Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Our Office Reading from Isaiah this morning contains some oracles that continue a movement begun in our lectionary exactly a week ago that’s directly concerned with the Syro-Ephraimite War. This war saw the Northern Kingdom of Israel (sometimes referred to as Ephraim, the dominant tribe in the Northern Kingdom) ally itself with Syria (called Aram) to wage war on the Southern Kingdom of Judah in order to effect a regime change that would see Judah join them in a campaign against the Assyrian Empire. It was a doomed enterprise. Judah eventually appealed to the Assyrians to deal with Israel and Syria—and they did in the brutal fashion for which the Assyrian Empire was well-known: they obliterated Aram and Israel and made Judah a client state. And part of the result of becoming a client state of Assyria was the promotion of the worship of the Assyrian gods throughout Judah, the ascription of the power of deliverance and salvation to the Empire and its idols.

Last week, our passage from Isaiah saw the prophet beginning his attempt to convince the king of Judah, Ahaz, not to give in to fear and desperation, to keep faith, to keep covenant loyalty with God and not do anything particularly rash…like appealing to the violence of the Assyrian Empire to save. “If you do not stand firm in faith,” the prophet said, “you shall not stand at all.” Ahaz will not listen, however. He chooses violence, and eventually Isaiah will deliver a prophecy that this decision will existentially imperil Judah…and lead to devastation. That devastation is not the end of Judah’s story, though: God will restore the throne of David.

In our Office Reading today, Isaiah announced oracles against the Northern Kingdom: the result of Israel’s desertion of God has been that the people devour each other and oppress each other—indeed the final years of Israel were marked by regicide after regicide, political and social turmoil; the needy receive no justice; the least, the lost, the lonely are tyrannized, preyed upon; all is consumed by a lightless dark fire of wickedness, an all-consuming passion for wickedness; and that fire, the kingdom’s violence, will be consummated in the kingdom's awful and fiery destruction at the hands of the Assyrians…who also will fall. They have all sown the wind, they will all reap the whirlwind.

And throughout all of this, Isaiah’s words from last week seem to echo more and more and more forcefully: “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all.”

I had a professor in undergrad who would often remind us that, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” I thought at the time that perhaps you could stand for any old something and be okay. But thinking of Isaiah’s words to Ahaz, “If you don’t stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all,” it’s clear that any old something just won’t do. Whatever the something we stand for, it has to actually be something—which is to say, something good, something true, something that won’t vanish away like smoke or lies or deception, something stronger than death…something like Love.

That can be hard to do when there are so many “somethings” (so many idols and imperfect shadows of the real good for which we truly yearn) that we’re invited to stand up for! And it can be confusing when, thinking of Isaiah’s words, we imagine that “standing firm in faith” means an intellectual adherence to a series of truth claims rather than the conversion of life that sees the truth of those claims rooted, alive, flourishing, and blossoming in a human soul and in a community; the sort of life characterized by a reliance on- and a real relationship with the God of Love.

Beloved, in this Advent season, even now the Light is dawning, the gloom of sin and death is being dispersed! …and yet so often this old world seems just as lost in the darkness as ever. Dear, dear Friend! Don’t lose faith! Fear and despair are no place to stand! Rather, keep standing on the sure foundation of God’s love, God’s own faithfulness! Indeed: God loves you so much, dear Friend! And the faith in which we stand is less a thing of our doing and devising, and much more the faithfulness of Jesus Christ alive and at work in us by grace. Stand in this faithfulness, Beloved. And you may discover that you are a horizon from which the streaming of the Light’s dawning is visible, that you are becoming a living reflection of the Sun of Righteousness, that the fire of God’s Love is alive in you, that your own life is a tender ray of Love in a world sorely in need of it!

If in Love and by Love and through Love we sow Love…why, then, Beloved Friend…, we will reap a new world, a kingdom bright shining and glistering with the light of Love!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+