Ever-creating God, may your Holy Spirit rest upon us and fill us this morning. And may your presence bring us peace, hope, renewal, and inspiration to imagine, dream, and embody your Shalom. Amen.
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God is about to do a brand-new thing!
This is the proclamation our prophet made to his people thousands of years ago. And now his hopeful vision leaps off the pages of scripture and into our lives again, proclaiming that same good news to us.
Into a world that is often bogged down in the same-old, same-old, the prophet imagines and declares something new. Instead of the same old economics that benefited the wealthy and exploited the poor; instead of the same old politics that privileged a powerful few and left everyone else to fend for themselves; instead of the same old tendencies toward war over territory and violence between peoples and nations… the prophet invites us into a vision of the world as it could be – a world centered in God’s love, peace, justice, and joy – God’s Shalom.
Imagine, says the prophet, a new creation where the pain of the past is replaced with joyful delight. Imagine… no more cries of despair. Imagine… no infant mortality. Imagine… you may be a hundred years old – but kid, you’ve got the youthful vitality of a teenager! Imagine a society where everyone has a home, enough to eat, meaningful work, caring community, and hope for future generations. Imagine a place of peace where no one hurts each other, no one destroys that which is good and sacred (including all creation). And hey, can you even imagine that wolves and lions might give vegetarianism a try?! It’s a metaphor, sure, but also kind of fun to imagine.
Imagine… the world utterly transformed through God’s Love, reflecting God’s Shalom. God is about to do a brand-new thing. Our lives, here and now, on this planet, in this earthly existence can be transformed, claims the prophet. What has been turned upside down can be made right again. Stay tuned, keep watch, and participate in God’s transformation!
The conventional wisdom of this world might lead us to say this is impossible. This is pie in the sky, unrealistic, improbable at best. We all know that we have a long way to go in many ways.
But prophets don’t dwell solely in conventional wisdom. They aren’t content to abide by the logic that the way we’ve always done things is the way we’re always going to do things and that nothing can or will ever change.
Hogwash! says the prophet. Why would we put limits on God’s creative impulse? Why would we give up hope that we, as a species, as God’s children, as part of this beloved creation, might yet learn and find better ways of being together on this planet?
This is not to say it isn’t hard sometimes to believe that an alternative is possible. And we humans sure can get stuck in ruts. But the prophets urge us not to give up on what could be better and not to just give in to the status quo.
When we become complacent with conventional wisdom, the prophets interject an alternative, imaginative wisdom. And they invite us to imagine with them. Isaiah chapter sixty-five is a product of this imagination.
It might seem like this vision of the peaceable kingdom and a new Jerusalem, is nice but not realistic, overly optimistic. I get that.
But if we hear this passage in continuity with the first sixty-four chapters of Isaiah we realize that this vision is also the hard-won result of holding onto hope, sometimes desperately – through centuries of unjust and unrighteous behavior by those in charge in Jerusalem and Judah, through one imperial occupation after another, through a long exile in Babylon and eventual return home – all while issuing an unrelenting prophetic call to the people to remember and honor God’s faithfulness, to take seriously God’s covenantal promises, and to respond as God’s children with faith and with the willingness to take responsibility and live as God’s covenantal partners.
The book of Isaiah as we have it now is not the work of just one prophet but is, instead, the result of an evolving prophetic witness that developed over time through at least three distinct prophetic voices spanning the 8th to 6th centuries BCE. And the voices that make up this work are all prophets who dared to imagine. Through collective moral failure, societal collapse, war, political powerplays, and shifting uncertainty these prophets still stubbornly held onto hope (even in the midst of despair and feelings of hopelessness), and still called for a faithful, hopeful response from their people. And they still offer that witness to us now.
God is about to do a brand-new thing – not elsewhere; right here.
In Isaiah, Jerusalem is lifted up as the focal point of God’s activity in the world. And this vision for the new Jerusalem is not mere nostalgia for the way Jerusalem was. The prophets are not ignorant or willfully myopic about history. They experienced Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians and the resulting exile. They also know Jerusalem had plenty of problems before it’s destruction; it was always in need of reform. So, rather than nostalgia, this is a re-ordering and re-visioning for what Jerusalem could be. And, with God’s help, would be one day.
For us, Jerusalem can also serve as an icon for any “work in progress” – anything that needs God’s liberating, renewing, redeeming activity. How might our city, our nation, our global relationships, as well as aspects of our own personal lives, like Jerusalem, be made new? What history do we need to learn from? What injustices and mistakes need to be worked through and corrected? What renewal is needed? And what’s our part to play? These are some of the questions the prophets ponder.
