Isaiah 25:6-9
Today we celebrate All Saint’s Day, the day we remember, with thanks and praise and prayer, all those who love now, and have loved God through Christ Jesus.
Now the Church includes all those who have died in Christ, as well us we who are alive. Those who have died in Christ are the Church Triumphant. They have already triumphed over death and are alive now in the true realm of God; that other country that we are separated from at this time by the thinnest of veils.
We who are still in this world are the Church Militant, still fighting the good fight, as the apostle Paul puts it. Jesus says this body, triumphant and militant, will prevail against the very gates of death itself.
So make no mistake, the greatest blessing in receiving the Kingdom of God; that is, receiving Jesus Christ himself, is eternal life. The Church triumphant are now experiencing this very thing with our Lord Jesus, where every tear is wiped from every face.
Which brings us to this morning reading from Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah was called by God to be a prophet the year King Uzziah died, 740 B.C., he prophesied and wrote under three other kings of Judah; Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah.
He was probably martyred by being sawn in two during the reign of the evil king Manasseh, Hezekiah’s son, sometime after 680 B.C.
Isaiah is called the messianic prophet, as we shall see during advent, when many of our most treasured readings are his prophesies regarding the Messiah, Jesus.
In this remarkable passage, very similar to the vision given by Jesus to John in this morning’s reading from Revelation some seven hundred years later, the Lord prepares a lavish feast on the Lord’s own sacred mountain.
Our reading begins by telling us that all peoples are invited: powerful and lowly, native and foreigner, all people (25:6). The host of such a feast can only be a king, and in this case, the King of all Kings who will ever have been.
In Isaiah’s time, such feasts provided opportunities for mighty rulers to display their wealth and power, to make judgements, to foster loyalty, communicate their protection and providence, and show their generosity. To be invited to such a feast was a sign that you were really someone in that society or culture.
But even in our time, the shared meal also has a sacred and intimate character. It brings pleasure and a joy. It engages our senses, and establishes and strengthens relationships.
Many of us are starting to give thought to Christmas dinners with extended families where we hope exactly this will happen.
At their best our Christmas dinners together cement our families together, show that all are important and the little things that irk us about each other are forgotten for a time.
I know that it doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s the way we would all dearly love it to be.
The feast that Isaiah writes about is like that, but perfected and magnified to an infinite degree.
At this feast, God’s lordship, providence, and power are on display. But God has not yet sat down for the feast that he has prepared for all who love him, the full number of all the Saints.
He has a few other things to do first. God is preparing to judge and to save. But God does it in a way utterly unlike any earthly royal host.
Instead of food, the Lord’s mouth will open wide to swallow the veil that covers the peoples, the cloth that is woven upon the nations. And finally, the Lord swallows death.
This image startles us, doesn’t it? A cloth is not food. It does not nourish. And how can death bring life? Why has the host done such a thing? What does it mean?
Elsewhere in the Old Testament, swallowing and death are a common and related image. In the book of Numbers, following the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, Moses has to do something.
So, letting God himself judge, instructs the people that “if the LORD creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up, with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Hades, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord” (Numbers 16:30).
This was, of course, exactly what happened to them. This swallowing enacts an irreversible divine judgment against those who have rebelled.
The earth becomes another word for death itself. As John writes in the Revelation reading this morning. “The first earth has passed away” (Rev 21:1).
In other words, the first death has passed away and everybody who has ever lived comes through that first death to face judgement – both good and bad.
But in Isaiah the Lord does not swallow people. Instead, the Lord swallows “the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations” (v.7).
In Hebrew, the words ‘shroud’ and ‘sheet’ have wider meanings than we give them in English. ‘Shroud’ means literally a veil or covering, while ‘sheet,’ refers to something that is woven.
Isaiah says God will destroy the shroud that is cast over all peoples, and he will destroy the sheet that is spread over all nations. What does he mean?
We can take a cue from next line - death itself forever (v. 25:8). But how, in the language Isaiah was writing in, are a veil, or a covering, and a woven cloth, related to death?
Are they simply the death shroud, as the English translation suggests? Or can they mean something more?
Because the text says, “all peoples” and “all nations,” I think it more likely that the imagery is meant to show that the nations have been veiled in a way that makes them blind to the Lordship of God.
Or they have imagined themselves to be covered, that is, protected, from divine judgment. The image of weaving evokes a luxurious commodity.
By worshipping false Gods that we thought brought us comfort, nations and peoples have chosen for themselves a living death.
To swallow is to consume utterly, leaving no trace behind. In removing the covering, the veil, the Lord erases every false story the nations have told, every false security, every destructive value.
The nations are then truly ready to be judged or to be saved. They will have nothing ‘covering’ them. In that sense, at the end we will all be naked before God, just as we were naked when we were created by the very same God.
To swallow is also to take something into one’s own body. When the Lord swallows death, it will no longer exists. It will no longer exists anywhere. God has taken death into his very self, just as Jesus took sin into himself on the cross, and sin is death.
Circumstances that seemed to spell final destruction for God’s own people no longer have the power to end the life of God’s saints.
God profoundly changes the order of life and death and makes possible a future for God’s people beyond death and destruction.
The royal feast of judgment therefore becomes for us, all the saints of all the times, a day of salvation. V.9 just aches with hope and wonder and joy, says “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.”
Our hearts’ desires will be finally fulfilled in this verse.
God “wipes away the tears from every face and remove his people’s disgrace” (25:8). All the things in our life that troubled us are brought to this feast and swallowed up by God. They will no longer exist or be brought to mind.
What a time this will be. We won’t be alone, but together at last, with all the saints. “This is the Lord for whom we have waited!” v.9. Our faithful waiting will be rewarded with the richest of meats and the finest of wines. Come, Lord Jesus! Let me pray ...