Listening to Isaiah: We Are Like Grass

Isaiah 40:1-11 December 4, 2011

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Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. I don’t know if you are a fan of the television show, Seinfeld. I suspect that many of you are. It was a brilliant comedy that managed to stay fresh year in and year out. It was one of the few shows that actually went out on top of its game, even after airing for 11 years. The show was brilliant because it made fun of the little quirks that make us human and flawed. The characters each had their own foibles, and never seemed to grow beyond them. What made the show really hilarious was that they were like us on our bad days on steroids. Laughing at them was laughing at ourselves. Pretty much everyone who watched Seinfeld has a favorite episode. Mine was the Soup Nazi episode. In this episode, a soup stand opens up in Manhattan, and it offers amazing soup. The place is packed everyday, but the owner has a quirk. He likes order. So to buy the soup you have to stand in line in the proper way, you’re not allowed to talk in line, and you have to place your quickly and perfectly. If you didn’t do it exactly right, the owner would shout out to you, “No soup for you!” If you argued, he would say, “No soup for you,… ONE YEAR!” The idea of the Soup Nazi was actually taken from a real-life stand in Manhattan, one that still exists. When our family visited NYC last Christmas, I made everyone go to it, just so we could have the Soup Nazi experience. What I didn’t realize was that there was no place to sit, so we ended up at another soup place, conveniently situated across the street. But this isn’t the episode I want to talk about. I want to talk about the Opposite George episode, the one that reminded me so much of Isaiah. In this episode, George, a short, stocky, balding, persistently neurotic and self-destructive guy, gets an insight. He’s complaining one day to Jerry and Elaine, while sitting in their favorite corner coffee shop, that all his instincts about life are wrong, and that’s why he can’t keep a job, an apartment, or a girlfriend. Jerry tells him, “If every instinct is wrong, maybe you should just do the opposite.” George snickers at the idea, and then realizes that Jerry’s right. He should do everything the opposite. So George gets started by ordering a chicken salad sandwich on rye instead of his typical tuna salad on wheat. As he’s eating his sandwich, he notices a very attractive woman staring at him. Doing the opposite of what he’d normally do, George walks up to her and says, “I can’t help but notice you looking at me.” She says, “Yes, I noticed you ordered the same sandwich as me.” George looks at her and says, “My name is George, I’m unemployed, and I live with my parents.” Flirtatiously she smiles and says, “Who ARE you?” Later, George is on a date with her at the movies. Two tough-looking thugs are in the seat behind them, cracking jokes, kicking George’s and his date’s chairs, irritating everyone. George, who’s normally a coward, stands up, turns around, and says, “Hey, KNOCK IT OFF! If you don’t knock it off, I’m going to take you outside and show you some manners. And if you don’t believe me, try me. I would LOVE to show you what I mean. And don’t test me because I’m a dangerous man!” They immediately cower as the movie crowd gives George an ovation. His date looks at him and says, “Who ARE you, George Costanza?” The final scene takes place in the offices of the New York Yankees. George, recognizing that his normal instincts would keep him from ever applying for his dream job of working for he Yankees, decides to interview for a job. He goes to the interview dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt, and a down vest. He tells the interviewer that he has no skills for the job, and the man is close to kicking him out of his office. That’s when George Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, comes down the hall. The interviewer introduces George to Steinbrenner. Instead of shaking hands with Steinbrenner, George looks at him and says, “Mr. Steinbrenner, you have made a mockery of this team. Your ego has caused you to bring down this storied and once-proud organization (at the time the Yankees weren’t doing so well). You have micromanaged this organization into a shadow of it’s once-proud self. What do you have to say for yourself?” Steinbrenner pauses and says to the interviewer, “HIRE this man!” Opposite George has triumphed. So why do I bring up Opposite George? Because I couldn’t help thinking about him while thinking about our passage from Isaiah this morning. Isaiah was kind of an Opposite Guy. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. Most biblical scholars recognize that there really wasn’t one Isaiah. There were probably three, two of whom might have been apprentices—one to the original Isaiah, and one to the second Isaiah. But we don’t know for sure. What we do know is that if one prophet, Isaiah, wrote this, then He would have had to be writing for ten years prior to the Jewish exile to Babylon, then write all during the 70 years of the exile, and then be writing after the exile. Not likely. Anyway, why would I say that Isaiah is Opposite Guy? Because Isaiah never seemed to deliver the message you would expect. He always seemed to offer the opposite. Prior to the Babylonian exile, things were actually going well for Israel. Assyria, which had dominated Israel for 80 years, was weakened. Israel was becoming stronger nationally and economically. People were doing much better, but Isaiah was delivering a message of gloom and doom, earning him their scorn. Then, when the Babylonians conquered Israel, sending them into exile, they were desperate for a message of hope. But Isaiah poured salt into their wounds, saying that they were being punished for their lack of faith—for their sin. Then Isaiah, in the midst of their exile, turned around and offered words of hope, when they expected more gloom and doom. When they were set free (actually, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original exiles were set free), they returned to Israel to find it a mess. They had hoped to find the Temple in it’s original condition, and Jerusalem a still-beautiful city. Instead, everything was a mess. Jerusalem looked like a slum, and