Sermon: Come All Who are Thirsty

Isaiah 55:1-8

“Hotdogs, get your piping hot hotdogs. Get while their fresh get ‘em while their hot, get your hot dogs, juicy delicious hot dogs!” “Cola, get your ice cold cola!” I have not been to a baseball game since I was in high school, so my memory of what a modern baseball game is like, is pretty fuzzy. I am pretty sure that the “songs of the venders” did not ring out across the stadium. I am thinking the traditional vendor selling his wears in the stands has been replaced by a concession stand with horribly long lines, even if the vendor is a man from a days past, we have all seen the “proto-typical vendor” in a movie or on T.V. Many of us are probably familiar with the sound, the cadence, the ring of the words of one who has this for his profession.

This passage begins with a very similar feel and sound; “Is anyone thirsty? Come, Come and drink – even if you have no money! Come, take your choice of wine or milk – it's all free!” Sounds almost as if someone is standing on the street corner calling to all those who are passing by, calling for them to come in, to come join him, to come join the feast. Unlike most street vendors this man is not selling wares for a profit but this man is offering up a grand feast, to the hungry and the thirsty, for free. And his food will fill the belly of the starving man who has had nothing to eat but his dreams of a plentiful harvest, which never came, and his drink will quench the thirst of even the most parched woman, faint with thirst because she has lost her way in the desert and has not seen water for days. He asks, “Why spend money on food, which will not fill you and why spend money on drink which will not satisfy?” What he has to offer will fill and will satisfy but you can not buy this food, nor can you labor, work for or in any other way earn the water which he will give.

God speaks these words through the prophet Isaiah to the people of Israel at a time when the people are desperate. They were living in a land which was not their own, living among a people which was not their own, they had been taken into exile by an enemy army and had been living in the land of exile for quite some time. They were far from their homes, far from their land, and felt they were extremely far from God.

Too often the people of Israel tied God to the land, which God had given to them, believing that their God live in the land, which was quite nearly a backwards way of looking at it because in reality they lived in God’s land, the land which God had given to them. Since they thought God belonged to the land and not the land belonging to God, they had the mistaken idea that God was not with them in exile, which incidentally was part of the reason they were in exile to begin with.

They knew they were God’s people, and they thought God was tied to the land, so they believed that God would never let their land be destroyed or taken from them, so no matter how many prophets came and warned them that if they did not change their ways God would leave them to the natural consequences of their actions and they would be destroyed and taken into exile, they never did believe them. So, when the people continued their idolatrous ways, when the people continued to mistreat each other, and take advantage of the poor, the sick and the needy. The people choose to turn from God and from God’s protection, which was found in living the kind of lives God had called them to live, so God left them to the consequences of their actions. They were overrun by a foreign army and they were carted off as prisoners to live out their days in enemy territory.

For years they had been living in a foreign land, they were far from all that was familiar, far from their homes, separated from their families and as I said before felt they were far from the reach of God and therefore felt as if they were living out their lives without hope. They had turned away from God’s law and God’s protection. And believe it or not many of the exiles continued in to live their idolatrous ways taking on even more of the practices of the people of the land in which they lived and, they continued to live in ways which did not glorify God. They continued to take advantage with each other, even after they had gone into exile. They had lost their way, spiritually. At this point in their history, the only thing that they see is the condemnation they felt day in and day out as political prisoners.

At one point they had had covenant with God. They had been God’s people, and God had been their God. Now, they had broken covenant. They had turned their back on God and now it looked as though God was choosing to turn away from them. They couldn’t see any future in sight…all they could see was they were living their lives as exiles, prisoners in a foreign land and all they felt they could do was to shrivel up and die as a nation, it seem that the once numerous descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Israel would just dissolve in another land and be no more. The people were defeated, they were weak, they were longing for home, they were longing for all which had once been familiar and in many ways they were hungering and thirsting for their God, whom they felt was unreachable and un-findable there in the land of exile.

In hard times it was customary for those who were well off, who were not suffering from economic troubles to buy up all the food and then disperse it to those who were in need. Isaiah is portraying God as a rich land owner who has seen the plight of the people and has done everything to procure the very best and is announcing to the poor, the sick, those who have gone without food, those who have gone without water, all who were lacking all the good things God had, that it is there for the taking. God has gathered up the very things the people needs and God has set it out for them to come and receive. God, is the one on the street corner calling, Come, take, eat, be satisfied.” God desires for all the richness, which belongs to God and to God alone to be available to all who are in need. God desires to gather the people up and to take care of them, to protect them and to give them what they truly need.

