Isaiah 55 contrasts the ways of the Babylonian Empire
(read: all empires and all domination systems) with the ways of God.
One satisfies, one doesn’t.  One has built in rest, one is a constant
system of labor.  One is aimed at the fullness of humanity, one  is
aimed at pleasing a King.

According to the Bible the glory days of ancient Israel
as a nation-state started in in 1000 BCE when David was King, and his
son Solomon after him.  After that the Northern Kingdom left, and in
722 they lost a war with Assyria and were taken into Exile.  In
587/586 BCE the Southern Kingdom lost a war with Babylon and their
leaders were taken into Exile.  

The book of Isaiah centers around the second, southern
exile: first in warning that it might come unless things change
(chapters 1-39), then the exile “happens” and there are
conversations to the exiles about what return will look like
(chapters 40-55), and finally encouragement to those who have
returned and are struggling (chapters 56-66).  Isaiah 55, our passage
for today, is the end of the encouragement to the exiles, and it is
written in “anticipation of a a joyous and secure homecoming.”¹

Walter Brueggemann in his commentary on Isaiah 40-66
(amazingly, one of my favorite Brueggemann commentaries) says, “The
initial verse…offers to passersbys free water, free wine, and
free milk.  This of course is in contrast to the life
resources offered by  the empire that are always expensive, grudging,
and unsatisfying. … The rhetorical questions ask,
incredulously, why Jews in exile would invest so much in forms of
life that cannot work – why work so hard and so long in ways that
give no satisfaction; why give life over to the demands and rewards
of the empire that yield nothing of value in return.” ”²

As the text refers to the “wicked”, Brueggemann has
a great explanation for who that refers to.  “’The wicked,’ I
suggest, are not disobedient people in general.  In context, they are
those who are so settled in Babylon and so accommodated to imperial
ways that they have no intention of making a positive response to
Yahweh’s invitation to homecoming.”³

There were, in fact, plenty of people who didn’t return
from exile.  After 80 years, for many, Babylon had become home.  The
scripture says that even those who have accommodated themselves to
the empire – to the systems of domination – can be freed and
pardoned, and come back to a full and abundant life within the
community.

And all of this makes me wonder about how it applies
today.  When are we settled into domination systems, and in need of
being reminded that other options exist, and welcomed home to the
community of God, and forgiven and set free to live in equality and
equity with each other?

When are we the “wicked” who are too enmeshed with
the empire, and need forgiveness?  This is a convicting question for
me.  I continue to struggle to hold onto ONLY kindom values and let
go of the domination ones.  I appreciate the reminder that it can be
changed and forgiven.

One of the tools of domination systems is fear.  Fear
works to keep us from seeing things clearly, fear moves us into
right/wrong thinking, fear moves us into blame, fear moves us into
us/them thinking, and fear kills creative problem solving.  Fear
makes people more interested in authority, which means more invested
in hierarchy, and more likely to accept the commandments of
authoritarians.  Fear leads to snap decisions, instead of careful
consideration.

Fear is a really, really useful tool, if the desire
is to keep people separate, compliant, and disempowered.

And, it can get a hold on me rather too easily,
particularly when I’m not getting enough down time with God.

Another of the useful tools of domination systems is
getting control over meaning making, which usually means
appropriating religion for its own purposes.  We can see this clearly
in looking at the Roman Empire in Jesus’ day, and the Roman appointed
High Priests running the Temple.  That domination system thought
having the Temple’s support was imperative to keeping control, and so
they appropriated it.  That is one example of a rather constant
reality.

Truth be told, when I read the Bible, I’m often struck
by the struggles back and forth between the stories of an all-loving
God encouraging the people to care for each other and the strangers
in their midst AND the stories of a God who controls, rewards,
punishes the people – including by trying to frighten them into
compliance.  I tend to think of the first as the stories of God, and
the second as the constancy of humans trying to to claim the power of
Divine meaning making for their own ends.  The fact that it is a
constant tension in the Bible itself clarifies how hard it is to
separate out the love of God from the desire of people for control.

