Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, November 17, 2024
by Dr. Miles Hopgood, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Being faithful in our proclamation of the word of God does not always look like success, at least as the world measures it. It may mean rejection for us, but our rejection does not frustrate God’s plan of salvation.
Measured in terms of complicatedness, our society has reached a new high. The more information we have access to, the more information we want in order to do even the most basic things, making a smart phone all but required for daily living. Looking for a restaurant while traveling? Don’t ask the concierge; spend an hour combing through reviews online. Oh, the menu? Just scan the QR code. Cash? Sorry, we only accept Bitcoin. Even fast food needs an app! If I sound like a Luddite, then so be it.
Yet despite all this complexity, some things about our society have remained astonishingly simple. Taking our prize for least changed would be our notion of success. However much the Internet of Things has changed about our world, we still think of what it means to do well in crude terms of “number-go-up.” Success on the internet is measured by more clicks, longer engagement, a greater number of unique hits. Success in the church is often measured the same way. Growth in our congregation’s membership, increase in our budget, maybe even a new building addition.
How disappointing it must have been for Isaiah to answer a call to proclaim the word of God only to learn that it would mean making the minds of the people dull, shutting their eyes and stopping their ears. He is called to proclaim not an excellent fiscal quarter but exile, not a gathering together of the people but a scattering. A painful message indeed, one that would probably see any modern pastor driven from the pulpit.
The vision of Isaiah is a somber reminder that the word God has called us to proclaim will not always be well received or yield the sort of response from people that our world would call successful. But this does not mean that the word of God will return to us empty. Quite the contrary—the challenge the word of God brings to our world carries with it the good news that God is doing something different, something new. For our world’s notion of success is at its heart cold and cruel. For some to succeed by our world’s standards, others must fail. Resources are finite, and so we play a zero-sum game. But not with God. With God there is something the world cannot and will not offer: the departing of guilt and the blotting out of sin. God calls us to face the painful parts of ourselves and our world so that we could see where God is at work to bring new life. Redefining success, we see God at work on a new creation.
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