by Dr. Lani Wilson
Good day, prayer and fasting partners! God is good and in the healing business. Looks like I herniated a cervical disk in my fall a few weeks ago, but I did not break my back, as my spine doctor feared. Hallelujah for small miracles! I am moving very slowly and carefully and am pretty much “down” for awhile, but I am feeling much better. Thank you for your prayers: Not a small thing.
I was given this word a couple of weeks ago: Send (I am as mystified as you…). Of course, we know the familiar verse from Isaiah that is said to be at the heart of The Call for every minister of God.
I heard the voice of the sovereign master say, “Whom will I send? Who will go on our behalf?”13
Isaiah 6:8 (NET)
According to NET Note #13, “our” has a special reference.
13tn Heb “for us.” The plural pronoun refers to the Lord, the seraphs, and the rest of the heavenly assembly.
Ibid.
But what we usually don’t pay attention to is the rest of the scripture, the object of the word send because it is such an heroic stance to take, confirming the mark of God upon a person: ”Send me, God.” Send whom and for what? Verses 9-11 announces the judgment on everyone in Israel and Judah who chose paganism and ignored the warnings.
He said, "Go and tell this people: "’Listen hard, but you aren’t going to get it; look hard, but you won’t catch on.’ Make these people blockheads, with fingers in their ears and blindfolds on their eyes, So they won’t see a thing, won’t hear a word, So they won’t have a clue about what’s going on and, yes, so they won’t turn around and be made whole."
Isaiah 6:9-11 (TMB)
God is so angry and fed up with His people that S/He gives Isaiah the pronouncement about their coming doom centuries into the future and a sign. God tells Isaiah to go to Ahaz, King of Judah and reassure him that Judah will be safe from King Rezin of Aram and Ephraim (the northern kingdom of Israel) who were threatening to conquer Judah. Isaiah tells terrified Ahaz to ask God for anything and be “extravagant.”
God spoke again to Ahaz. This time he said, “Ask for a sign from your God. Ask anything. Be extravagant. Ask for the moon!”
Isaiah 7:10 (TMB)Ahaz recoils in fear, not daring to make demands of God. Then Isaiah gives Ahaz the future. So Isaiah told him, "Then listen to this, government of David! It’s bad enough that you make people tired with your pious, timid hypocrisies, but now you’re making God tired. So the Master is going to give you a sign anyway. Watch for this: A girl who is presently a virgin will get pregnant. She’ll bear a son and name him Immanuel (God-With-Us). By the time the child is twelve years old, able to make moral decisions, the threat of war will be over. Relax, those two kings that have you so worried will be out of the picture. But also be warned: God will bring on you and your people and your government a judgment worse than anything since the time the kingdom split, when Ephraim left Judah. The king of Assyria is coming!"
Isaiah 7:13-17 (TMB)
So in the year that Isaiah’s cousin, King Uzziah, dies, he is sent to assure the King of Judah (the southern kingdom) that they will be safe because God has secured the future for all parties involved. The NET translation casts an eerie familiarity over Isaiah’s prophecy, Ahaz’s fear, and us.
During the reign of Ahaz son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, King Rezin of Syria and King Pekah son of Remaliah of Israel marched up to Jerusalem to do battle, but they were unable to prevail against it.
Ibid. vs. 1
“Aram” became what is known as the country of Syria.
The word means high, or highlands, and as the name of a country denotes that elevated region extending from the northeast of Palestine to the Euphrates. It corresponded generally with the Syria and Mesopotamia of the Greeks and Romans. In Genesis 25:20; Genesis 31:20; Genesis 31:24; Deuteronomy 26:5, the word "Syrian" is properly "Aramean" (RSV, marg.). Damascus became at length the capital of the several smaller kingdoms comprehended under the designation "Aram" or "Syria."
biblestudytools.com/dictionary/aram
This general area of Aram was named after a son of Shem, a grandson of Noah and from which we get the language “Aramaic.”
