Starting Over: Restoring, Renewing, Regenerating

            I will contend that, in the United States of America, it is only the people of New Orleans who might begin to understand the hearts and souls of the children of Israel who returned from exile to the city of Jerusalem in Isaiah’s day many centuries ago.  It is only the ones who came back to a city that was no longer a city… to a home they could not live in again… the people who stood on the street corners and wondered where their neighbors were… whether they would ever see them again… who looked for the landmarks they had once used as reference points each day… landmarks that had been destroyed and wondered whether they would ever be restored… these are the only ones who might understand the thoughts and feelings of the exiles who returned… the exiles to whom Isaiah was preaching.

Jerusalem had been a great city… the crossroads of major trade routes that had brought people from every country in the known world to its doorstep.  Every known language could be heard in the marketplace.  Immeasurable wealth flowed through its streets.  Each day brought a new discovery and each night a new celebration.  It was the center of commerce… of power… of opportunity… and of faith.  But now, the great Temple was gone… destroyed by conquering armies.  There was no marketplace… no recognizable landmarks at all.  Those who lived there had come from neighboring countries after the war ended to scavenge for whatever treasure remained.  The Israelites who survived the final battle had been scooped up like sand in a shovel to be carried to another place… and those who had come in behind them poured into the city like grains of sand pour in to fill an empty hole.  Whatever they found, they carried off to their own homes until nothing remained.  Everything of any value had been stripped off and much of the city’s infrastructure had been decimated and sold for scrap.   There was nothing left… nothing but dust and debris… and broken dreams.   The exiles would have to start all over again.

            But, an entire generation… almost two… had died… and the children and grandchildren of those who had gone into exile were the ones who returned.  They looked… but they could not find the places their grandparents spoke of so fondly… the magnificent buildings that towered over the city… the wide streets that bustled with people… the marketplace filled with every delicacy imaginable… the cozy homes and families that featured so prominently in the stories they had heard told and retold.  They could not even begin to imagine the city their grandparents once knew.  They saw nothing, but devastation… the scattered remains of a broken skeleton lying in the dust… lifeless… penniless… hopeless.   Why had they returned?   And what could Isaiah say that would give them hope?

            Well, he couldn’t say, “It’s not so bad.”  Holy Cow, they could see how bad it was!    That line might have worked when they were all back in Babylon… before they set out on the journey that would take them home.  But to fully understand the people Isaiah was preaching to in those days, we need to understand the practices of war in those days.  When a nation was conquered, it was the wealthy and the educated elite who were carried back to the victor’s cities.  The idea was to take the money and the intelligence out of the conquered country so that it could never rebuild itself.  The people who were carried into exile were not military men, but those who were exempt from military service either because they were wealthy enough to pay for such an exemption… or because their intellect was needed to operate the economy that supported the war.  And the exiles who were transported to Babylon were actually treated rather well.  While they were initially slaves, they were allowed to earn their freedom, to own their own property and to worship in whatever way they chose.  Many of those who went into exile prospered in the new land.  Their children were assimilated into Babylonian society and adopted the culture of their new homeland.  They married Babylonian women and had children whose homes… and lives… were well-established in that land.   After a generation or two, why would they leave their homes to return to Jerusalem?   The simple answer is that most of them wouldn’t.

            So, who did return to Jerusalem when the Persian Emperor told them that they could go?   Obviously, it was those who had never adapted to their new home… those who had tried and failed to succeed in their new environment… or those whose religious beliefs or family stories had been nurtured by their parents or the priests in such a way that they always dreamed of returning to their homeland.  So, they returned… carrying in their heads the dreams of their parents and grandparents… and fortified by the belief that they were doing the right thing… only to discover once they arrived that the picture in their heads did not match the reality of life in that place.    I can still remember the eagerness of the Katrina victims to return to their homes.  I can only imagine how devastated they must have been when they arrived there and realized that they no longer had a home… that whatever structure remained would never be home to them agian.  They could rebuild the house, of course, but the home they had known was gone forever.   It was that realization that robbed the mother of my friend, Judye, of hope when she returned to Texas City after Hurricane Ike. 

What can you say at a time like that that will bring a word of comfort to someone whose life has changed forever?    What could Isaiah say to the Israelites?  What can we say to the victims of Hurricane Katrina? … to the refugees in the Sudan… to the survivors of September 11th?   What do I say to Lelia Surber when I visit her?  That everything will be OK?  That, in time, things will be the way that they were?    I can’t say that…and neither could Isaiah.  But he could give them hope… and he did.  “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light,” he said.  “God shall break their bonds asunder.” “God will wipe every tear from their eyes,” he said.  “The desert will bloom, he said. “And the eyes of the blind will be opened.” “Behold, says the Lord, I am doing a new thing.  Do you not see it?” he said.  And, in our passage from scripture today:  “The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed… to bind up the brokenhearted… to proclaim liberty to the captives… and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  “For I, the Lord, love justice. I will give them their recompense.” 

            There are four things that you can hear in these words of Isaiah… four things that are repeated throughout the entire book of Isaiah.  The first is that God is in charge and that God is still present… even in the midst of disaster.  The second is that God will provide the strength and the courage for whatever challenges his people might face in the days to come.  The third is that God will provide good things… things that will allow his people to rebuild their lives and restore their fortunes.  And the fourth is that whatever God does will be new and different from what has been in the past.   The word “recompense” is used quite often in Isaiah.  John Darby used it last week when he read from Isaiah.  We use it again this week in our text.  But recompense is not a word that most of us know.  “Recompense” means something that is given in compensation… payment for what has been done… something equivalent that is given to atone for what has been lost.   God promises his people recompense… that God will give them something in return for what has happened to them… but whatever God gives them will be different from what they had previously.   But it is that vision of hope that gives the children of Israel the courage to rebuild their city.  It is that vision of hope that gives each of us courage to face a new day.

            Walt Whitman, in a poem called “Whispers of Heavenly Death”, compares the effort of a spider weaving its web to the work of the soul in the darkness that follows loss.  Listen to the way he described it:

A noiseless, patient spider

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my soul, where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

            There is hope in the darkness… an anchor in the night… for we have God who loves us and will never leave us.  We have a God who promises to make everything right… to provide recompense for all that has happened to us… to give us something to repay us for what we have lost.  But note again that that which God gives will not be the same as what has been before.  The Israelites would never have King David again… but the One who did come was greater than he… different, but much better.  For the Lord is doing a new thing.  It will be a change from what we have known… and oh, how we hate change.  But our God will never leave us.  Our God will be with us through that change… to give us hope for the future… a future we do not know and cannot predict.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”  What can compare to a love like that?   Have we ever known a love like that?  It is a love that surrounds us… restores us… renews us… regenerates us… a love that sustains us each time we start over. And our text says: “All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.”  Indeed, we have been blessed.  Amen. 

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11