Visiting Prisons

But What If We Have Freed All the Prisoners?

January 21, 2013 By 4 Comments

by Lauren Winner

Gospel Reading: Luke 4:14-21

For Sunday, January 27, 2013: Year C—Epiphany 3

I am writing this from the classroom of a women’s prison in central North Carolina. The classroom is in a trailer, kind of like the trailer in which you might have had overflow classes at your middle school.

I come here each week to teach a course on prayer. I never ask the students why they are in prison, but by now I know: some of them are here for killing abusive husbands or partners. Some are here for drug crime. Some are here for failing to intervene in a husband’s sexual abuse of their children. Some are only here for a year or two; others have been in the prison system for decades.

And here comes Jesus, quoting Isaiah, coming to proclaim freedom for the prisoners. [Read more...]

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A Preacher with Unclean Lips

May 27, 2012 By 1 Comment

Redemption for God’s mouthpiece.

by Mike Stavlund

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8

For Sunday, June 3, 2012: Year B—Trinity Sunday

On Trinity Sunday, the Lectionarians are showing us the wider landscape through the eyes of Isaiah: he is transported in some kind of vision to the very presence of God. When the throne room is opened, God’s power and glory are utterly overwhelming.  The experience is so unsettling that the prophet seems to be torn in two.  He cannot be a son of man and see God.  We might imagine that the songs of the assembled hosts of heaven would be comforting (and we often sing them that way), but Isaiah comes unhinged.

Isaiah Unhinged

“Woe is me, I am lost…” he cries as he laments his human condition.  He has unclean lips, and he lives among people of unclean lips. 

We see here an unexplained bifurcation between his eyes and his mouth.  Or more specifically, a contrast between what goes into his eyes and what goes out of his mouth.  In his mind, this imbalance is an impossible impediment to his redemption. 

Now Just Hold Still…

The gulf between Isaiah’s vision of God and his practice of life is bridged when one of God’s attendants gives him the fix:  a hot coal straight from the altar is touched to his lips. 

[Read more...]

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot

January 9, 2011 By 15 Comments

Dare I Shoot Isaiah’s Arrows?

by Jennifer Johnson

Old Testament Reading Isaiah 49: 1-7

For Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011:Year A - Epiphany 2

As a seminary student, I lapped up the call stories in Scripture as milk to the hungry kitten. I knew the story of the first Isaiah who lamented over having unclean lips, of Jeremiah who expressed concerns over being too young, and the various apostles who were interrupted in their jobs by Jesus to “Follow me.”

Why Are There No Plumbing Classes In Seminary?

What an idiot I was. Back then I pictured myself in all the warm fuzzy moments of people’s lives. I’d preach inspiring sermons and my flock would sit in rapt attention until my benediction when they’d go charging out the door to work tirelessly for the Kingdom. They’d tell me how my service and leadership had changed their lives. Instead, I got “Nice sermon. Umm. Did you know the basement’s flooded?”

Oh, it hasn’t all been building issues. I’ve had my share of holy moments. I’ve wept at the bedsides of the dying. I’ve endured the middle of the night calls when tragedy struck. I’ve held startled babies at their baptisms and taught pre-schoolers “Seek Ye First.” I’ve also been tempted to wrench my hair out in handfuls at the stiff-necked propensity of people not to “do right.” However, unlike the words of Isaiah in this servant song, I’ve never had to convince a people to return to a homeland some of them have never even seen, especially when that homeland was in ruins. I’ve never publicly spewed judgment on them because of their lack of obedience or faith.

[Read more...]

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Conspiracy of Unkindness

December 19, 2010 By 3 Comments

Are we too demanding of God’s delivery of peace when we’re so full of rebellion?

by Mike Stavlund

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 63: 7-9

For Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010: Year A – First Sunday After Christmas

This Sunday we will be sitting, the day after Christmas, with bellies full and socks fresh and (if you’re among the 20% of affluent Americans who account for 40% of holiday sales) with toys aplenty. The Advent candles will have been put away, and we’ll be doing our best to look ahead. And yet, and yet: our Advent waiting is over, but it is far from complete. We’ve got an Advent hangover, and utopic texts like this one from Isaiah seem to mock us.

Shiny, Happy, Isaiah?

Isaiah 63:7-9 might be the perfect fulfillment of our Advent longing: Compassion. Good deeds. Faithfulness. Redemption. Salvation. Love. Mercy and the alleviation of affliction. The famous hesed (“lovingkindness”) of God, splashed over all of creation. Concluding with the familial and parental image of God “carrying and bearing” God’s children.

