“Pay attention”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Saturday, January 28, 2023
Isaiah 51:1-8 (Forward, p. 91) CEV p. 746
One of my besetting problems is that I sometimes fail to pay attention to things that I should be paying attention to. Of course, this is all the more prone to happen when I am on the computer, scrolling down through Face Book posts or absorbed in a TV program. (In fact, even if I am not actually watching a program, the mere sound can distract me enough—or, seemingly, close off my hearing enough—that I don’t hear or pay attention to something). And sadly, events around me, the flow of traffic for instance, can also create a distraction and cause me to lose my concentration, cause me to fail to pay attention.
Given this problem—one that I think plagues all of us at times—I think that Isaiah’s words today are most relevant. Twice in today’s passage, God implores His people to pay attention to him (verses 4 & 7).
In the first instance, He says that they should pay attention because Israel is God’s people and nation. And why is that? It is because God’s teaching will bring about justice for the entire world. Indeed, He says, the nations are eagerly waiting for Him to come and rescue them. He will come to save and rule them, and His victory, His saving power, will last forever. And so It is that Israel has a purpose in God’s redemptive plan. It isn’t spelled out in so many words in this passage but is certainly touched upon elsewhere in Isaiah. Indeed, the mere mention of Abraham and Sarah and the suggestion that they are the rock that Israel was hewn from (verses 1-2), gives credence to this idea—for Abraham was told that his offspring would be a blessing to the nations. And so, their obedience, their ‘paying attention’ is crucial.
In the second instance, He underscores the importance of paying attention to Him if they want to do right and obey His teaching with all their heart. And surely, this makes abundant sense, otherwise they might not know what He wants. But there’s an additional reason for them to pay attention, and that is because they can easily be distracted by the things that they are going through—by such things as insults and hurtful things (verse 7b), or by the present reality that Zion is in ruins (verse 3) It is easy to be distracted or discouraged by these, He says, but they must keep in mind that His power and victory is not impeded, or decided, by any such things.
Both of these messages have a particular pertinence and application for us today. We do not exist for ourselves, but for a hurting and hurtful world that needs us and the saving message of the Gospel—and, more to the point, needs our loving, compassionate and totally ‘able’ Saviour, a Saviour whose power is undiminished and whose victory is assured. We are to serve as lights in the midst of the ever-present darkness, as salt to give taste and flavour to a drab and unappealing world and preservation to a society largely ‘gone bad’, and as leaven, yeast, to bring about wholeness and goodness in situations where this is not present. And we are to do this, to be faithful in this, faithful in obeying God and His purposes, even when things go wrong, even when we are ridiculed or slandered, and even when our world ‘seems to be going to hell in a handbasket.’ A certain Roman Catholic theologian once penned the words, “We need the conviction that God counts on men.” Being more politically correct and inclusive, that surely would be ‘that God counts on men and women, on all of us.’ I’m sure that this is what the theologian would have thought. And isn’t this most wonderfully true: God needs all of us, counts on all of us, to work in partnership with Him for the redemption and salvation of our world. Amen.
Forward notes: “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many” (verse 2).
“When I was a teenager, my mother began taking us to visit her father’s columbarium niche. He died before I was born, so I never knew him beyond the stories I heard while growing up. During the summers that we visited Hong Kong, we would make a daytrip to the Christian cemetery overlooking the sea. We would stop to get flowers and fruit and then take a minibus to that part of the island. As a child, I didn’t know what to make of the small ancestral practices my mother kept.
“As a young adult, I stumbled into the Episcopal tradition by way of an All Souls’ Day service. I didn’t know what to make of ‘the most Catholic thing we do,’ as the celebrant called our practice of praying for the dead. But over time, this theology for the great company of saints who surround us took root in my personal life. I found language to talk about and relate to my ancestors. The last time I was home, I called my maternal uncle, and we made the trip to visit my grandfather together.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Do you pray for the dead? Consider adding their names to your prayer list.”
A concluding note: Touching on the question of prayers for the dead is a rather dicey subject for mainstream Anglicans—I say this to distinguish between them and those of a High Church or Anglo-Catholic persuasion. The 39 Articles explicitly forbid the Invocation of the Saints but doesn’t, in so many words, outlaw prayers for the deceased. However, in explicitly stating that purgatory is something ‘vainly invented, grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, and repugnant to the Word of God’, they seem also to rule this out.
The reason for this stance is based upon the Scripture, Hebrews 9:27, ‘people are destined to die once, after that to face judgment’. Taken literally, that is read to mean that the judgment happens immediately, with no intervening period of time and no intermediate place. And certainly, this is usually taken to say that people only have one life to live—for which they are judged and held accountable—and after that is over, well, it’s too late. There is no ‘make-up session’. They are judged solely on the basis of what they did in life; there is no further possibility of making amends or growing in their faith and obedience.
Now, none of this is to say that we should not remember the dead or celebrate those who have passed on. Nor does it definitively rule out the suggestion that they are fully aware of us and our doings. In fact, to me, Hebrews 12:1 suggests that we are surrounded, crowded around, by such a host of witnesses. To me, it says that they are aware of us and are even cheering us onward.
However, let me say in passing, that what happens after death, and what our relationship with them should be, remains ever shrouded in mystery. However, given that lack of certainty, that lack of knowing for sure, it suggests to me that we should be all the more conscientious about making sure of our salvation and sharing that salvation with those around us.