2022.11.13 | Toiling with a Purpose
Toiling with a Purpose
Isaiah 65:17-25
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
13 November 2022
The end of the book of Isaiah, chapters 65-66, is a divine response to a supplication made on behalf of Israel by the Prophet Isaiah. A new world order is imagined, similar to the antediluvian era, before the introduction of blessings and imprecations that we read in Genesis 3 after the so-called Fall. Thorns and thistles will be no more, God’s vision for us as the Isaian school here records is one of longevity, fecundity, prosperity, and harmony.
“For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” This passage is essentially Isaiah’s equivalent of the earlier prophet Jeremiah’s divine utterances of Jer 31 that we heard last month, that “God will put God’s Torah in their minds and write it on their hearts, so that they will know God.” God there was making a new covenant with Israel and Judah, unlike the former one.
Similarly, God here is beginning anew as well, and makes more explicit God’s intent for creation. As with Jeremiah’s “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jer 29:11). God here too exclaims that the sound of weeping shall be heard no more. Isaiah here may be alluding to the weeping of Rachel in grief for her children who were forever disappeared as a result of the pillaging of Jerusalem as read also in Jer 31. We read a more graphic account of this separation of parents and babies in the collective traumatic memory of Ps 137, a psalm composed by those forced into servitude by the River of Babylon, their world, creation itself turned upside down.
The divine is stating in our passage this morning that there is, however, a purpose beyond grief and loss. We have a purpose. Neither shall Israel continue to labor in vain. You see, during the time of Jeremiah, a small portion of the elite Judahites were forcibly deported from their land and imported for labor closer to the center of empire in Babylon. Recently, there has even been discovered a town al-Yāhūdū, which literally means “Judahtown” in Arabic, with a trove of cuneiform tablets detailing Judean life in captivity in Babylon.
Scholar Tero Alstola of the University of Helsinki examines these cuneiform tablets and finds ancient Judeans in Judahtown referred to as šušānu. Šušānu is an Akkadian term which denotes a status different from that of a slave or a fully free person, but rather one with an in-between status, akin to undocumented residents of today, a semi-free class that could hold and work land, but the state could exploit their labor and movement, their ultimate purpose to work and provide for empire.
The prophet Jeremiah had exhorted these ancient Judeans who lamented by the irrigation canals of Babylon, which they built just as their Hebrew ancestors had labored on Egyptian state projects before them. Jeremiah exhorted them to make homes in their new land--in the ancient ghetto al-Yāhūdū, Judahtown--and to care for its well-being.
Isaiah here is reusing Jeremiah’s previous prophecy to tell the children and grandchildren of those who were forced to Judahtown that Jerusalem itself will be recreated, and they will no longer labor in vain for empire, but for their own sovereignty and well-being. They will build houses and live in them, plant and eat of their own harvest--not provide it for Persian foot soldiers. They will no longer be cogs within the wheel of the imperial labor industrial complex, or at least this is the vision. Their labor will not be in vain, their toiling will have a purpose, in their own land. Sorrow will give way to joy.
This prophetic pronouncement abrogates a curse, particularly the one found in Deut 28:30, “You shall build a house but not live in it. You shall plant a vineyard but not enjoy its fruit,” which, as the Deuteronomist tells us, Israel had received for going astray.
After the so-called fall, in Genesis 3, we are told that humankind will toil painfully for our food, but here God now exclaims that Israel will enjoy the work of their hands, and that they will be like a tree, as the Psalmist wrote, “In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap” (Ps 92:13-15). Because they once again will have a purpose. In this divine vision of a new creation, curses cease yet blessings remain. Purpose is renewed.
What is our purpose? Really, we’re not toiling with a purpose in the sense of trying to figure out what our purpose is. The prophets make this plain for us. Isaiah chapter 1 tells us, “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” Our purpose is further articulated in Eden Church’s mission and vision statements which can be found on the reverse side of your bulletin, that is the last page for those viewing online.
MISSION STATEMENT: What are we about in the here and now.
