Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Ninth Sunday after Trinity

A lengthy car journey and I had a request, I wanted Nina Simone singing Mr Bojangles,

I knew a man
"Bojangles" and
He'd dance for you
In worn out shoes

My wife wanted to know why I like it so much. It is not that she dislikes it, she is just puzzled I play it so very often. Why? Well, there is a story here. It is a story that begins with a singer song writer called Jerry Jeff Walker – actually, he was born ‘Ronald’, but that is no basis for a career in country music. Walker was arrested for public intoxication and put in a New Orleans jail. There he met Mr Bojangles. Again, not his real name, but here was a man wary of the police. He was homeless, down and out, those ‘worn out shoes,

Silver hair
A ragged shirt
And baggy pants

Mr Bojangles was an entertainer, he danced on the street, in honkytonks, and at county fairs. He knew prisons from the inside, he drank too much, and he was dirt poor. That day, in the New Orleans jail he, talked. He had had dog he had had. It performed with him until it was killed by a car. Twenty years on he still grieved. That story made the jail sad; they asked for something to lift their spirits. Mr Bojangles danced,

He jumped so high
He jumped so high
And then he'd lightly touch down

A homeless man, dancing in a jail and laughing, because, for all his sorrow, he still could. That is why I like Mr Bojangles. It is that little glimpse of hope in despair.

Mr Bojangles, resilience, hope, and possibility – that is what I think of, with a lot more besides, when I hear, 

everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; 
and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Isaiah 55: 1 

Our first reading - Isaiah 55 – food for the hungry, a feast in a wilderness. Remember, this is Isaiah. He does not always sound this note. We have heard him prophesy very differently,

The Lord of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and staff -- all support of bread, and all support of water… Instead of perfume there will be a stench; and instead of a sash, a rope… instead of beauty, shame. Isaiah 3: 1, 18, 24

Loss, suffering and destruction; Isaiah knew grief. The early chapters wade through a mire of misery. And no wonder. Isaiah lived nearly three thousand years ago when the Assyrian Empire went to war and brought death and defeat to the divided kingdoms of Israel. We can still hear the voice of the Assyrian Emperor Ashur,

I conquered the cities… I caused great slaughter, I destroyed, I demolished, I burned…I washed my weapons in the Great Sea.

Isaiah spoke into that experience. He described all this loss as God’s judgment. The Lord, he said, had planted a vineyard, a home for his chosen people. Then, confronted by their faithlessness, he destroyed what he has planted,

I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste... the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, … he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! Isaiah 5: 5–7

It is real bloodshed, real destruction, it is the pictures we still see today of ruined villages, bereaved and battered people, war and its cruelty. It is not imagined; Isaiah is working in history, describing real things seen and known. He saw the world as it is and knew what will be. He made the moral connections. A people who do this; will become that. He dared to speak of evil and found the courage to suggest that it might even be worse than we fear.

And we need to know that this is the vocabulary, the experience, of prophecy before we can read Isaiah 55 – so full of promise and of hope – we need to know just how startling it is to be able to say both / and. How breathtaking to live in the tension between destruction and restoration.

Now, our reading, Isaiah 55 was actually written by another hand long years after Assyrian weapons were broken and lost. History turned. The story has got even worse and Jews had suffered catastrophe. They have been overwhelmed, exiled, their landmarks, temple, city, king all gone. Yet, this second Isaiah writing, like the first, knows all the horror and with a searching eye, glimpses something more. This really is a both / and book. There is destruction and there can be restoration. There was suffering; there is hope.

That is the startling achievement of Isaiah - to know the reality of human horror and still believe, still hope. In one sense it is so much more than Mr Bojangles in his New Orleans Jail, and yet and yet it is also precisely that ability to grieve and still stand up and dance. The miracle of Isaiah is that there is a language for both,

To provide for those who mourn in Zion –
to give them a garland instead of ashes, 
the oil of gladness instead of mourning, 
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. Isaiah 61: 3 

It is the possibility of a feast. In the bible that is not just a party, it is a miracle. It is manna in the wilderness, it is feeding the five thousand, it is the wedding feast of the Lamb. When you hear of feasting, well that is the moment the kingdom comes and God does what we cannot do ourselves, turning famine into feast.

The tyrants and the despots of the bible, tyrants and despots always and everywhere, want to tell us that there is scarcity. They want us afraid; they want us broken, and dependent. Pharoah and his bricks without straw. Babylon and a people rooted in loss and dependence. The story is always the same, you cannot help yourselves, there is only your weakness and the power of the system. There is only scarcity and want. Unless… unless you believe that there is a God and a different story can be told, with a different ending. That is what Isaiah is proclaiming.

Remember Martin Luther King, at the Lincoln Memorial, in August 1963,

… even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream… I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream.

That is language taken from scripture. It is Isaiah and the prophets. It is a man who knows how bad things can be, he has seen and felt horror and injustice, and he still has a dream. It is the voice we so dearly need.

Isaiah 55 is an invitation to feast. An invitation offered to those who doubted this day would ever come. An invitation to those grown used to sorrow and loss. Those accustomed to scarcity, the hungry and the hopeless hear a summons. It is a shout of triumph, the sound of hope. Put another way, it is the promise of community and reconciliation in a world turned brutal and sour. It is Easter at the tomb. I is a decisive and distinctive part of our faith that we can know this to be true, manage not one, but two vocabularies, describe destruction and restoration, horror and of hope. To be a Christian is to pace the ground between Golgotha and the Easter garden and to know that wherever we are. and whatever we feel in a world where joy and woe are woven fine God is known in the darkness and the light. Both / and. Scripture is the escape of the enslave, manna in the desert, it is exiles coming home, it is the voice of hope in the wilderness and the wildness of Easter morning. Both / and. We should have, must have the faith that names and knows destruction and restoration. We should have that faith, that courage, that hope. 

See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. Isaiah 55: 5