[00:00:00] Foreign welcome to the collective table where we celebrate the intersections of Jesus, justice and joy. This podcast is brought to you by Oceanside Sanctuary Church. Each week we bring our listeners a recording of our weekly Sunday teaching at Oceanside Sanctuary, which ties Scripture into the larger conversations happening in our community, congregation and even the podcast. So we're glad you're here and thanks for listening.
[00:00:42] Those of you who don't know, I'm Jason Coker. I'm one of the co lead ministers here and we've been working through a series on Sunday mornings called Prophetic Imagination. We've been reading through various passages of scripture to understand what prophetic imagination is and how it is that that can shape our own approach to how we are learning to be faithful followers of Christ. Today we're going to continue that series. Today we're almost done. We're going to wrap it up as we approach Easter and sort of hopefully, deftly transition from like prophetic imagination in the Hebrew Bible to where we see Jesus playing out that same kind prophetic imagination and how that leads him to the cross and maybe informs our understanding of that as well. Today, however, we're going to take a look at Isaiah, chapter 65, verses 17 through 25. If you have your Bible, you are welcome of course, to turn there. Otherwise we will put it up on the screen. I want to read this at the beginning. It's a little bit longer passage. We don't necessarily always dwell on this many verses on a Sunday morning, but I want to read through this because it's I find very poetically evocative. And that's one of the things that I try to highlight, especially in some Hebrew Bible passages, that there is a very intentional sort of poetic construction to these verses. And I want to encourage you as we read through this to of course use your brains. That's important. God gave you a brain, but there's a part of your brain that you have been taught not to pay attention to as people who are raised in the West. And that part of your brain is that sort of affective, imaginative side. So I want to encourage you to not just think about what you're hearing or reading up on the screen or in your Bible, but I want encourage you to feel it.
[00:02:47] Poetry isn't really about coming to analytical conclusions. It's about inhabiting a different kind of reality. And so I want to encourage you to think of it that way.
[00:03:02] Isaiah chapter 65, starting in verse 17, we're going to read through to verse 25 says this for I am about to Create new heavens and a new earth.
[00:03:16] The former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. For I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight.
[00:03:32] I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people. No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.
[00:03:44] No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime. For one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth. And one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
[00:04:04] They shall build houses and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and inhabit another. They shall not plant and another eat. For like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be. And my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
[00:04:26] They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity. For they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord and their descendants as well.
[00:04:37] Before they call, I will answer. And while they are yet speaking, I will hear.
[00:04:43] And the wolf and the lamb shall feed together. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. But the serpent, its food shall be dust.
[00:04:55] And they shall not hurt or destroy. On all my holy mountain, says the Lord, I'm going to share with you sort of what I'm taking away from this, but before I do, would you just say a prayer with me?
[00:05:09] God, we thank you for this tit time and place. We thank you for today.
[00:05:15] We thank you for all of the circumstances that have brought us to this point, good and bad.
[00:05:25] We thank you for all the ways that you have shaped us and led us through our stories, each individual story that brings us to this place, all the joys that we've experienced and the suffering as well, for how all of that somehow brought us to a place where in this time and in this moment, we have been prepared for something.
[00:05:54] We ask that you would give us courage to lean into an imagination for a better future, for a better world, for a better heaven and earth.
[00:06:08] We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:06:12] Okay, so in addition to other things, I also get to sort of be the resident historian here at the church.
[00:06:20] And this is a copy of the Koinonia Collar, which was the newsletter at this church for I don't know how long, but I have copies of Koinonia collar from about 1960, weekly copies of it from about mid-1969 to about the mid-1970s, which is fun. To, like, you know, leaf through on occasion. And I think. I'm not sure, but I think that this little, you know, newsletter was instituted by Reverend Charles Elswick, who you might recognize that name. Reverend Elswick was one of my heroes from our past here at this church, mostly because he got fired for all the right reasons.
