bread or in the way they have to struggle. As has been said, they lead lives of "quiet desperation," in which all that they do has no meaning or satisfactory recompense. They experience the same old routine, day after day, with no purpose to it all.
Indeed, even parents can feel that way when they spend hours of anxiety and toil raising their children, only to have them turn out badly. As one mother put it, "We raise our kids, and someone else tears them down." Nothing seems to bear good fruit. And of course, all the labor, all the anxiety, all the struggle to make something of life ends in death, and we are gone, forgotten in just a few short years.
But the promise of God in our text is that there will be a permanence to human life -- "like the days of a tree," says verse 22, which is often a symbol of permanence in the Old Testament (cf. Psalm 92:12-14; Job 14:7-9). Honest work will render meaningful and lasting results, and labor will not be spent in vain.
Above all, verse 24 emphasizes that God will be near his faithful folk. Even before they pray, he will hear them, and even before they finish speaking, he will answer them. In contrast to those mentioned at the beginning of chapter 65, to whom God called but who never answered, those who trust in the Lord will find themselves in an intimate communion with their God, who will be sufficient for all their needs.
The New Testament did not err in the way it used the words of this chapter from Third Isaiah. For finally, the fulfillment of all of these promises from the Lord will come only when Christ does return to set up the Kingdom of God on earth, with its total transformation of our lives. We do in fact still suffer the violence and heartbreak of premature death of beloved infants and elderly. Our earth still knows the greed and injustice of the powerful and proud, and the rape and pillage of war. We still do know the impermance of life in an era of dizzying change. Many still suffer the meaninglessness of the work they are doing.
But God has promised to transform it all. He made that promise to Israel -- a promise that is now extended to all his faithful covenant folk through his Son Jesus Christ. And ours is a God who always keeps his promises. In the New Testament message, there rings out the assurance of triumph over death, over suffering, over evil, over all, and yes, the reward for labor in the Lord. "Therefore, my beloved," writes Paul, "be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:58). If we trust God in Jesus Christ, we can know that is true.