God calls out to them and tells them that they might have forsaken the covenant, they might have turned from their God but God had not turned from them. God is here, even in the land of exile and God is willing to give them everything they need to be whole again.

God tells them they will be a nation again. God tells them they will be the people of God united again. God tells them they will be full, their thirst will be quenched, they will have all that is good in the world. The old covenant may be worthless, it may be broken and mangled beyond repair, but God has given up the old covenant and there is hope. God is willing to make with them a renewed covenant, a clean covenant, one that will not be marred by their constant desire to disobey God’s commands. A renewed covenant in which God will not remember their hatred of all that is good and right, one which would not remember how many times they had turned from God to worship other gods or tried to worship other gods along side the one true God. God would give them a new covenant. Not only that but this renewed covenant would not depend on a fickle king, but would rely God, and on one God would appoint. One who would be called the Holy One of Israel. God is asking the people of Israel, “Will you trust in me, this time, will you rely on me?” God does not want them to rely on kings, or a leader, or even prophets for that matter. God wants Israel’s complete and unadulterated trust, God want them to trust wholly, completely fully, holding nothing back, giving everything over to God, and following God blindly just as their ancestor Abraham did. And just as God did with Abraham, God is coming to them to renew the covenant which they have put in jeopardy. God was reaching out to them even as they had drawn away from God and everything God had stood for.

They had turned from God and wondered why they felt so alone and abandoned, and God came to them in their self imposed alienation asking them to come back, to return to their God, to come back and start over again. And in doing so God gave them a glimpse of what a return could mean, would mean. God showed them the promise of what covenant life meant for their dry, famine impoverished beings, it would mean rest, it would mean food, it would mean communion with the one and only God of the universe. God’s plea reminds me of a poem.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"The New Colossus"

The poem that is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

If you could imagine God saying this to the people of Israel instead of the statue of Liberty saying it to the peoples of the world, such is the promise God is making with Israel, and unlike an empty cold promise, which is little realized by too many immigrants today, God’s promise is not spoken with motionless brazen lips, nor is it an empty ideal which no one is willing to live out in day to day lives, but God’s promise is spoken with the breath that breathed the image of God into each and everyone of us, the promise is worked out with the hands which knelt down into the dust and the labor is done by the one on whose back all creation is upheld.

The Israelites were living in a sort of in-between time. God has presented them with a promise, the promise that someday they will be a nation again, someday they will return to the land of the promise, but this promise as of yet, has not yet been fulfilled. They had the promise that God would rescue them, would return them to the land God had given to them, which would prove that God was not merely the God of the land of Israel, that God was not merely the God of the people of Israel but that God was the God of the whole world and God’s reach, care, provision could extend to them even while they lived in a land far from their own, populated by people who believed that other gods where in charge in their land, but they were far away from seeing the far reaching power of God come to fruition in their lives. God had yet to prove to them that God’s power reached throughout the entirety of the world. And while they were in the in this in between time, the question, on which everything hung was, “would they follow God, or would they continue living they way they had been living?” God has told them that forgiveness is at hand for their rebellious ways and that restoration from the consequences of their disobedient choices is at hand. God is willing to extend grace to them, to renew that which they broke, to set right that which they caused to go wrong and God calls out to them, calling for them to trust, to obey, to love and to allow God to truly be their God and for them to truly be the people of God.

The people of Israel, are not all that different from us. There may stand between us an unfathomable gulf in time and culture but the circumstances in which we live are not really all that different. The people of Israel were living in an in-between time. They were somewhere in the middle of promise and fulfillment. Their promise was for a homecoming and for a kingdom that was to come. We too are living in such a time. We are living in the time between the rising of our Lord and the second coming of Christ. A time after the resurrection with a promise of a life where all things will be set right, when Christ returns. We also stand between a promise of a homecoming which will be no less glorious or fulfilling than Israel’s return from exile and for a kingdom that is to come, a kingdom in which God truly reigns, a kingdom in which we will be truly filled, truly satisfied, truly at peace and in communion with our God.

And like Israel the question is, “Will we listen to God’s plea for us to come, eat, drink and be satisified and will we heed God’s call for us to return to God, and to trust God and God alone for all that we desire; to follow God’s commands so that we too may come to reside in the land of promise.

God stands before us calling to us to come, to eat of the food God alone can offer. God calls for us to drink from the water which God alone can provide. God calls for us to turn from whatever it is in our lives, which is separating us from being the people of God and return to God, God wants to write a covenant on our heart, wants to call us God’s children. Whether you experience all the good things God has to offer depends on one thing and one thing alone, “will you turn to God, live a live wholly given over to God, trusting God in all things or will you turn away?”