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

220 First Sunday after the Epiphany/Year C
The people Israel, together with “everyone who is called by my name”
(v. 7), is the apple of God’s eye. This is the constitutive or priestly axiom
of the Scriptures: the proclamation that we are the apple of God’s eye.
Sometimes the emphasis is so strong that the claim is made: “you only
have I known of all the families of the earth” (Amos 3:2), as if Israel were
the only people whom God loves and chooses. But the prophetic axiom,
that we are to love and do justice to all our neighbors for they, too, are
God’s children, is equally important: “Did I not bring Israel up from the
land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from
Kir?” (Amos 9:7). Are they not, too, my people? God loves each and all of
us as if we were the apple of God’s eye. And we are to love and serve one
another because the neighbor is the one whom God gives us to love.
Today’s reading is preceded by a chapter that speaks of God’s judgment
against Israel for not having done justice: “So he poured upon him [the
people Israel] the heat of his anger and the fury of war” (42:25). Wrath
and love are not two opposing character traits of YHWH. Rather, love is
opposed to whatever is opposed to love and justice is the form love takes.
Love should lead to justice in relationships, just as achieving greater justice
in relationships should lead to more love. Wrath is God’s “strange”
work; love is God’s “proper” work. It misrepresents God’s love when we
presume upon it and hence neglect to see that kindhearted justice is done.
That is the context of today’s passage. Just having preached God’s judgment,
Isaiah changes course: “but now thus says the LORD” (v. 1, italics
ours). Our reading is a psalm singing the good news. It takes the form of
a chiasm in which verses 1 and 7 sing of God’s creation. It begins: “But
now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed
you, O Israel” (v. 1). And it ends with: “everyone . . . whom I created for
my glory, whom I formed and made” (v. 7). The God who redeems Israel
and us is the God who made us.
Verses 1b–3 and 5–6 begin: “Do not fear,” a frequent admonition in
Scripture found often in the New Testament. “Do not fear” signals God’s
presence as savior: “I have redeemed you” (v. 1b). God promises to be with
Israel when it passes through water and rivers, fire and flame, the hazards
of the journey out of exile into Judea. God will be with Israel because God
is Israel’s “savior” who gave “people in return for you, nations in exchange
for your life” (v. 4).
The center and the point are in the statement of God’s unmerited,
unconditional love for Israel (v. 4). This is at the heart of the Scriptures. “It
was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the