June 21, 2026
“I don’t want to sing about the things I always sing about.
I wish I could sing about love.
But I’ll sing them and sing them until there’s no need to sing them.
And then I shall sing about love.”
—Chumbawamba, “I Wish I Could Sing About Love”
Just to get a feel for the room, who remembers Chumbawamba?
One? Two?
Oh boy. Okay. That might make this a little trickier going forward.
But I read these lyrics. I hear the music. I feel this song.
I feel the prophets in this song, both minor and major. They were all destined to write about these same themes again and again.
Maybe it is just my love of literature, but behind all the instructions for justice and the words of reproach for the same old sins again and again, there is such beautiful, imaginative writing. How frustrating it must have been for these artists to write about the same things again and again.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, just for once, they could simply write and sing about love?
Prophets, preachers, teachers, poets, and singers may spend their entire careers, or even their entire lives, devoting all their energy, gifts, and strength to the cause of love and justice without ever tasting the fruit of their labor.
It is important to remember this so that we do not assume, even for a second, that they are motivated by the sound of their own voices.
They are exhausted.
There is no pleasure in repeating themselves over and over again to a world that has simply stopped its ears and covered its eyes.
Their motive is always love. Their motive is righteousness. Their motive is salvation for all. Their motive is the kingdom of heaven.
These prophecies did not come from naivety or idealism. God gave the prophets the vision and imagination to see what goodness and greatness are possible because we are all made in the image of God.
What might happen if we, as one people, finally broke all the yokes that continually bind us to injustice and embraced the vision of a more perfect reality?
In the meantime, these prophets, preachers, teachers, poets, and singers must live alongside us in the tension between the reality of this unjust world and the promise of the already-but-not-yet established new world.
If we have to devote our entire beings to saying the same old things again and again, trusting that one day there will finally be no need to say them, then by golly, we are going to do it.
The book in our canon that we call Isaiah is actually a broad collection of prophecies written over several centuries by multiple authors. It was written to the chosen people of God across three distinct eras of Israel’s history.
The first section was written during a period of political turmoil that coincided with the rise of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Jerusalem was caught in the middle. We call this the pre-exilic period.
The people and government of Jerusalem were panic-stricken. Their kings and leaders continually sought alliances with neighboring powers, trying to find safety through the right political relationship.
In First Isaiah, the prophet addresses this tension directly. He chastises the people for forgetting the promises of God, practicing injustice among themselves, and leaving themselves divided and vulnerable. He also rebukes them for idolatry.
This particular idolatry involved seeking protection and safety through false deities, whether household idols or kings.
The prophet introduces the idea of the already-but-not-yet kingdom that will come in the future, when God will level the mountains and establish justice, equity, and peace among the people. But he also warns them that there will first be a great deal of trouble and suffering.
The section ends almost comically, in prose, with the prophet telling King Hezekiah that after he is dead, Babylon will overtake Jerusalem and the people will be driven from their homes.
Hezekiah rejoices because all he hears is that it will not happen until after he is dead.
The second portion of Isaiah was written many years later to people living in exile. This is the exilic period of Israelite history.
This section is filled with messages of hope. Their suffering will not last forever. God has not forgotten them. They will soon be restored.
The prophet writes in great detail about the vision first introduced in First Isaiah: a new kingdom ruled by justice and equity, where oppression will end.
It is the more uplifting section.
Back in seminary, I came up with a metaphor that my professor fortunately endorsed. Otherwise, I would not be sharing it with you now.
Think of the book of Isaiah as a sandwich.
The first slice of bread is First Isaiah. That is rye bread.
In the middle, you have the peanut butter and jelly.
Then, on top, you have the whole-grain bread.
When we reach that whole-grain section, the final eleven chapters known as Third Isaiah, we encounter the post-exilic people. They have returned home after exile and are living under the watchful eye of the Persian Empire and King Cyrus.
But their return is not what they expected.
It is not the beautiful vision of hope and a new kingdom that the prophet had given them. Everything is a mess. Everything is in disarray. Their oppressors are still there.
The Persians are watching them, spying on them, arresting them, threatening them, and carrying accusations back to Cyrus, warning him that he needs to bring the hammer down on the Israelite people.
This is not the promised new kingdom they expected.
