3/20/22 "The Invitation" by Nancy E. Petty

Isaiah 55:1-9

The invitation came via email. It read: “We are reaching out to invite you to join us on an A Wider Bridge LGBTQ Interfaith Clergy Mission to Israel.” The invitation went on to share details of the invitation. A Wider Bridge is a North American organization that brings the LBGTQ communities in North America and Israel together, builds inclusion, fights for social justice, and combats bigotry including LGBTQphobia and antisemitism. Our Mission to Israel will bring together influential LGBTQ Interfaith Clergy to provide a balanced and deep look at Israel and Palestine, an opportunity to meet activists and leaders of its LGBTQ community, learn about peacebuilding work, experience holy sites, and explore the region’s history, religions, and culture.

At first, I thought the email invitation was a blanket email sent to a long list of LGBTQ clergy. Then I realized that the email was addressed specifically to me from Rabbi Denise Eger, former president of Reform Jews and good friend of Rabbi Dinner. And so, I kept reading the invitation.

The mission will include programs like: encountering the leaders of Israel’s LGBTQ organizations, visiting local LGBTQ Centers, exploring the current challenges of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, witnessing People-to-People Peacebuilding Work, visiting Christian Holy Sites, touring Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Yad Vashem Israel’s National Holocaust Memorial, meeting Palestinian activists, learning about Faith in Equality- Acceptance in the Religious Community and the battle against Conversion Therapy, and engaging on issues including Antisemitism, Pinkwashing, and BDS.

The invitation, as most invitations, gives the dates of the trip; and, unlike most invitations, also states that all costs are covered by A Wider Bridge. A month later, I am still trying to discern how to reply to this invitation. Accept or send my regrets.

There are many things that go into how we respond to invitations. On a practical first-level consideration, there is the question of the date and time. Are we available or does the date conflict with something already on our calendars. Once that hurdle is cleared, often taken into consideration is whether the invitation is from family or friends, or is it job related. There are a whole host of things to consider if it is a job related invite. Will this improve working relationships or career advancements? What is the professional cost of sending regrets? Maybe that is true, even more so, when the invite is coming from family, especially the cost of sending regrets. If we are honest, though, there is another criteria that we more often consider when receiving an invitation. Who else is invited? Don’t deny it. We all know we have made our decisions based on the guest list. Finally, and maybe ultimately, our answer comes based on the question: Is this really something that is important to me, something that I really want to do? And if so, what else am I willing to say no to, or what am I willing to sacrifice, to accept the invitation?

Isaiah 55 is an invitation. Its poetic beginning draws the reader in immediately, and even more so when set to music. It is an invitation that is hard NOT to accept regardless of what’s already on the calendar or who else is attending. The Message Bible interprets the invitation this way: “Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you penniless? Come anyway – buy and eat! Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. Buy without money – everything is free!” If the Pullen young adult group were sending out this invitation it might read: “Hey y’all! Are you thirsty from a long work week, come on down to the watering place on Glenwood South. If you’ve already spent your eating out and drinking money for the month, come anyway – the church is buying. Join us for drinks and appetizers. You don’t need money – it’s all free!” Wouldn’t you agree that’s an invitation that would be hard to turn down, especially if you are a young adult struggling to pay rent and live in Raleigh? The generosity of Isaiah’s and the young adults invitation is extravagant, especially to those receiving it.

Let’s consider who the invitation in Isaiah 55 is addressed to and how they might have worked through whether to accept or send regrets. Isaiah’s invitation is addressed to the elite Israelites who had been forcibly deported to Babylon when Jerusalem had been destroyed. Writing of this text, Walter Brueggemann explains: “While these deported elites yearned for a return to Jerusalem, it is clear that they also came to terms with the Babylonian regime and the Babylonian economy, enough to participate in the opportunities and requirements of the imperial order. In doing so, they inevitably compromised their quite distinctive Jewish identity as members of a neighborly covenant. It was an uneasy balancing act for them, to participate fully in the dominant economy and to practice at the same time an intentional and distinctive faith identity. That same uneasy balance is the very one that many of us seek to maintain in our own political economic setting.”

Let me bring this home to us. How would this invitation come to us? The elite Israelites receiving this invitation would be like us receiving an invitation from, oh let’s say, Bill Finlator or Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. or your most revered US President (you pick) asking us to disavow our American identity for the cause of our Christian identity and principles. In essence we would be invited to turn from capitalism, exceptionalism, ownership, rugged individualism for the forgiveness of debts, sharing everything in common, loving neighbor as self, living in community. What would you do, would we do with such an invitation?

