February 9, 2025
“For thus the Lord said to me:
‘Go, post a lookout,
let him announce what he sees.
When he sees riders, horsemen in pairs,
riders on donkeys, riders on camels,
let him listen diligently,
very diligently.’
Then the watcher called out:
‘Upon a watch-tower I stand, O Lord,
continually by day,
and at my post I am stationed
throughout the night.
Look, there they come, riders,
horsemen in pairs!’
Then he responded,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
and all the images of her gods
lie shattered on the ground.’
O my threshed and winnowed one,
what I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel, I announce to you.”
Have
you or have you not, in the last week, heard someone say or said yourself words
to the effect of, “Are we going to make it?” or “What is going to happen to
us?” That is not a rhetorical trope, a
figure of speech used by a politician: “People are saying such-and-such.” No, we are in a situation where I hear people
ask me in a professional capacity whether the upset that is going on all around
us is going to destroy their physical safety in the way that it has already
ripped up their emotional security.
“Will I have a job in four years?”
“Will my children or grandchildren be protected from measles, mumps, and
rubella?” “Will there be bananas and
tomatoes in the grocery store and, if so, will I be able to afford them?” “Are my neighbors going to be deported?” “Will my best friend be stripped of citizenship?”
I’ll
tell you flat out. I don’t know. I cannot tell the future. But I can see the present, and I know that
you’re scared.
Maybe
you are one of those people who do not share those misgivings. You can see the present, too. Your neighbors are scared. Your family members are scared. Maybe you don’t understand why, but surely
you can see it happening.
The
Lord spoke to Isaiah and told him to send watchmen onto the towers of
Jerusalem. Their job would not be to
make predictions about what the future would hold. They were not there to do anything except to
let officials in the city know what they saw and heard.
“For thus the Lord said
to me:
‘Go, post a lookout,
let him announce what he sees.’” [Isaiah
21:6]
There would be a lot that would be unremarkable. There would be the usual farmers with the
produce and herdsmen driving sheep or cattle.
There would be pilgrims and priests on their way to the Temple. There would be merchants and traders of all
sorts.
But there would also be
unusual travelers from far away who might be talking about the weighty matters
of that day which would impinge on the lives of people of all
descriptions. They might have news that
could help or hurt the people of Jerusalem and Judah. Then the watchmen’s job was not simply to
watch but also to listen.
“When he sees riders,
horsemen in pairs,
riders on donkeys, riders on camels,
let him listen diligently,
very diligently.” [Isaiah 21:7]
There would be an urgency to the watching and the
listening. It would be twenty-four hour
news.
“Then the watcher called out:
‘Upon a watch-tower I stand, O Lord,
continually by day,
and at my post I am stationed
throughout the night.’” [Isaiah 21:8]
Now,
there is something that strikes me as strange about this assignment, and how it
turns out. Maybe it comes from watching
too many action movies when I was a kid.
I picture watchmen on a city wall looking out for an approaching
army. In a Western it would be a sentry
in a square tower at the corner of a fort spotting a dust cloud just before a
raiding party rides up and over a hill. In
Isaiah, the watchers report,
“‘Look, there they come,
riders,
horsemen in pairs!’” [Isaiah 21:9a]
That doesn’t describe attackers so much as it
describes soldiers fleeing a battle that went against them. It sounds like people who somehow escaped. What news would they bring?
“Then he responded,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
and all the images of her gods
lie shattered on the ground.’” [Isaiah
21:9b]
So I say to the people in our own day to listen
closely. But listen closely not to the
people you know. Listen closely to
people who are not even talking to you. Listen
to the people who are from outside your walls and hear what they say to one
another and that is when you will hear what is going on in the widest sense.
That
has to come with a warning, though.
“O my threshed and
winnowed one,
what I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel, I announce to you.” [Isaiah 21:10]
In the Old Testament,
Babylon represented a real place. It was
the capital of an empire that was trying to take over the entire world as it
knew it. For that matter, so was Egypt. Jerusalem was right between them and was
repeatedly slammed by both. Babylon’s
destruction would mean freedom for the Jewish exiles who had been carried there
by invading armies. The fall of Babylon
would restore Jerusalem’s sense of safety.
In
the New Testament, Babylon is used symbolically to represent any worldly
political system that sets itself up to oppose or replace God’s rule. It represents raw power exercised without
mercy or restraint. Such systems are
doomed to failure across the board.
John’s vision in the book of Revelation looks to a future where all such
empires face judgement. John directly
echoes Isaiah:
“Fallen, fallen in Babylon the great! She has made all nations drink of the wine of
the wrath of her fornication.” [Revelation 14:8]
In Julia Ward Howe’s words, “He is trampling out the
vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”
The message is no longer a simple matter of nation versus nation, but of
faithfulness to God.
Again,
test what I say for yourself. I am no
prophet. But what I see, you can see,
and maybe we can make sense of it together.
So I am (probably foolishly) about to venture an answer to the questions
I started this sermon with, and the answer is going to be, “Yes, but…”
“Are we going to make
it?” Yes, but who do you mean by “we”
and what do you mean by “make it”? If
“we” is American society as we have known it, it’s pretty clear that the
divisions go deeper than the past few years and there will have to be a lot of
grace shown by everybody to do more than get back to the status quo. Even that won’t be good enough because if the
status quo was working, we might not be asking these questions.
“What is going to happen
to us?” Again, if by “us” you mean
American society as we have known it, I don’t know. A lot depends on how the other “we” – Jesus’
followers take lead in loving God and neighbor when there are so many
temptations and incentives not to do that placed in front of us. If by “us” you mean Jesus’ followers, then
the answer is that if we do follow him faithfully in any time of trial –
personal or national, whatever – we are going to come out of it as better
people – humbled, but better.
Better. Not the same. And not finished.
Our God is marching on.
No comments:
Post a Comment