Help We Did Not Expect

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, Year A – Isaiah 45:1-7

“I arm you, though you do not know me” (Isaiah 45:5).

As we read through this Sunday's OT lesson (Isaiah 45:1-7), we are met by two surprises. For most of us, the first is an unfamiliar name: Cyrus. The second is the title that the Isaiah text gives him: "anointed one." We may skim past the name. As to the title, however, many of us think, "This can't be."

For Christians, “anointed one” (messiah in Hebrew) means Jesus, the one who is born in Bethlehem, who dies on a cross. Yet here, YHWH speaks about a Persian king who neither belongs to Israel nor knows Israel’s God. Some additional context is required.

Isaiah, his friends, and his family lived in a shattered world. Babylon had conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. Most of the important members of the community had been carried off into exile. Their life, their routines, and especially their rhythms of worship, had been disrupted.

Living in Babylon, the exiles wondered if they'd ever see home again. They wondered if YHWH's promises were still true? How could they be true without the sacred Temple? Removed from Judah, were they still YHWH's people? Where might hope be found?

Isaiah's words speak into the uncertainty of their lives. Isaiah assures them that the future will be reopened by YHWH. Jerusalem will be rebuilt. Their exile will not become their final word. Change will be brought about, but they learn that the instrument of that change is a man those in exile could scarely have expected.

Cyrus.

Babylon will be conquered, but not by a Jewish leader in the line of King David. A king will vanquish Babylon, but he will not be a descendant of Abraham and Isaac. This Persian king does not belong to the covenant people. Yet God calls him “my anointed.”

In the life of those who descended from Israel, anointing marked a man’s appointment to a particular office or responsibility. Here, YHWH appoints Cyrus to a work of deliverance. His title did not mean what Christians mean when they/we confess Jesus as the Messiah. Even so, its use for this foreign king stretches the boundaries of expectation. Someone outside the community of faith will have a decisive part in that community’s restoration.

Twice God says to Cyrus, “though you do not know me.”

That detail is the most unsettling of all. Cyrus does not have to recognize or understand whose purpose he serves. YHWH can still work through him. The people who have called upon God for help and hope will receive it, but it will come from an outsider.

Isaiah intends that the people hear comfort in that promise. YHWH intends that they also be humbled by the message. Humanity often prays for deliverance while carrying a fairly settled picture of what such deliverance should look like, and from whose hands it should come. The Isaiah passage invites us to consider often how little room our hope leaves for surprise.

For the church, that question can come uncomfortably close to home. We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as people through whom God works. We worship, teach, serve, and seek to bear witness to God’s love. We think of these as are faithful responsibilities. Over time, however, we can become so accustomed to offering help that we forget how to receive it, especially from those who do not share our faith.

What happens when a neighbor who professes no religious belief helps us see a need that we have overlooked? How do we react when someone who has left the church speaks a truth about our life together that we would rather avoid? Can we listen? Can we acknowledge the goodness of work that was begun elsewhere? Can we offer our support when the idea isn't our own. Can we accept that we may have something to learn from those already doing it?

To be sure, these encounters are far removed from the rise of a Persian king in 539 BCE. Yet they can expose something of the same difficulty in us: our tendency to assume that we know where God’s activity will be found and who will be qualified to carry it forward.

Isaiah gives us reason to loosen that assumption. YHWH’s choice of Cyrus serves YHWH's particular purpose. YHWH acts for the sake of a people whose lives have been broken by conquest and exile. The surrounding verses speak of Jerusalem rebuilt and captives set free. People will be able to go home.

I think that YHWH's purpose matters when we consider the implications of this special passage. Calling Cyrus YHWH’s anointed does not require us to regard everything an emperor does as holy. Nor does it give us permission to treat political success as evidence of divine approval. Instead, our attention belongs with the people awaiting deliverance. What becomes possible for them through this unexpected agent? Where are captivity and displacement giving way to the possibility of life renewed?

The Isaiah passage ends with words that resist an easy resolution. YHWH declares sovereignty over light and darkness, well-being and calamity. YHWH's oracle does not explain away every sorrow. It doesn't authorize us to tell a suffering neighbor why a particular tragedy has occurred. Yet here, amid the upheavals of nations, it insists that the reach of God has not ended at the borders of the exiles’ ruined homeland. Their future remains open.

This bit of scripture meets me deeply. We all live with knowledge that is at best partial. Our hopes are sometimes weary. Our expectations may easily be mistaken for certainty. You and I cannot see the whole of creation’s unfolding. We can, however, attend to the promise before us: God remembers the displaced and makes a way toward home.

When we pray as our Lord has taught us, when we say, “Thy will be done,” we place our hopes within a purpose larger than we can comprehend. We also ask, whether we realize it or not, for the grace to receive what we have not anticipated.

God’s faithfulness gives us reason to hope. God’s freedom calls us to humility. We do not have to comprehend every movement of God to remain hopeful, but we may have to relinquish some cherished expectations to receive the help for which we pray.