The Gospel of Inactivity

"Like a pregnant woman

who writhes and cries out in her pangs

when she is near to giving birth,

so we were because of you, O Lord;

we were pregnant, we writhed,

but we have given birth to wind.

We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth,

and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen."

- Isaiah 26:17-18

I have been reflecting on Isaiah recently, and these verses really stuck out to me. Isaiah is lamenting over Israel, God's agents of deliverance in the world, who are a people who cry out for God, but accomplish nothing. Israel as a people sought God when they were in distress and God continued to deliver. This however, made no change in the way God's people lived.

What is so striking to me personally about Isaiah's bemoaning is what actually is to saddening him. Most of the time when people are mourning, they are mourning the loss of a person, a possession, or maybe a place. Isaiah is clearly mourning over his nation's sins. He wishes that his people had done more to change the world acting as God's emissaries. His last line there is convicting, "We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth, and the inhabitants of the world have not fallen."

I believe the church needs to consider Isaiah's words. Sometimes I fear that Stephen's words to the Sanhedrin are coming to true for Jesus' church:

"You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it."

(Acts 7:51-53)

We Christians claim that the ultimate miracle of miracles happened in the form of the incarnation: God came to earth. Jesus' ministry on earth was not neither ambiguous nor deceiving. He taught, he healed, and he made it possible that people would come into a right relationship with God. If it weren't enough to have God on earth, Jesus called apostles to preach and teach the word for years after his ascension to heaven. There has never been an absence of God's word to the world, there has only been an absence of hearing.

Nowadays the church (particularly in the United States), spends it's time largely ignoring Jesus. We relegate him to Lord of Heaven and Earth, but not of our houses, businesses, families, political parties or lifestyles. Jesus is a means to an end, namely salvation. He is a tool in the divine toolbox of our comfort. This ethos of passivity that I too am so guilty of cannot stand in light of the true Jesus. Christ does not speak words of comfort and rest to us. He says, "Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire" (Matthew 3:10).

I need to have the same spirit of Isaiah, one that compels him to action and sacrifice. I do not want to look back at my life and mourn over my failures for the world. I want to celebrate the beautiful ways God has worked in my life to further the Kingdom. When I look at the world around me I see people striving after some ounce of power or control in their life. I think this lust for power is actually a good sign. As Thomas Traherne puts it:

The noble inclination whereby man thirsteth after riches and dominion, is his highest virtue, when rightly guided; and carries him as in a triumphant chariot, to his sovereign happiness. Men are made miserable only by abusing it. Taking a false way to satisfy it, they pursue the wind: nay, labour in the very fire, and after all reap but vanity.

All of our life's desires for power, control and authority are but misguided aspirations for our life's true calling. I hear many people say that they do not want their lives to be boring or meaningless. People who have no relationship with Jesus pursue philanthropy because they want to connect with some greater purpose. The Body of Christ needs to preach and live the fact that following Christ is neither boring nor idle. True salvation as Stanley Hauerwas puts it is coming into the middle of God's story. A story that "began without us, as a story of the peculiar way God is redeeming the world, a story that invites us to come forth and be saved by sharing in the work of a new people who God has created in Israel and Jesus."