This moment is pivotal in Israelite literature because the language surrounding the servant, or the suffering servant, completely shifts.
Previously, the servant was usually understood as an individual prophet, king, or warrior.
In Third Isaiah, including the passage we read today, God speaks through the prophet and says that it is not simply individual prophets, kings, or warriors who are called to be the suffering servants and bring about this new world.
The people of God, Israel collectively, are the servant.
Now that they are back in Jerusalem, they are tasked with the work of bringing about a new world of justice and equity.
God is saying that the kingdom of heaven will not simply come down from the sky in bolts of lightning. Instead, God will work relationally through the faithful.
Through works of justice and righteousness, God will slowly, gradually, and continually bring about salvation for all nations, first to Jerusalem and then to the rest of the world.
That language may sound familiar from the New Testament: first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. This is where that idea begins.
This is also unusual in Israelite literature because it includes all nations within the kingdom of heaven. It is not simply one select group of people, but all people.
Throughout the book of Isaiah, across centuries and multiple writers, we continually return to the same themes and behaviors.
The message is always to push through suffering. Push through oppression. Remain faithful. Continue doing works of justice so that one day we may live in a world without suffering and pain, a world ruled entirely by love.
Many years after this passage was written, God would baptize a Jewish carpenter’s son named Jesus with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus would feed, heal, teach, and live into the calling first given to one people. That calling would spread like wildfire to all nations, as we celebrate at Pentecost, so that all people might take on the mantle of the servant and help bring about this new world of justice.
Before we get carried away, though, we need to return to the basics and consider what this actually looks like.
What did it mean for them, and what does it mean for us, to live by justice, live for justice, and bring about a just world?
To understand what it means to bring salvation to all nations through justice, we need to understand what justice means within the context of Isaiah.
That requires looking at justice through a Jewish lens.
Judaism is a faith of action. It is not simply a faith of believing the right things. It is a faith of doing.
It is a faith defined by lived experience, with the singular goal not of going to heaven, but of achieving oneness with God.
Just and righteous acts are performed so that we might gradually become more like God. The transformative power of a righteous act toward our neighbor, or more broadly toward all creation, transforms us in return.
We do godly things, and we become more like God.
For example, our reading instructs us to share our bread with the hungry.
In Hebrew, a voluntary act of kindness from one person to another is called chesed.
It is simple, straightforward, and uncomplicated.
The impact may be small and temporary. The act may have been done sincerely or even begrudgingly. But as long as it is done, one hungry person is fed.
That is good.
But what if, instead of one person giving a piece of bread to another person, a group of people financially supports an organization that provides and distributes food to hungry people throughout a city?
Done effectively, that organization could drastically reduce or even eliminate hunger within that city.
The Hebrew word associated with this kind of righteousness is tzedakah.
The twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, also known as Rambam, developed a model for attaining righteousness based on different forms of charity. It is sometimes called the ladder of charity, or Rambam’s ladder.
He proposed, and it remains a commonly used guideline for righteous living, that the type of charity or justice performed affects the transformative power of the act.
The lowest form, giving begrudgingly, is still considered righteous, but it is less transformative.
The higher you climb on the ladder, the less emphasis there is on the giver and the more emphasis there is on the impact of the gift.
This brings us to a third form of righteousness.
The root word of tzedakah is tzedek, which emphatically means justice.
Tzedek is the big word.
It is an act of justice that restores or creates balance within a system of injustice.
In the example of feeding hungry people, an act of tzedek would seek out the root cause of the hunger.
Why do some people have food to give while others do not have access to it?
What is the underlying problem?
Is there a food desert with no public transportation to grocery stores?
Is it a money issue?
Are there not enough jobs?
Are there jobs, but the wages are too low?
Are some people unable to work, or unable to work enough hours to earn sufficient income?
Is the available food unhealthy or spoiled?
Why do some people go hungry while others have more than enough?
An act of tzedek would undo or tear down the system that creates the hunger and disparity so that there would no longer be a need for charity at all.
This is ultimate righteousness.
This is the absolute justice that will bring about the kingdom of heaven.
Still, simpler acts remain acceptable and transformative. Feeding one hungry person still matters.
But it will take a collective act of tzedek to transform the entire world into God’s promised kingdom.
