Reading: Isaiah 2.1-5
We take many things for granted in our day-to-day living - until, for some reason, they are in short supply.
We "flick a switch" without giving a thought to the power station. Electricity will always be there "for us" - except when there is a generator break-down or the power workers are on strike!
Unless we are in the country during drought, we turn a tap, confidently expecting the water to flow.
Or take the air we breathe - we may appreciate the scents of the flower garden and dislike fumes from a manufacturing plant. Mostly, however, we don't think about it - we just breathe. We don't live in choking smog, wondering where our next breath is coming from.
Yet television images remind us from time to time that there are people elsewhere in the world who cannot take these things for granted, for whom the very process of living is a struggle, a struggle which many are losing.
What are the essentials? There are many things we want to retain as important to our life-style, but, if it came to a point, what are the true basics?
One Sunday a man was driving through a mining region when he noticed a number of mules out in an open paddock. It seemed unusual, so he asked a local about it. The work animals, he was told, had been brought up from the dark shafts below to preserve their eyesight. If they weren't regularly exposed to the sunlight, they would eventually go blind.
Someone might say, Well, let them stay below, lose their sight and become creatures of the darkness! The animal welfare lobby would rightly put up a strong protest. They are not creatures of the night. These days there would even be objection to them working in the pits in the first place.
The Bible talks a great deal about light. The divine command of Genesis 1.3, "Let there be light!", comes to signify more than the physical light that is essential to our earthly environment. Light is the quality of the Creator, not simply of the creation.
For Adam and Eve, the most natural thing in the world was to know God, to talk to him, to share their lives with him… With the choice to disobey God came a desire to hide, to avoid God, not to be open with him… God, who knows everything, becomes the Seeker, not forcing himself on the rebellious pair, but seeking with reconciling love to bring them back (3.8-9) - their guilt and shame was covered with "clothes out of animal skins" provided by God himself (v. 21) - the first animal sacrifice for human sin. But Adam and Eve - and all their descendants - were meant to be "children of the light".
The theme of light is especially picked up by the apostle John. At the beginning of his gospel, he describes Jesus as "the real light - the light that comes into the world and shines on everyone" (Jn 1.9). In chapter 3 we read, "…the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. All those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up" (vv. 19-20). In chapter 8 we hear Jesus describing himself in these words, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness" (v. 12). In John's first letter we read, "God is light, and there is no darkness at all in him. If, then, we say that we have fellowship with him, yet at the same time live in the darkness, we are lying both in our words and in our actions. But if we live in the light - just as he is in the light - then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin" (1.5b-7).
As in Genesis 3, there must now, because of human sin, be a new basis for living before God - for living in the light. That basis is clearly revealed and fulfilled in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God the Son.
Every human being ever born was always meant to be a child of the light - living in the knowledge, presence and love of God. That is why the grace of God is freely available for all who will receive it.
The Lord complains, "The children I brought up have rebelled against me" (1.2b). They are described as "doomed", "sinful", "corrupt and evil" - "You have rejected the Lord, the holy God of Israel, and have turned your backs on him" (v. 4). Yet they still regularly kept up the outward form of their religion - sacrifices, festivals, sabbaths, holy days… They prayed and went to the Temple, yet persisted in lives which in no way matched their professions of allegiance to the Lord (vv. 11-15).
The Lord offers his grace to them, "Now, let's settle the matter. You are stained red with sin, but I will wash you as clean as snow. Although your stains are deep red, you will be as white as wool" (v. 18). But they are warned that to persist in rebellion will incur judgment (v. 20).
Jerusalem, "once like silver", is now "worthless", once "like good wine", but now "only water" (v. 18). And yet, "because the Lord is righteous, he will save Jerusalem and everyone there who repents" (v. 27). Even in the note of judgment there shines a ray of hope. (Incidentally, we have had a tendency to separate out the wrath and mercy of the Lord - with serious consequences for our understanding of both judgment and grace. See further in Is. 54.8; 60.10; Hab. 3.2.)
"In days to come the mountain where the Temple stands will be the highest one of all, towering above all the hills. Many nations will come streaming to it, and their people will say, 'Let us go up the hill of the Lord, to the Temple of Israel's God. He will teach us what he wants us to do; we will walk in the paths he has chosen. For the Lord's teaching comes from Jerusalem; from Zion he speaks to his people'." (2.2-3)
It is not so much that the Lord will exalt Jerusalem, but that Jerusalem will again exalt the Lord. Of course, when the Lord is exalted, there are good consequences for Jerusalem.
At this point in history, we still await the turning of Israel to acknowledge and welcome Jesus as the Christ. Paul wrestles with this question in Romans 9 to 11. "My brothers and sisters, how I wish with all my heart that my own people might be saved! How I pray to God for them! I can assure you that they are deeply devoted to God; but their devotion is not based on true knowledge. They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, and instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God's way of putting people right. For Christ has brought the Law to an end, so that everyone who believes is put right with God" (Rom. 10.1-4).
Jerusalem is indeed the place where historically God's truth and ways have been revealed - fully, completely in Christ. The final and complete sacrifice for human sin has been made there. The tragedy is that the chosen people managed to get in on the wrong side of the act. Hence Jesus' lament, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets, you stone the messengers God has sent you! How many times have I wanted to put my arms round all your people, just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you would not let me! And so your Temple will be abandoned…" (Lk. 13.34-35a).
From that place we hear the teaching of the Lord, informing our conscience, shaping our manner of life - the Word that came to bring grace and truth (Jn 1.17). We long for time when the nation through whom the Lord was revealing himself will as a whole return to the Lord.
"He will settle disputes among great nations. They will hammer their swords into ploughs and their spears into pruning knives. Nations will never again go to war, never prepare for battle again" (v. 4).
We don't see that fulfilled yet, either. In spite of the end of the Cold War with the fall of much of the communist empire, our expenditure on weapons of destruction and defence is still incredibly high - criminally high when we compare it with our "ploughshares" kind of practical aid to developing countries.
In v. 5 is the prophet is calling on the Jews: "Now, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light which the Lord gives us!" But the word is for us Gentiles too! and especially for those of us who say we believe in the Christ. It is so easy, like the Jews of Isaiah's time, to maintain all the outward forms of the Christian religion - baptism and holy communion, church attendance and private devotions… We desire affirmation, rather than salvation, personal development, not transformation…
Could it be that we do all the right things, but with a heart and life that is removed from a relationship with God? Could it be that we fail to see people streaming to hear the Lord's teaching and love because our lives have failed to exhibit it?
We are all intended to be children of the light. And Jesus came and, in his own body, tore down the barriers separating us from God, the source of light. If we have been born again into God's family, we are truly once again children of the light. Jesus described us as being "like light for the whole world…" and said that "[our] light must shine before people, so that they will see the good things [we] do and praise [our] Father in heaven" (Matt. 5.14,16).
So yes - the call is for us: "Now… let us walk in the light which the Lord gives us!"
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