For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” declares the Lord.
One of the reasons that we hear so much in church from the later prophecy of Isaiah must be his inspiring optimism, which is close to and precedes the good news of the Gospel. There are passages describing suffering and there are angry rants against idolatry, but overall the mood is of release from suffering and the promise of a new and often magical life. Magical and mysterious it may be but we are not taken entirely beyond the bounds of reality. The promise of free food and drink is fantastic, but within our imagination. Perhaps it is that our imaginations are never entirely free from our experience and so the visionary promise of release, healing and satisfaction must always be expressed in worldly terms- indeed the release is from human and physical suffering and hunger, and while the remedy is promised in exaggerated and mysterious terms, it is essentially earthly; Israel’s triumph is seen in, almost imperialist terms of international reputation and military might, with nations running to pay respect, the fulfilment of the promise made to David.
And yet there is something intangible in the vision; “Why spend money on what is not bread and your labour on what does not satisfy?” the promise is beyond the physical, for something beyond our mundane experience. Is its fulfilment located in some higher level our own being, parallel but deeper than our ordinary life, but somehow more real? Or is it beyond this world in time, and perhaps space, a heavenly kingdom to which we may escape, or return as to a golden age, or an uncorrupted Garden of Eden?
Isaiah’s visions are certainly beautiful, inspiring and hopeful and that must be because we can see some relation between them as our actual experience. It would not be enough for them to be pleasant illusions, moments of fantasy to lighten briefly the pain of existence. Isaiah is of course altogether unworldly, he is aware of that pain; he describes it explicitly elsewhere and in more optimistic passages such as that we heard this evening, he is implicitly aware of hunger, disability and disgrace.
If we are to be truly inspired or comforted by Isaiah’s poetry, then he must offer us some way of realising the vision that he describes. There must be some way of crossing the divide- if indeed it is a divide between our experience and Isaiah’s perfect world; that way might be what we have to do get to heaven, or it might be what we have to do to attain some deeper experience of reality. Christianity has offered and explored both those paths, but I’m not sure they are not what Isaiah intends, nor do I think they are the essence of Jesus’ teaching (and it’s clear that Isaiah was a strong influence on Jesus).
After his initial description of the heavenly world, spoken in God’s voice, Isaiah addresses his audience (vv 6 and 7) –”Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their faults.” There is a connection between, on the one hand, both morality, our relations with our fellow creatures and righteousness, our relation with God, and, on the other hand, the attainment of this apparently otherworldly state. Just how other worldly it is remains ambiguous. God speaks again at verse 8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” This seems to suggest a remote God, and equally a remote and unreachable world; that God and man are “clean different things”. But it need not mean that, the words could also mean not that man can never act like God; but simply that he does not. Godliness is not impossible, and if it can be attained, or to the extent that it can be imitated, the rewards will be great. This is not to deny the transcendence and great power of God, nor his gracious bounty; we cannot be exactly like God, but the more we try to align ourselves with God’s purposes, the more we shall be able to enjoy that Grace.
As I have tried to say, the world Isaiah describes is not entirely other, and the imagery Isaiah uses to express God’s purpose in his world, is telling; one manifestation of God’s grace is rain which like sunlight is vital to the growth and fertility of the earth, vital therefore to our existence and yet completely out of our control. To exploit this bounty, however, requires intervention by man, to which Isaiah alludes in the sower of seed and eater of bread; growing wheat and making bread are complex processes but more or less within human control, although ultimately reliant on resources provided by God. But God is not so remote in his heaven that he does not send rain to earth and man has a role in perfecting God’s creation. This will however only happen if we can forsake wickedness and unrighteousness- if we can understand, respect and fulfil our relationship with God and our fellow creatures and creation. What that means is to try to be Godlike; to try to be instruments of his creative love, whether that is in restoring Eden, establishing his Kingdom on earth or opening our minds to what is really valuable. In a word, it will mean to attempt to make our thoughts God’s thoughts and our ways God’s ways. Amen.