At the recommendation of my colleague the Rev. Harold
Wheat, I recently read “One Nation Under God” by Kevin Kruse.
The book takes a long view of American religion, and the battles for
control of it.  The history takes a sharp turn after the successful
passage of Roosevelt’s New Deal, which was generally lauded by the
nation’s clergy.  In response, business and industry leaders started
multiple meaning making campaigns of their own, putting clergy on
their payrolls to deride “communal values.”  They spent decades
accessing power at the highest levels, providing resources, and
finally in engaging in nation-wide PR campaigns to encourage people
to attend worship as part of their patriotic duty.  Since these
campaigns were so successful, those pushing worship were confident
that most of those attending worship would be getting their
pro-business messages shared from the pulpit.

This church was one of the ones that did NOT comply with
the campaigns, thank God.  But, being a part of US culture during
that time meant being a part of a society with the highest worship
participation rate in the country’s history, and this church did
benefit from that.  

One of my big take aways from the book was that every
church and every church structure I know well has defined itself from
its heights in the 1950s or 1960s, and created its narratives and
identity in those “high times.”  But that came without an
awareness of the forces that created that high, or the reality that
it was an ABERRATION, not a “new normal.”  It is a bit like the
Jewish people in 506 BCE looking back to the glory days of King
David, and forgetting that in 1500 years of history, about 80 were
the time of nation-state empire.  It was an aberration, not the norm.

The fact that the worship attendance of the 1950s was a
cultural swell of worship attendance nation wide suggests that the
narratives of “failure” for not maintaining the heights are…
well… wrong.  After the nation wide ad campaigns stopped and the
nation stopped being pushed to define being a good American with
being a good worship attender, worship attendance started returning
to more historically normal levels.  

However,  I’ve been in A LOT of meetings over the years
where in direct or indirect ways people have tried to “problem
solve” church decline, and that has almost always sounded a whole
lot like blame.  This is never the story I heard – that the
huge ballooning of membership was an oddity that was unsustainable,
and that it was to be expected that it would not be maintained.

Instead, there are seemingly infinite definitions of the
problem and possible solutions.  “Better evangelism.”  “More
prayer.”  “Clear mission statements.”  “Good websites.”
“More faithful leaders.”  “More training in inviting people to
church.”  “Better missions.”  … Take this class, do this
study, engage in this survey, read this book, ….and some of it is
even useful, but the impact of the whole is the continuation of the
narrative that worship attendance in the 1950s was “right” and
that means that everything since then has been “wrong” and if
that’s true, then it implies we’re doing our FAITH wrong.  

Learning that there is a bigger narrative at play has
helped me reframe those conversations about church growth and church
decline.  It has also helped me see that even when there isn’t active
blame going on, church leaders (clergy and lay) are just
internalizing it.  I’ve done it (I still do it.)  The number of
people who choose to attend worship FEELS like a tangible expression
of how faithful I am to God.  But it isn’t.  Yet, I have to actively
remember that.

And, I worry about all the church leaders in all the
churches for the past 70 years who have asked “why are we getting
smaller” and ended up believing that it was because THEY were doing
their faith wrong, because they couldn’t see the larger dynamics at
play.  They’ve taken in the wrong story.  Our faith is not WRONG, nor
BROKEN.  

Of course, it is hard to see the church in decline and
it is extra hard right now to see the church transforming and not
know if it is strong or weak or.. what it is right now.   But, as I’m
committed to building the kindom of God, and I’m excited to have ANY
partners in that work who want to work with me.  I’m willing to tell
people why that seems worthy of my life energy, and I am delighted
when I get to teach about what kindom/God values are and how they
differ from empire/domination values.  

The thing is that strength, even strength in numbers,
looks a lot like a domination value.  And inflated numbers in the
past were aimed at no good.  God is willing and able to work with any
of us who want to work with God, and to make a big difference with
those who are committed to doing so.  I’m interested in celebrating
those committed to following in the ways of Jesus, and the power that
love has in our midst.  I’m ready to let go of an old, false, and
misleading narrative of who we are supposed to be, and let us be who
we are.

There is the labor that matters, the bread that
satisfies.  And leaving behind the old myths that were created to
control the churches and their people– that’s the empire stuff we
don’t need anymore.  May God help us sort through, and find the
kindom values in our hearts, to put them to further use in our lives.
Amen

1Brueggeman
158.

2Brueggemann,
159.

3Ibid
160

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

March 20, 2022