It is not simply about a collection of individuals performing just acts. It is about people coming together as one body to dismantle systemic injustice and create balance.
As we moved through these three forms of justice, did you notice that more and more people became involved?
As more people became involved, the impact became greater.
That is what it will take.
Unfortunately, throughout human history, we repeatedly fall into the same patterns of behavior described throughout all three portions of Isaiah.
We become complacent in our relationship with God. We forget our calling. Our religious lives become routine, and we push God and God’s promises out of our worldview.
When trouble comes, instead of seeking God’s justice, we seek help from the powers of the world.
This is idolatry.
We are pulled again and again into patterns of violence, oppression, and greed because that is how the powers of the world operate.
Our repeated failures, however, do not undo what God has already done.
Martin Luther King Jr. wisely proclaimed that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Even so, we must continually return to the beginning and remind ourselves that nothing good, just, or transformative can be gained through false deities or tools of injustice.
As the prophets remind us, this is good, but it is also deeply frustrating.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes that to be enslaved to sin is to be enslaved to the self, imagining, desiring, and hoping for nothing beyond one’s own needs and desires.
We lose sight of salvation. We become crippled by fear and retreat toward what is familiar.
Paul says, in essence, “I know what is good and right and just, but I keep doing the wrong thing again and again.”
We continually return to what is familiar, even when the familiar is terrifying.
The good news is that, by grace and under grace, we have been given unlimited opportunities to try again.
God does not imprison us when we falter. God has granted us unconditional freedom.
Each day, we have the choice and the power to do what is good, just, and right.
Through Christ, and through the invitation to become suffering servants, we become the hands and feet of God, tasked with bringing about a more perfect world.
We are free to imagine and act in service of perfect justice.
We are free to become more like God and, in turn, transform the world around us.
The kingdom will come when the imbalances of the world have been corrected and there is no more hunger, thirst, or hatred.
There will be no need to welcome the stranger because there will no longer be a stranger.
I believe too many of us aim far too low when we envision a mission or project meant to respond to suffering and need.
We think about addressing symptoms.
We think in the language of tzedakah rather than dismantling unjust systems through tzedek.
But our mission as the church, not Lutheran, Disciples, Presbyterian, Catholic, Baptist, or any other denomination, but the church, the living body of Christ on earth, alongside our Abrahamic siblings, Jews and Muslims, is to build the foundation of the kingdom of God for its ultimate establishment.
It will not happen by itself.
When God created us and all the earth at the beginning of time, everything was created to exist in balance.
All creatures and plants were interdependent upon one another.
The first ailment of Adam was loneliness, so God created Eve to correct the imbalance.
Each person was created in the image of God with the power of creativity, righteousness, and justice.
When we move away from this primary mission, we lose sight of our identity with our Creator.
We forget that we are not alone.
We also forget that the power of absolute righteousness lives within us.
I am convinced that the root of all injustice and imbalance is the belief that we are powerless, the lie that there is nothing we can do.
In the midst of sickness, depression, and sadness, we may believe we are stuck by ourselves.
We are not.
God is with us, within us, beside us, and among us.
God is a living presence within ourselves and within each of our neighbors, so that we may never be alone.
We are called to be generous with our godliness.
We have evidence that we possess this capacity.
Be assured that God’s work will be done one way or another.
It may happen through the simple gift of bread to someone who is hungry.
It may happen through an egotistical billionaire giving to charity for a tax deduction.
It may happen through an idealistic grassroots organizer turning the world upside down one petition at a time.
God finds a way to work through us.
But would it not be thrilling to participate in that work without cynicism or guilt?
What if we participated with the sincere belief that grace, enacted through voluntary acts of tzedek, could bring about an end to loneliness and injustice?
What if we acted with intentionality, believing as faithful people that a righteous world is possible, and then witnessed the balancing of the scales?
We, the church, are a generous people.
That is true whether we are liberal, conservative, or anything else.
We are inherently generous people, and we have already been set free to participate in creation through the abundant grace of our Savior.
Let us give ourselves over to being made holy and righteous, not alone, but in full participation with God and one another, for the establishment of the kingdom of heaven.
Then, finally, perhaps we can stop singing the same old songs and at last simply sing about love.
Amen.