[00:07:09] And you can actually follow the incredible conflict leading to his resignation in the pages of Koinonia Caller. And right here at the beginning of his tenure as the pastor in this edition of Koinonia Caller, there's an interesting little foreshadowing of the trouble that would come. The first thing that has nothing to do with my sermon today at all is I opened this and read it last week. And on page two, it says, congratulations to Barbara and Gary Prather on the arrival of their new baby girl, Kristin Cathy, born April 16th. And I was like, I wonder if that's Kristen Prather, who is a friend of ours who lives in our neighborhood. And sure enough, this is the birth announcement of our friend Kristen.
[00:07:56] That's just totally. A little parenthetical aside, I messaged her on Facebook, is this you? And she was like, oh, my gosh, that's totally me. Anyway, so weird. But in this little part on page two, it says, north County Coalition. Little title there. North County Coalition. It says this to the congregation. Are you concerned with the relations of the police with the community?
[00:08:26] Are you concerned with the lack of relevance to the educational system? School dropout problem, drug abuse problem, Evaluation of the school system? Are you concerned about the continuing war in Vietnam and its slaughter of human life on all sides?
[00:08:43] Are you concerned about the conditions and below standard of living of farm workers?
[00:08:50] If the answer to some or all of these questions is yes, then you should plan to participate in the north county coalition meeting May 3rd at 8pm at the church.
[00:09:02] There will be rapping.
[00:09:05] I'm not sure what that means.
[00:09:09] In 1969, there will be rapping.
[00:09:16] Not W, R A P, P, R, A P, P I N G. Entertainment. I think they mean talking like, we're gonna rap.
[00:09:26] Cordially, as it were.
[00:09:33] We're gonna rap. Okay, I'm just now figuring this out right in front of you.
[00:09:39] Entertainment, dancing and refreshments. This is my favorite part. Are you ready? Note underlined use of the church building by this group, some of whom are members of First Christian, does not necessarily mean endorsements by the entire Congreg is in keeping with our policy of trying to use our facilities more responsibly by making them available to various community groups.
[00:10:03] It's like the little qualifier at the end of a commercial for drugs.
[00:10:11] Right? Attendance at this group might cause hair to fall out or various dysfunctions.
[00:10:19] What I love about this little bit from the Koinonia caller is that it reflects the sensibilities of the reverend at the time, Reverend Charles Elswick, who got this church sort of deeply involved in an anti war movement here in North County. And this church was at the time very conservative and largely populated with veterans from World War II.
[00:10:41] So this caused a great deal of tension in the congregation that ultimately led to his resignation about a year and a half later, which resolved all of those tensions, but also split the church. And the church was really never the same after that. But one of the things I love about this is that he is essentially speaking to the exact same issues in 1969 that our justice Works team is speaking to today. Issues of relations with the police and the community, issues of educational equality, issues about, you know, service to the poor.
[00:11:21] He really imagined a church in 1969 that was willing to do that kind of work this week in this church. By the way, there was a group of people on Tuesday, March 11, that showed up at Oceanside Unified School District board meeting last Tuesday night and was there to support a member of this congregation who just happens to be in charge of all dead DEI programming for Oceanside Unified School District, which is a tough job to have these days, by the way. And he gave a presentation in support of DEI policies. A few of us were there to support him, and I was very proud that members of our congregation were there to support Jordi and his work. And then on Friday, March 14, somebody had the audacity to not only organize a protest here in downtown Oceanside against the policies of the current administration, but also to hand these flyers out to some of you unsuspecting members of Oceanside Sanctuary last Sunday in preparation for that. And then, as if that wasn't enough, on Saturday, March 15, there was a protest at the Encinitas Tesla dealership to essentially raise some commotion about various actions from this administration. A member of this church was sharing that out on Facebook. Facebook. And then, as if that wasn't enough, we have another member of this congregation, Larry, who is sharing that on this coming Thursday, March 20, that the police and fire commission in Oceanside will be voting on whether or not to expand its commission, which we would like some of you to consider showing up for, to endorse that expansion so that that commission could be more representative of. Of the diversity of this city.
