Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text for today’s meditation is Isaiah 55:6-13

"Indeed you will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you will break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands." Isaiah 55:12.

Home! The very word evokes feelings of love and laughter, security and serenity, warmth and welcome. It means mom and dad, fun and games, good food, deep sleep. It is amazing how the littlest thing can remind you of home; Just the other day my son Joshua sent me a text telling me he was cooking brats boiled in beer and onions and the smell made him think of home. "Home, home on the range." "When Johnnie comes marching home." But a little girl from Kansas says it best, "There’s no place like home!"

Isaiah, writing in the eighth century BC, addresses Israelites living in Babylon in the sixth century BC. And these exiles are far away from home. A monstrous reality called Babylon was a fire-breathing horror that devastated everything. In 586 the empire decided once and for all to destroy Jerusalem, described in the Babylonian archives as, "a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces and a place of rebellion from ancient times."

Now in refugee camps, Judeans are stuck in a land with canals and ziggurats and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the Ishtar Gate and the detestable statue of Marduk. Judah and Jerusalem and the Jordan have been replaced by the building projects of Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar. They have no king, no temple, no royal city, no land, no liturgy, no sacrifice, no future, and no hope. And so they have no song. How can they sing the songs of Yahweh while in a foreign land?

By the rivers of Babylon they sit and weep, reminiscing about the good ol’ days when they worshipped in the splendor of Solomon’s temple, worked and shopped in the city of David, and saw the Mount of Olives from a distance. Oh God, "there’s no place like home!"

The exiles are far away from home but, more pressing, they are far away from the Father. As Yahweh’s firstborn son Israel had demanded his fair share of the inheritance, set off for a distant country, and squandered it all on wild living; enticing Baal worship, seductive Assyrian planetary deities, perverting justice and righteousness, worthless worship, false faith. On August 19, 587 BC Jerusalem was destroyed. It was the day the music died!

With how much we move around these days, some of us are far away from home but, more pressing, all of us are far away from the Father. It’s the way we operate. We are, again, right here, right now, in an exile of our own making. We demand our fair share of the inheritance and set off for distant lights, seductive lights, and deadly lights. We sell our baptismal inheritance … for what? Dual lives, empty relationships, and inflated egos. Then Satan plants his foot on our necks and shouts, "God is finished with you!" Living in the agony of defeat, we have no song to sing.

But Yahweh speaks to exiles! Isaiah 55:12, "Indeed you will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you will break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands."

Just when the music had died and Israel’s history seemed closed and controlled by hopeless Babylonian imperial policy, to the shock and surprise of everyone Yahweh stirs up his messiah Cyrus and Isaiah’s new thing explodes in the desert! A Servant is wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. And barren Zion is given so many children, like the old woman in the shoe she doesn’t know what to do!

The climax of Isaiah’s program in chapters 40-55 is Yahweh’s promise to bring the exiles home in shalom. Everything that is so wrong will be made just right. That’s shalom. When Israel returns to Jerusalem Yahweh will renew everything! That’s

shalom. And shalom is why mountains and hills are singing and the trees of the field are clapping their hands!

Throughout Isaiah 40-55 creation celebrates Yahweh’s restoring gift of shalom. It begins in Isaiah 42:10-11, "Sing to Yahweh a new song … Let the desert and its cities lift up their voice." Isaiah 44:23, "Sing, O heavens … shout, O depths of the earth; break forth into singing, O mountains, O forest, and every tree in it! For Yahweh is restoring Jacob." Isaiah 49:13, "Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For Yahweh is comforting his people and having compassion on his afflicted ones."

The exiles are invited to join in the hymn of all creation!

"But the Babylonian propaganda machine sounds so persuasive. Didn’t their god Marduk defeat Yahweh? Aren’t we captive to the new realities of the empire? And isn’t all this talk of shalom just a pipe dream?"

In Isaiah 55:7-13 the prophet addresses these doubts by repeating the Hebrew word ki ("indeed") seven times, seven times (!), to underscore Yahweh’s program of shalom. Let me give you three examples.

Indeed, Yahweh has compassion … eternally.

Indeed, Yahweh forgives … abundantly!

Indeed, Yahweh has a plan … certainly!

Standing behind the reverberating ki, indeed, is Yahweh’s mighty word! Earlier Isaiah wrote, "The grass withers and the flower fades but the word of our God stands forever!" Now Yahweh promises that this same Word will never return empty. Yahweh said it. That settles it. Faith believes it! Indeed!

In Bethlehem this powerful Word took on flesh and blood and he has a heart and he knows the bitter pain of exile. "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Jesus was exiled, not only from the Father’s home but, more pressing, he was exiled from the Father. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

He has no song to sing.

To find the last time he sang a song of celebration we need to rewind the clock twelve hours to the meal in the Upper Room where Jesus sang the Egyptian Hallel, Psalms 113-118. After singing this song, Jesus was betrayed, spit upon, and scourged. Stretched out upon the cross he cries out, "It is finished!" It was the day the music died.

Yet raised on the third day, the song, strike that, the symphony of celebration, rocks on! How could death ever hold our Savior of Shalom, our Prince of Peace? Jesus, forever alive, lovingly looks you straight in the eye and says, "In my Father’s home are many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you!" This is no dorm room or army barracks or student housing. This is no Super 8 or Holiday Inn Express. It is infinitely better.

The robe and sandals are ready, and so is the ring. The price is paid, the party prepared, the sacrifice complete, and the Father has rehearsed his lines, "This son of mine was dead and is alive again."

"Indeed you will go out in joy and be led forth in shalom; the mountains and the hills before you will break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands."

In Jesus Christ we have this prophetic word made much more certain. When he returns we will go home, to the New Jerusalem, a place marked everywhere with shalom.

And our response?

We join in the hymn of all creation, for the Lamb who was slain has begun his reign! Halellujah!!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.