God is about to do a brand-new thing! Can you perceive it? We dare you to imagine it, say the prophets. And we dare you to be a part of it.
The challenge, of course, is that we have to figure out our part for ourselves. The prophets think in big picture terms, offering us a vision of possibility. The practical piece of living faithfully into this vision is ours to discover.
Some of us have been exploring the prophets together this fall and one of the things we’ve been pondering is how the prophetic texts are really the work of artists. These texts are poetry. And these poets paint pictures for us through metaphors, images, and ideas that urge us to see the world more clearly and deeply and to take notice of God’s presence, activity, and call to us in fresh ways.
Sometimes the prophets are honest and raw with grief and lament in the midst of brokenness. They also burn with a passion for justice for the vulnerable who have been abused and left out (the widow, the orphan, the poor, the immigrant, the displaced). They demand moral accountability to God for the rich and powerful whose moral failures have piled up. They also speak comfort and peace as a balm to weary souls. And they dare to hope and dream for a future where God’s call to covenantal relationship with all creation is honored, enacted, and cherished. And they do this all through the medium of prophetic, poetic artistry that draws us in – sometimes in jarring, disruptive, and challenging ways and sometimes with beauty, joy, and hope.
It is often the artists among us who call us to look and listen deeply, to feel deeply, to get lost in story, song, and image in order to break us open, challenge us, and move us; in order to help us perceive life, reality, the world around us, others, and ourselves in new ways; in order to aid us in discovering truth and wisdom; and in order to help us recognize and encounter the sacred within all creation.
Some art is more overtly prophetic, drawing our attention to both the struggles and possibilities of the world around us and our own lives. John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, and Alanis Morissette are just a few poetic musicians who come to mind.
Some artists might not seem like prophets at first, but when we spend a little more time with them, we might discover the prophetic word they have to offer.
A number of years ago I had the opportunity to travel to France and visit Claude Monet’s home in Giverny. And, as I wandered around the grounds and his famous lily pond, I began to understand in a new way Monet, Van Gogh, and other Impressionist painters who were obsessed with light.
Monet painted the waterlilies that grew in that pond over and over and over again in an attempt to help people perceive the beauty of not only the lilies, but also the beauty and wonder of the light dancing off of the surface of the water. At first glance, the pond just looks like a pond – mostly green, pretty murky. But look a little longer, with the memory of Monet’s paintings in your mind’s eye, and you begin to see more color, movement, sparkle – the sacred beauty within that little microcosm of creation.
I didn’t really think of Monet’s work as prophetic at the time, but I do now because his art, informed by his perception of the world around him, helped me perceive in a new way. That is part of the work of a prophet.
I was chatting about this with my folks and my mom noted that another one of my favorite artists, Georgia O’Keefe, did a similar thing in her painting, inviting her viewers take a closer look at the intricacies of flowers, the unexpected beauty of sun-bleached animal bones, and the breathtaking and dramatic desert landscape of New Mexico that she called home. She invited her viewers to see the beauty in all creation, including nature’s cycles of life and death. She was also obsessed with vibrant color and organic forms in a time when many male modern artists were using darker palettes and focusing on more industrial subjects.
O’Keefe said that she painted what she “felt” about what she was looking at, rather than trying to copy it. She wanted to invite her viewers to feel what she felt. That’s part of the work of prophets too.
The point is this: the prophets and artists throughout history and those among us today still call us into the holy and sacred spiritual practice of imagination. Their creative exploration bears witness to the truth that God’s creative work is still unfolding – in the natural world, in our lives, and in our relationships with one another and with God.
For the prophets, imagination and creative exploration are acts of prayer. And they invite us to pray with them. In witnessing to the possibility of the new – new ways of perceiving, new ways of being together, new opportunities for the future – they invite us to imagine too.
So, what’s your mode and method of imagination? Whatever it is, honor it as prayer. And practice it as a prophetic witness to God’s loving, renewing, and ever-creating impulse.
The peaceable kingdom and the new Jerusalem of Isaiah 65 might still seem like a long way off. But if we can let ourselves imagine it, then we can also imagine and embody actions that bring us closer to that vision.
Your imagination is needed. Your creative work is needed. Your prophetic witness is needed.
For God is about to do a brand-new thing! But God can’t do it alone.
Amen.