[00:13:14] So in one week, There are four opportunities for this church to gather and make its voice heard on behalf of those who are struggling and marginalized and oppressed. And it's occurred to me that even if I didn't want you to do this at this point, that you would still do it.
[00:13:35] And that is both very proud and deeply disconcerting for me that, like, somehow Janelle and I have lost the plot here.
[00:13:45] Like, we weren't in charge of any of those four things that happened in the past week.
[00:13:52] Well, yes and no. Like, I mean, yes. Like, we should be like, wow, this is so great. And on the other hand, what. What other trouble are you guys going to get into that might get me into trouble?
[00:14:10] This was meaningful and moving for Janelle and myself because it occurred to me that what Reverend Elswick had the audacity to imagine in 1969 has come true.
[00:14:28] That this is a congregation that is not afraid to represent people who are suffering, people who are hurting.
[00:14:38] And that's something to be proud of. Not in the, like, pride is a biblical sin way, which really just means, like, you're so arrogant that you can't listen to anybody, but more like proud in the LGBTQ sense, which is all humans deserve dignity, right?
[00:15:01] And so you should be proud to be a part of a congregation that does that sort of thing.
[00:15:07] I promise all of this has something to do with Isaiah 65, but I'm going to have to find my notes to remember what that is.
[00:15:17] Isaiah 65, of course, is written as an oracle, a kind of prophetic utterance with a certain historical context in mind. Isaiah. Many of you I know are aware of this, but Isaiah is really not one book. Isaiah is like three books, right? There's essentially a kind of first, second, and third Isaiah, and this portion comes from the third part of Isaiah. It's easy to remember those divisions, because the first part of Isaiah is really those prophetic oracles written during the actual life of the prophet Isaiah, which was before the Hebrews were carried off into exile into Babylon. And those prophecies have all to do with warnings against Israel for essentially not doing what they're supposed to do, which is represent the needs of the suffering in their community. And for that reason, they have been made weaker and are susceptible to being conquered by outside forces. And that is, of course, exactly what happens. And so the second part of Isaiah, the second book, written by separate folks, comes along during that exile period. And so those middle prophecies in the book of Isaiah are really about trying to comfort and console people who have been carried off into captivity and to promise them a better future. And then third Isaiah, which is where we are in this passage, is after the return from Babylon to Israel, which is a return which is, of course, hopeful and joyful, but also deeply troubling, because they've returned to ruins.
[00:16:54] Their formerly glorious community, their autonomous, proud community, is now in shambles. And it's in the midst of trying to reckon with the despair that these people are experiencing that third Isaiah speaks here in Isaiah chapter 65. And here is what Isaiah 65 speaks to a group of people who are now free, in a sense, but have been returned to a land that is in ruins.
[00:17:28] What Isaiah 65 promises is a new heaven and a new earth. You've probably heard that phrasing before.
[00:17:39] But this new heaven and new earth promises something that is genuinely joyful and new. And picking it up in verse 20, it says, no more shall there be in this new heaven and new earth, no more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime. And then it does something that's very typical of these old sort of Hebrew prophetic, poetic passages. It pairs ideas in a kind of contrasting couplet, right? So what you see in verse 20 is, no more shall there be an infant that dies young or an old person who doesn't live out a lifetime. It says it positively, and then it switches over and says the same thing negatively. For one who dies at 100 years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of 100 years will be considered accursed. See, it's supposed to be sort of poetically ironic that somebody who dies at 100 years old, we might be like, oh, what happened to that guy?
[00:18:41] Must not have eaten, right? Or must have smoked too much or took too many chances, right?
[00:18:47] Because only somebody who lived a cursed life would die as young as 100. There's a bit of, like, fun being had here with the idea of being young versus old. But the idea, I think, is very clear, that in this new heaven and new earth that's to come, people will live long and good lives.
