Reading: Isaiah 45:1-13
The reading is from The Book of Isaiah 45:1-13, from a part of the book (chapters 40-55) that was composed in the middle of the 6th century BCE to encourage the Judeans still scattered in exile in Babylon to return to their land and rebuild their city and temple.
Cyrus, king of Persia, has defeated and taken over Babylon, and he is allowing the exiles to return home. History tells us Cyrus was known for things like this – for setting free captured and exile peoples, supporting religious diversity, and in his own way championing human rights.
The prophet Isaiah, in the passage today, actually applies to Cyrus much of the language and titles used earlier in Isaiah to describe the messiah God will raise up to save the people. Over two thousand years of Christian history, we have connected these descriptors with Jesus. Isaiah is happy to apply them in his own time to King Cyrus of Persia.
The Lord has chosen Cyrus to be king.
He has appointed him to conquer nations;
he sends him to strip kings of their power;
the Lord will open the gates of cities for him.
To Cyrus, the Lord says,
“I myself will prepare your way.
leveling mountains and hills.
I will break down the bronze gates
and smash their iron bars.
I will give you treasures from dark, secret places;
then you will know that I am the Lord
and that the God of Israel
has called you by name.
I appoint you to help my servant Israel,
the people that I have chosen.
I have given you great honour,
although you do not know me.
“I am the Lord; there is no other god.
I will give you the strength you need,
although you do not know me.
I do this so that everyone
from one end of the world to the other
may know that I am the Lord
and that there is no other god.
I create both light and darkness;
I bring both blessing and disaster.
I, the Lord, do all these things.
I will send victory from the sky like rain;
the earth will open to receive it
and will blossom with freedom and justice.
I, the Lord, will make this happen.”
… The Lord, the holy God of Israel,
the one who shapes the future, says:
“You have no right to question me about my children
or to tell me what I ought to do!
I am the one who made the Earth
and created humankind to live there.
By my power I stretched out the heavens;
I control the sun, the moon, and the stars.
I myself have stirred up Cyrus to action
to fulfill my purpose and put things right.
I will straighten out every road that he travels.
He will rebuild my city, Jerusalem,
and set my captive people free.
No one has hired him or bribed him to do this.”
The Lord Almighty has spoken.
Reflection
This Thursday as I was driving in to the church, I saw a middle-aged woman cycling along the shoulder of Hwy 8 past the church, heading east. She had a basket on the front of her bike filled with stuff, saddle bags at the back, was dressed in all-weather gear, and over it all was wearing a bright multi-coloured t-shirt that said in big letters on the back: “Riding to Fight Kids’ Cancer.”
I wonder if anyone knows about this, I wondered. I wonder where she’s from, and how far she’s riding. Someone should call CHCH and get a camera crew out here.
This summer our focus in worship is unsung and unlikely heroes doing God’s good work in the world. I think she must be one of them.
Later, checking Google, I found out there’s a whole Canada-wide thing going on through the month of August called “The Great Cycle Challenge Canada.” The website is greatcyclechallenge.ca, and the deal is that people are invited to set up their own route to ride through August, register and get the t-shirt and other gear, collect pledges for their riding, and send in the money, which will be used to fund research to develop safer and more effective treatments, and find cures for all childhood cancers. Top earners have their pictures on the website, and some have collected over $20,000 already. Each.
A whole country of unsung heroes, riding their bikes all over the place, raising funds to help save the lives of children they don’t know and will never meet … just because it’s a good and truly human thing to do, and they probably feel good doing it.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it, of all the unsung things done every day all around us and all over the world for the good of other people, other creatures, and Earth itself, sometimes by the most unlikely heroes?
Unlikely heroes.
In Isaiah 45, the prophet lifts up and praises to high heaven a very unlikely hero to find his way into the pages of the Bible. It’s King Cyrus of Persia, a foreign, pagan king, touted by Isaiah as saviour of the people – messiah, in fact, of Israel.