A people known as the Arameans lived in the regions of Syria and Mesopotamia in antiquity. They were a large group of
linguistically related peoples who spoke dialects of a West Semitic language known as Aramaic. Although not politically unified, they developed powerful city-states that had a strong cultural influence in the Near East in the first millennium B.C. The Aramaic language, very similar to Hebrew, became the official international language during the Persian Period, ca. 539-332 BC, and eventually replaced many of the local lan- gauges of the area, including Hebrew. As a result, in New Testament times the main local language was Aramaic rather than Hebrew. The nation of Israel was in conflict with the Arameans for about 300 years, from the time of David, ca. 1000 BC, until Assyria annexed the Aramean city-states at the end of the eighth century BC. Most of the conflict was with the city-state of Damascus that, under Hazael, dominated Israel in the second half of the ninth century. www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2011/05/04/the-Tel-Dan-Stela-and-the-Kings-of-Aram-and-Israel.aspx#Article
Isaiah’s warnings to the remaining southern kingdom of Judah tell of its coming fall, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the people taken into captivity. Yet, within the midst of this gloom, there sparks salvation. These prophecies didn’t all happen within Isaiah’s lifetime.
He prophesied in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, and also may have lived past Hezekiah into the reign of Manasseh. Assuming that he was a young man at the death of Uzziah in 742 B.C. when his official ministry began, he might have been 70 or 80 at the time of his death (ca. 680 B.C.). Therefore, the prophet would have ministered for at least 60 years in an effort to bring the nation back to God.
Allen Ross, Beeson Divinity School, August 5, 2004
https://bible.org/seriespage/1-introduction-study-book-isaiah
Isaiah was sent to tell God’s people what was going to happen to them. He also predicted the birth of The Messiah.
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young womanf is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.
Isaiah 7:14 (NRSV)
fGk the young virgin gThat is God is with us
Within these pages of doom and gloom is also salvation, Ross says in his introduction to the study of the Book of Isaiah quoted above. When God sends us warnings, does S/He also send us salvation? As Christians we proclaim faith and hope in the face of every and any situation, right? Do those messengers sent by God get discouraged? Don’t they get tired of getting sent to folks who seem “okay” with how things are going because they’ve reached a certain plateau of sufficiency with even a little luxury?
Jesus in Luke 16 tells a story about a rich man and Lazarus, a poor man. Interesting choice of name for the poor man: Lazarus is another version of the Hebrew name, Eleazar, “whom God helps” (biblestudytools.com/dictionary/lazarus). There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of articles and books about this famous pericope. They discuss Jewish cultural themes about reversal of fortune after death, concepts of Hades or hell and paradise, Jewish folklore, as well as Egyptian mythology, wealth disparities, legal systems of governing, and last but not least, economics as it applies to the antiquity of Jesus’ time.
Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I amin anguish in this fire.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus likewise bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. Besides all this, a great chasm has been fixed between us, so that those who want to cross over from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ So the rich man said, ‘Then I beg you, father – send Lazarus to my father’s house (for I have five brothers) to warn them so that they don’t come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they must respond to them.’ Then the man said, ‘No father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He replied to him, ‘If they do not respond to Moses and the prophets,
they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”
Luke 16:24-31 (NET)
Certain themes stand out:
- If you have wealth, you should share and look after the poor.
- The poor man was named, Lazarus (the only time a name is given in one of Jesus’ parables) and the rich man was not.
- How you behave in life determines your life after death.
- The afterlife status is immutable.
- Earthly status and hierarchy are inconsequential to God.
- And finally, and perhaps most importantly, for some people no matter who is sent to them, they will not reform.
In this last theme, we may see parallels to our nation and the international community and Isaiah’s mission. He was sent to warn the people of Judah what was coming if they didn’t reject paganism, worshipping false idols for approximately 60-80 years.
Due to the Puritan principles and Eurocentric racism that religious refugees brought with them in the seizing of the North American continent, the United States has fixated on sexual mores and behavior as the center of moral discourse. Even victims of this rapacious system have succumbed to a preoccupation with personal, private sexual identity and behavior in the face of starvation, genocide, and psychological decay of wide swaths of citizenry. Thus, the depth of paganism in 21st century America is measured by the open acceptance of Gay marriage and Transgender identity. If a friendly intergalactic alien dropped from the sky tomorrow, it is this author’s belief that they would be flummoxed with our priorities. It is not unusual to hear church-going, educated, formerly enslaved descendants one generation away from lynching emphatically state that the United States is doomed because this culture may be turning the corner on same sex love and gender identity bigotry. And the final drop in the bucket of proof is that “it’s in the Bible.” For consideration regarding this issue (that will not be taken up here), it might be best to start with the Hebrew Bible.