[00:19:09] Babies won't die young, children won't die. People won't die at a young age. They will live long and full lives.
[00:19:19] And then, of course, it switches to another bit of good news, which is that people will actually own their land and their labor.
[00:19:31] Verse 21 says, they shall build houses and inhabit them.
[00:19:36] They shall not build. And another inhabit.
[00:19:42] To me, that's such an evocative turn of phrase, because My guess is that, you know, people who build houses that they don't get to inhabit.
[00:19:54] People, in other words, whose labor is exploited.
[00:19:58] People who are made to work, to build dwellings that are perhaps opulent or comfortable or full of all the things that people need, but they themselves then go back home to dwellings that are terrible, that are unsafe, that are unhealthy.
[00:20:19] Isaiah says that in this new heaven and new earth, that won't be the case, that the houses that people dwell in will be the ones that they build with their own hands. In other words, they are invested in the ownership of their own good place to live. And as if it wasn't clear enough, Isaiah then switches over to the topic of labor and says they won't work land that they don't get to enjoy the fruit of.
[00:20:45] And if you don't know anybody who builds nice houses that they don't get to live in, I guarantee, you know, people who work agriculture that they don't get to eat, that tend to, you know, avocados and grapes here in California and work hard to earn a wage that isn't enough to live on, and then go home to those terribly unsafe conditions and do that all on behalf of people who will make plenty of money off of the fruit that these workers worked hard for.
[00:21:25] In other words, Isaiah here isn't talking about heaven. And it's very likely that at some point you've heard a lot of this passage in reference to heaven. A new heaven and a new earth maybe referred to some future ethereal existence where everything would be made perfect, we'd be liberated from our bodies, and there would be no more pain or suffering. Or maybe the phrasing at the end of this chapter where it describes the wolf flying with the lamb and the oxen, you know, eating straw along with the lion, right? That there's peace describing this ideal disembodied future state. But Isaiah is not talking about that at all.
[00:22:10] Isaiah is not talking about some future disembodied heaven where people live forever. He's talking about a new heaven and a new, new earth here where laborers get to enjoy the profit of their work.
[00:22:26] This is a pretty radical political vision that Isaiah has here.
[00:22:34] When he begins this portion of Scripture with describing a new heaven and new earth. It's important, I think, to understand ancient biblical cosmology, right? The way that they understood their actual earth to be constructed, right? New heaven and new earth means this earth was understood to be, of course, this, you know, patch of dirt that we all live on. And below that, it was believed, according to, like, ancient cosmology, there were caverns in the earth that constituted Sheol, or hell. And then above that, there was a kind of dome that covered the entire earth called the firmament. You see that in Genesis described. It's sort of a hard shell that encircles the earth, and above that is the water that comes down when it rains. And above the firmament is where heaven is. It's a literal physical existence where all the gods and angels reside.
[00:23:25] So when Isaiah describes a new heaven, a new earth, he isn't describing, like, this worldly existence and then a future disembodied existence. He's talking about this world here and now. But what he's describing by heaven and earth is all the cosmological powers, because that's what, for them, cosmology meant. It meant, who's in charge of this place. Of course, the gods who live above the firmament are the ones who are really in power.
[00:24:00] Of course, we don't have that cosmology. We don't think that there's an dome encircling the earth above which the gods live physically. We don't think of the universe that way. We don't think of the cosmos that way.
[00:24:16] So for us, maybe like the closest interpretation of a new heaven and a new earth might be to say one day I envision a new politics and a new economy.
[00:24:31] Because those are our gods.
[00:24:35] Those are the people who live just out of reach.
[00:24:41] They're the ones who are residing, like, high above us, making decisions that we feel like we have nothing to do with.
[00:24:50] We have a hard time imagining living life free of our current politics or our current economy.
