Needing Change - Isaiah 1:10-20

Jerusalem, your rulers and your people are like Sodom and Gomorrah. So reads Isaiah 1, verse 10. I can’t imagine you being too impressed or enthused if I were to begin this post in a similar vein – Readers, your rulers and your people are like Sodom and Gomorrah.

The problem, of course, is in what Sodom and Gomorrah stand for. To use the Biblical word, they stand for sin – for wrong, for bad, for evil. It is certainly an attention-grabbing headline. And I think that is why the prophet uses it. Of course, there are things wrong in what the people do, how they behave. That is true for all of us. But, of course, it is not the whole of the story that the prophet tells. He grabs the people’s attention in this way. But he then goes on to challenge them about how they are living. And, yes, he does say some more about what they are doing that they shouldn’t. But he also offers them some very positive encouragement.

Indeed, he immediately goes on to say: Listen to what the Lord is saying to you. Pay attention to what our God is teaching you. And whether we need the blunt challenge of the initial words of this passage or not, we certainly need the encouraging challenge that comes here. I fear that too often we are too noisy and too busy to hear what God is saying to us. And yet that we should listen to God is a recurrent Biblical theme.

The Bible is packed with stories of how people needed to listen to God and what happened when they did. If we just restrict ourselves to mentioning some of those where this is most explicitly stated, we might mention, for example, the story of Samuel’s call. Samuel, asleep at night, keeps hearing this voice and running off to the old priest, Eli, thinking he is the one who is calling him – until, eventually, Eli realises what is going on and tells Samuel that, if it happens again, he should answer: Speak, Lord, your servant is lisrening. Take another example. What is it that Jesus says at the end of the parable of the sower? Listen, then, if you have ears! And one more example. When John records the messages to the seven churches of the province of Asia in chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, at the end of each of these individual messages comes the exhortation: If you have ears, then, listen to what the Spirit says to the churches!

Listening isn’t always easy. But how important it is that we listen for what God is saying to us. We need also to listen to each other, and we don’t always do that, but we certainly need to listen to God.

But let me link this in to our passage from Isaiah. We have considered how the passage exhorts us to listen for what God is saying. It goes on, in verses 11 to 15, to condemn what might be described as the sham worship of the people. This is very similar to some comments that Amos makes in a passage that, I think, is much better known. Amos 5, verses 21 to 23 – The Lord says, “I hate your religious festivals; I cannot stand them! When you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; I will not accept the animals you have fattened to bring me as offerings. Stop your noisy songs; I do not want to listen to your harps.

Now, at first sight, whether we take the Amos version or the Isaiah version, this all seems rather strange. Why is God offering this response? Surely God should love our religious festivals, not hate them. And, of course, God does – providing they are not hiding stuff. The problem that both these prophets were facing is that the people were coming along and, on the face of it, doing the right thing in church, or the temple, as it was in their case. But their worship was not reflective of the rest of their lives. As Isaisah puts it, in verse 15, God won’t listen to their prayers because their hands are covered with blood. That’s why he addresses them as Sodom and Gomorrah to begin with. It’s a strong condemnation. “It is difficult to imagine a more massive rejection of God’s people on God’s part than this.”[1] The prophet asserts that God is finished with the people and their activities in the temple.

Only that’s not the end of the story. And this is where Gospel comes in, and we are back to talking about something that is a recurrent theme in the Bible. There is always hope. God is God of hope. Noah faced utter devastation, but there was a way through. The accusers of the woman caught in adultery all gradually realised that they couldn’t be the ones to condemn – and Jesus didn’t condemn her either..

The possibility of transformation and how it might happen is outlined in verse 17 – Learn to do right. See that justice is done – help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights and defend widows. Amos declares the same transforming possibility – Instead, let justice flow like a stream, and righteousness like a river that never goes dry. A restored relationship with God requires a change of action, but it is all very possible.

Isaiah uses a powerful colour contrast to emphasise this possibility – The Lord says, “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. In a sense, this is the summary. What is going to happen? Change is needed. Change is possible. But it doesn’t happen without some commitment and some effort. God has taken the initiative. We can’t work the transformation. We need God for thar. But it’s there for the taking. God invites us, as he has always invited his people, to receive the blessings of that new thing which the needed change will bring. But it’s not dumped on us. We need to be ready and willing to receive it.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1 - 39, Westminster John Knox Press, 1998, p. 18.