Richard Davenport

October 15, 2023 – Proper 23

Isaiah 25:6-9 (service 1, this is the feast)

            The Old Testament passage for today comes in the midst of a lot of talk of warfare and destruction.  The beginning of chapter 24 has God declaring he will empty the whole earth of people.  All civilization wiped clean.  No one will be saved by their profession or social status.  God will treat them all equally and sweep them all away.  The first portion of Isaiah contains a lot of these kinds of prophecies of coming destruction and judgment, but this one seems especially harsh.  The days of Noah returning.  

            There’s an old bit of wisdom for those that have worked with computers.  Sometimes when you can’t get something to work right and you’ve tried everything you can think of to get it fixed, the best answer is to turn the whole thing off and on again.  Give it a fresh start.  You reboot and you come back up with no problems and can try again without anything else getting in the way.  That seems to be what God is going to do here.  You might ask how God can do that when he promised not to do it after the flood. But, the promise God made to Noah is that he wouldn’t destroy the world in a flood ever again.  He made no explicit promise for anything else.

            The passage for today talks about a mountaintop. Mountains and any other kind of high ground have always been prominent features in warfare.  It takes more work for someone to get you when you’re on the high ground and you can see them coming a lot easier.  There are few places to hide when you’re charging up the mountainside to attack an opposing army.  But holding the high ground doesn’t always guarantee you success.

            I’m a big fan of ancient Chinese and Japanese history. There’s a story from back about 200AD in China where two kings had been warring for many years trying to be the ones to unify the nation.  One king realized the enemy would send an army to attack him and it would have to come along a certain route.  There was a large hill on the side of the route and if he sent his own army there to occupy the hill, the enemy would have to deal with it and they’d be at a disadvantage.  The king had a grand strategist whose skill would scare armies away at just the rumor he was around, but he was off fighting another battle.  The king was confident his plan was a sound one.  He could have waited for the strategist to return but he was confident his plan would work and that he could organize it just fine on his own.  He was also getting impatient as the war continued to drag on, so he sent his army off. 

            Everything was going well.  The king sent his army and they headed to the top of the hill and built up some defenses and waited for the enemy to come by.  When the strategist did return, the king showed him the plan, but at that point it was too late.  The strategist took one look at the map and knew immediately that the army was lost.  It’s true they held the high ground and would be difficult to root out.  It’s true the enemy wouldn’t be able pass them by without taking care of them, but the enemy would be able to defeat them without any bloodshed at all.  By taking the high ground the army had also cut itself off from any supply of water. All the enemy had to do was sit around the base and wait.

            The moral of this particular story is that even if you are out doing what looks good, that doesn’t mean it is good.  In this case you might think it was an honest mistake. A costly mistake perhaps, but just a mistake.  But no, the problem was the king being impatient and making a rash decision. His pride led him to think he was more capable than he was and it ended up getting a lot of people killed. 

            Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons was a hallmark of Pharisee life.  The prayers, donations, and righteous living they prided themselves on didn’t impress God in the least.  They were living out what they saw as the highest level of righteousness and could look down on everyone else who was beneath them.  No one else would be able to come close to what they had achieved. Their pride assured them they would be blessed richly by God, that he would pour out every conceivable wonder on them as an acknowledgment of their righteousness.  But doing the right thing for the wrong reasons often doesn’t succeed in warfare and never succeeds with God.  By perching atop their pride they had cut themselves off from what they needed most, God’s grace and forgiveness.

            It’s one thing to doing something good even though you don’t want to.  You grudgingly help your neighbor carry in her groceries, you don’t really want to be bothered when she’ll probably manage on her own.  You balk a little at putting the money in the offering plate, because there’s that new recliner you’ve really been wanting and it would be nice to have a little extra in the checking account this month so you could get it. You grumble at doing chores around the house when you’d really rather go to see a movie.  Doing good things even when we don’t want to is part of living in a sinful world and helps us learn good habits so eventually we do what we’re supposed to because we want to.

            When you do good things with another motive in mind, that’s when you start looking like the Pharisees.  Putting money in the plate because you want everyone else to see your generosity and think highly of you.  Helping your neighbor with the intention that she’ll give you some sort of reward, however small.  Doing your chores thinking it will mean you can do whatever you want later on.  All of these examples are not doing good works for their own sake, but for the payout we’d rather have.  None earns any merit with God. 

