Sermon for Year a 5th Sunday after the Epiphany
Well I have to say when Isaiah came up as one of our readings this week, I was happy. I have a personal love of the prophet and amazed by the fact that most of his works correlate with the New Testament, Jewish tradition and Muslim documentation. That this man could prophesise so greatly so humbly, so bravely, through the Holy Spirit, the works and words of God is astonishing. He gave us new and ground breaking information. He predicted Jesus Christ, His birth, His life, His death and resurrection. He predicted Mohammed. Isaiah’s death was gruesome, sawn in half by the Israelites. In the beginning he and his prophetess wife, had been loved by Jerusalem, but by Isaiah’s words and actions, that all should get along, he was killed. He was an impartial man toward the end. He evolved in his humanitarianism. Here, in today’s passage, he contradicts the Pharisees, the Rabbi’s (the teachers) of the time, by breaking away with tradition. With telling us and them, and this was around the 8th Century BC, that love is Action, not ritual. This guy was a little ahead of his time.