How many of you ever had a shirt or jacket with your
name on the inside of it? Embroidered, an iron-on patch, written in permanent
marker…
I’m
guessing that those of you who are parents have, at some point or another,
labeled your child’s possessions so that you would know, when they came home
from school, whether they had grabbed the right coat or backpack or gym shirt.
Sound familiar?
There are many ways that we mark things as our own.
A number
of years ago I was on a scenic drive through the countryside in England and
Wales, and there were sheep all over the place. Each sheep had been spray
painted a different color on his or her backside.
When I asked the native Brits I was with why the sheep
had such colorful rumps, they told me, it’s how the shepherds or farmers tell
their sheep apart from everyone else’s.
Painting
an animal’s rear end seems a lot more humane than branding, that other practice
most of us have heard of for marking ownership over livestock. When branding an
animal, the owner heats up a metal shape and then burns that shape into the
animal’s flesh.
Today’s reading from Isaiah tells us that God marks us
as God’s own.
I’d like
to think that God’s mark is as fun and colorful as the painted sheep bottoms,
but as permanent as the branding iron.
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, God says.
I have called you by name; you
are mine.
Because you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,
I give people in return for you,
nations in exchange for your life. (Isaiah 43:1b; 4 NRSV)
Isaiah tells us today that we are God’s children, created for God’s
glory, and each one of us is as valuable as an entire nation.
As we hear in the
service of baptism: you have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with
the cross of Christ forever. You belong to God!
God calls each one of us by name and claims us as God’s own.
This is an incredibly comforting thought.
It can also be
incredibly disturbing. Would God really destroy an entire nation of people –
their culture, language, art and architecture – just to save the life of a
single individual?
The reading tells us that God will give other nations as ransom, in
exchange for God’s people. While that might make us feel pretty special, how is
it good news for the other nations?
What about all the
individuals in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Seba? Were they not also created for God’s
glory?
The first time I read through the Bible readings for worship today, I
was struck by how comforting and personal the first reading was. We are blessed
to have a God who loves us, protects us, and calls us by name!
On the second
read-through, I started having second thoughts. The blessings in Isaiah seem to
come at the expense of other people. How can something be good news for me if
it is bad news for someone else?
Let me do a little interpretation here.
If you haven’t come to Bible study in a while, this is the sort of thing
we do there. Feel free to join us, it’s fun!
It sounds at first
like God is saying that the people of Israel are worth more than the people
from Egypt or Ethiopia or Seba, wherever that is.
I know from Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia that there is no
difference that matters to God according to nationality, social status, or
gender.
There is no
longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male
and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians
3:28)
No person is worth more than another.
Since the passage from Isaiah seems to contradict the one from Galatians,
then we need to dig a little deeper.
The people Isaiah was writing to were in exile.
This is after the
time of the famous kings – Saul, David and Solomon.
There had been civil war, and the kings of Israel and Judah were mostly
unfaithful to God and not the greatest rulers.
Israel was a small
and rather unimportant country on the borders of much larger empires, like
Babylon and Assyria.
So, as often happens to small countries on the borders of large empires,
Israel was invaded.
Even though the people of Israel believed that God would protect them,
and that God had given them the land of Israel to be theirs forever, this
invasion changed their expectations.
The people of
Israel were taken captive and forced to live in exile in Babylon. For a people
whose whole identity had been focused around God’s promise to give them this
land in which to live, being torn away from the land was heartbreaking, to say
the least.
And this is where the people are – physically in exile, emotionally
despairing – when God speaks to them through the prophet Isaiah:
Do not be afraid!
Don’t despair.
You’ve lost your
land, and part of your identity along with it.
But don’t worry.
I still know who you are.
I have called you
by name – you are mine, whether you live in that promised land or not.
Isaiah is speaking to people who have been kidnapped, exiled, and had
that which was most important to them taken away.
Contrast their
lives with the prosperity of the people living in nations like Egypt, Ethiopia,
and Seba, and well, somehow God’s words here do start to sound like good news.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for
you.
Even when you are worthless by every measure the world has to offer –
even when you think that you no longer matter to anyone, even to God, these
words can break through the despair.
God will
bring you back!
That is
what it means when Isaiah says that God will ransom other nations in exchange
for the Hebrew people.
God promises to restore the people and help them
regain their identity.
God will bring you back!
This is
good news for all people in exile – for all refugees! It is good news for
anyone who has lost their identity – for those who are depressed, widowed,
impoverished, unemployed, or otherwise despairing the loss of something they
thought they could not live without.
Today God says, “I love you. You matter to me. And
even though the thing you grieve was important, you are important too, and I
won’t lose track of you.”
God isn’t really going to destroy an entire nation of
people – people who have been created in the image of God, for God’s glory – to
rescue the people in exile.
God
doesn’t need to.
Each one of us is as valuable to God as the entire
history, culture, art, language, and all the people of Egypt.
It’s true. You are worth
that much to God.
But God doesn’t have to
destroy Egypt to prove it to you.
The reason Isaiah uses this imagery is because it’s
the only way God can describe our worth to us in terms that we can understand.
God can save the refugees and depressed people and
poor people without destroying the rest of the world.
It’s our imaginations that are limited – we
are the ones who have a hard time putting a value on ourselves. Who are we that
God should spend any time or effort on us? Well, we – you, as an individual –
you are as valuable to God as all the inhabitants, all the wealth, all the
history, all the art and beauty that has ever been produced by Egypt, or
Ethiopia, or Seba - which is another country in Africa, by the way.
And to prove it, God isn’t going to destroy another
nation.
Instead, God will restore you to where you want to be.
God will sew God’s name into our sweatshirts and
paint it on our backsides. God will make sure the whole world knows who we
belong to.
Eventually, the people of Israel were allowed to
return from exile in Babylon. They went back to the land God had promised to
them, and rebuilt their cities and temples and lives.
God
proved that these people were loved and precious and valuable – that God was
with them – when they were restored to wholeness.
If you find yourself in a place of despair, like the
Hebrew people were in today’s reading from Isaiah, God wants you to hear that
you still matter.
“You are
mine,” God says.
“With
you I am well pleased.”
You don’t have to earn it.
Here’s
an interesting thing to notice about today’s Gospel reading, from Luke. Jesus
got baptized today, and God said,
“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am
well pleased.”
But Jesus hasn’t done anything yet.
So far in the
Gospel of Luke, Elizabeth and Mary got pregnant and talked to angels, John and
Jesus were born, and Jesus ran away from his parents to go hang out with the
elders in the temple.
That’s it. No healings, no teachings that are recorded, nothing that
Jesus has done except be born and run away from home.
And God says, “You belong to me. I love you. With you I am well
pleased.”
This is what God says to each one of us.
It’s the same promise that is made in baptism.
God’s name is written inside our collars and painted on our skin.
We don’t have to
earn it. We don’t have to do anything. We can simply hear the promises of
baptism, hear the good news from Isaiah, and believe.
God made you. God wouldn’t hurt you. In fact, God will go to great ends
to keep you safe. And even when bad stuff happens, God will work to make sure
that everything is made right in the end.
When you are
forced out of your home or widowed or depressed or feel useless – God doesn’t
change those circumstances, necessarily. But God does save us from the feelings
of hopelessness, and brings us back to the promised land, to the place where we
are loved, to our special honored place as children of God.
I love you, God says.
You are precious to me.
I have called you by
name and you are mine.
Amen.
Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:1-17, 21-22
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