[00:25:01] And so what Isaiah is saying here, I think, is I imagine a better future. A future where people actually get to be happy in their work every single day. A future where they get to live lives that are healthy and full and not cursed by disease, or at least broken by the medical debt that will result from being treated by a system of health care that is so insanely expensive that it's guaranteed to bankrupt you.
[00:25:32] Or a future where we actually get to own the homes that we live in and the land that those homes sit on, and that we get to participate in our own work that is dignified, that brings us profit, that we get to enjoy.
[00:25:50] I imagine this kind of better future where in the end, our existence is not governed here in verse 24 and 25, by violence, by harm, by predators who seek to devour us, but instead, everybody would eat grass.
[00:26:13] And if this sounds impossible, to you that that makes sense. It should sound impossible.
[00:26:23] It sounds a bit crazy that we might enjoy an existence like that.
[00:26:28] This brings me to what I think is another observation about prophetic imagination, and that is that prophetic imagination is a utopian imagination.
[00:26:43] We've said a lot of things about what it means to have a prophetic imagination for our lives, for our world. And one of those is that when the prophets imagine a better future, it is thoroughly utopian. It is blissfully perfect.
[00:27:05] Prophets don't imagine what's realistic or practical or possible. They imagine what is utterly unrealistic and improbable, because what they imagine is a future of health and happiness and equality and goodness and fairness that is utterly devoid of harm and violence.
[00:27:30] And that is, I think, important to do.
[00:27:37] And I think it's important for a couple of reasons. One is just remembering the historical context of this.
[00:27:45] One is because when you are a part of a group of people who feel harmed and oppressed and beaten down and battered, and even if you have achieved some level of freedom and autonomy at long last, you still feel utterly under threat in that moment, I think you need a bit of utopian imagination.
[00:28:17] I think imagining future possibilities that are impossible is, in its own way, therapeutic.
[00:28:30] I think when we're in the midst of despair and we wake up every single day wondering if the latest federal cuts mean that we will lose our jobs, the careers that we have enjoyed or the careers that we have dreamed about that we are just beginning to embark on, or if it means that the latest federal cuts are actually going to make it so that you can't feed your family or pay your rent. This is happening every single day.
[00:29:00] If you wake up wondering what the latest calamity is going to be, I think having a utopian imagination is helpful.
[00:29:13] I think we need prophets who come around and say that they have this wild idea that everybody should be able to actually enjoy the fruit of their labor, that they have this crazy notion that everybody should actually be able to have access to affordable health care, that that might actually be good, that that might actually be God.
[00:29:51] And without that sort of wild imagination, we can't ever make it possible.
[00:29:57] Last week I talked about Jubilee and what Jubilee is, and the idea that, you know, Moses's ancient idea of Jubilee, where he recognizes that sort of, sort of the economic gravity of humanity, that we will eventually, just like in a game of Monopoly, take everything we can from each other until some of us are rich, but most of us are broke, where Moses realized that that was very likely to happen. In any given community. So he created rules to ensure that we would exist perpetually in a state of equality. That was a utopian imagination.
[00:30:36] Historians and theologians argue nonstop about whether Jubilee was actually practiced in ancient Israel, because it's just so crazy.
[00:30:48] But we need that. We need crazy imagination during times of great threat and harm and oppression.
[00:30:58] Walter Brueggemann likes to say he's an Old Testament theologian, comes from the UCC tradition, and in sort of response to the protest that Israel never really practiced Jubilee. I love his response. This is a paraphrase. He basically says, well, yeah, but they imagined it.
[00:31:23] You can't do anything that you can't imagine. First, we need prophets who can imagine these possibilities.
[00:31:34] And I think we become the kind of people who can imagine wild, crazy, unrealistic, impossible, utopic futures. We become people like that.
[00:31:48] This is going to sound like the most pastor thing ever.
[00:31:53] We become people like that by learning to read these words in a way that's not harmful.
[00:32:07] So many of us have been taught how to read scripture, ancient Hebrew and Christian scripture, in a way that turns it into a weapon so that we can just beat each other into submission and gain power and gain control over each other. But if we learn to read these words the way I have encouraged you to read them today, to read verses 21 and 22, that says they shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
[00:32:39] To wonder when you read that.
