God Swallows Up Death
Scripture: Isaiah 25: 6-8
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
—
God sets the table and She goes all out, like Martha Stewart and Julia Child multiplied by 100! The wine is of such quality that even if you left it out it probably would never turn to vinegar. The vintage is so good that it is named twice and the food is rich, fatty, and succulent, filled with the ancient Mediterranean superfood, marrow. God sets the feast, everyone is welcome at the mountain top table.
We can imagine them sitting down, oppressor and oppressed, insider and outsider, all together delighting in the abundance, licking their fingers, running the bread through the rich drippings on the plate. God doesn’t swallow up the feast; God swallowed up death. God swallows the shroud, the last mystery that we all share, death.
Death comes for all of us, no matter our status or economics, we all face the mystery of death. This poetry where God swallows up our greatest fear and grief, and then wipes every tear looms large in our faith journey. Paul reminds the people of Corinth about God swallowing up death and John of Patmos in The Book of Revelation does the same. So it makes sense that on this day when we name our grief for ones we love and name our own struggles with mortality out loud, that we would lean into this ancient poetry about God swallowing up death. The gift of this day is that in a culture where we are zealously individual, you do not have to carry your grief alone. We can name that we wish for more time with people we love, even as we name the strengths and gifts they have given us. We can name together how we long for life, how imagining the loss of a partner and friend is almost unbearable; and we don’t have to do that alone. We lean into this poetry of God drying tears so we might be able to live life as abundantly as this table is set in our scripture. That is perhaps one of the most strange and profound aspects of this text for our modern times, it is deeply communal. God sets the table for everyone, invites everyone.
This text where God sets a big table is part of the “Mini Apocalypse of Isaiah” and I don’t know how you feel but I don’t usually use the word mini alongside anything talking about the end times. Isaiah might better be understood as the Isaiah(s) it has three distinct periods, all of which are times of struggle for Israel. The apocalyptic literature emerges from a struggle so deep, the only way to find justice, peace, and comfort is for God to wipe everything clean. Sometimes in our Bible this comes in the form of a final conflict, and sometimes if comes in the form or a great big table. God’s table in Isaiah is on the mountain, the place where God makes covenants and welcomes everyone. Banquets were tools of the empire, ways of making trade deals, way of establishing loyalty and relationships between nations; but here in this space God sets the table and everyone is invited, all the nations are included.
The language of God swallowing up death resonates with Isaiah’s audience, They know the story in Canaanite theology where Baal brings calm out of chaos until he is swallowed up by the God of the underworld/ death and chaos return. Our own tradition names the power of a greater being swallowing up death, death dealing forces and even chaos. Most powerfully, we can look to Exodus when the Pharaoh’s army, in pursuit of the Hebrew people, is swallowed up by the earth. That which would bring death and stop the people’s liberation is swallowed up. The sweeping change of swallowing up death is a part of this literature that people in extreme poverty and despair lean into. You see this “Mini Apocalypse” that culminates in a beautiful, abundant, table feast is written to people who don’t have much food on their own tables. The chapter before the feast rings with the desperation of the Isaiah’s first listeners, I suspect it must name the painful reality to be authentic or the promise of God’s feast will ring empty.
Isaiah 24
The earth dries up and withers,
the world languishes and withers;
the heavens languish together with the earth.
The earth lies polluted
under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed laws,
violated the statutes,
broken the everlasting covenant.
…The wine dries up,
the vine languishes,
all the merry-hearted sigh.
The mirth of the timbrels is stilled,
the noise of the jubilant has ceased,
the mirth of the lyre is stilled.
(Life is so hard there is no more music.)
No longer do they drink wine with singing;
strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.
(The wine they miss for feasting and merriment has changed, strong drink is bitter, medicating pain, people intoxicated in the streets…perhaps.)
The city of chaos is broken down,
every house is shut up so that no one can enter.
There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;
all joy has reached its eventide;
the gladness of the earth is banished.
Desolation is left in the city,
the gates are battered into ruins.
For thus it shall be on the earth
and among the nations,
as when an olive tree is beaten,
as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is ended.
