000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

will make her wilderness like Eden” (v. 3). Their memories enabled them
to look forward to joy, gladness, and song (v. 3).
The all-inclusiveness of God’s grace rings out in Second Isaiah. “A teaching
[torah] will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples. . . .
The coastlands wait for me” (vv. 4–5). The mission given to the exiles is to
carry the message of God’s compassion, justice, and truth to all peoples.
Israel’s covenant with God was to be a light and blessing to all peoples.
God’s “salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be
ended” (v. 6). Such bold promises of redemption from captivity still met
with skepticism and doubt among Second Isaiah’s listeners, evident in
verses 7–16, which follow today’s reading. It is important to note this
because listeners to today’s sermons may well harbor unspoken doubt
about God’s promises. Second Isaiah evokes God’s power by reassuring
the people that God will lead them in safety to the land of promise: “You
have forgotten the LORD ... who stretched out the heavens and laid the
foundations of the earth” (v. 13).
It is when God’s power is far from evident, God’s people defeated and
in exile, that the Scriptures speak of God’s power. They do it to reassure
the people that faith and trust are feasible because God is ultimately reliable.
It is like Martin Luther King Jr., going along a dusty road in the middle
of the civil rights movement, asking his followers: “How long?” And
answering: “Not long!” When things look bad, messages of a powerfully
gracious and compassionate God reassure us that as God made “many”
from Abraham and Sarah (v. 2), so God can do great things with us.
The lectionary pairs this passage with Peter’s declaration about Jesus in
Matthew 16:13–20. At Jesus’ time, with Judea under Roman occupation,
the people were in exile in the land of promise. Roman soldiers patrolling
the Temple at Passover when Jews celebrated liberation from oppression
had replaced Babylonian soldiers oppressing the people in exile outside
the land of promise. In such a situation, Jesus’ messiahship, confessed by
Peter, was lived out. And it brought him into conflict with Rome.
Proper 17 [22]/Year A
Exodus 3:1–15+ (Semicontinuous)
Proper 17 [22]/Year A 79
In verses 1–6 of today’s reading, the first important image is the blazing
bush that was not consumed (v. 2). The burning but not burned-up bush
has long puzzled interpreters. We receive great help, however, from
J. Gerald Janzen, who points us to the many ways in which images of the