Isaiah 25:6-9 I will briefly consider in two sections.
In Isaiah 25:6-8, the theme is the great banquet of the nations. This text has a connection with 24:21-23.[1] It combines two images. One is that of the elders around Mt. Sinai in Exodus 24:9-11. The other is that of the pilgrimage to Zion of all nations in Isaiah 2:1-4. 6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts, Zion, as in 24:23, will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. The feast testifies to the joy of the nations at the salvation of Israel and a climax to the pilgrimage to Zion. It is also a triumphant ending after years of grief and sorrow. Isaiah began with a hope for the day when all the people of the earth might sit down in peace together, a hope that appears vain in view of the contemporary turmoil throughout the world. The changes in human nature necessary for that hope to happen seem hopelessly beyond possibility. Surely, Isaiah was speaking of a time beyond this time and place. The basic imagery is a royal banquet. This verse is an example of Jewish tradition using the figure of a banquet to depict the eschatological future of fellowship in the fullness of the reign of God. This image is important in forming an understanding of the origin and meaning of the Lord's Supper.[2] 7 Further, he will destroy on this mountain the shroud, a sign of mourning that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that human experience spreads over all nations; 8 he will swallow up death forever. The Lord will take away the suffering mentioned previously. If death is not the end, then surely God is the one who must make it so. We have no right to say it. The darkness of death is the simple biological end to a biological life. Poet John Donne wrote: “And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.” Many of us feel some ambivalence about this belief. The Christian faith holds out a glowing promise of that which lies beyond, and yet there is little or no evidence to support this promise. It comes to us on trust alone. Yet many of us are willing to stake our lives on the promise.[3] 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.[4] The nations will see how wrong they have been to treat Israel the way they have. The final emphasis shows that at the time of the author, this triumphant future seems impossible. This passage shows that the eschatological consummation in which God will wipe away all tears removes all doubts concerning the revelation of the love of God in creation and salvation history even though the love of God has been at work already at each stage in the history of creation. Only in the light of this promised end do we find confirmation of Genesis 1:31 that creation was “good.” Only in the light of this “end” can we make such an affirmation, given the confusion and pain of this world. When people today offer praise and honor to God as the creator of all that is, they do so in faith and trust that this end will happen. Creaturely reality is a process oriented to a future consummation.[5] For that reason, when Barth says that God the creator does not need justification, our response might well be astonishment. Yet, even for Barth, the light of Jesus Christ overcomes the shadow side of creation. The reason the “end” is so important is that the present human experience of the world is so ambiguous. The point is that present praise and worship anticipates the praise of the heavenly community. Yet, even before this eschatological future, the love of God is present to their salvation. Therefore, the whole path from the beginning of creation by way of reconciliation to the eschatological future of salvation the march of the divine economy of salvation is an expression of the incursion of the eternal future of God to the salvation of creatures and thus a manifestation of the divine love.[6]
As powerful as the theology might be, we might make the point in a personal way.[7]
A woman goes each year to a cemetery near her home, carrying a small teddy bear. She stands beside a tiny grave, thinking about what might have been, about a terrible grief only partly assuaged by the years. She remembers. Then she places the bear on the grave of a little fellow who never got to hold it and quietly returns to her car. The passage of the years, and the hope of a some-day reunion help, but the inward pain will never completely disappear until then.
Is this not the world in microcosm? Do we not all have to walk through that dark valley, either in the loss of someone who means so much, or at least when we ourselves must enter that undiscovered country? The papers of America daily feature pictures of the anguished faces of mothers and fathers, of children, or friends who stand beside the graves of those who have died in unnecessary ethnic or urban violence. Go to the sea of white crosses at Omaha Beach and realize that for each of those thousands of white crosses so lovingly tended by our French friends, word went out to moms and dads, to wives and children, that a young man had courageously waded ashore on a beach he would never hear of and there, to the sounds of hatred, had died. So, grief swept across our land. So many other nations of the world multiplied that grief.
A young woman committed suicide. She was a nurse in the children’s cancer ward of a large hospital. Her close friend said she could no longer bear to see the suffering, both the children and the loved ones who prayed and hoped until the end. She had seen too much. So, Wordsworth caught the pain of loss:
She lived unknown, and few could know,
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me.
What a profound word, that of Isaiah, then: “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 …”
The judgment that death may bring to us all may be quite different from that which much of Christian tradition has said. Does it not make sense to believe that we are in a state of process, becoming what we are to be but are not yet? It might be like Oscar Wilde’s story of “The Portrait of Dorian Gray.” The man lived a very selfish life, yet widely acclaimed for his dashing good looks and witty manner. He had a painting, a portrait, in the attic of his home. When first completed, he often went to admire his own attractiveness in the painting. As the years went by, the painting became ugly and hateful. Then one day Dorian Gray died. They found him, his handsome face now distorted by the sins of a lifetime, grotesque and ugly. Death revealed his inner being. Death may at last reveal the finished product. Somewhere in there may be the dynamics of judgment. “To sit alone with my conscience would be judgment enough for me,” wrote bishop Stubbbs. “What I think will be hell to most of us,” wrote Leslie Weatherhead, “will be the slow realization, in a further life … of how much sin has hurt and hindered the loving God.”[8]
[1] Therefore, they are by the same author
[2] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume Three, p. 285).
[3] Inspired by Carver McGriff.
[4] H. Wildberger defends authenticity of the first part of this verse, but Clements believes it must be an emendation.
[5] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume Three, p. 645)
[6] Barth (Church Dogmatics, III.1 [42.3], p. 384-5, 412, 266)
[7] Dr. Carver McGriff provides the following insights.
[8] Inspired by Carver McGriff.
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