This was going to be a sermon, now it is mostly just a mental exercise, since it is no longer the sermon due for class, but it was an interesting enough insight, that I wanted to share it all the same.
“Here I am; send me!”
I can't imagine Isaiah knew what he was getting into when he said that. And even more interesting is what God then asks him to do- harden the hearts of the people until they are in ruin so that they will again turn to the Lord.
This God is very difficult to reconcile with the Lord who cradles our every step and loves us all with reckless compassion. This God is the parent; the parent who believes in tough love. How could Isaiah want to do such a thing to his people after seeing such a vision of Lordly power? How indeed? I think some of that answer is found in the vision itself.
This vision of the Lord as a king on a throne is not unique to Isaiah. The book of Job begins with God holding court, and sounding a bit bored. Ezekiel is commissioned by God surrounded by glorious angels and enthroned.
The call to lie to the people is not unique to Isaiah either. It is also found in 1 Kings 22:19. The prophet Micaiah is also called by the Lord to mislead; in Deuteronomy 13:2, where the author warns against true prophets misleading people as a test of loyalty to the one God.
So, quickly, we have a God in the Old Testament who is represented in ways that are contrary not only to our desires and understandings of God, but who is represented in a way that is actually condemned by God himself. God did not want to place a king at the head of Israel. The people begged for a king of their own until God finally gave them David.
God had originally set the people of Israel up as a community lead by community leaders, called Judges, but not like our judicial figures. God did allow for a king, in Deuteronomy 17, but he is bound by the law. God does not allow him to be an absolute ruler. God knew that people would want someone to be responsible for them, but he would not allow them to abdicate their responsibility to Him.
Why then, if God has set up the Israelites in Canaan, just as he promised, and he has made them responsible to and for each other, would the Jewish prophets still describe God as an enthroned ruler?
It's a sad fact that no matter what God has done for us, we are still human. It is part of our nature for some of us to want to lead and for some of us to want to follow. Even in our democracy, we put up kings and idolize royalty. Consider English Royalty. They generate just as much fascination in America, where we threw out the King as they do in their own country. Maybe even more.
The truth of the matter is, we do want someone else to be responsible for our actions. We want to lay blame at the door of anyone else. This means that we are more responsive to truth coming from a God who is proclaimed in ways that we perceive as powerful. Those trappings of power, however, are not the true power, of God or of ourselves. This is what Jesus was trying to tell us before we stuck him to a tree and told him to shut up. This is why, after we realized what Jesus was trying to tell us, and we loved it for what it is, we blamed the Romans, and the Jews, leaders and laity alike, for killing him. We do not like to take responsibility for having killed our own leader, but we did. In fact, there are people walking around, even today, doing a remarkable job of actually following Jesus. If they do it in a foreign country, they are like Mother Theresa and revered, but if they do it in America, then they are like the prophets, and we vilify them, ignore them, and otherwise, attempt to hang them from a more modern tree.
The throne is important. It is the only thing. Just ask the Wizard of Oz. How frightened we will all be when we realize that the power of God is found in our own hearts.
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