Ah, it is the best Christmas gift, saved for last. Except that it’s not. It yet stands − through millennia and even through the life and death and promised return of Christ − as a reminder that the not yet of God’s kingdom remains painfully and pointedly unfulfilled.

Airbrushed Advent

This passage is so dissonant that we wonder if it might be the source text for that schlocky Footprints poem that hangs in the hallways of our homes and lurks in the darker corners of our lives. The one where we’re assured that we’re never alone — that when it seems so, it was actually that God was bearing us up. “When you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

Admit it! When we raise our eyes unto the larger context of Isaiah 63, don’t we wonder if this plaque was hanging in the conference room where the cabal of Common Lectionariers determined this passage? For we note with interest that they ended this reading precisely where Isaiah takes a hard right. “…but they rebelled… …and God turned to become their enemy, and fought against them…” (v. 10)

[Read more...]

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God with Us Revisited

December 13, 2010 By 6 Comments

How do you live when wrath is no longer an option?

By Sonja Olson

Gospel Reading: Matthew 1:18-25

For Sunday, December 19, 2010: Year A – Fourth Sunday of Advent

It’s strange when the Bible misquotes itself. But it is really good at it. I have gone for what seems like, well, all my life not even noticing how Matthew takes a common pregnant woman who gives birth to a common boy named Immanuel and turns it into a prophecy about a virgin giving birth to the Christ child. I have heard it year after year, yet never noticed.

Clever Switch-a-roo?

Matthew takes a sign Isaiah gives to Judah about her salvation/destruction and twists it into a promise of a Messiah coming for the forgiveness of sins. In Isaiah the mother will name him Immanuel (“God with us”). In Matthew, the father does the naming and calls the boy Jesus (“Yahweh Saves”). Jesus is not Immanuel. That’s two different names.

Either Matthew is not well-versed in Jewish prophets, or he is getting at something more when he writes that this birth occurs to fulfill what the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah. Perhaps this idea of “God with us” being revisited was part of the plan all along.

[Read more...]

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God with Us

December 13, 2010 By 1 Comment

Does God’s presence require both salvation and destruction?

By Sonja Olson

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 7:10-17

For Sunday, December 19, 2010: Year A – Fourth Sunday of Advent

If God is with us, is that a good thing?

If you spend any time with the prophets of the Old Testament you know a lot is made out of the doom, destruction, and calamity of God’s wrath. But Isaiah is a peculiar prophet. Not only does Isaiah hear pictures on the temple walls speaking to one another, has an angel touch his mouth, but also his very name means “Salvation is of the Lord.”

A prophet whose name means salvation? It doesn’t make sense. Prophets aren’t known for such happy news. But “salvation” occurs twenty-six times in the book of Isaiah compared to the seven times the word is used in all of the other prophetic books combined. Where is the death and doom?

How nice.

In the Isaiah passages we have read so far this Advent season, Isaiah tells of a time when all nations will recognize one true God and there will be no need for warfare. The wolf will live with the lamb. The blind will see. The deaf will hear. The lame will leap like dear. How nice that sounds. So many nice things are told to us in weeks one, two and three of Advent.

[Read more...]

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Seriously, Isaiah?

October 24, 2010 By 1 Comment

Where do we draw the line between prophet and lunatic?

by Jake Bouma

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 1:10-18

For Sunday, October 31, 2010: Year C – Ordinary 31

Well, this is certainly a hell of a way to open a piece of prophetic literature. Isaiah wastes practically no time at all in convincing us that he’s either a raving lunatic or a prophet with wordsmithing skills of hip-hopical proportions.

Instead of A Show

For two-thirds of our reading, Isaiah makes himself perfectly clear: God is pissed. “I do not delight,” he says, “my soul hates,” “I will not listen,” and so on. Isaiah the prophet bursts on to the scene with some really bizarre stuff. If it doesn’t seem strange to you, I suggest listening to a worship song called “Instead of A Show” by Jon Foreman, the lead singer of the Christian super-group Switchfoot. The first time I listened to the song, I remember thinking that Mr. Foreman must have an unbelievable amount of courage to have written this song for consumption by Christians (“You shine up your shoes for services,” he croons, “There’s blood on your hands.”). Either that, or he’s lost his mind.

But “Instead of A Show” is clearly based on this text from Isaiah. Jon Foreman has translated Isaiah for our modern age, and if it seems strange to us, it surely must have to Isaiah’s audience as well. Wouldn’t the hearers of Isaiah’s message have questioned, “On whose authority do you say these hyperbolic statements?” or, more straightforwardly, “Are you serious!?”

[Read more...]

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