(All the nations are in struggle and the earth itself stumbles like a drunkard.)
The earth is utterly broken,
the earth is torn asunder,
the earth is violently shaken.
The earth staggers like a drunkard,
it sways like a hut;
its transgression lies heavy upon it,
and it falls, and will not rise again.
On that day the Lord will punish
the host of heaven in heaven,
and on earth the kings of the earth.
They will be gathered together
like prisoners in a pit;
they will be shut up in a prison,
and after many days they will be punished.
Then the moon will be abashed,
and the sun ashamed;
There is no wine and there are no feast days when an empire makes the schedule. This piece of Isaiah is written to people who look at desolation, who look at the earth and see it staggering, polluted and failing. People who have experienced such pain and injustice that even the sun and moon should be ashamed. People who long for the kings and cosmic beings to be held accountable for their sins. Just before the feast, the prophetic poetry celebrates a God who cares for the poor - people who know the harsh sun and the bitter cold rains. This is 100 percent different from any kind of end time narrative I heard in the stories told by “Left Behind.” Stories where preppy young adults worried about personal salvation and painted the picture of nice cars driving unmanned. The end times I was taught about - and even the salvation I learned about - in these groups was deeply personal and individual. It was my relationship with God or Jesus, it was how could I help others have a personal salvation to save them from a violent end time or eternal damnation. Perhaps we do this because the individual seems more easy to manage and because we love certainty, almost to the deficit of deeply exploring the mystery of faith. Or perhaps it is the mirror of our culture that likes rugged individualism and picking yourself up by your bootstraps. Or maybe it is just to hard for most of us to really read these prophets and realize that we do not fit. It’s not for us. We resemble Babylon or Rome or Egypt much more than we resemble God’s chosen but despairing people.
So I invite you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. To imagine this scripture from the vantage point of a parent, walking miles in the sun’s heat and the cold rains to bring your three year old daughter to a safe place to dwell. This week I saw beautiful and heartbreaking photos of children on what has been labeled the ‘caravan’ and when I hear this scripture through them it sounds different. Listen to Isaiah 25 just before the feast is set and imagine yourself reading from the caravan.
For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens (the outside forces of destruction) is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.
For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.
A few weeks ago I was listening to the Detroit’s Public Health Director, watching his images of the city, and witnessing how he mapped public health concerns against the most blighted zip codes. Listen to the scripture from the street of boarded up homes.
The city of chaos is broken down,
every house is shut up so that no one can enter.
There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine;
all joy has reached its eventide;
the gladness of the earth is banished.
Desolation is left in the city,
the gates are battered into ruins.
For thus it shall be on the earth
and among the nations,
as when an olive tree is beaten,
as at the gleaning when the grape harvest is ended.
These voices are hard to hear. We like to appropriate them, assimilate them into our context without the discomfort of realizing that most of us find ourselves on the side of the country that is ruthless and oppressive. So what is here for us? What do we do that isn’t making this about us without asking anything of us? I believe this still calls to us. We are created in the image of God. Our earliest stories witness to this and so we are called to be a part of God’s communal act. We can set the table. We can open the doors, rebuild the broken places and offer shade to the sun weary sacred souls. We can offer our best to the most vulnerable. We can be a part of swallowing up death dealing systems, death dealing broken and death dealing poverty. We can be a part of this most beautiful image of the divine, drying eyes weary with tears. We can be a part of the feast that feeds hungry people. This All Saints Sunday we can name our grief and our own mortality, so that it sends us into the world whole and open to making change. We can name our grief and our loss so we can help others find a way through. We can witness to the ways we make earth hell rather than like heaven. We can take hands and set the table because we are not alone.
Questions for discussion:
• What is your experience with grief and loss? Who do you miss that taught you, loved you or challenged you?
• What does it mean to practice faith in community? What does it mean to share your grief and worry and loss in community? Do you feel pressure to manage grief alone?
• What is it like to read the scripture from other vantage points? From what other eyes might you look at this text? What do you learn from their ears?