[00:32:43] Who do we know today who has to build houses but doesn't get to live in them?
[00:32:51] Who do we know today who works vineyards but they don't get to eat its fruit? Who do we know today who suffers the death of infants or children because their entire community is deprived of good health care? Who do we know today that this passage speaks to?
[00:33:14] And then, maybe more importantly, does that make you feel anything?
[00:33:25] How does it make you feel?
[00:33:29] Does it bother you that they live nearby?
[00:33:35] Do you drive a different way home so that you don't have to drive through their neighborhood?
[00:33:46] Do you fall asleep to Netflix every night?
[00:33:51] Because this is all just too much.
[00:33:57] I'm not saying that's bad. I'm not condemning you.
[00:34:03] Netflix can be therapeutic in its own way, too.
[00:34:10] But these passages don't exist so that we will have theological arguments about whether or not there is a heaven or a hell.
[00:34:20] These passages exist to make us feel enough to get up and take the first step towards creating an impossible world, a world where that doesn't have to happen anymore.
[00:34:36] And I think that as a pastor, I'm Just terribly afraid of Christians and churches that take these incredibly evocative, radical passages and turn them into just more fodder for theological argument.
[00:34:56] And so my encouragement to each of us today is to learn to inhabit these kinds of passages, not just to think about them, not just to wonder about them abstractly, theologically, philosophically, but to ask ourselves if we really believe that these words are true, that a world where people get to live joyful, long, healthy lives and enjoy the fruit of their own labor is actually worth fighting for.
[00:35:36] And if it is, then I want to encourage you to send out a memoir.
[00:35:48] But there is a Police and Fire Commission meeting on Thursday, March 20, at 4pm and we need you to show up and encourage them to vote for the expansion of that commission so that the Police and Fire Commission is, I don't know, maybe made up of more than just retired cops and firefighters, but is made up of people who actually feel the consequences in their bodies of the policies that are leveled against them.
[00:36:18] Just one example.
[00:36:20] There will be other opportunities.
[00:36:22] And I want to encourage you to consider how you might be involved today. As Joey and the band play our last song, they're like, oh, it's our cue.
[00:36:34] We're not very good about that. But as they play the last song, I want to invite you to consider how you might respond to the prophetic call to build a better community.
[00:36:51] And I know that there are a million possibilities that you're overwhelmed, just like I am by the news every single day, and that most days you don't know what to do. And I think one of the advantages to being a part of a church is that we get to sing about how our hallelujah is the result of a fight, where we get to sing about the goodness of God, where we get to hear words like this from Isaiah 65 and be inspired. And then we get to do things like learn to put one foot in front of the other and put our bodies into action.
[00:37:30] And so, as they sing this last song, I want to invite you, if you are so inclined, to take a moment, to reflect on how you might put your body to work, to building a better community.
[00:37:43] And as a symbolic way of stepping towards that action, I want to invite you to come forward and light a candle.
[00:37:54] And that candle, I think, is a really powerful symbol of how you might be committed to taking action, to resist the despair that shows up in our newsfeed every day.
[00:38:09] So this candle could be your expression of, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do and how I'm going to do it. And lighting that candle is just your solidifying that commitment or lighting this candle might just be I don't know what I'm supposed to do but I'm going to do something.
[00:38:29] And so lighting that candle just means expressing your willingness to be a part of the solution or you might not be ready to do any of that. And that's okay. You don't have to come forward. You don't have to light a candle. You can sit with this until you are ready. But if you're ready to make some kind of expression of commitment, I want to invite you just to come around the outside aisle, light a candle for yourself as we sing this last song together and then we will let you go. God bless you.
[00:39:05] Thank you for joining us for this Sunday teaching no matter when or where you're tuning in. To learn more about our community or to support the work we do, Visit
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