most of the Temple had been torn down. They expected Isaiah to offer more words of gloom, but Isaiah told them that this was a great thing, and that they should be hopeful. God was with them, and everything would be all right. The thing about prophets like Isaiah is that they see things with a wisdom that most of us humans can’t see or won’t see. We don’t see with this kind of wisdom because we think too conventionally and commonly. We’re too wrapped up in what I call world think. We think in the ways either of the world in general, or of the groups we identify with, think. We think in terms of what we would like to see, what would seem to benefit us the most, or what seems “normal” to us. Prophets see things more from God’s perspective. Since they are passionate about what God wants, they refuse to be trapped by human perspectives. Isaiah’s connection with God led him to be what I call a hopeful realist. Like an optimist he was ever hopeful, but like a pessimist, he was rooted in the way things really were. He recognized that with God all things really do work out well in the end, but that at the same time, all things do end. He understood that with God there is always hope, but there is also a reality to life—we all die, and bad things do happen. It’s what led him to say to the Israelites both, Comfort, O comfort my people, and All people are grass. He was telling people that God was working in their lives, so live in hope. But don’t lose a grasp on the way things are because like the grass and the flowers, life does fade. I think the trouble with a lot of people is that they want the first perspective without the second. They want comfort, but not reality. Isaiah understood that real wisdom comes from having faith in God, while recognizing our own finitude—while recognizing our own mortality and the reality of death. Back in the 1970s a profound, Pulitzer Prize winning book was written by Ernst Becker, called The Denial of Death. In the book, Becker wrote about how we all deny death. It’s what allows us to accomplish what we accomplish in life. He said that all of us live with the false sense that somehow we will be the exception, overcome death, and live forever. The younger we are, the more we deny death. So we treat all of our own projects and pursuits as though they have some sort of eternal significance. It’s what leads us to believe that our beliefs, our accomplishments, our achievements are SO important. This denial of death leads us to problems of self-importance, while acceptance leads to humility and being grounded. The latter is what leads to a better life, even if the process of getting there is painful as we admit our mortality. Our passage reminds me a lot of a column I read Friday by one of my favorite political pundits, David Brooks. David Brooks is a conservative columnist who writes for the New York Times. What I like about him is that while he has a conservative perspective, he refuses to be trapped in that perspective. I find that most political columnists, no matter how smart of clever they are, can’t see beyond their rigid ideologies. Brooks recognizes the limits of his perspectives, and you can tell that he is a life-long learner who is always willing to question his own thinking. In his column this past Friday, he wrote about what he learned from those over 70 who responded to his request for them to send them their "Life Reports." He asked them to write about their regrets, their perspectives, and their happiness. Here are some of the lessons he learned from them: 1. Divide your life into chapters: In other words, be able to turn the page on the past. Those who were happiest didn’t let the past capture them, leaving them stuck in what they didn’t do, or what was done to them. When they went through a bad period, they looked at it as just that. And when it was over, they turned the page and moved on, closing that chapter of their lives. In that way they were able to, in a sense, continually recreate themselves. This is what Isaiah called on the Israelites to do—recreate themselves. Begin anew. Don’t let the pain of Babylon or the challenge of ruins hold you back. God is with you, so move forward. That’s his message to us, too. 2. You can't control other people (And, I’d add, your situation): The people who were happiest understood this. They knew that people are people, and they don’t do what we want. So work with them rather than trying to control them. Where this is often hardest is as parents. We want to control our kids so that they can live life without pain and make good decisions—or just to make life easier for us. But as our kids get older, they get harder to control. Especially as teenagers they seem to excel at being Opposite Guys and Gals themselves. Isaiah understood this about his own people. Even God couldn’t control the Israelites, so God let them suffer the consequences of their actions. And then God invited them to rejoin God in recreating Israel. 3. Lean toward risk: Those who were happiest didn’t live in fear but were willing to take risks, even when they were older. They didn’t live in fear and anxiety over what they could lose. Instead, they were willing to try new things. Again, much like what Isaiah was calling the Jews to do. 4. Work within institutions, not outside them: This is an especially important lesson for today. We live in an age in which everyone distrusts institutions, whether they are the government, schools, or churches. But the happiest people were ones who worked with others within institutions to make life better for everyone. They were civic-minded, realizing that institutions, when done properly, make life better. This is a huge lesson for people today who say they are spiritual but not religious. Becoming happy means becoming spiritual and religious, because if you aren’t you end up just becoming a lone ranger who really doesn’t work with others to make the world a better place. Think of all that the church does in ministry and mission. This is what institutions do—they get people to work together. And this is what Isaiah was calling on the Israelites to do. Isaiah had a message for the Israelites and for us: Don’t live in the past and in fear, don’t try to control others, take a risk every once in awhile, and work well with others. The question is whether we’re listening to Isaiah. Amen.