One of the responsibilities of good preaching is to create space for us to hear ancient texts in ways that make sense of a world not envisioned when those texts were written. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? As Harry Emerson Fosdick was fond of saying, “People don’t come to church with a burning desire to learn more about the Jebusites.” Which, of course, is a hard word for us nerdy seminary-types to hear. We like to think that that which is of interest to us, is of interest to everyone. It comes as a rather bracing shock to new ministers to find out that most folks in the pews don’t sit around and contemplate the implications of pre-lapsarianism or postliberal hermeneutical theory.

Unfortunately—at least for us—people have other things to worry about: will partisan politics and vaccine denial keep us forever in the clutches of the pandemic, a crisis in voting rights, the possibility of a coup attempt that succeeds, wealth disparity brought on by toxic capitalism that keeps most of the wealth in a few hands, stagnating wages, race relations, anti-semitism, the Affordable Care Act, whether the Cubs are totally going to tank this year.

Big questions. Questions that go, largely, unanswered by Scripture.

So when we get a passage like today’s from Isaiah, it’s next to impossible to keep our eyes from glazing over. Oh, it’s pretty, of course. No question about that. But it seems so—well—so distant.  I mean, what do the “camels of Midian and Ephah” have to do with tornado victims in Western Kentucky, or whether the Supreme Court is, after all, a partisan institution?

What does “gold and frankincense” have to do with whether or not young people with onerous student loans will be able to make enough money even to cover the loans—let alone carve out any kind of life—or whether undocumented immigrants are going to have their families torn apart by deportation?

What does any of the stuff Isaiah’s talking about—which happened 2,500 years ago—have to do with whether Omicron will fill our hospitals so full that every other healthcare emergency will be pushed to the side, or whether our Democracy is resilient enough to endure the beating it’s been taking at the hands of some of our neighbors, or the fact that certain folks in our government lie to us with such staggering regularity that huge sections of the population have largely become inured to it, convinced that conspiracies are unassailable truths, while actual science and rational discourse are a liberal plot.

Frankly, we’ve got more pressing issues to occupy our idle hours than to listen to this irrelevant stuff. Come on, preacher, give us something that’ll help us deal with the fact that the world feels extra shaky and unstable right now, with nothing for us to do but wonder if there’s anything anybody can do to stop what feels like the coming apocalypse.

See what I mean? Tough sledding, this. That this passage contains such lyrical prose makes it merely readable—not necessarily relevant. Indeed, some have criticized this last portion of Isaiah as dreamy avoidance therapy. You know, the kind of power-of-positive-thinking stuff you find on late night infomercials that tell you how to lose 100 pounds by Valentines day, or make dump-truck loads of cash on real estate with “no money down”—or preachers like Joel Osteen selling a false bill of goods that God has nothing better to do than to bless you with a new Mercedes and a vacation home … if you’ll just send a suitable donation to help gold plate the toilets in the pastor’s office.

Yup. That’s been the rap on the last part of Isaiah. These people come straggling back to Judah after years of exile, more a trickle than a mighty stream. A few here, a few there. Let loose by the Persian King, Cyrus, (forebear of the Magi who followed the star to Bethlehem in our Gospel text this morning) who defeated the Babylonians.

The temple lies in a rocky rubble—a painful reminder of their humiliation at the hands of the Babylonians. The people of God hang their heads in shame, unable to bring themselves to lift up their eyes.

There’s more confusion in Jerusalem as the exiles return than there is on the issue of whether there’ll be indictments of the politicians and organizers of the January 6th coup attempt.

Then Isaiah comes to the people and says, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you … Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”

Kind of pie-in-the-sky sounding, isn’t it? Just more words. What is Isaiah? Some sort of Palestinian cock-eyed optimist? Like kings would even occupy the same room as these misfits—let alone come and bend the knee. Come on. I was born at night (as my friend, Bill Bisceglia, would say)—but not last night.

And that’s kind of how this passage sounds, isn’t it? It’s nice, but anyone with half a brain and some walking around change knows how the world works—and it doesn’t work the way Isaiah says it works. A scroungy band of refugees with Babylonian dust still on their Crocs and Birkenstocks just doesn’t receive the attention of the nations.

What do you take us for? Credulous dolts? Unsophisticated rubes?  Give us some credit. We’re urbane modern folk.

No, it’s hard to comprehend this sort of good news, especially in our current context.

Admittedly, we face our own difficult times, but over all, we’re pretty comfortable. We’ve got problems, to be sure. We suffer much higher levels of depression and anxiety than our ancestors. We’re living through the 21st century version of the Black Plague. Our parents are more fragile than we ever imagined when we were younger, and they seemed like the anchors in our universes. (I mean, we lost national treasure, Betty White, for crying out loud.)

We watch our children struggle in the world, and despair that there’s so little we can do to make things right for them. But most of us who live in nice homes, who drive serviceable cars, and have at least three different streaming services can afford to be a bit dubious about the fantastical claims Isaiah makes.

Apocalyptic literature, in the final analysis, is always pooh-poohed by the secure and the well-situated. I mean, how do you convince someone who drives a Jaguar and vacations in Fiji, after all, that the reign of God has much to offer?

If we are to create space within which we can hear this ancient literature, we’ll need to be reminded that Isaiah wasn’t speaking to middle class, white suburbanites.