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God Is Subversive

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Contents

Preface.................................................ix1. Bathing with Isaiah..................................12. Radio Questions......................................193. Old (Anti)War Stories................................334. Peacemaking and Prison Abolition.....................475. Against Patriotism...................................776. In Praise of Inutility...............................997. Arguing with God.....................................123Index of Authors........................................153Index of Names and Subjects.............................157Index of Scripture References...........................163

Chapter One

Grace and peace to all of you. Thank you for inviting me to join you this morning for worship of God and reflection on the word.

It has been over three decades since the last time I was inside this meetinghouse. I am sure some of the saints have gone on since then, but many of you are still here who will remember those days. I was a student across the street at the college, and it seemed like everybody was marching in front of the Elizabethtown Church of the Brethren. When you hosted a visit by a Russian Orthodox patriarch, an angry group of brothers and sisters led by the Reverend Carl MacIntyre gathered in front of your meetinghouse to warn the public that you were basically a bunch of communists. Although you were pleasant communists, MacIntyre said, that should not be allowed to obscure the fact that you were red to the core. Sitting across the street in my dormitory room, I was thinking, "Hmm, maybe that congregation is more interesting than I thought." In Acts 4, there is an admonition for the community of believers to hold all things in common — goods, resources, talents, burdens, joys, sorrows, hopes. It is what sociologists call "primitive Christian communism." Over the decades, I have visited dozens of worshipping communities with affiliations ranging from the Quakers to the Roman Catholics, and I must say, I have yet to encounter a congregation that would not benefit from a stronger dose of that primitive Christian communism.

And then there were other folks marching out front, too. Your meetinghouse served as the college chapel at the time, and there were students out front protesting compulsory chapel. They were saying that faith should not be a matter of compulsion, which is actually a good Anabaptist idea. So, members of your community would go out and join the protest.

And then there was the protest of the war in Vietnam. Gene Clemens would load us into his van and we would go protesting in Washington, D.C., and protesting in Harrisburg, and protesting downtown and on campus, and members of your community would be there. If I have visited dozens of congregations over the decades, I have been to hundreds of antiwar gatherings, and that is not a pretty feather in my cap, but rather it is an ugly stain on the soul of our nation to realize that, in our lifetimes, there has never been a day without war or preparation for war. There has never been a day of genuine peace. It ought to be dawning on the people of this nation that fighting for peace and freedom has not been working; today, we have less of both.

So, I hope that you are still protesting, and I hope that people are still getting mad at you. It can be a sign that you are doing something right.

Of course, there's anger and then there's anger. In today's text from Isaiah 1:10-18, the prophet is communicating the word of an angry God. And who is the recipient of God's wrath? Who else? The chosen people. By the time of Isaiah in the eighth century before the common era, it was already abundantly clear that being chosen by God was not an unmixed blessing. Isaiah confronts the people of Judah and Jerusalem with the reality that being the chosen people was not an honor bestowed but a commitment undertaken.

We know that God is angry because this text begins with a harsh rebuke as the prophet addresses the leaders and the people of Judah and Jerusalem: "... you rulers of Sodom! ... you people of Gomorrah!" (1:10) That is harsh, no doubt, but there needs to be a note of caution about the content of that rebuke. It is because of our post-biblical obsessions that, whenever we hear the word "Sodom," we think of gay people, but that is not the biblical focus. Depending on who is doing the counting, there are between seven and ten texts in the whole Bible that make explicit or implicit reference to sexual contact between people of the same gender. In contrast, there are literally hundreds of biblical texts casting aspersions on wealth and the wealthy, but rich folks are not rejected by the church; they're asked to build new Sunday school wings. In the Bible, the references to Sodomare clear, and they have nothing to do with sexual orientation. Among the many references that could be cited, in Deuteronomy 29, in Ezekiel 16, in Amos 4, and here in Isaiah 1, it is clear that "you rulers of Sodom, you people of Gomorrah" means "you kings of the slaughterhouse, you brokers of injustice."

If you are looking for a lower volume, if you are looking for moderation, do not look to the biblical prophets. Abraham Heschel wrote that the prophets are wild and maladjusted. They are maladjusted to the routine suffering that society takes for granted. They are maladjusted to indifference and to the little acts of bloodshed that others regard as regrettable but necessary. The prophets are unreasonable fanatics who pronounce doom on an entire nation because a few widows have been driven from their homes. And then they turn cosmic with their pronouncements of doom. Why do the mountains quake? Why do the fields lie barren? Because of bloodshed. It is the covenanted people, the chosen people, the beloved people who bear the brunt of prophetic wrath, but the prophets are not oblivious to the bloody ways of other nations. When Assyria is at the very height of its political and military power, Isaiah already sees the empire trampled underfoot (14:25). In the wild and unreasonable calculus of the prophet, the acquisition of power is a certain guarantee of ruin. Et tu, America.

Now, if we wanted to, we could probably write a treatise that would make the prophets sound quite reasonable. Of course, we would first have to discard some of their more outlandish theological claims, and we would have to tweak the shrillness out of their discourse, but once we have accomplished that, we might be able to dress the mup as responsible citizens with progressive leanings. After all, who can doubt that militarism and all of the wars for oil are contributing to global warming, quaking mountains, and barren fields? But the prophets are not interested in being reasonable or in offering power point presentations. They want to be unreasonable and maladjusted in Gomorrah. The adage that "all we have to fear is fear itself" is wrong. In Gomorrah, what we have to fear is contentment. Do not fear becoming a malcontent. Fear becoming complacent.

In Isaiah, complacency is assailed by the anger of God. Of all people, the chosen people should know that this is a God of justice (in Hebrew, mishpat, Isaiah 1:17), but the people are not just. This is a God of righteousness (tsedeq, 1:21), but the people are not righteous. This is a God of mercy,...