Isaiah 56:1, 6-8, the First Reading appointed for the 11th Sunday in Pentecost in the Year of Mark, is a text that announces God's radical welcome. "My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples," says Yahweh in this text. This is both bad news and good news for us whose view of grace is infinitely smaller than God's. It will be the preacher's challenge to bring both the Law and Gospel to bear in this sermon.
(The following questions are not meant to be exhaustive; they are meant to be used in conjunction with other fine sets of questions available to exegetes. These questions have been developed to lift up a particular concern: how is the Word functioning in this text? This is a fundamental concern of Law and Gospel preachers. For more on this method and Law and Gospel preaching in general see my brief guide, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)
1. How does the Word function in the text? The first half of verse one is a command, otherwise this entire text is an announcement about what God will do. How does God's announcement sound to us? That is the question. If we are the foreigners, this announcement sounds like Gospel; if we are accustomed to being insiders amongst God's people this might not sound like Gospel at all.
2. How is the Word not functioning in the text? The text itself is not literally a Law text, but it can function as that because of our hard-heartedness. We might hear this announcement and say, "What dya mean, all people? Have we no standards?!"
3. With whom are you identifying in the text? It is important to identify with those to whom the Word is spoken, and this Word is spoken to God's people, announcing to them God's radical welcome. It is important to note that in the last verse of the text God reminds them that the same God who welcomes all, has welcomed the outcasts of Israel.
4. What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text? The clear call to obedience is in the opening line: "Maintain justice and do what is right." This is the command to God's people who have lived under the grace and mercy of God.
5. What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text? We can imagine a number of couplets simply based on the situation presented here: excluded/welcomed; repelled/drawn towards; unacceptable/acceptable; outcasts/favorites.
6. Exegetical work: It is sometimes instructive to note the stem form of a Hebrew verb in a text. In verse 7 there are several times that the causal form is used. We could then literally translate verse 7 as God saying, "These I will cause to come to my holy mountain, and I will cause them to rejoice in my house of prayer." This form of the verb lifts up God's direct agency in the drawing of these people to Zion. Clearly God is the active one in this welcome event. Luther, in his lectures on this text, understood God to be saying, "I will not stop gathering, because they do not stop being scattered. Satan does not stop scattering, and so I will not stop gathering." (LW, vol. 17, p.264) Claus Westermann notes an interesting incentive to this text. He noted that this text is post-exilic and it comes to "a small band of people living in a time of disillusionment after the end of the exile and the return." He surmises that this struggling remnant now realized that their survival meant welcoming those whom previously had been unwelcome. "[There is] a radical change in the idea of the chosen people. Membership ceases to be based on birth and now depends on resolution, the resolve to take one's god the God of Israel." He even suggests that this change actually produced a change in identity: "The acceptance of foreigners' sacrifice means that, properly speaking, they cease to be foreigners." (The OT Library series, Isaiah 40-66, p. 305-315).
7. Consider the insights of the pioneers of the New Homiletic? Charles Rice considered the primary task of the preacher to help listeners recognize their shared story in a text. Tapping into experiences of being excluded and then included could be a great strategy for preaching here.
Blessings on your proclamation!
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