“‘The sin of your sister Sodom was this: She lived with her daughters in the lap of luxury—proud, gluttonous, and lazy. They ignored the oppressed and the poor. They put on airs and lived obscene lives. And you know what happened: I did away with them.
Ezekiel 16:49-50 (TMB)
Dr. Renita Weems in Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets lays out how the relationship between God and the Hebrew people was described as a marriage; the wanton wife was the disobedient Hebrew nation. It of course served to dehumanize women and allow men to control all aspects of women’s lives, especially their bodies. If we look at how Christianity is faring in the 21st century, we have to acknowledge that it is a global religion.
At the same time, Christianity has grown enormously in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century. The share of the population that is Christian in sub-Saharan Africa climbed from 9% in 1910 to 63% in 2010, while in the Asia-Pacific region it rose from 3% to 7%. Christianity today – unlike a century ago – is truly a global faith.
http://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-exec/
Given the explosion of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and South America, we have to wonder what kind of Christianity is growing. Allen Temple is exemplary in our mission service in Africa, South America, and right in our own neighborhood. As Dr. Obery Hendricks stated (paraphrased) to the Black Theological Leadership Institute in July of this year, “Allen Temple is my church. It is the social justice model for churches.” Yet, we are struggling with what kind of message we are sending to those outside the church, peering in. We talk inclusivity, open to all people, but just exactly who do we think “all” is? Is the message we send God’s message or is it our own frail, human interpretation? Without getting into doctrinal debates, is God sending us a message about who we are versus who S/He wants us to be in this new world of instant communication with little depth? If God is sending us messages, are we dodging those communiqués because we really don’t want to deal with them? Are we beginning to look like the Hebrew people in Isaiah’s time? And what sent messages have we already missed?
The title of Dr. Weems’ presentation to the BTLI this year was “The Empire is Falling, Other Biblical Tropes: Part I.” She cited Isaiah 6:1: “’The year King Uzziah died and I saw the Lord.’ The truth is in the ‘and…’ The truth is in the ugly spaces and the stuff you don’t tell…The empire is falling because there is a whole lot of stuff in there.” In that “and” was all the stuff that Isaiah was warning Ahaz and the Hebrews about: Walking away from God; worshiping foreign gods; not caring for the widow, the orphan, the stranger; greed in public places and hypocrisy in private spaces.
Ah, you who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter!
Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes,
and shrewd in your own sight!
Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine
and valiant at mixing drink,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
and deprive the innocent of their rights!
Isaiah 5:20-23 (NRSV)
We Christians must be willing to receive messages sent from God. The southern kingdom of Judah was so sure that the LORD their God would never let them be destroyed like Israel the northern kingdom that they couldn’t hear God when He spoke. Is it an individual pursuit? Whose responsibility is it to make sure that we are listening, looking, straining for God’s sent imprint? Is it the responsibility of the Pastor to solely determine what we should be listening or looking for? Maybe, the Deacons or Deaconess? The Trustees? Christian Education? Do we even know how to recognize it? And what if we don’t like what we hear? Is that paganism-turning a deaf ear to God because it makes us uncomfortable? Who are we worshiping then?
LORD Jesus, these are the toughest questions. One generation is bowing out and another is coming in, and we may not be sure what to even listen for. Send us your clarity. Send us your peace. Send us your courage. We are willing, we think…but it’s scary out there. “There be giants!” said the ten scouts; only Caleb and Joshua said, “Let’s go! We can do this!” We don’t want to get left behind, wandering in the desert until our generations have died out. We want to be with You and your Sent Message, The Christ. His life, death, and resurrection was loud and clear. Help us answer Him and You – with unequivocal passion.
Send me, LORD.
Send me, LORD.
Send me. Just…
Send.
Amen.