            There’s also another famous mountaintop battle, one that you’re probably a little more familiar with.  In the 6th century BC, King Nebuchadnezzar was conquering the Middle East and no country or empire could withstand his onslaught. No one could hold out against him for long and everyone eventually fell before the might of his armies.  He started in Babylon, far to the east of Israel, and pushed his way north, south, and west.  Finally he made it to the coast of the Mediterranean and to the capital of Judah.  Jerusalem, a mighty fortress built on the top of Mt. Zion, was a daunting foe. Jerusalem had high walls and towers, and the soldiers could see enemy armies from a long way off.  They even had a source of water, built by King Hezekiah many years before.  But Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the city anyway.  He set up camp all around the city so no one could go in or out. 

            The only ally the Israelites had nearby was Egypt. But the Egyptians only made a feeble attempt at rescue.  The Israelites also thought God would produce some mighty wonder that would drive the Babylonians away, after all, they were God’s chosen people.  God would never allow a foreign nation to destroy his people. And yet, day after day went by with no relief in sight.  Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months.  Though they had water, they didn’t have a source of food.  Everything edible was long since gone and the people finally turned to the only thing they could think of:  cannibalism. 

            God had indeed chosen them, but they had chosen other gods instead.  In the end, their mountaintop fortress did not keep them safe.  Their status as the chosen people did not keep them safe. They certainly were not blessed for who they were or what they were doing.  God swept them away, just like he said he would.  Their pride and idolatry doomed them.  They were hidden behind the walls of their fortress, but because God was not defending them they were not safe at all. 

            The mountaintop in the Old Testament reading is one where God’s blessings are found.  It is a place we want to be.  A place where we are safe.  God declares he is wiping everything out, but then he says there is a mountaintop where a rich feast is presented.  So what makes this mountain any different?  Why should this place be any better?  If there’s no guarantee of finding safety on a mountain, why listen to what God says here? Most of us aren’t soldiers, at least not anymore. We certainly don’t have armies at our command.  This isn’t the kind of thing you can afford to make a mistake on.

            God declares he will wipe everyone out and he means it.  He also declares he is giving a feast and he means it too.  The two go together.  There is one safe place from the destruction God is bringing.  You can’t find this mountain by doing the right thing when there’s no humility and trust behind it.  You can’t find this mountain by trusting that God will bless you no matter what you do just because of who you are.  You can only go where God calls you.  God creates a safe place where his destructive judgment will pass by.  God judges the world and its sins.  Everyone who is driven by their pride, everyone who wanders into idolatry, everyone who is only interested in what they’ll get for their efforts and can’t bear to part with their possessions, all will find death washing over them like the flood waters in Noah’s day.

            You don’t find safety by planting yourself on your own mountain.  You only find safety by coming up to God’s mountain.  As sinners, we want security.  We want all of the good things the world will give us.  We want to collect them all for ourselves and show them off in front of everyone.  But all of the pride we have in thinking we can build our own security in this world, all of the greed we have in trying to turn everything to our advantage only leads to destruction, getting caught up in God’s judgment against the world.

            God’s mountain is where security is found. God’s mountain is where he has his celebration.  God’s mountain is where death is a distant memory.  God’s mountain is here, right here and right now.  Here is where God brings a feast and where death fades away. We stand on the mountaintop and look out over the world that is still shrouded in darkness, but God and his light are here with us above it all.

            This prophecy given through Isaiah looks forward to God’s work in bringing an end to death and celebrating its defeat.  The Commander of the Lord’s Armies comes to earth in judgment and in mercy.  He establishes a place of safety for those who want to leave their sinful lives behind and he decrees judgment on all of those outside.  He establishes his fortress here and invites everyone to it, refugees from a fallen and sinful world.  Here pride is left behind.  Here selfishness is replaced with service.  Here we ask for forgiveness for bringing more strife and anger into the world and he invites us in and our sin is left outside. 

            Here in his sanctuary he sets a feast for us, a feast of celebration, a feast of victory, a feast for those whose sins are forgiven and for whom death is no longer a threat.  Those in the Old Testament looked forward, waiting for salvation, for Christ the Commander to come into the world and defeat death and establish this place for them.  Now the enemy assaults the sanctuary he has created.  He attacks the church, but cannot topple it from the mountain.  Christ has given us everything we need here.  He feeds us and cares for us, protecting us from all harm.  We look now to his return, to when he returns to judge the world and all sin.  We wait for him to wipe away all evil from the earth and make the whole world safe again.  We call from the mountaintop.  We call to others lost in the darkness of the world to warn them of what is coming.  We call to invite them here where God’s judgment will pass them by.  We call to invite them to the feast of victory, to celebrate his triumph over death. We call to invite them to where they will finally be free from their sins and rejoice in God’s graciousness forever.