Spoken the the Prophets–9
Isaiah reference / Chapter 26-29
Format / Japanese renga
Go, my people, go
To your private room to pray
Shut the door. Be quiet.
The city is abandoned now.
When boughs go dry, they get burnt.
For they are broken,
not a discerning people.
They can’t hear a thing.
Precepts are turned to nonsense.
Gibberish passes for speech.
Your orders and rules
become fodder for the fools,
certain that they know
But they refused to listen
Their counsel is corrupted
This people only
honors me with lip service.
Hearts are far from me.
People come with words only.
Their reverence is nothing.
Yet eyes of the heart
will witness the truth again
Its beauty will reign
Look to the day that the deaf
will hear the words from the book.
The lowly will find
God’s joy. The poor will delight
in the Holy One.
Erring ones will understand,
and grumblers accept teaching.
Fair judgment will be
the plumbline and the cornerstone,
a firm foundation
Then the children will return
and will hold Yahweh in awe.
Reflections and Connexions
The social vision of faith grows from a belief that all have access to God. But we may think otherwise because we live in a time of cheap discernment. Explanations come at us from bumperstickers, Bible quotes, FB reposts, emails, and podcasts. They also reach us from traditional sources like books and teachers and religion. We may have already encountered the great idea or the answer to our most pressing question. But it’s easy for “orders and rules to become fodder for fools” unless we engage and connect through a source with no name, that is, through the wisdom of paradox and prayer. Not through certainty but through faith will we find a way to love our neighbor truly and walk humbly with our God. Wisdom itself is a gift not what we decide we have.
In Isaiah’s time the sources of wisdom were also available but they became words without engagement and broken connexions. Mere words are not connexion. “This people only / honors me with lip service. / Hearts are far from me. / People come with words only. / Their reverence is nothing.” Yet prayer is possible if it is from the heart. Jesus quotes the first 3 lines of this Isaiah passage in the Sermon on the Mount, encouraging connexion with God through humility and a quiet place. In this sense less is more, less of our egos and selfish selves so there can be more room for God and for others. This is the end of the line for dominance and control; the beginning of wisdom is a sincere turning to God.
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