How Far We Have to Go

The prophet Isaiah, in the Hebrew Scriptures, likes to imagine heaven.  He doesn’t label his imaginings as such, of course, but that’s how I read them.  We are more familiar with grandiose depictions of John in the Book of Revelation - the gates of pearl, streets of gold, angelic choir-filled throne room image that sound more like a baroque painting than anything God might actually live in.  But I understand John’s need for hyperbole, even if I don't resonate with it.  

Isaiah’s imagination is so much more, well, down to earth.  In one, painted on countless nursery walls, he looks forward to a time when predators and prey in the animal kingdom coexist peaceably together.  “Cats and dogs living together,” as Peter Venkman predicted to the mayor in the classic movie, Ghostbusters.  But what Venkman saw as a sign of tribulation, Isaiah lifted up as a glimpse of the Reign of God.  

Elsewhere in the prophet’s writing he anticipates a time when God would host a feast of “rich food and well-aged wine” for “all peoples.”  That is perhaps my favorite image of the Promised Land.  Not some tropical island in the clouds.  Not streets of gold.  Not harps and choirs.  None of that grandiose stuff.  Instead, a feast - maybe an old-fashioned potluck with tables groaning under the weight of homemade casseroles and favorite salads and tantalizing family recipe desserts, instead of the ready-mades grabbed at the grocery store en route more common today.  A feast, for all peoples, instead of a homogeneous collection of folks who look just like me.  All that as a glimpse of “heaven”, which is really just a word for “the world the God intends.”

Unfortunately, we somehow along the way twisted the idea of heaven into a reward for the pure; a gated community for the righteous.  Our kind.

Jesus, I think, sounds a lot more like Isaiah.  In his frequent “the Kingdom of God is like...” stories, he describes behaviors, not beliefs; qualities, not dogmas; relational dynamics like forgiveness and welcome and mercy and kindness, not personal salvation.  He would have resonated with lions and lambs sleeping together.  And it’s obvious that he liked a good feast.  As for that “all peoples” part, he was all in.  One of his most famous stories elevates a Samaritan - a consummate outsider - to moral example, while depicting “people just like us” as anti-heroes.  

The question, as far as Jesus was concerned, is not about who we are or even what we profess; it’s not about where we are going, but about where we are and what kind of community we are building in the company of each other.  It’s about what kind of table we are setting, and whether or not “all peoples” are on the invitation list; about who we feed and clothe, who we welcome, and who we visit and comfort.

Now that xenophobia has been codified into Iowa state law, I brood over the chasm widening between the malignant brand of patriotism now in its ascendancy, and the teachings of the Christian faith that artificially undergird it.  That “all peoples“ part of the faith in particular.    While our public life has become fixated on the suppression of our differences - silencing conversations about gender identity, sexual preference, racial subjugation, and institutionalizing the always popular “proper order of things” -our spiritual hard-wiring establishes a different standard.

There is Peter, in the book of Acts, proclaiming, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.”

There is Paul to the Romans asserting, “God shows no partiality.”  And to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Or, if we needed a more definitively inclusive statement, there are the twin theological, evaluative bookends that "codify" divine assessment simply and succinctly: “God saw every thing made, and, behold, it was very good”  (Genesis 1:31).

And

“Everything God made is good, and nothing should be refused if it is accepted with thanks” (1 Timothy 4:4).

I wonder what might happen if, instead of hanging the 10 Commandments on classroom walls as some are requiring, we transferred those two biblical foundational principles onto posters and displayed them for all to see?  Everything God made is good.  Everyone.

And what if perhaps, on occasion, we retold in some public forum the story of a feast that God is hosting, to which all peoples are invited.  Where no partiality is shown.

It all makes me realize how far we have to go.  And given how repulsed I feel about those who insist on another way - given the bile I taste when I hear their denigrating rhetoric - I realize how far I have to go, as well.