Just today, I was working on a meditation, as I periodically do for a prayer network. I noticed that the readings for that Sunday included Psalm 133 - which begins with "Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity!," a sentiment which clearly is liturgical rather than based on experience of this at any time or place in history - and Isaiah 56, one reference of which was "temple as a house of prayer for all nations."
I may have mentioned previously that, during the past two years, I devoted quite a bit of study to Isaiah (mostly "Deutero-Isaiah," comprising chapters 40-55, which are most famous for the Servant Songs.) It is a marvellous book, in its entirety, and I found it all the more fascinating because I had to separate myself from two millennia of Christian interpretations and "place myself" in times of post-exilic redaction. It struck me how very confusing the times of captivity must have been on many levels. Surely, there were those Israelites who wondered if perhaps Yahweh just did not have the clout of Ba'al or Marduk. As well, the pining for a glory of the Davidic monarchy (small nation state... but absence does make the heart grow fonder and the victories more vivid), for the destroyed temple and its rites, etc., would have made the thought of returning to Jerusalem a vision of glory. (In the minds of theologians, of course. Your average Israelite undoubtedly was wondering what the fate would be, considering that the elite were transported and those troublesome lower class people had some hold on the land... but I digress.)
It is true in all history, of course, but the power of "Us vs. Them" is always potent. I am sure that those who were pining for the glory of the Lord revealed in His people Israel saw the Babylonians as the ruling power which prevented the free exercise of Israel's vocation. (Persians, Canaanite pagans, Roman empire... everyone queue to the right - one cross each... Forgive me. My affection for Monty Python made that last, admittedly tasteless, part inevitable.) By chapter 56 of Isaiah, when we've moved from Deutero to Trito Isaiah, the Israelites are back in Palestine. Their leaders are a complete bust - everyone is falling into sin (...as if anyone really thinks that has not been the case since Adam was young...) - the temple worship is not what it is meant to be, though the building (nothing to match remembered glory of Solomon) has been reconstructed.
Everything was as it had been and always would be. It must have been quite a problem, not to be able to blame "them" any more. Remember that tired but apt old saying, "We have met the enemies, and they are us"?
"For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples,
Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel..."
By the time of Isaiah, Yahweh was proving to be a most puzzling God. The people of Israel, who had been surrounded by cosmological myths of the Babylonians which stirred an interest in creation, were faced with paradox. Yahweh's transcendence and immanence (with Israel sharing in a glory they could only grasp from afar, though their creation tales show they were called to be its icon) are strong in all of Isaiah.
Yahweh, unlike the other, territorial gods, is lord of all nations and history,
working even through pagans such as Cyrus or Pharaoh. In creation myths of other
cultures, whatever their relationship to Genesis in genre, creation is an accident,
and people here to be the gods' servants. For Israel, the nation makes present, and
this to the edification of other nations, the transcendent God. Israel suffered consequences for her own infidelity, yet, and this being both innovative and
striking in Isaiah, suffering is not a punishment for sin, and indeed may be
vicarious. (The commentators love to debate whether the Suffering Servant was God Himself, Jeremiah, Israel, Deutero-Isaiah himself... but I wish a few Christians would remember that the idea of all pain as punishment died out centuries before Jesus walked the earth.)
Well, by Isaiah 56 the captivity in Babylon and the Persian conquest were in the past, and Israel is centred in Palestine. As the remainder of Isaiah will show, the absence of pagan domination hardly meant that Israel was a shining star! Israel was back in Palestine, and had not found either the splendour of Solomon's day (undoubtedly much improved in legend - though sources would differ on whether the Davidic line were mirrors of virtue or ruthless politicos) or the holiness which collective memory of long-gone days of a holiness which stopped the sun and moon in the sky. "Trito-Isaiah" bemoans the leadership in the temple, and seems to hope that the Gentiles may be a goad for better behaviour on the part of the Hebrews. Indeed, one can picture a sigh as devout Jews read psalm 133, "Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity!" They would have seen this no more than would have Jesus of Nazareth, who the New Testament shows us, 5 centuries later, as reading from Isaiah in the synagogue (even if with some daring in applying prophecies to himself), yet using the very term "house of prayer" to denounces its being still a "den of thieves."
It indeed would strike us, most the very Gentiles who can be stricken with awe that
the divine calling was not exclusive but indeed was extended to all nations (aside - far more are wondering if being in church is a good example for kids or will score them points with potential customers...), that falling short of vocation, having leaders who may be of a degree of virtue somewhat lacking in degree to that of Jesus of Nazareth, and a manner of relation with one another which hardly could be described as living together in unity is all too familiar.
And so it always shall be. God shows a moving and constant tendency to be highly fond of weak, vacillating, sinful people - just as we are.
This is not to say that we should not strive for virtue. Indeed, Israel stressed the
sanctification of all of life. But, in Isaiah strongly as elsewhere, it is plain
that all that binds Israel/The Church to God is freely given, divine love for us.
The call to cosmic redemption, clear in our deification through Christ but long
pre-dating His time on earth, remains to be resolved. As we wait, and though the
perfection on earth will never come, what we have is our response in worship. Let us
see the universe, and every area of our lives, as well as our churches, as the
'house of prayer' in which a God who controls all of creation calls us to praise and
thanksgiving.
And, for the love of God, let's not indulge in the 'us vs. them' business among ourselves, except in pub conversations and with a laugh! The trouble with 'us vs. them' is that 'we' are not only right but highly superior...
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