Brueggemann goes on to explain that it is into that uneasy arrangement that this invitation is extended. “[The invitation], the message of Isaiah is that he wants his Jewish listeners to heed his call to reembrace their distinctive identity, and so to retreat from commitment to the empire. The purpose of his [invitation] is that his listeners will be prepared to return to Jerusalem with a clear covenantal identity...” In other words, the people are about to be freed after years in exile, and the prophet is extending an invitation for them to consider how they want to live as free, liberated people.

I want to stay with Brueggemann for just another minute. He goes on to write: In verses 1-5 the poet [issues an invitation to] his listeners to make a clear choice. He offers them an option of the generous self-giving of YHWH, the God of covenant. This God has in times past given Israel manna-bread and water in the wilderness, and will now generously give all that is needed for life...free water, free milk, and free wine, all gifts of God. But reception [Brueggemann writes] of these free gifts in faith requires his listeners to choose against the quid pro quo economy of Babylon. In that imperial economy of demand-production, these deported Jews had to do work that was not satisfying; they had to buy consumer goods that had no sustaining value. The quid-pro-quo of production ("labor for that which does not satisfy") and consumption ("that which is not bread") is in fact a dead-end project that only results in fatigue, disappointment, and despair. The [invitation of Isaiah 55] is that, because of the living God, an alternative way is possible. That alternative way is a homecoming that will be enacted because of God's fidelity to the covenant with [God made with God’s people].

Clearly, the invitation in Isaiah 55 is for a specific group of people, for a specific time in their history. Maybe you are thinking, this invitation is not for us. We are not an exiled people about to return to our homeland after years of captivity. And maybe some of you are thinking, I have enough money for water, milk and bread. I don’t need a free handout. But before we send our regrets to this invitation, let us take one moment to consider our own thirst and the questions this text might be inviting us to consider.

Have you ever felt caught up in a quid pro quo cycle? You go to work to pay the bills, to pay the bills you go to work. Do you ever thirst for a more life-giving rhythm to a work-life balance? It’s not that you don’t want to work and contribute to a larger purpose and pay for your way in the world. Such independence is freeing and motivating. But when that work becomes the tail that wags the dog (your life), are you not left thirsty? Thirsty for a way of life that is sustained by more than earning money? Thirsty for time that allows you rest and renewal? Thirsty for connection beyond a work or professional identity? The invitation that Isaiah 55 is offering us is to break this quid pro quo cycle and explore a life of abundance that God’s so desires for us. It is a risky, life-changing invitation to accept. And yet, it may very well be an invitation that saves our lives.

For us, Isaiah’s invitation is an invitation to consider how scarcity-thinking shows up in our lives. That thinking that there is not enough so we do not give as graciously or generously to those in need. Isaiah invites us to imagine how what we do might look different is we believed we had unlimited resources – and I’m not simply speaking of financial resources here. Consider all the resources at our finger-tips. It’s a lot to imagine but that’s the invitation. Such imagination will require us to resist the false narrative of scarcity – that’s there not enough for all. Such imagination will require us to resist the false narrative of American exceptionalism – that we are the best and most powerful. Such imagination will require us to resist the false narrative that whiteness is superior – that some human lives are more valuable than others. Such imagination will require us as a nation to resist the false narrative that Christianity is the only way to God – that other faith traditions are a threat to freedom. And those are some mighty big hurdles for Americans and Christians to overcome. But after all, is that not the invitation of our faith? To resist exceptionalism, racism, nationalism, faithphobia.

Do we accept or do we send our regrets to Isaiah’s invitation? Do we accept the invitation to live into God’s steadfast and sure love that offers us abundant living when we graciously and generously share what we have with others. Do we accept the invitation to break the quid pro quo cycle of life that our geo-political economy has convinced us is our only choice of how to live and get ahead in this world? Do we accept the invitation to support one another in finding a work-life balance that doesn’t leave us spiritually and physical thirsty all the time? Do we accept the invitation for our message to be: Come, everybody who is thirsty, come – eat and drink!

I am still trying to discern if I accept or send my regrets to the invitation to travel to Israel with my LGBTQ Jewish and Christian colleagues. But as for Isaiah’s invitation, I accept. And I hope you will accept it. And I hope and pray that as a church we will, in our spiritual thirst, accept Isaiah’s invitation to come and drink and eat from the abundance of God’s steadfast and sure love for us. Imagine how accepting such an invitation might bring new meaning and purpose to our lives and our church. The invitation awaits our response.