The members of Eden Church worship God and strive to follow Christ’s example by providing a welcoming and safe environment for all, seeking God’s wisdom, growing spiritually, caring for each other, enriching our neighborhood, and sharing the good news of God’s creative and unfolding work in the world.
VISION STATEMENT | Articulates what we are becoming?
The vision of Eden Church is to grow in spirit, fellowship, and number by offering many opportunities for spiritual growth; by becoming a more culturally diverse congregation; by strengthening our capacity to serve our neighbors, by caring for each other as Christ cares for us; by inviting others to be a part of our community of faith; and by working to transform individual lives and our community through the power of God’s love in human action.
We have toiled with our purpose in the past, that is trying to figure it out. Now we must remind ourselves as Isaiah did to his community, that we are toiling with a purpose, one given us by God. And at the root of this purpose is belonging--for Isaiah and for us.
God as depicted in Isaiah 56 states that “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts.” For Isaiah, when God would recreate Jerusalem, it would be again like its original form, when egalitarian King David included many nations, it would be diverse, a place of belonging, especially for those whom empire deemed non-citizens.
Not only a place of belonging, but a harmonious one. Isaiah’s vision ends with the wolf and the lamb feeding together, and the lion changing its diet to eat straw like the ox. Accommodation is made by the strong to make room for the weak. There will no longer be exploitation and destruction within Jerusalem, for as the original version of this vision in Isa. 11 states, “for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” There’s that knowing again. Knowing has an effect on doing.
In this divine vision that privileges the divine economy over the empire’s economy, and gives this group of Judeans purpose to their toiling, from the Hebrew it is clear that God has not yet created this new creation in Isaiah’s vision, but God is creating it. It’s not past or future, but a participle evoking continuous action. God still is creating, even today. We are invited to partner with God in realizing this vision of a new creation.
Eden’s ancestors have answered this invitation in many ways: In the 1940s Eden Church stood in solidarity with Japanese Americans; in the 50s resettled refugee families; in the 60s sent Freedom Riders to the South; in the 70s and 80s advocated for affordable housing, family planning and Choice, and supported the Farm Worker Movement and the Women’s Rights Movement; in the 90s fought for LGBTQ equality; and in this new millennium, partnering primarily with the immediate Spanish-speaking immigrant community in Cherryland, we continue the work of dismantling structural racism and inequalities via the Newcomer Navigation Center for asylum-seekers and new arrivals, its wider Accompaniment Network, and our COVID-19 direct response. It’s hard to believe what all we have accomplished together in these past three years. Take a look at Our COVID Story on the website under the “About” heading. Much of our COVID-19 response work has only been made possible due to our previous campus renovation and expansion. Many of you were involved in that gargantuan effort. Now we continue the renovation with our windows campaign.
Let us be confident in why we do the things that we do. That our purpose and actions exude from knowledge of God. So, whether it be feeding thousands to stewarding our campus for the generations to come, may it be done in accordance with this vision, one of inclusion. May we never shout as Isaiah’s successor in Babylon once did, “I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing at all” (Isa. 49:4). For we are toiling with a purpose, so that all might belong.
The divine vision is not yet fully realized. We find ourselves, even 2,500 years later, in the here and not yet. So many still labor building houses that are not theirs, grow and harvest food that they will never eat.
May we partner in solidarity and action with modern-day šušānu, accommodating to others, making room at the table, and in our house of prayer. For we ourselves did not belong once upon a time. If we do not do this, then we labor in vain.
Isaiah’s vision of New Earth and New Jerusalem is based on a new ethic of belonging derived from deep knowledge of God, the equity of labor and just distribution of resources. For this divine vision to be further realized, we must train our society’s lions to eat straw like the ox, and whatever we set out to build must be inclusive, leaning into our mission and vision, toiling together with a purpose. As we endeavor together in our new capital campaign, let this purpose resound, and as with the ancient Judeans, may we build back better. Amen.
Blessing:
May we all participate in the ways we feel led in the continual building-out of the dream of God’s edenic economy. May we enjoy the fruits of our labor, partnering in God’s vision of building spaces of belonging. Church, it’s our time to shine! May we rejoice forever in the purpose to which God has called us. Amen.