Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 11, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Have you ever noticed that some Bible verses appear to say more than they really do? I mean, have you ever read a Bible passage, thought it was really good and meaningful, then looked at it more closely only to find that it raises more questions than it answers? I had that kind of reaction to part of our reading from Isaiah this morning. I really like verses 8 and 9 of Isaiah 55, the ones that read “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” NRSV I take great comfort in the fact that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than human ways and thoughts. If they weren’t, what need would we have of God? What would God have to offer us if God’s thoughts and ways were merely human thoughts and ways? I hear great good news in Isaiah’s statement that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours.

Yet when you think about it, doesn’t the statement that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours raise more questions than it answers? We want to ask: What then are God’s ways that are higher than our ways? What are God’s thoughts that are higher than our thoughts? These verses from Isaiah don’t really say very much about what they are. It leaves us to wonder about God’s thoughts and ways, and to wonder about how we are to discover them. So let’s take a closer look at the passage to see if we can tease out any information about what God’s ways and thoughts are that might be helpful to us.

The passage that ends with our verses 8 and 9 actually begins at verse 6. Before verse 6 the text is talking about God making an everlasting covenant with Israel. That’s fine, but it isn’t what really interests me here. At verse 6 the subject of the text changes. It says: “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” It then calls upon the “wicked” to forsake their way and the “unrighteous” their thoughts. It calls on them to return to God so that he may have mercy on them, because he will “abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.” It turns our that the way this passage is constructed is telling us at least one thing about how God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours. God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours at least in part because God is a God of mercy and pardon. God is different from us because God forgives. God forgives unrighteousness and wickedness. There’s no indication here that God demands any price for forgiveness other, perhaps than that those who need it ask for it. God is a God of grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

And we must admit, I think, that the way of mercy and forgiveness is a different and higher way than the way of most of us humans most of the time. I know how hard it is for me to forgive someone that I think has wronged me. Hurt and anger always get in my way. I want to make them wrong and myself right. I want to feel superior. Holding a grudge makes me feel righteous because it reminds me of how much better I am than the person that I think wronged me. I get all kinds of benefit from not forgiving. Forgiving puts the person I forgive and me on the same moral level. It means I can’t hold the wrong they did to me against them. When I forgive I have to give up my righteous anger and my moral superiority, and I don’t much like giving those things up. My human way is not to forgive.

And that’s not just my human way. I think it is the human way generally. We humans all want to make ourselves better than the next guy. We all want to feel superior and righteous. We may not want to admit that that’s what we want. When you say it out loud like that it doesn’t sound very attractive. We may pretend that that’s not what we want, but let’s be honest here. Don’t we do an awful lot of what we do so that we’ll look good to other people? Don’t we do a lot of what we do to make ourselves right by making other people wrong? Don’t we hold onto the wrong others have done to us rather than let it go because it feels so good to be right and righteous as compared to those other people who aren’t as good as we are? Don’t we find it hard to forgive because we get so much from holding onto our anger?

There must be something we humans get by refusing to forgive others who have hurt us. After all, we humans seem a lot more concerned with honor than with mercy. We care more about appearing strong than about being compassionate. The world tells us that the honorable thing to do is to get even and that forgiving and forgetting is nothing but weakness or even cowardice. We may nod in agreement when we hear Gandhi’s statement that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, but we no more follow the way of forgiveness than we do Gandhi’s—and Jesus’—way of nonviolence. We practice reprisal not mercy, and thus we perpetuate the cycle of injury, anger, and retaliation. If we didn’t get something out of being that way, we wouldn’t be that way.

That’s the human way. It is not God’s way. Isaiah says that God has mercy and pardons abundantly. As Christians we know that forgiveness is God’s way because we see it not only in Isaiah but even more so in Jesus Christ. This is Lent, and we are preparing to commemorate our faith’s foundational story, the story of Jesus’ betrayal, execution, and resurrection. This is a time for us to contemplate the stories of those events, in this pre-Easter time especially the stories of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, suffering, and death. In those stories we see how much Jesus placed mercy and forgiveness above anger and revenge. We have, for example, the story that appears in several of the Gospels of the disciple who, upon Jesus’ arrest, drew his sword and struck off the ear of one of those who had come to arrest Jesus. In Luke’s version of the story Jesus says: “No more of this.” Then he touches the severed ear and heals the man who had come to arrest him. Luke 22:50-51 NRSV Luke also has Jesus say from the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Luke 23:34 NRSV I actually think the phrase “for they do not know what they are doing” isn’t an authentic Jesus saying. It would be so much more like him to have said “Father, forgive them though they know exactly what they are doing.” We Christians say that we see God’s way in Jesus, and Jesus’ way is the way of forgiveness. Forgiveness is God’s way, and it is a much higher way than the way we humans most commonly follow.

We see other ways of God in Jesus that are much higher than our ways too. The most important thing for our world today that we see in Jesus is God’s way of nonviolence. The story of Jesus’ rebuke to the disciple who cut off the ear of the man who came to arrest Jesus is a good example. And we all know the sayings: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Do not resist the evil doer, where the Greek original means do not resist with violent force. We know the sayings: Turn the left cheek also, give the cloak as well, go the extra mile, which actually mean resist evil assertively and creatively but not violently. Nonviolence is God’s way, and it is a higher way than our human way. We humans seem to resort to violence at every turn. Our nation does it in its foreign policy. Many of us humans do it in our personal relations, in which we strike out in anger rather than work for reconciliation. We glorify violence in our movies, on television, in popular music, and perhaps most of all in the video games that our young people can’t seem to do without. God’s way is to break the cycle of violence by meeting violence with love. The human way is to perpetuate the cycle of violence by meeting violence with more violence. God’s way is higher. God’s way is better. God’s way can bring peace, and it is the only way that can.

So it turns our that we do have some pretty good idea of what God’s higher thoughts and higher ways are. We learn them in Isaiah and other writings of the Hebrew Bible. As Christians we learn them most of all from Jesus Christ, who not only teaches God’s ways, he is God’s way. God calls us to follow God’s way, not our human ways. God calls us to transcend our pettiness, our little egos, our addiction to violence, and so many other limited human ways of thinking and of living. So when you’re nursing that grudge, when you’re feeling superior, when you’re tempted to resort to violence, remember what Isaiah says. My ways are not your ways says the LORD. Remember God’s ways; and when I’m doing those same things, I’ll try to remember them too.. Amen.