You know what it feels like…you are waiting for the results of an exam, medical test or job interview. They will arrive in the post today & the postie is late. & the feet of the postie are what you are waiting for above all.
Now the postie is not necessarily wearing those fashionable strappy gladiator sandals on beautiful slender tanned feet which have just had a pedicure. It’s not the feet so much as the sound of the footsteps. You can hear them even though you are at the other end of the house, because you have been listening out for them. Here they come: the scruffy trainers with laces that don’t match, barely visible below overlong, frayed, dirty jeans. How beautiful are the feet! & then you hear the letterbox go, the letter drops on to the mat, you open it &…you have got a distinction, an all-clear, the dream job. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation!
& now imagine that this is news that a whole nation has been waiting for, almost but not quite losing hope, battered by one disaster after another; Isaiah may mention watchmen, but there are no watchtowers: the Babylonians have seen to that. & the last people to come over those mountains were bearing anything but peace & good tidings. The postie, shall we say, had brought tidings of failure, disease & death; but now it is different. The future is no longer unmitigated destruction & oppression; the light at the end of the tunnel really is not, this time, the headlights of an oncoming train.
This is how to read tonight’s passage from Isaiah. People in Isaiah’s day were not different from us. This may be a historical document, but that’s not why we read it. I agree, of course, that we need to know some of the historical & social background of Scripture (I’ve given you some just now!) but there can be a temptation to concentrate too much on it. It is genuinely interesting; but above all, maybe, it is less threatening, less demanding; we can stay comfortably in our heads & discuss whether it was the Babylonians or the Assyrians that Isaiah was talking about &, if the latter, whether their cohorts really were gleaming in purple & gold. & what exactly John the Baptist ate &, if the locusts were insects, whether he cooked them first.
I will quote for the nth time the phrase that Kierkegaard muttered to himself before starting to read any Scripture: “It is of me this is spoken, to me this is said”. We must allow the Scripture to interrogate us, not as to what is in our brain (do we know what a locust tree is & where’s Assyria?) but as to what is in our soul.
I have noticed quite frequently at Bible study groups & even at Lent groups that there is an almost audible sigh of relief when the discussion moves to some piece of historical or social information; when that is not what the whole thing is about at all. We are not talking about academic questions but about human beings; & human beings in their nature as children of God & as subjects of salvation history; we are talking, indeed, about God’s action in his creation. Why do we read Scripture after all? Paul replies quite clearly: to Timothy he says: “All Scripture is…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” & to the Romans he explains that “whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance & the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”. “How beautiful are the feet!”
& there’s that familiar verse from the epistle to the Hebrews “For the word of God is living & active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul & spirit, joints & marrow; it judges the thoughts & attitudes of the heart” . I’m not sure we really hear that verse or we might not quote it so much. It’s not comfortable to have our soul & spirit, joints & marrow, sliced apart without anaesthetic. & even in the context of Bible study or a Lent Group, it can be distinctly uncomfortable to have our thoughts & attitudes judged in public. It takes courage to say, as some evangelicals put it, “This piece of Scripture convicts me”.
Interestingly, Paul applies our passage to preachers; he says, in Romans ch 10: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on one they have not believed in? & how can they believe in one of whom they have not heard? & how can they hear without someone preaching to them? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
So, as always, I am the first person to be convicted by this passage, which speaks to me not only as a child of God, as a Christian, but as a preacher.
My job, the job of all of us who stand up here, is to be the postie I was talking about earlier. To bring from God the message that his people most dearly & deeply want to hear. To bring those who hear the word into the closest possible personal contact with it. Otherwise we might just as well not bother. If you want to know what a locust-tree looks like, look on google images. If you want to know the dates of the Babylonian captivity you can read a history of Israel.
What a preacher should do is what you see Mark do in our second reading: show you how the Scripture speaks not of ancient history but of today. Mark takes the anticipation, the surprise, the disbelieving joy, of Isaiah’s Israelites & plonks it straight down where it belongs in his own era: in the appearance of John the Baptist & Jesus, in the middle of the Roman occupation. Because this is how things are, this is how God is, this is what God does. Mark isn’t talking about five hundred years ago when he quotes Isaiah: he is talking about now. When we read the Scriptures here at Evensong, we are not talking about two thousand, two & a half thousand years ago: we are talking about now.
So read those passages again when you get home. Please, do. & ask yourself what they are saying to you. What does it mean to you that our God reigns, & that Isaiah was exploding with joy when he announced it? or that Mark is calling on you – yes, you – to prepare the way for the Lord?
Because now I’m going to turn the tables on you. I’m down there on the order of service as preacher for Evensong. But Jesus addresses his call to every single one of you when he says “Go into all the world & preach the good news to all creation” & “Therefore go & make disciples of all nations”. & unless the Scriptures, the history of God in this world, speak to your life, you will have nothing to tell them.
& so let us pray: O you who are the fulfilment of the law & the prophets, Christ our God, you have carried out the will of the Father in its entirety. Fill our minds with light & our hearts with love each time we take your holy Scriptures in our hands: for you live & reign with the Father & the Holy Spirit, now & for ever. Amen.
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