For some time, the people of God have been living a scattered, disconsolate life as exiles in Babylon. They live in a world of enemies and aliens in all directions. And now Babylon, the great oppressor, has been defeated. The new boss is King Cyrus of Persia, ruler of most of the known world. He’s taken over Babylon, and the good news is that this time the new boss is not the same as the old boss. One of the first things Cyrus does is declare the people of Israel free to go home – pack up what they have, leave the empire behind, and go back to their land to rebuild their cities, their temple and their lives.
Isaiah celebrates Cyrus as God’s anointed and appointed servant – literally, God’s messiah, which means “anointed one.” Language the prophet developed earlier to describe the one whom God would raise up to save the people – language that Christians for two thousand years have applied to Jesus, Isaiah applies to Cyrus.
He even says that Cyrus, in undoing the oppressive policies of the empire, putting things right, and setting people free to be what and where God has made them to be, is the fulfilment of God’s original purpose for all life on Earth revealed way back in Gen 1 and the creation of humankind on Earth. In other words, Cyrus of Persia is living out God’s original design – is giving the world a glimpse of God’s blueprint or logos, and bringing it to be in the world. He’s as good as God’s favourite and most loved son.
Reading this, I imagine two rabbis at a coffee shop in downtown Babylon, 540 BCE, talking about what Isaiah says, as their people are packing up and getting ready for the journey back to the land of Judah.
One rabbi, disgruntled, says, “It should have been one of us! After all, aren’t we God’s chosen ones, and God’s anointed? Why has Isaiah gone off the deep end about Cyrus? Such a thing! Did you hear what Isaiah has said? That s foreign king, is the saviour promised of old! A pagan, God’s messiah -- God’s anointed one (which is the meaning of messiah)! Really, he’s just another self-important ruler we need to steel ourselves to survive. But now Isaiah would have us bow down and worship him? Like he’s the son of God? I do not know what this world is coming to!”
After a respectful silence, the other rabbi speaks. Quietly at first.
“Yes, I see how you feel. And I’d feel the same way if I thought that’s what Isaiah was saying. But it’s not.
“Yes, he says Cyrus is anointed and is God’s messiah at the moment to put the world right, But Isaiah’s focus is really more on God who’s making all this happen by his own design, than it is on Cyrus, whom God is simply using right now to do what needs to be done.
“What Isaiah sees is that even though Cyrus does not know God, he is doing God’s work. Even though he serves a different God, and knows little of ours, he is serving God’s purpose in the way he is setting people free, creating new ways of justice for all, righting the wrongs of the past, and making the world work for the good of all, the way it’s been meant to all along.
“Isaiah’s focus is on God above and beyond, as well as within and through all that is – Lord of all.
“And isn’t that marvelous? Isn’t that hopeful? Isn’t that good news? That God is not limited to just us, as instruments of the good that needs to be done, and can be done for the world’s healing?”
The two rabbis get up to leave, side by side in their desire to help their people know and be part of the work of God in the world, and I too prepare to leave the coffee shop.
I think, praise be to God, of King Cyrus of Persia, led and lifted up by God long ago to help put the world right.
I think, praise be to God, of the woman on the bike along the shoulder of Hwy 8, watched over by God, as she rides a route of her own design to fight kids’ cancer.
I think, praise be to God, of how God nudges, leads, and uses people of all kinds and in all kinds of ways – wild and wonderful, as well as small and unsung, to help make Earth good, set things right, make the world a place of freedom and justice not just for some but for all, to make the world work the way it’s been meant to all along.
Praise be to God that people don’t even need to know God to be used by God.
Praise be to God that we can know, and see, and happily, intentionally offer ourselves just as we are, to help and be of use in some way – no matter how unlikely or unsung.
Praise be to God.
Questions
Have you ever felt like you were being used by God for some good purpose? That something you did, or were doing – even something little and un-noticed, may have been be helping to make the world a better place for others?
What was it you were doing when you felt that way? What kind of human being were you being at that moment? Praise be to God that you were, and are able to do that kind of thing, and be that kind of person.
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